Studio: international art (17.1899)

Frits Erler

tained artist into a disastrous exuberance of fancy,
into overloaded detail and multiplication of motives,
which would have wrecked the whole. Mr. Erler,
however, has held himself well in hand, and having
thought out his theme, has let the riches of his
fancy play about the working out of its charming
variations, while absolutely conserving the unities.
To assign the result to any known style would
be as impossible as it is unnecessary. It is so
original that it seems to owe no one of its
forms to aught but its author’s inventive talent.
It is a painter’s room rather than an architect’s,
distinctly a decorative-painter’s conception, in
which, though architectural criticism may find
faults, there is pleasing proportion and—in spite
of its entire departure from the kind of thing tyrant
custom imposes upon us—much dignity of impres-
sion. The delicious softening of the lines in wood
and metal gives great suavity to the whole compo-
sition ; while in the flowing curves of the three steps
which sweep across the end of the room, swelling
out into a platform for the small organ, an admir-
able effect is gained.

Erler shrinks from the right line, avoids the
square joint, and goes great lengths in order to
blend abutting members together softly. The
finish of the wainscot against the chimney is an
instance of this. The wood is moor-oak, the
natural forms of whose gnarled and storm-bent
limbs may have suggested the lines he shows here,
lines which have something of life in them, a
grotesquery as of a couple of gnomes seated on the
baseboard and guarding the hearth, or a pair of
salamanders climbing to the flame.

The idea of carrying the marble out against the
walls probably grew out of a desire to give the fire-
place an effect of greater width; and in order to
avoid the abrupt interpolation of a new note of
colour under his painted figure decoration, and to
bring the stone and wood together easily, he merges
them in these sinous lines. The fireplace is an
interesting bit of treatment, again more decorative
than architectural. The hood is in iron, with a
stained and mottled surface, upon which ornaments
of gilded metal are applied with a pleasing Japan-
esque symmetry.

The whole is wrought with a very delicate regard
for softened lines and rounding forms. The pieces
which run down at the sides from the hood, and
project upon the hearth in a somewhat awkward
and unstable way, were doubtless intended to
mitigate the evident shallowness of the chimney-
breast, which has too little depth for a good fire.
If this fireplace, in the centre of the side wall of a
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great room, has scarcely that dignity which an
English taste might expect in the setting of the
sacred hearth, one must absolve the artist, who,
finding the rough work in place, did what he could
with it; and one must remember that the heating
of the room is otherwise provided for.

The hood is well motived, indeed, by the beauti-
ful painting panelled above it, but one is concerned
whether it will shield the rosy-skinned Botticellian
maid who stands there on a flowered sward in her
wind-blown diaphanous draperies, from the smoke
and grime which threaten to smirch the pretty
muse and wither her garland. Does not the place,
indeed, seem to call for something less dainty—a
bit of sculptured stone or plastic ornament ?

The wainscot, in iron-grey moor- oak, is capped
by a broad boldly projecting member of gothic
form, with a good hollow where the grain of the
wood shows to advantage. The small panels,
carved in a simple ornament, are carried along the
two sides of the room without variation. Other-
wise the wainscot is a plain surface in chequers of

LOCK I’LATE

BY FRITZ ERLER