Studio: international art (20.1900)

A Decorative Painting by Sir J. D. Linton

hide-bound in their conventions and general
scope.

The danger that underlies this warping of great
principles to suit the purposes of small groups of
workers is in many ways a very serious one, for it
threatens the vitality of design and checks the
growth of that catholicity of taste without which
no great national school can ever flourish or
become actively influential. Directly decoration
comes to be treated as if it were a thing that must
be rigidly limited to certain lines and bound down
to observe a particular set of conventions, it loses
its reason for existence. Under such conditions
it relapses into trickery; it becomes morbid and
monotonous, or superficially pretentious; and it
substitutes mere affectation for honest intention.
It undergoes, in fact, all the degenerations that are
inevitable when inbreeding is permitted to continue

unchecked and no new blood is introduced to
counteract hereditary tendencies of an evil kind.

We have lately in this country been going
through some rather curious experiences with regard
to the development of decorative art, as it is
understood by the painter, apart from the similar
changes which are observable in the work of the
decorative craftsmen. Half a century ago the
practice of design had become quite extraordinarily
incapable; there were no artists who could be
said to understand even in a rudimentary fashion
what were the essentials of decoration, and there
was no work being done that had a trace of interest
on artistic grounds. A few years later things
began to improve slowly but surely. First one
man, then another, strove to find a way out of a
position that was as lamentable as it , was ridiculous,
and as these men gained power and collected

■III:

STUDY FOR "BOCCACCIO; THE OPENING SCENE IN THE DECAMERONE"
244

BY SIR JAMES D. LINTON