Life of James McNeill Whistler, . Pre-Raphaelites was decoration—that is, convention. Their decoration was either wilfully or ignorantlyfounded on the realism of the Middle Ages. The great decoratorsof Italy were the realists of their day, their realism, except in the caseof the greatest, Piero della Francesca, is now regarded as convention,and it is the Pre-Raphaelites who stirred up these dead bones. InFrance, Puvis de Chavannes developed Italian methods, adapting themto modern subjects and modern wants, retaining the convention offlatness and simplicity. Whistler believed that a portrait or
Life of James McNeill Whistler, . Pre-Raphaelites was decoration—that is, convention. Their decoration was either wilfully or ignorantlyfounded on the realism of the Middle Ages. The great decoratorsof Italy were the realists of their day, their realism, except in the caseof the greatest, Piero della Francesca, is now regarded as convention,and it is the Pre-Raphaelites who stirred up these dead bones. InFrance, Puvis de Chavannes developed Italian methods, adapting themto modern subjects and modern wants, retaining the convention offlatness and simplicity. Whistler believed that a portrait or a Nocturneshould be as decorative as a conventional design; that, by the arrange-ment of his subjects, and by their colour, they should be made decora-tive, and not by conventional setting and conventional lines. He alsobelieved that walls should be in flat tones and not covered with then placed upon them were shown properly and did notstruggle with the pattern. Lady Archibald Campbell writes us a few160 [lbTo. PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLEARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK. NO. II OIL In the Corporation Art Gallery, Glasgow (Seepage ni The White House lines proving that he could make people understand his aims when theywere willing to learn from him : The fundamental principles of decorative art with which Whistlerimpressed me, related to the necessity of applying scientific methodsto the treatment of all decorative work ; that to produce harmoniouseffects in line and colour grouping, the whole plan or scheme shouldhave to be thoroughly thought out so as to be finished before it waspractically begun. I think he proved his saying to be true, that thefundamental principles of decorative art, as in all art, are based onlaws as exact as those of the known sciences. He concluded that whatthe knowledge of a fundamental base has done for music, a similarlydemonstrative method must do for painting. The musical vocabularywhich he used to distinguish his creations always str
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