James Ward

“ Nothing in this world can be had without paying for it, but though we must all live,{3} those who have devoted their lives to the creation of the beautiful, look more to the delight they give and the admiration they excite, than to mere pecuniary rewards. No art will ever flourish unless there are educated and enthusiastic admirers of its masterpieces. The artist will never devote his talents to an art, and undergo the ceaseless toil requisite to create beauty, unless he be rewarded by the praise of real judges. I fear we cannot as yet make the Greek boast “that we love the beautiful” ”

“ The entablature is Ionic, to leave the frieze clear for the sculptured history of Bacchus, turning some pirates into dolphins. The architrave is deep with three equal fascias, the face of each one inclined inwards, and a cymatium. Above the cymatium of the frieze is a cornice with a heavy dentilled bed mould.
The Greeks were consummate artists, who bore in mind the adage that “rules are good for those who can do without them,” and adapted every part of their buildings to produce the effect of light and shade they wanted. ”

“ To{151} the Greek architect no thought and no labour was too great in designing his building, to form it so that the sun would play melodies on it from dawn to dusk. Such truly national architecture cannot be imported into a different climate without losing most of its effect, nor can it be transferred to a coarse and opaque material without losing much of its charm; while its sculpture, the finest the world has yet seen, portrayed national traditions or events connected with its faith. ”

“ The student, when he has learnt and comprehended the laws, should observe growing plants, and notice that every plant illustrates some, and mostly many, of the laws; and when he has clearly distinguished them, he should examine the best ornament of antiquity and the Renaissance, and satisfy himself that the laws, involved in the particular example he is studying, have been followed. When he has done this, he should note any divergence from the laws and endeavour to understand the reason for it. To ensure the effect they intend, great artists sometimes ignore the ordinary laws. ”

“ The elaborate system of proportioning parts to one another and to the whole, which is so important in architecture as to be its main characteristic, is equally valuable for the division of spaces for ornament.
Mouldings which form so great a feature in architecture as to have given rise to the saying that “mouldings are architecture,” give lessons in elegance of shape, and in the proper contrast of forms, that are useful to the ornamentalist who has to design the shapes of small objects; while the Corinthian capital has been the prototype of most of the floral capitals up to the present day. ”

“ Every artist, however, can, by the means before mentioned, be sure of having conquered the preliminaries of his art, and he can be sincere; he can give us those beauties from nature that have captivated him, and have been transfused into ornament by the alembic of his mind; such ornament will be sure to find some congenial spirits to admire it: and I think I may say that a public sufficiently cultivated to appreciate real art is gradually being formed. ”

“ The ornamented parts of the Greek and Roman Orders, figure sculpture apart, show how two cognate nations, each with transcendent abilities but of an entirely different range, abstracted the beauties of plants, and conferred them on stone and marble to emphasize and adorn the rigid forms of Architecture ”

“ But it is one thing to have a longing, and another to be able to bring plants, leaves, and flowers into the domain of high art. The early Gothic sculptors did give a certain crispness, and in some cases even a monumental air to their carved flora, and sometimes they got that mysterious look of infinite complexity that is found in nature, and they had invention to a marvellous degree. From the sculptors working on the spot, and being able to see each figure and piece of ornament in its place, they never missed their effect. ”

“ Variety, the absence of similarity; a word embracing an infinity of differences, from two things that are not absolutely alike, to two things that are absolutely unlike. The judicious use of variety gives interest to ornament, but uniformity with slight variety gives the most dignity. ”

“ Novelty in art is not an absolute difference from what has gone before, for that is sure to be bad, but only that difference and that improvement which one instructed generation can give to the past excellence it builds on. It is therefore necessary for the student who is born an artist, and hopes to create new loveliness, to be steeped in the beauties of nature and of art. ”

“ Little of secular Byzantine art remains, though it is not probable that it materially differed from the ecclesiastical art of its period; it was Roman art modified by the new religion and by Greek and Oriental taste, in which saints and martyrs, with their attributes or symbols, took the place of the antique gods and goddesses; while the Renaissance was an attempted revival of Roman.
We cannot expect to equal at once the masterpieces of Greek, Roman, or Renaissance art; we have neither the centuries of experience nor the cultivated public. ”

“ I have dwelt much on carving for several reasons; it is the most lasting of ornamental work, and as a rule the most important; it is susceptible of the greatest perfection when executed in marble, and all architectural ornament must eventually fall into the hands of the sculptor, since he has devoted his life to its study. I may add that the French architects look upon it as the weak point in English architecture. ”

“ To the young student I may say that he can never become an artist until he has mastered the fundamental principles of his art; and that nothing can deserve the name of ornament that is not both{18} appropriate and beautiful, and has been evolved from nature by the mind of man. I would suggest to the young artist that the flora of the world is not confined to the lotus, the honeysuckle, and the acanthus; that if accident caused the original choice of these plants, it was the infinite pains bestowed on their treatment that caused their persistence. ”

“ The highest art is undoubtedly that which is the simplest and most perfect, which gives the experience and skill of a lifetime by a few lines or touches; and this art is more calculated to captivate the best taste of the day than the complex or the intricate. ”

“ However, there will even now be ample recognition of the creations of any skilled artist who is sincere, let his genius take him where it will. There is, too, this consolation for every true artist{6} whose works remain: that if there are few judges of his work now, there may be more hereafter—judges who when they look at his work will say, this is the work of a true artist; and he may confer delight on unborn thousands, and direct attention, in after ages, to those beauties of nature that have been overlooked. ”

“ In any complex system of ornament, one part should be chosen as the most important, and all the rest should lead up to it; but certain distinct parts, such as masses or flowers, may re-echo in a fainter way the main motive. In drawing, subordination is obtained by the principal mass being larger than the rest, and by its details being larger and more pronounced; in painting, by the above and by the principal part being more vivid in colour; in modelling, by greater size and relief. ”

“ Mean ornament, whether of figures or plants, tends to degrade the architecture with which it is associated, and may spoil it by the main lines not properly contrasting with the adjacent architectural forms, or by the ornament being on too large a scale. I have seen in modern work, the stately dignity of a grand room utterly destroyed by colossal figures. ”

“ The whole ornamental art of the world is now before us, and it is not to be believed that artists would not elaborate something new and beautiful from all the knowledge they have gained, if there were a passionate desire for it among the people. This can never be so long as the public is content with paraphrases of deceased art, or merely asks for a jumble of discordant scraps. ”

“ The ornaments on mouldings, patterns in checkers, net-work, or diapers may be repeated up to a certain point without being tiresome, but symbolic and distinguishing forms must, as a rule, be used sparingly. One human figure is mostly enough in an ornamental panel, because the figure absorbs the attention, though cupids or very young children may be repeated; the former are imaginary creatures, and the latter sportive ones, but even these should be so arranged as to compose with the foliage, which should be an open screen they are seen playing through. ”

“ It is admitted that in those periods of history when architecture, sculpture, and painting attained their highest excellence, the painter, sculptor, and{147} architect have not only sympathized with one another, but each one has been no mean judge of the sister arts. At the Renaissance, and immediately before it, artists are to be found who were goldsmiths, sculptors, painters, and architects, and some few who were poets, musicians, and engineers as well. ”

“ The scale employed in the decoration of rooms, of floors, or of pieces of furniture, may increase or destroy their importance; hence, except in rare instances, the human figure should not exceed its natural size, and may want to be much smaller. And this precaution is equally important in the use of plants; if the flowers or leaves in ornament are made gigantic, they destroy the scale of the room or floor ”

“ All ornamental arts, that are not realistic imitations, must be founded on precedent art. We have only one complete system of decorative art that took an entirely new direction besides Gothic, and that harmonizes with its architecture—the Saracenic—and that art is not congenial to our taste, feelings, or desires. Gothic ornamental art is mostly too barbaric or too realistic to suit us, except when it is borrowed from Roman, Byzantine, or Saracenic sources; in fact, we have nothing but Roman, Byzantine, and{5} Renaissance art to fall back on for ornament ”

“ To attain this a profound study{4} of nature and the masterpieces of former art are wanted, for, as Sir Joshua Reynolds said, “Invention is one of the greatest marks of genius, ... and it is by being conversant with the inventions of others that we learn to invent”; while to express our knowledge and invention admirable draughtsmanship is requisite.
We have a novel phase of ornament, which consists in twisting or arranging certain plants into the shape required, to make them fit their places. ”

“ Renaissance and Roman ornament (see Fig. 129) give the amplest illustrations of contrast; varieties of foliage contrasting with vases, labels, shields, armour, masks, animals, and human figures. (See Figs. 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 130, 132, and Frontispiece.)
Symmetry has been defined before as the mere doubling of a form on its axis; it is one of the most important means of producing ornament, as well as one of the laws most commonly found in nature. Nothing in nature, however, is absolutely symmetrical, though there is a suggestion of symmetry about the bulk of its works. ”

“ The repetition of squares is much more endurable than a repetition of similar oblongs. A common case of the monotonous effect of similar oblong panels is to be seen in a four-panelled door with the middle rail in the centre, so the middle rail is commonly put below the centre to get variety in the panels. Even in so graceful a form as the human figure, sculptors rarely represent it in a perfectly symmetrical attitude, particularly in bas-relief, unless it be to express some marked emotion, or for the sake of the composition ”

“ Fig. 138.—Mediæval and Oriental root forms.
As a rule, all redundances, excrescences, and accidental waywardness of growth, that might be interesting to a botanist, ought to be avoided in the decorative rendering of plant form; the average form and the higher beauties should alone be expressed. Though this may seem a paradox, the less realistic{111} we make our designs, the more nature we put into them. We should strive to put the most perfect forms of nature into our ornament, avoiding those that are poor and stunted, as well as over-nourished and rank ones, though nature abounds in both. ”

“ The circle is by far the most beautiful and useful closed curve, but it is not always available, as in the case of a central feature in a very long ceiling or in oblong panels, and its place must be then supplied by an ellipse, which has this merit, that its proportions are infinite, the straight line and the circle being only extreme cases of the ellipse; but when the choice is unfettered the long (major) axis should so far exceed the short (minor) as to afford a contrast; an ellipse that differs but slightly from the circle too much resembles one that is ill-drawn. ”

“ Radiation is the spreading out of lines from a point, like a fan, and these lines may be straight or curved, and the axis of the radiating lines may be vertical, horizontal, or oblique. It is found in the human hand, in the wing feathers of birds, in the scallop and similar bivalve shells, in the umbels of flowers, and in much other plant growth. The Greek honeysuckle is the most beautiful instance of its adaptation as ornament. ”

“ There are, too, thousands of beauties still to be culled from plants and flowers that now remain outside the domain of art. Let the student remember that knowledge, skill, truth, and sincerity are the main roads to real success, and that real success is, to have produced some beauty that has captivated or will captivate mankind. ”

“ Much of this work is flabby or wire-drawn, and often omits the highest beauty of the plants it uses, but even when the beauty of the plant is not left out, the ornament is infinitely below the highest flights of former art, in which the artist had absorbed the graces of floral growth and had properly applied them. The highest ornament, by its abstraction, is closely allied to architectural art, while all its higher achievements are in conjunction with architecture ”

“ It may here be remarked, that for outdoor work in a sunny climate, a lower relief in the carving and more delicacy in the mouldings is admissible, than in a misty one like ours, where strong sunlight rarely occurs; and for this reason a bolder treatment of relief is necessary, which allows of a coarser material being used. Before leaving the subject of relief ornament, it would be as well to state, that no carved decoration should be fastened on to a ceiling or panel, but should be worked out of the material itself ”