The Gentleman's Magazine AND HISTORICAL REVIEW. THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. SECOND ARTICLE. ONE of the first questions which suggests itself to the student of Mediæval Art is how to account for the extreme paucity of woodwork, more especially furniture, executed during the earlier periods. Wood of course is a much more perishable article than stone, but, even taking this fact into consideration, it can hardly be denied that nothing is more difficult than to find a piece of thirteenth-century woodwork. I suspect the solution of the question is to be found at Westminster, Beauvais, and Noyon, where three of the most curious pieces of furniture are still preserved. It is true that they belong to the fourteenth, not to the thirteenth century, but they tell us very plainly why we have lost so very many movables made in a similar manner. The fact is that they have been covered with painting and gilding-a fashion which continued with us through a great part of the fourteenth century, and with the Italians very much later, for Vasari tells us that before his time it was the fashion to decorate both the walls and furniture of the rooms with painted subjects, and adds that Niccolo Delli was particularly good at this sort of work. At South Kensington will be seen several marriage coffers thus decorated; several also were exhibited at Florence last year, and in one of the rooms of the Uffizii is a curious piece of furniture which presents us with the usual allegorical triumphs of Fame, Death, &c. Now it is very easy to conceive, when this sort of furniture got injured, that it would receive a coat of common paint, and perhaps descend from the parlour to the kitchen, and thence be eventually converted into firewood; for when once the paintings were destroyed all artistic value of the work was destroyed with it, which is by no means the case with carved furniture, which has always some interest, even when in fragments. GENT. MAG, VOL, CCXIII. B One of the curious features of the Medieval Court is the attempt to revive this sort of furniture; and this not in one or two solitary cases, but in such profusion that it forms. the most conspicuous feature of the Court. It is very true that the London papers, as a general rule, have fulminated against it, and critics have loudly exclaimed against the wickedness of making such dry bones as furniture live and tell stories for our instruction or amusement; but, after all, here the fact is proved that such things can be done decently in the present time, and that they cost very little more than the usual good upholstery-work. For instance, compare the price of Mr. Morris's cabinet with the lectern ornamented by what is called pyrography: the one is thirty guineas and the other forty; but the former has two most beautiful figures painted on it by Mr. E. B. Jones, while the latter has some commonplace little figures of apostles burnt in by the new process. One would exceedingly like to know the prices of the pagan sideboards in the Furniture Court, could they be come at: it would most probably be found that for similar sums, form, colour, and ideas might have been obtained from some of our rising painters; whereas in the present state of things we are obliged to be contented with swags of flowers, dead game, and other things which, when we have once seen them, we do not want to see again. In the Mediæval Court there are no less than five exhibitors of furniture, more or less painted. These are-1. Messrs. Marshall, Morris, and Co.; 2. Mr. Burges; 3. Messrs. Prichard and Seddon; 4. Mr. Forsyth; 5. Mr. Fisher. The firm of Marshall, Morris, and Co. is an association of architects and painters, who have set up a shop in Red Lion Square, in the same manner as the Italian painters, such as Giotto, did in the Middle Ages. They execute stained glass and furniture from their own designs, and we have here a considerable number of specimens of their skill in the latter branch. The general characteristic of their furniture is an Eastern system of diaper combined with rather dark-toned pictures; in fact, they may be said to lean rather to what is called the Venetian school of colour; at the same time, it is only fair to state that their furniture is more what would have been used by the middle classes in the times of our forefathers than that of the other exhibitors. But if their work can hardly be called cheap, it is certainly not dear, when we consider that it speaks and tells a story, which assuredly cannot be said of most modern furniture. The work of Mr. Burges is equally painted all over, but the tone of colouring is much brighter, and the articles are more what would have been found in the houses of the nobility. Here we see the literature of Pagandom and of the Middle Ages, worked up by our modern artists, side by side in the same bookcase or buffet. On the former article of furniture no less than fourteen different artists were employed. Messrs. Prichard and Seddon, on the contrary, have reserved their colour for the panels of the work, carrying it out by means of marquetry on the rails and stiles; the groundwork is of oak. Although a different system is used, the effect is excellent, and the furniture is less liable, from its materials, to be injured than that above named. But here a curious fact is to be noticed. All Messrs. Prichard and Seddon's work which has painted figure-panels looks well: thus the large portfolio and writing-table looks well; the organs look well; the chair (painted, by the way, by Miss Seddon, the sister of the exhibitor) looks well but the little writing-table, where only marquetry is employed, by no means comes up to the mark of the others. The fourth exhibitor is Mr. Forsyth, who sends a bookcase and escrutoire combined, the design of which is due to Mr. Norman Shaw, architect. Here, again, we have a great deal of marquetry, and the painting is reduced to a few ornaments and a little gilding; the ironwork, however, is very beautifully executed by Levers of Maidenhead. Lastly, Mr. Fisher exhibits a chair, painted all over with rather bright colours: he also contributes some decoration and embroidery. To resume, Messrs. Morris, Marshall and Co. send six articles, Mr. Burges five, Prichard and Seddon five, Mr. Forsyth one, and Mr. Fisher one, making eighteen articles of furniture all more or less painted. As might have been expected, there are a great number of pieces of carved oak furniture scattered up and down the various Courts: thus, Mr. Skidmore has a sideboard and bedstead; Mr. Forsyth, some of the new stalls designed for Chichester Cathedral by Mr. Slater (the old ones, by the way, were coloured chocolate, with a great deal of gilding); Kirk and Parry, a font cover, not very successful; Mr. Thurston, a billiard-table, with the Wars of the Roses carved all round it in very low relief-so low, indeed, that it calls loudly for colour, to render the groups, which are designed with a certain amount of spirit, more distinct. A clergyman, the Rev. R. S. Baker, presents us with an eagle, carved with his own hands: it is very true that it sadly wants conventionalism to make it what a church eagle should be, but inasmuch as Mr. Baker has studied most conscientiously from the living bird, his work, although leaving much to be desired, has ten times the spirit in it than we see in any other of the numerous eagles in the Exhibition. As to organs, the visitor comes upon them everywhere; sometimes they are roaring in the middle avenues of transepts, sometimes you come upon them in sequestered nooks, close upon China or Japan. As a general rule, the cases are not much to speak of, nor the colouring of the pipes pleasant to look at. Messrs. Prichard and Seddon's are an exception, for the architecture of the cases is good, there are pictures in bright and pleasant colours, and the pipes are admirable, Mr. Seddon having, like so very few architects, studied nature (butterflies' wings) for the purpose. If the designers of the other organs had followed his example, there can be no doubt but that a very different result from what we see would have been attained. Before leaving the Medieval Court, it would be disrespectful to omit noticing the works of sundry amateurs and artists who are now turning their talents in the development of mediæval painting. Thus Mr. Gambier Parry sends a specimen of painting such as may be seen in his own church at Highnam; Mr. L'Estrange has photographs of some of the subjects in his gigantic task in painting the nave-roof at Ely; he has used conventional drapery, such as we see in the manuscripts of the twelfth century, but the hands and heads are drawn from life. Unfortunately, this conventional drapery hangs as no drapery could possibly hang, and it may be a question whether the employment of it is a step in the right direction. Probably a study of the Elgin Marbles, and of the figures on the west front of Wells Cathedral, would give Mr. L'Estrange all he wants without being false to nature. Mr. Smallfield has a painting of a Majesty, to be fixed inside the arch of the tomb now erecting in the church in Wells-street, to the memory of the late incumbent, the Rev. James Murray. Just above the furniture of Messrs. Marshall, Morris, and Co., is to be seen the original paint ings by Mr. E. B. Jones for the stained glass lately fixed in Oxford Cathedral. Mr. Jones is a colourist, and consequently declines to trust the choice of the tones of his colours to the glasspainter; he therefore makes a finished coloured painting in oil, and the result is that the best modern stained glass windows are due to his designs. This naturally leads us to the subject of stained glass; but the visitor will be most grievously disappointed when he finds with how little judgment the Commissioners in their wisdom have chosen to place it. Stained glass, from its very nature, is intended to be looked through, and generally at a considerable distance: imagine, therefore, how these conditions are ignored when the glass at the Exhibition is made to line two sides of a gallery, one side of which looks on to a wall coloured red, and the other on to the interior of the building. Add to this, that the space from side to side is by no means very wide, and the reader will have some idea of the immense disadvantages with which the manufacturers of stained glass have to contend. Nor do those fare better whose productions are placed at the ends of the transepts, for there is quite as much light in front of them as behind, and the consequence is, that the colour in nearly every instance is swallowed up. There is, however, one piece of glass in the north-west transept which comes triumphantly out of the ordeal. This is a sort of procession, the work of Messrs. Heaton and Butler, and the reason why it looks so well, appears to us to be simply this, that they have massed their colours, and not distributed them about in small pieces. The windows in Florence Cathedral are executed on this principle, which indeed should always be kept in view in work that has to go up to any height. At the same time, it must be allowed that Messrs. Heaton and Butler's work would have been still better had they followed their Florentine example in other things; for if we look at the incomparable glass of the Duomo we shall see that, although the colours are few and massed together, yet every one is made up of no end of pieces. of different tints of the same colour; these, again, are toned on both sides, but there is very little shading, properly speaking. Now Messrs. Heaton and Butler have got their colours well massed, but they have tried to get variety by shading instead of using different tints of the same colour. The consequence is, that their work lacks the jewel-like effect of the Florence glass. |