Wall painting

“ To a certain extent, indeed, all good painting has the decorative character of monumental art. That is to say, a basis of harmonious design underlies all other qualities in the works of great painters. Mere life-like figure painting is not, in the best sense, art at all. But so long as the idea of beautiful design governs, all the qualities required for the representation of nature may be carried very far, with good effect, even in decorative wall painting. ”

“ The black figure of an attendant has passed out of the apartment and is going up a stair against a clear white wall. The skilful way in which you are led into the picture is astonishing, and the whole thing is quite by itself as a piece of painting. There is no attempt at anything subtile or even delicate in the treatment, speaking from the point of view of a result achieved by paint on canvas,—no texture, no difference of handling, no imitation; all is paint, admirably put on, for the effect across the room. ”

“ The distinction between fresco and wall-painting is frequently forgotten. Most of the early specimens of this art are monochromes, but subsequently the painters used polychrome, which signifies surface colouring in which various colours are employed. The vaulted ceilings, the timber roof, the screens and canopies, the monuments with their effigies, as well as the surface of the walls, were often coloured with diaper-work. Colour and gilding were marked features in all mediaeval buildings, and even richly carved fonts and sculptural monuments were embellished with this method of decoration. ”

“ The decoration of wall surfaces in colour is one of the very oldest forms of art, and to a wall painting of any kind the term “fresco” has usually, but somewhat loosely, been applied. Strictly speaking, however, a veritable fresco painting is one that is executed on the fresh or wet lime plaster of the wall, and is not re-touched after the plaster has become dry. ”

“ You see, a mural painting is not like your illuminations. You can keep a book safe in a chest. But a painting on plaster—or on a wooden panel—is besieged day and night by dampness, and dryness, and dust, and smoke, changes of heat and cold,—everything. The wall may crack. The roof may take fire,—especially when pigeons and sparrows nest in the beams. The mere action of the air on any painting must be proved by years. ”

“ This, together with the presence of many black and heavy shadows, which appear to have gone darker, if possible, with age, combine to throw the painting out of tone. In composition and drawing they are not without grandeur of style, but if they had been more simple in treatment, and less violent in colour and light and shade effects, they would be more pleasing as wall decorations. ”

“ Those of our artists who are foolishly occupied in copying or transposing the beautiful art of the ancients have entered a blind alley which ends against a blank wall. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but in art it leads only to a fall.
Until very recent years, almost all important mural decorations were figure compositions in which landscape played only a minor part; but the trend of modern life points clearly to a time—a time in the very near future, I believe—when pure landscape will be largely used in mural work. ”

“ So mural painting differs materially from a picture painted on an easel. The easel picture has more detail, is placed in a frame when finished, and is destined to make a decorative spot on the walls. The modern mural painter now executes his design directly upon canvas in his studio, and when it is completed it is applied to the wall space by a composition of glue and white lead. ”

“ Painting in tempera on the dry wall is a process in which the colours are tempered with a binding medium, such as glue size, gum, parchment size, or a size made from eggs beaten up with water; the Italian painters added the juice, or gum, of the fig tree, and sometimes vinegar to the egg size. Other methods are encaustic, or painting with wax as a medium, heat being afterwards applied to the wall to blend or to protect the colours; spirit fresco, in which the colours are ground in a wax medium and thinned with spirits of turpentine or oil of spike; water-glass, a German method of wall painting ”

“ In the painting of a MS., of the panels of a coffer, of a ceiling, a wall or an altar-piece the painter was alike—however different his theme and conception—possessed with a paramount impulse to decorate, to make the space or surface he dealt with as lovely to the eye in design and colour as he had skill to do.
The art of painting has, however, become considerably differentiated since those days. We are here in the nineteenth century encumbered with many distinctions in the art. ”

“ The only advantage that these varieties of wall painting seem to possess over the buon, or true fresco, process—and it may be considered as a questionable one—is, that as regards the number of the colours, the artist may use an almost unlimited or unrestricted palette, while in buon fresco his colours are limited to the very few which remain unchanged when subjected to the caustic action of the lime in the plaster. ”

“ In fresco painting a damp plaster ground is prepared on the wall, upon which the moist colors are painted. These colors become fixed as they dry, and appear to be a part of the wall. The work must be done while the plaster is damp, so the painter prepares only that part of the wall which he expects to cover that day. As it cannot be used after it is dry, he must scrape away all that is left and prepare a new background the next day. If the artist wishes to change any part of his picture, he must scrape off the ground and repaint the entire picture. ”

“ Although we cannot claim for spirit-fresco that peculiar quality of monumental dignity, nor the undoubted luminosity or power of reflecting light that is characteristic of buon-fresco paintings, still, if the entire system is carefully carried out, from the preparation of the wall down to the finished painting, the work should be as lasting and as permanent as any other kind of wall painting. ”

“ It is one of the most valuable qualities which mural painting can possess—mural painting which fluctuates between the flatness which is also feebleness and a kind of realism which carries with it the effect of out-of-doors—of a hole in the wall. The same thing obtains in his minor work, and here the background, the temple, or rock, forty feet away, is as perfectly detached from the foreground figures as would be a distant and airy mountain miles away, while still the picture remains flat cardboard or flat canvass invested with light and shade and color. ”

“ A comparison of his work in the Panthéon at Paris with that of the other artists whose works occupy other wall spaces in that building clearly proves this contention, for, as a rule, the surrounding wall paintings, executed by about ten other artists, though excellent as illustrative works of art, are really out of place as wall decorations in their composition, treatment of design, and more particularly in their violent colouring. ”

“ In rooms that are to be hung with prints or pictures, the panelling or other treatment of the walls should be carefully designed with a view to the size and number of the pictures. Pictures should never be hung against a background of pattern. Nothing is more distressing than the sight of a large oil-painting in a ponderous frame seemingly suspended from a spray of wild roses or any of the other naturalistic vegetation of the modern wall-paper. The overlaying of pattern is always a mistake. ”

“ People who don’t know much about painting are very apt to call any picture on a wall a fresco, but I suppose I need hardly tell you that oil-or wax-paintings on walls are no more frescoes than is an oil sketch on paper a water-color. ”

“ The great mistake most artists make when they have a large wall-space to decorate with figures, is to proceed in the same way as they would for an easel picture. Elaborate finish, powerful light and shade, expression and individuality in the heads, are all excellent qualities in an easel picture, but they are by no means necessary in decorative work.
On the other hand, a well-balanced and harmonious composition, a pure and grand style of drawing, and great breadth and luminosity of coloring are absolutely essential for good decorative work. ”

“ A stained-glass window or a wall of tiles can outdo them for pure colour and decorative magic. Leaving decoration, accordingly, to take care of itself and be applied as sense may from time to time require, painting goes on to elaborate the symbols with which it begins, to make them symbolise more and more of what their object contains. ”

“ A scratch across the sky, a little indentation, and the illusion disappears; for the observer has become conscious of the surface of the canvas. The rough edge of the stretcher has the same disillusioning effect, and for this reason no picture is really complete until it is enclosed within the sheltering protection of a frame. It is necessary to separate the real from the unreal, the hard reality of the background of burlap or of wall-paper from the illusion of the picture. ”

“ Colour was obtained for the adornment of a building by the use of marbles, metals, enamelled bricks and floor mosaics, which may be classed as permanent colouring, and structural in character, or it was applied, as in painting, wall mosaics, and stained glass. Architects were not content with leaving their buildings in grey and drab, for in such periods of the past, no building was considered complete without its final application of colour decoration.{2}
Nature, for the solace of mankind, has made most of her works beautiful, by dressing them in coloured garments. ”

“ For the same reason a carved or gilded frame is not allowable on any purely mural decoration, the gold frame having been replaced by universal consent with a decorative border painted upon the flat surface of the wall, thus helping rather than hindering the sense of support and solidity that must be maintained at all costs. It is probable that the more the artist is willing to limit his scale of color, the more conventional he makes it, the more beautiful will be his result ”

“ On this principle great effect is sometimes given to a colored pattern by having a portion of the composition on the wall of the building without any color at all, and for the same reason an expanse of wall in a room often looks well when painted with a single uniform ground surrounded by a rich pattern. Again, certain colors are better suited for some places than for others, and the brighter and more transparent for higher positions, and if the hangings of a room are scarlet, crimson with gold has a richer and better effect for chairs than scarlet and gold. ”

“ Owing to the special composition of the paint used in flatting, it dries very rapidly and two men should be engaged at once in flatting a wall. A plank placed across two step-ladders, or otherwise supported, is placed in front of the wall at about half the height from the ground. ”

“ The window which gives light to a painting-room, ought to be made of oiled paper, without any cross bar, or projecting edge at the opening, or any sharp angle in the inside of the wall, but should be slanting by degrees the whole thickness of it ”

“ They are delicate enough in pattern to go in the drawing-room and refined enough in manner to be seen and not heard.
Perhaps this very quality of refinement, so acceptable in his easel pictures, was something of a defect in his mural decorations. The greatly enlarged wall space of a public building called for more intensity of color, more sharp contrast of angle lines, more loftiness and elaborateness of composition than the painter [Pg 238] dreamt of in his art philosophy. His attempts at mural painting were somewhat sporadic. ”

“ A Red Wall. Red may graduate from Indian red to what would practically be a warm gray. Any color going with a selected tone or tint needs to be modified so as to harmonize with it. If a wall has a paper colored in light red and gold, and it is desirable that the woodwork should be red too, it must differ from the color of the wall in tone and in intensity.
A Crimson Wall may have amber woodwork with cream colored mouldings, or they may be heliotrope for contrast. ”

“ A whole wall, ceiling, or other space should not be entirely covered over with rich ornament, and so also in a colored piece of drapery or other ornamental work, it is better to have some portion of it much less rich and of less complicated pattern than the rest, and in some cases to have only a border round a single ground destitute of any pattern, as it is apt to fatigue the eye when overloaded with an equal richness of detail throughout. ”

“ There is no painting, no varnishing, no wall-papering,—only staining and polishing of particular parts, and a sort of paper border about fifteen inches broad fixed along the bottom of a wall to protect it during cleaning and dusting operations. ”

“ As for the wall decorations, there should be a looking-glass for family convenience either in this parlor or the entry way (the parlor is the better place) , and the best pictures the house affords, always making sure that they are good pictures. Better always a good photograph, or wood-cut, or etching, than a poor chromo, steel engraving, or water-color; and better, a hundred fold, a good water-color than a poor oil painting. ”

“ When everything is in readiness to commence work, a portion of the rough wall surface should be thoroughly saturated with water, and the plaster ground, or intonaco, should be laid on with a wooden trowel, beginning at the top and at an angle of the wall, and large enough in area to constitute a day’s work, or, rather, as much as can be done in about five hours ”