Studio: international art (14.1898)

Selwyn Image

still more true of all “ fashions ” in art—fashions
that, if dignified and scholarly, we call “ move-
ments,” if trivial and vulgar we call “ crazes.” Yet
nearly all these,
worthy or unworthy,
might be traced
ultimately to a single
person who initiated
the new departure.

Possibly, when we
credit a Bismarck
with German unity,
or an Edison with
a host of scientific
inventions, we are
really misled by the
prominence given to
certain names, and
should find, if we
dived deeper, that
the real impetus had
been provided by
some mute inglo-
rious student whose
very existence was
unsuspected. This
must needs be sur-
mise to a great ex-
tent ; yet in our own
field of work, be it
what it may, we
realise “ a power
behind the throne ”
known, it may be, to
all immediately con-
cerned, but unsus-
pected by outsiders.

Mr. Selwyn
Image’s influence
upon modern art
is well known to
those who have
studied its develop-
ment in recent years.

His actual handi-
work might bulk
small in a retrospec-
tive exhibition of
late Victorian art;

but his influence would be discerned in the work
■of many who might possibly have never heard his
name. Indeed, one has encountered people who,
having heard it, regarded it as a decorative nom de
guerre. The Century Guild (of which more anon)
4

STAINED GLASS

has been a very important factor in the develop-
ment of the decorative arts during the last ten or
fifteen years ; yet in a summary of the progress of

the applied arts dur-
ing that time its share
is too often ignored.
Once popularity is
gained by any move-
ment, all sorts of
people come for-
ward with a modest
confession that they,
and they only, “ did
it with their little
hatchets,” that they
cleared the mighty
forests, while, as a
matter of fact, their
true share was but
to steal a few twigs
of the trees felled by
others to bind into
chaplets for them-
selves. Those who
know the truth rarely
trouble to cavil at
such statements;
and so the charla-
tans wear their self-
bestowed honours
without reproach.
This by way of
preamble before
discussing more
directly the work of
a small group of
artists that has ex-
ercised a very im-
portant influence on
contemporary de-
sign.

The modern deco-
rative movement, so
called, began with
Pugin and the
Gothic revival. That
Owen Jones was also
responsible for no
little share in it, and
that what we may call the pre-Morris period is
almost entirely Gothic in its sympathies, is also
true. Indeed, with Morris himself and his fellow-
workers we still find Gothic dominating, if not
entirely absorbing, their efforts. Had any of the

BY SELWYN IMAGE