Studio: international art (14.1898)

Selwyn Image

artists of the period before the Century Guild
been asked his opinion of Sir Christopher Wren’s
work, it may be doubted if a single one had
praised it. We
know what Morris
himself thought of
St. Paul’s Cathe-
dral ; and going
back to Strawberry
Hill and Horace
Walpole, to the
Eglington Tourna-
ment, to the Houses
of Parliament, down
to the New Law
Courts and the
Eastlake domestic
furniture, one finds
that the inspiration
is always from the
Gothic, rather than
from Romanesque
in any of its develop-
ments. The whole
bias of the nine-
teenth century, from
and before Pugin,
to Sir Gilbert Scott,
was in favour of
Gothic reproduction
pure and simple,
rather than of build-
ings or patterns,
obeying the spirit
of Gothic construc-
tion but with the
newer influences of
the Renaissance
restraining its ar-
chaic manner, to
less evidently eccle-
siastical expression.

In short, the Gothic
revival was bigoted,
and positively op-
posed to all styles
based on the Italian
Renaissance. With
the Century Guild
—as with Mr. Nor-
man Shaw ■— came
with diverse expression that new appreciation for
the art of the Renaissance, especially of the
English Renaissance which is dominant to-day.

6

To recognise this is not to discredit the good work
done by Gothic partisans. The story of Pugin
and the Gothic revival, of the Pre-Raphaelite

brotherhood and
its work, of the
famous firm of
Morris, Faulker &
Co., helped by Ford
Madox-Brown and
others, each one a
chapter in the his-
tory of decorative
art in England, has
been told and re-
told. The stories
of “ The Century
Guild ” and its in-
fluence, and of
“ The Dial,” with
its outcome in the
Vale Press, yet
await their histo-
rian. These were
in a sense amateur
experiments, co-
existent with the
more widely recog-
nised efforts of
architects and de-
signers already
mentioned, and also
with certain com-
mercial enterprises
which had no little
influence on the
progress of decora-
tion, in the hands
of Dr. Christopher
Dresser, Mr. Lazen-
by Liberty, and
some few others.
In the last two
alone do we find
Japanese art assert-
ing itself, a factor,
perhaps, more im-
portant than many
good disciples of
Morris or of the
Century Guild care
to acknowledge.
But here we must leave Japan out of the record,
and note in Mr. Selwyn Image one of the earliest
who found a new source of inspiration, drawn not