Studio: international art (34.1905)

A Room Decorated by Charles Conder

books, sedans, spinets, and palch-boxes, besides
making the painting of pictures a fine business, was
a charming fashion, especially when the pictures
were good; and when they were bad, it was not a
worse fashion than prevails to-day,—at least it was
not more unhappy in its results. Now it is the
fashion to buy works at the dealer's, regardless of
where they will be hung, and it is the fashion to
hang them anyhow. Architects, in attempting to
combat the vitiated instincts of their clients, come
forward with schemes for interiors to the exclusion
of the wall painting; and, unfortunately, in many
cases they come forward with something a great
deal worse in effect than the very worst painting
could ever be.

The room which Mr. Edmund Davis—a true
" patron " of the arts in the best sense of the word

PANEL IN BY C. CONDER

WATER-COLOURS ON SILK

202

PANEL IN BY C CONDER

WATER-COLOURS ON SILK

—has had decorated in his home at Notting-
hill by Mr. Conder should lend as a new impulse
to interior decoration the old tradition from which
it springs. The scheme, as a whole, falls short of
perfection in essentials which could be remedied
in another case. The surface of the satin-wood
panelling round the walls is too brilliant to give
repose: it does not lead up so effectively to Mr.
Conder's restrained painting as it would do if it
were toned down. The elegant motif of the wood-
work is marred by this and by the fact that here
and there the inevitable law of proportion has ap-
parently been disregarded by the architect of the
room. An element of mechanical triumph, foreign in
spirit as a surrounding for Mr. Conder's art, makes
itself apparent in the over-polished surface and in the
shapes of the ovals framing the painted panels.