On the Walls

...We are, generally speaking, ignorant of the principles by which the furnishings of a house are arranged to beautiful effect. How many houses there are in this country without a flower in a vase, or a picture on a wall, or a bookcase in a corner, or a curtain at a window, or a piano anywhere. And how many houses in which the first thing to greet you is the smell of cooking, or a stifling, gloomy air. And when you penetrate further inside, you find in the sitting room or reception room identical seats ranged in a row, usually in a circle, with a table in their midst piled with every stray object under the sun. And in the bedrooms you see beds stretched along the whole run of the walls, as though they had been set there to fill the empty space, not for their owner to retire to by night or by day...

It is just as well that I stop with you here, my dear reader, and say nothing of the kitchen and all its appendages and trains. Let me return to my subject for this time, which is "pictures on the walls." Perhaps on future occasions I shall speak to you of other subjects connected, by the bond of taste and art, with the arranging and ordering of the home's furnishings.

Pictures on the walls are very necessary. They lend the wall a luster and bestow upon it a personality that endears it to the beholder — provided these pictures are not an exhibition of the members of the esteemed family, whether those whom the hands of time have folded away or those who are still, praise God, alive and provided for! Or provided these pictures have not been set in their places to fill empty space, or to display the prowess of some member of the family in the art of photography!...

Choosing pictures is a difficult operation. It must be carried out according to numerous principles, the most important of which is that the picture harmonize with the objects, the colors, and the subjects around it. Pictures in the dining room differ from pictures in the reception room or the bedroom. The size of the picture, likewise, depends on the expanse of the wall, as it depends on how spacious or how cramped the room is. Nothing is further from good taste than placing a large picture, for instance, in a cramped room, or setting several pictures upon a broad wall in a contrived geometrical pattern.

In my view, it is essential that some of the pictures be changed at intervals of no more than a year, so that the eye does not weary of them and they become dead pieces of wood and glass, stirring in the soul no feeling of beauty or pleasure or interest.

So adorn the walls of your house with pictures, madam... with the pictures of the gifted artists among the sons of your own nation or of others; in this way you will bestow upon that rigid, silent wall of your home a personality overflowing with luster and life.

And would that we were able, this time, to accompany these words with an abundance of published models to help you master the way of distributing pictures upon walls; perhaps we shall manage it on a coming occasion.