DOI Heft:
No. 198 (September, 1908)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: The problem of modern interior painting
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20967#0285
Modern Interior Painting
The problem of modern
INTERIOR PAINTING. BY
T. MARTIN WOOD
The man of genius is not fastidious. Far from
searching with pain for beauty, he cannot escape
its presence until he goes blind. And the paradox
is not to be rejected that the same scene is a
different one for every painter, confronting him
with his own problems, and above all assuming
the complexion of his mind, whether classic or
common-place.
If Charles Lamb had been a painter I think he
would have been an interior painter,—he had the
genius for being indoors. And yet something of
this genius, this sense that indoors the world is
quite different from what it is out-of-doors, counts
too in the constitution of a landscape painter; for
to whom does nature offer such a cup as to him
who steps out into the sunlight from a room ?
But with the sun coming through the window we
are conscious that nature environs us indoors as
much as out, transforming the moment while
attuning us to it; and it is this, if anything, which
lives, this music—preferring the word to poetry—of
the moment, for that lives in art which, born of a
moment, continues for ever the spirit of the
moment in which it was born. Who could fail
to be attracted to M. Blanche’s picture of The
Dining Room at Offranviile, in which the very
happiness of nature itself seems descending to the
breakfast table ? We are not separated from the
spring morning by the French windows; all things
are lyrical indoors as well as out, and the light on
cups and tea-spoons is as silvery as the dew.
Interior painting deals with the pervading air of
a room, and often the more hygienic the less ro-
mantic, for a dusty atmosphere brings mystery and
the charm of it; dust itself being but the poudre
Tamour on the face of faded things. It is with
old and curious and beautiful things that so many
of the modern interior painters are dealing. But
: THE CHINTZ COVER”
XLVII. No. 198.—September, 1909.
BY J. E. BLANCHE
251
The problem of modern
INTERIOR PAINTING. BY
T. MARTIN WOOD
The man of genius is not fastidious. Far from
searching with pain for beauty, he cannot escape
its presence until he goes blind. And the paradox
is not to be rejected that the same scene is a
different one for every painter, confronting him
with his own problems, and above all assuming
the complexion of his mind, whether classic or
common-place.
If Charles Lamb had been a painter I think he
would have been an interior painter,—he had the
genius for being indoors. And yet something of
this genius, this sense that indoors the world is
quite different from what it is out-of-doors, counts
too in the constitution of a landscape painter; for
to whom does nature offer such a cup as to him
who steps out into the sunlight from a room ?
But with the sun coming through the window we
are conscious that nature environs us indoors as
much as out, transforming the moment while
attuning us to it; and it is this, if anything, which
lives, this music—preferring the word to poetry—of
the moment, for that lives in art which, born of a
moment, continues for ever the spirit of the
moment in which it was born. Who could fail
to be attracted to M. Blanche’s picture of The
Dining Room at Offranviile, in which the very
happiness of nature itself seems descending to the
breakfast table ? We are not separated from the
spring morning by the French windows; all things
are lyrical indoors as well as out, and the light on
cups and tea-spoons is as silvery as the dew.
Interior painting deals with the pervading air of
a room, and often the more hygienic the less ro-
mantic, for a dusty atmosphere brings mystery and
the charm of it; dust itself being but the poudre
Tamour on the face of faded things. It is with
old and curious and beautiful things that so many
of the modern interior painters are dealing. But
: THE CHINTZ COVER”
XLVII. No. 198.—September, 1909.
BY J. E. BLANCHE
251