Studio: international art (17.1899)

E. M. Simas Decorations for a Bath-Room

attempting an elaborate criticism of his style, at
may be noted that among his distinguishing gifts
are a charming feeling for colour, an honest love of
nature, and a truly personal mode of treatment.
He has, moreover, a sense of proportion, a capacity
for effective detail, and above all a keen eye for
harmony of form and tone. He does not go out
of his way in search of the extravagant and the
eccentric, having an honest contempt for the com-
plications and the bizarre?-ies into which so many
other artists allow themselves to drift.

All these good qualities find characteristic ex-
pression in the decoration of this Bath-room
which M. Simas has constructed in the country
house of M. Laurens. The room is four metres
long by three metres wide and four metres
in height, with but one door and one window.
The pool-bath, let into the flooring, is enclosed in
a sort of rectangular niche reaching nearly to the

DECORATIONS FOR A BATH-ROOM

ceiling. The motif which has inspired M. Simas
is the stream flowing through the meadows, and
this has been carried out with infinite resource by
M. Laumonerie from the artist’s cartoons. On
the window a glacier stands out all white against
the opaline sky with its rosy-golden reflections;
while below, amid the rocks, the blue waters flow
between the lilies and the reeds. The window is
framed by a bordering of blue clematis on a back-
ground of glass of whitish, greenish, and yellowish
tints. The dominant colours in the glasswork
are blue and white. The window, which is flush
with the wall, is separated therefrom by a broad
band of red copper, which glistens under the broken
light thrown from the coloured glass.

The flooring, in marble and enamel mosaic-work,
represents a meadow of dark green hue, dotted
with white daisies and pink stars of Bethlehem, are
ranged in geometrical design, and surrounded by
a border of dandelions
standing out from a border-
ing of brownish soil, lining
the herbage to the extremi-
ties of the walls. This

mosaic-work has been

executed by M. Facchina.

Three steps lead down
to the elliptically-shaped
basin, which is sixty cen-
timetres in depth, one
metre seventy centimetres
in length, and ninety cen-
timetres in width. It is
hollowed out in the centre
of the mosaic meadow, and
separated therefrom by a
gutter of red copper. The
prevailing colours in the
enamelled mosaic-work are
turquoise blue, gold, and
green. From the height
of the first step the blue
waters flow down in orna-
mental ripples and curling
wavelets, which meet and
separate again till they
reach the bottom, carpeted
with water-plants—adder’s-
tongues and white water-
lilies. One can picture
the effect of real water
in this gleaming basin,
with all its splendid colour-

BY E. M. SIMAS ing.

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