Studio: international art (31.1904)

The International Exhibition

are hung to half their height with white sheets, one of his own, privately or publicly, unless the suit-
having no sort of decorative relation to the rest of ability of the frame, the condition of the light and
the room, and giving to the whole a painful background had been duly considered and approved
coldness and lack of repose ! by him. When we see what the members of the

Why could not the decorations of the rooms influential committee have done for the favourable
have been entrusted to some such responsible display of their own and their brethren's work, we
decorative artists as Mr. George Walton, Professor are reduced to a state of melancholy wonder.
Hoffmann of Vienna, or Mr. C. R. Mackintosh of That there were many difficulties to be con-
Glasgow, or a single room given to each of the tended against cannot he denied. There always
three with no further instructions than that each are in such cases. The brilliant reds and yellows,
room was to be adapted to the pictures to be for instance, of the two works by Zuloaga required
shown in it? The result would have added greatly special treatment with surroundings of their own to
to the renown of the Society, and at the same time do them simple justice.

would have been a lesson to the many who have But what can be said when we find Mr. Laszl6's
no ideas upon such subjects. It would, indeed, admirable Portrait of Cardinal Rampolla, Mr.
have been possible to find a hundred trade decora- G. O. Desvalliere's En Soiree, and Mr. Robert
tors in Paris alone, any one of whom, had the Burns' St. Patrick Spens, striving vainly to emerge
matter been left solely in his hands, could have from the gloom occasioned by the overhanging
achieved a better effect,
without greater expense,
than the combined efforts
of the committee of artist-
painters have succeeded
in obtaining. If there
is one thing outside the
immediate concern
of his own art that a
painter might be supposed
to know something about,
it is the question of how
pictures should be dis-
posed in order to obtain
the best effect. At
the establishment of any
large tradesman in Paris,
it is quite certain that,
when he shows his car-
pets, or his hangings, his
furniture or his jewels,
he will so display them
that each article appears to
the best advantage. It is
only necessary to ex-
amine carefully the manner
in which a shop-window in
the Rue de la Paix has
been dressed to realise
something of the art of
display. No man knew
better than the late Mr.
Whistler the importance
of its surroundings to a
picture, and it was rarely,

if ever, that he exhibited "le grand penseur" by a. rodin

60