THE ART OF 
 
 GERALD MOI RA. 
 
 HAROLD 
 WATRl N S 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/artofgeraldmoiraOOwatk 
 
THE ART OF 
 GERALD MOIRA 
 
 By HAROLD WATKINS 
 
 With 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS 
 ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 By GERALD MOIRA 
 
 Professor of Decorative and Mural Painting at the Royal College of A rt, 
 South Kensington, 1900-1922 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
PRINTED IN GREAT B R I F A I N 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 is due and is gratefully tendered to Professor Gerald E. Moira, 
 for his kindness in permitting me to prepare this all-too-inadequate 
 summary of his life and labours, who has given me the opportunity 
 to see again pictures which were in his possession, has allowed me 
 to examine drawings and cartoons, and who finally consented, 
 somewhat m face of his inclination (since he argues that his work in 
 life IS that of a painter rather than that of a writer), to add to these 
 pages his “ Notes and Thoughts on Decorative Art ” ; to the 
 Editor of Colour Magazine for the loan of certain blocks and 
 for the help which he has so willingly given ; to Mr. P. G. Konody, 
 for the loan of certain photographs ; to the Librarian of the Passmore 
 Edwards Free. Library for permission to examine the Shakespeare 
 Frieze ; and to Mr. E. W. Savory for assistance in connection with 
 the picture of Mistress Dorothy Hazard. 
 
 y. HAROLD WATKINS. 
 
 West Kensington, October, 1922. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Part I— THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 9 
 
 Part II.— SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DEGORATIVE ART 41 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Facing Page 
 
 Plate 1 . — Pastoral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . Title 
 
 Plate 2. — The King’s Daughter .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 10 
 
 Plate 3. — The Meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere. From the Frieze in the Trocadero Restaurant, 
 
 London .... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 10 
 
 Plate 4. — The Boar Hunt. From the Frieze in the Trocadero Restaurant, London . . . . . . . . 12 
 
 Plate 5. — The Blue Carpet .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 12 
 
 Plate 6. — Ceiling Decoration. In the Library, Unitarian Church, Liverpool .. .. .. .. .. 12 
 
 Plate 7. — Ceiling Decoration. In the Board Room, Lloyd s Register, London. . .. .. .. .. 14 
 
 Plate 8. — “ The Spirit of the Sea. ” Lunette in the Board Room, Lloyd’s Register, London . . . . 14 
 
 Plate 9. — Panel in Celling of Board Room, United Kingdom Provident Institution, London . . . . . . 16 
 
 Plate 10. — “Justice.” Lunette in the Central Criminal Court, London .. .. .. .. .. 16 
 
 Plate 1 1. — ** Mosaic Law. ” Lunette m the Central Criminal Court, London . . . . . . . . . . 18 
 
 Plate 12. — ** English Law.’’ Lunette m the Central Criminal Court, London (from a photograph of the 
 
 Cartoon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 
 
 Plate 13. — Armorial Stained Glass Window. On Staircase of Central Criminal Court, London (photographed 
 
 from the Cartoon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . 20 
 
 Plate 14. — The Russian Ballet. Water Colour .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 20 
 
 Plate 1 5. — The Crystal Vase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 
 
 Plate 1 6. — The Summit of the Slag Heap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 
 
 Plate 1 7. — The Bathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 
 
 Plate 1 8. — London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 
 
 Plate 19. — A July Day.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 24 
 
 Plate 20. — Ferreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . 26 
 
 Plate 21 . — The Cornish Floral Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 
 
 Plate 22. — Lunette. In the Music Room, P. & 0. SS. ** Mantua ” . . . . . . . . 26 
 
 Plate 23. — Lunette. In the Smoke Room, P. & 0. SS. “ Medina ’’ . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 
 
 Plate 24. — Lunette. In the Smoke Room, P. & 0. SS. “ Medina ’’ . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 
 
 Plate 25. — Two Panels. In the Music Saloon, P. & 0. SS. “ Medina ” . . . . . . . . . . 30 
 
 Plate 26. — Canadian Lumbermen in Windsor Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 
 
 Plate 27. — No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital at Doullens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 
 
 Plate 28. — A War Allegory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 
 
 Plate 29. — Stations of the Cross, XII. At St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge .. .. .. .. .. .. 32 
 
 Plate 30. — Stations of the Cross, XIV. At St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 
 
 Plate 31 . — Three Panels. In the Chancel at St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 
 
 Plate 32. — Blessing the Gospeller. In All Saints,’ Margaret Street, London . . . . . . . . . . 34 
 
 Plate 33. — Pegwell Bay. Water Colour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 
 
 Plate 34. — Mistress Dorothy Hazard Defends the Frome Gate. From a decoration in the Council Chamber, 
 
 City Hall, Bristol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 
 
 Plate 35. — The Atlantic Ocean. Decoration in the Brazil Centenary Exhibition at Rio de Janeiro . . . . 36 
 
 Plate 36. — The Arctic Ocean. Decorative Panel m the Brazil Centenary Exhibition at Rio de Janeiro . . 38 
 
 The Antarctic Ocean. Decorative Panel in the Brazil Centenary Exhibition at Rio de Janeiro . . 38 
 

 A . - 
 
 
 
 ' ' ■ •I'-i V 
 
 ■ ■'■m : 
 
 
PART I 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA. 
 
 By Harold Watkins. 
 
I. 
 
 9 
 
 HERE IS no effect without a cause — indeed, without many 
 causes. To try to ascribe the separate and dehnite causes, 
 however, to the effects which are, in their ensemble, Gerald 
 Moira’s genius, is likely to be a difficult task, though perhaps 
 one may find it easy to essay some broad deductions. 
 
 The work that has come from the brush of Moira declaims 
 to the observer two primary qualities. First, there is the 
 delightful and competent ease and grace of composition 
 apparent in every painting, from the studio study to the great 
 ceiling decorations that cover magnificent areas m splendid 
 buildings ; and secondly, the glorious, rich, and often daring, but always successful colour- 
 schemes m which his conceptions are carried out. Gerald Moira is as able a decorative 
 painter as he is a painter-decorator, and he glories m modern, unconventional paintings that, 
 on wall or easel, vie m their colourings with the grandeur of nature. 
 
 As to causes : the first of these primary qualities — the ability to build up and balance 
 
 the integral parts of a picture to practical perfection — is largely, perhaps, hereditary ; for 
 Moira the painter is the son of a painter. One imagines him in early youth, even during 
 the most impressionable years of childhood, surrounded by an environment essentially artistic, 
 influenced continually, consciously or subconsciously, by this environm.ent. He grew up 
 in an atmosphere of Art that no doubt generated, in his then plastic mind, a love of the 
 beautiful and an ability to distinguish it by a process of automatic analysis from the non- 
 beautiful. To this he added industry and assiduity in the study of things artistic and 
 
 appertaining to art. And the full result of all this we see m the faultless composition of the 
 
 works of his maturer years. 
 
 The second of these important primary qualities, a quality that distinguishes Moira 
 from among the ruck of contemporary decorative painters, his masterful colour-sense, may 
 spring originally from the self-same cause, heredity. For m Moira’s veins is Spanish blood. 
 Doubtless the inherent love of bright, gay colour has been fostered and cherished and 
 cultivated during his early life and training by himself and his tutors, but at the same time 
 it IS impossible, m an honest endeavour to search out fundamentals, to ignore its probable 
 hereditary genesis. 
 
 About the year 1837, the same year in which Queen Victoria ascended the throne and 
 ushered m a long period during which the Arts were to flourish exceedingly, a young 
 Portuguese came to London as a member of his country’s Diplomatic Service. This man 
 was Edward Moira, who was then about twenty years of age. There is no reason to believe that 
 he was a better or a worse diplomat than his contemporaries and colleagues, or any more 
 or less distinguished than the average member of a diplomatic service doing his country’s 
 work abroad ; but, however that may be, there was that m the young man’s soul that craved 
 for another form of expression than diplomatic verbiage, and it was not long before he forsook 
 the realms of international diplomacy and entered those of non-national art. He became 
 a painter of miniatures, then very much the vogue, and “ The Service ” knew him no more. 
 
 Parentage. 
 
10 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 Early Life and 
 
 Governing 
 
 Influences. 
 
 The Royal 
 •Academy School. 
 
 The young artist settled in London, where in due course he earned a reputation and an 
 eminence as a miniature painter that brought him a sufficiency of what the world calls success. 
 Later he married. His wife’s father hailed also from Portugal and was a member of the 
 same service that had brought young Moira to London ; her mother was a Spanish lady. 
 
 Thus Gerald Edward Moira, who was born on the twenty-sixth of January, 1867, is, 
 one might say, three-quarters Portuguese and one-quarter Spanish, although by virtue of 
 the fact that his father had taken out naturalisation papers many years before the boy’s birth, 
 he has as much right to claim the nationality of the country of his birth as any other Englishman, 
 and, strangely enough, notwithstanding the ties of relationship that bind him to the South 
 he has never visited either Portugal or Spain. But there is the blood of the warm South 
 in his veins, and its influence is everywhere visible in his art. 
 
 From the time of his courageous departure from the Portuguese Diplomatic Service 
 until the year 1875, the elder Moira practised the art of miniature-paintmg m London. In 
 that year, however, he moved, with his family, to Chislehurst, m Kent, where his son had 
 opportunities of observing and studying the beauties of the English country landscape at 
 first hand. Already the son showed every inclination to embrace a career which should 
 be connected with art, and during the ten years of his life at Chislehurst received the first 
 groundings in the practice of drawing and painting, his principal tutors being his own father 
 and Nature herself. 
 
 In the year 1885 the family returned to London, and Gerald Moira entered upon a 
 serious course of art-traming. His immediate ambition was to be admitted to the Royal 
 Academy School and he set about realising it with an admirable determination. Not that 
 there was any doubt of its ultimate achievement : a natural aptitude and skill combined 
 with the elementary training he had received at his father’s hands precluded that ; but it 
 was necessary that he- should qualify according to the rules of the Academy, and he began 
 by going to the British Museum m the daytime to draw from the antique, and, to help to 
 further still more rapidly his proficiency, to an Art School at night. Between times he earned 
 money by doing pen and ink designing and illustrations for publishing houses m Bouverie 
 Street, and particularly for a now defunct periodical called The Lock to Lock Times. 
 
 Coupled with his inborn ability, such unflagging industry was bound to realise its due 
 reward, and in 1887 Moira entered the School of the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington 
 House, where he was a fellow-student with several eminent artists who have since passed 
 away, such as Byam Shaw, Frank Craig, and Lawrence Koe, and many others who are living 
 to-day, who are now, like himself, at the top of their respective vocations. 
 
 The young student’s period of training at the Royal Academy School was a long sequence 
 of minor, but nevertheless brilliant, successes. During his first year, m competition against 
 the students, he gained the Armitage Prize for figure composition. Here was the first tangible 
 outcome of the early influences of environment and elementary training to which, up to 
 this time, he had been subjected. 
 
 At the end of the following year he carried off the third prize for life drawing ; the 
 following year brought him the second prize ; and finally, twelve months later, he succeeded 
 
Plate 2. 
 
 THE KING’S DAUGHTER 
 1896. 
 
THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 11 
 
 in obtaining possession of the first prize. Ultimately, in his last term at the School, he fell 
 short of the coveted premier honour, the Royal Academy’s Gold Medal, by the casting vote 
 of the President, Sir Frederick Leighton, alone. 
 
 Moira’s father had died m 1887, the year m which he had entered the R.A. School, 
 and serious family responsibilities had devolved upon the young student. These he was 
 able, by dint of unremitting industry, to carry, and when his scholastic career came to an end 
 and he was free and fit to start out in real earnest to earn a living with his brush, he lost no 
 time in taking the first steps. Jointly with G. Spencer Watson and the late Lawrence Koe 
 he took a studio in Bedford Gardens, Kensington, where he immediately commenced work 
 on three portraits, of Sir John Staines, Sir Walter Parrett and Dr. Roberts respectively, which 
 now adorn the choir practice room of Magdalen College, Oxford. These completed, he 
 painted a portrait of the late Lord Jersey, commissioned for the Ancient Society of Druids, 
 all of these portraits being entrusted to him by Phillip H. Calderon, R.A., the then keeper 
 of the Royal Academy. Moreover, within a few months, his first picture was hung “ on the 
 line ” at Burlington House. 
 
12 
 
 II. 
 
 First Exhibition 
 Pictures. 
 
 T IS a far step from the mere painting of pictures for show in 
 fleeting exhibitions, or for sale for the furnishing or decoration 
 of the houses of the well-to-do, with no idea of what will 
 finally flank them or surround them, or even for the 
 ornamentation of a single spot m a public picture gallery, 
 to the mural decorations, huge m one sense and great m more 
 than one, which have been, perhaps, the chief instrument 
 of Gerald Moira’s fame. 
 
 When Moira set up m his part studio as a painter of 
 pictures, it was as a painter of pictures within the ordinary 
 meaning of the word, and the ordinary gilt frame, and there was no thought in his mind at 
 this time of his pending development into an artist who was to jump, almost at a bound, into 
 the highest rank among British decorators. 
 
 The successful pictures of his first two years, however — ignoring those which were 
 purely portraits — indicated to whosoever had the eyes to see an ability of interpretation that, 
 combined with his skill of composition, were sure to direct him along decorative lines where 
 these qualities would be most surely valued. 
 
 The first picture, an imaginative figure-piece, was founded on the lines : 
 
 Thereto the silent voice replied, 
 
 ‘ Look up, look up the world is wide .” 
 
 “ The Silent 
 Voice. ’ 
 
 “ The King’s 
 Daughter.’’ 
 
 and showed a remarkable ability in the painter to take a given conventional subject and 
 interpret it along his own unconventional lines. There is a quality m the picture which was 
 well expressed by a critic, writing at the time of its exhibition at Burlington House ; “ In 
 
 the blue moonlight, close about the dazed and doleful figure of a seated girl, a ‘ silent voice, 
 or half perceived figure, whispers a coming comfort. Weird, haunting, fascinating it is as 
 a page from L'lntmse of Maeterlinck.” 
 
 The second canvas, too, which was again hung “ on the line ” the following year, was 
 founded on an extract’ from a poem, this time Swinburne’s 
 
 Golden gifts for all the rest, 
 
 Sorrow of heart for the king’s daughter. ” 
 
 In the picture the king’s daughter sits in the transparent shadow of the foreground, 
 on a river bank, solitarily nursing her bitter thoughts, while m the background in glorious 
 sunlight there is a vision-hke reality of turreted castle and on the opposite bank of the river 
 her more fortunate sisters bask m the sunshine of virtue. About this picture particularly 
 there was a suggestion of Moira’s future in its decorative, almost tapestry-hke quality almost 
 as much as m its large size and the admirable and expert manner in which both decoration and 
 largeness were controlled. (Plate 2.) 
 
 Fortunately for British decorative art, the signs were accurately read. It was at this 
 time that Messrs. J. Lyons & Co. had just acquired the site of the old Argylle Rooms and 
 Trocadero Music Hall m Shaftesbury Avenue, and had erected upon it a splendid new 
 
Plate 3 
 
 THE BLUE CARPET, 
 1917. 
 
Plate 6. 
 
 CEILING DECORATION. 
 
 In the Library, Unitarian Church, Liverpool. 
 1898. 
 
• ' 
 
THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 13 
 
 restaurant, the famous “ Trocadero.” The company had begun to create a new fashion m 
 restaurants, gay, bright, pleasant and beautiful, and the Trocadero was to be their chef d'oevre, 
 their masterpiece. It is directly due, however, to the keen perception and artistic flair 
 of Mr. C. W. Oakley, then a young manager for the Company, that Moira was invited to 
 design and carry out a frieze m the entrance hall of the new building. This work was duly 
 commissioned from Gerald Moira and F. Lynn Jenkins jointly, Moira’s part being to choose 
 the subjects, make the designs and cartoons, and paint the frieze, while Jenkins’ consisted of 
 the sculpture work of actual modelling, the selection in both cases being with the hearty 
 approval and co-operation of everyone concerned. 
 
 Early m 1896, the artists set about the task and Moira had started upon his successful 
 and distinguished career as a mural decorator. This phase, when he worked with Lynn 
 Jenkins, the sculptor, m carrying out jointly decorations in coloured plaster, was to last a 
 number of years and include many fine works, but it is doubtful if any later undertaking of 
 this period was carried out with more enthusiasm by either of the partner-artists than this 
 first one, for both Moira and Jenkins were tyros testing their genius. 
 
 Moira went to Tennyson for his subject. There, in the Idylls of the King ” he found 
 the material from which to build up his decoration. Where else, indeed, could he have 
 found a subject more suitable from every point of view ? In the delightful “ Idylls were 
 romance and feasting, love and kitchen-lore, chivalry and glory — and everything of the good 
 old English kind. What subject could he have chosen more compatible with the avowed 
 ideals and policy of this good new English restaurant, solid, substantial and honest ? 
 
 That well-known writer, “ Tis, ” who interviewed Gerald Moira on behalf of “ Colour ” 
 a few years ago, asked him a point-blank leading question : “ What do you consider to be the 
 first essential m mural decoration ? ” It is interesting to note the writer’s report as he set 
 it down shortly afterwards in print: “The answer came pat, ‘ Fitness And in this state- 
 ment “ Tis ’ showed that he had elucidated the secret of the artist’s success. The quality 
 of “ fitness,’’ which to so many is immeasurably elusive, is always present in Moira’s work, 
 and his choice of illustration of the but of the Trocadero from the classic tales of the 
 ancient Court of King Arthur and his Table Round goes far to show how thoroughly the 
 sense of fitness rules throughout his work. In his later undertakings there is invariably 
 evident the same ability to apply legend or history aptly to the case m hand. 
 
 The entrance hall of the Trocadero is peculiar in shape. Not the least difficulty that 
 confronted the two artists was the problem of how to employ the space to the best advantage. 
 Three windows break up the South wall, and here narrow panels had to be employed, and 
 an archway ate into the frieze in the Eastern corner of the North wall, but for the rest there 
 were opportunities for several long, almost panoramic panels, the whole frieze being 
 approximately six feet six inches m depth. 
 
 The long panels offered an excellent opportunity for the display of what one might call 
 “ general ’’ subjects, and Moira took full advantage of this and filled them with big and 
 important scenes. There are four such scenes ; the first, “ The meeting of Lancelot and 
 Guinevere,’’ (Plate 3) in which are gallant knights and picturesque serving-men, curvetting 
 
 Beginnings of 
 Mural Decoration 
 
 The Trocadero 
 Frieze. 
 
14 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 horses and sinuous drapery ; the second, “ A Boar Hunt, ” (Plate 4) alive with the thrill 
 of the chase ; third, “ A Banquet at the Table Round ’ ; and lastly, “ The Tourney,” 
 glittering with all the brilliance of the knightly festival. 
 
 Between and to the right and left of the windows on the South side are the five smaller 
 panels. The centre one of these depicts delightfully the beautiful Queen of the Tourney, 
 seated on her outdoor throne, eyes demurely downcast, while about her wave banners and 
 bunting and at her feet is the wreath of the victor, upheld on the point of a glittering lance. 
 Two other narrow panels flank this, and two wider these again, the subjects of the outer two 
 being respectively a kitchen scene in which a pretty kitchen-maid turns a spit while clouds 
 of smoke curl picturesquely above ; and the unfurling of King Arthur’s banner in which the 
 folds of the great flag, emblazoned with the emblematic lion, belly majestically in the breeze. 
 
 In all these scenes Moira’s genius as a decorator has enabled him to construct a vivid 
 and beautiful picture of the time. Deeply sculptured in relief, and coloured in the gay, 
 luxurious tints that he delights to use, with all the full golden value of the glint of shining 
 armour, they breathe the very spirit of the ancient story. The hall is perhaps somewhat 
 too small for their perfect display, but even thus they add beauty and splendour to the richness 
 of the building. Looking at them to-day, one is forced to regret that in the twenty-odd years 
 during which they have been in place they have been allowed to suffer a good deal from the 
 smoke of a big coal fire which burns, the long winters through, m the hall, and to become 
 considerably obscured and blackened by the frequent London fogs and the grime of the 
 London atmosphere that have entered the hall through the constantly open door. 
 
 @ @ @ @ @ 
 
 This was the beginning of a definite period in Moira’s work. From the Trocadero 
 frieze he went on through a series of commissions, working jointly with Jenkins in coloured 
 plaster. Almost immediately after the completion of this first task, m which they had 
 proved their mettle, the artists were invited to execute a somewhat similar work for the same 
 company m their new restaurant m Throgmorton Street. 
 
 Here Moira designed a series of panels based on stories culled from the operas of Wagner. 
 Throgmorton There Were, for instance, scenes depicting the forging of the sword of Siegfried, the Valhalla, 
 
 Frfeze.^^"* ^^d the Rhine Maidens, besides various smaller incidental panels. Here again the finished 
 
 work m deep relief exhibited the marvellous ability of the artist for decoration fitted to environ- 
 ment and medium, and his extraordinary aptitude for the interpretation of given classical 
 subjects along original and charming lines. 
 
 Following closely upon this came numerous commissions for interior decorations m 
 private houses. One of these particularly is worthy of attention because of its unusual 
 treatment. This is a frieze of small panels around the library of the house of Hall Watt, 
 Esq., near Beverley, Yorkshire. The room was richly furnished and fitted m very dark 
 mahogany. Bookcases ran to the lower edge of the frieze and their supports continued to 
 the ceiling, dividing the frieze into panels about three feet six inches wide and two feet six 
 inches deep. 
 
Plate 7. 
 
 CEILING DECORATION. 
 
 In the Board Room, Lloyd’s Register, London. 
 
 1900. 
 
THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 15 
 
 In each of these Moira designed and Jenkins sculptured in relief subjects from classic 
 author or famous poet, but so sombre were the surroundings that some special mode of 
 treatment had to be invented to provide m this frieze the set-off to the environing profundity 
 that was desirable. Moira overcame the gloom and provided the required effect of living, 
 luxurious colour by first treating the decoration with gold and silver and then painting with 
 thin stain colours over this base. The result exceeded expectations and the effect of the 
 frieze was almost an illumination, vivifying and beautifying the whole room. The architect 
 in this instance was W. F. Unsworth, Esq., F.R.I.B.A. 
 
 Then came the Passmore Edwards Free Library at Shoreditch. Here, at the suggestion 
 of the architect, H. T. Hare, Esq., F.R.I.B.A., Moira and Jenkins executed a frieze around the 
 entrance hall, four feet six inches in depth. The subjects are from Shakespeare’s plays, 
 “The Merchant of Venice,” “The Tempest,” “Macbeth,” and “^The Merry Wives of 
 Windsor.” 
 
 In 1889 there had been published by Longmans a book by James Walter, “ Shakespeare’s 
 True Life, ” which had been illustrated by Gerald Moira, mostly by means of pen drawings. 
 
 The book was one of the successes of the year and it was the general consensus of opinion 
 
 on the part of the reviewers that no small part of its success was due to “ the exquisite illustra- ij,Shal«speare's 
 
 tions. In Mr. Gerald E. Moira the author has found a worthy collaborator. There is not 
 
 a page in the book without an illustration, and every one is a work of art. ” I quote from 
 
 The Standard of December 19th, 1889. The Times of about the same date was even more 
 
 eulogistic. Perhaps a quotation is justified to emphasize the success that attended even 
 
 such early work of Moira’s, when he was quite unknown and his name was but just in the 
 
 making. “ We fancied we knew Shakespeare’s country pretty well (said The Times), and 
 
 many pilgrimages to Stratford and the neighbourhood have made us tolerably familiar with 
 
 it. But we confess that ‘ Shakespeare’s True Life,” written by Mr. James Walter and 
 
 illustrated by Mr. Gerald E. Moira, has shown us more beauties than we knew or suspected 
 
 . . . We have always regarded South Warwickshire as one of the most picturesque 
 
 districts in the English lowlands. There is no more stately timber m England than the oaks 
 
 of Stoneleigh or the elms of Charlcote. The streams, though sluggish, are enamelled with 
 
 water-lilies, and their winding reaches lose themselves in bosky bowers of the alder and the 
 
 willow interwoven with the bramble. The lanes, with the wear of immemorial traffic, have 
 
 often sunk out of sight between high banks draped with ground-ivy, like those of Brittany, 
 
 and the villages, burled among hedgerows and embowered in orchards, come upon you at 
 
 the sudden turns in a series of enchanting surprises. As for the cottages, such as that of 
 
 Ann Hathaway at Shottery and of Mary Arden at Wilmcote, they would appear to have been 
 
 built for all time. The great blackened beams that form the framework harden rather than 
 
 decay with age, and as for the thatch, it used to be the fashion of the olden time to put a wagon 
 
 load of wheat straw into a single gable end. All that, with very much more besides, Mr. 
 
 Moira has put into this fascinating volume . . . Turn which way we will, in following 
 Mr. Moira we cannot go wrong. ” 
 
16 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 Frieze in 
 
 Passmore Eidwards 
 Free Library, 
 Shoreditch. 
 
 The Passmore Edwards Library frieze, however, was a horse of a different colour. Here, 
 in four scenes, in the comparatively intractable medium of coloured plaster, he had to construct 
 what amounted to a suitable introduction to the wide realms of literature and at the same 
 time build a decoration that should render a beautiful entrance hall yet more beautiful. Thus, 
 aptly, he selected comedy and tragedy, tragi -comedy and comic-tragedy. The longest panel, 
 as befits a scene that represents the moment of the consummation of justice, evil designs 
 frustrated, generosity and courage triumphant, is given to that moment in “ The Merchant 
 of Venice ’’ when Portia, gazing into the eyes of the vengeful few, iterates : 
 
 Take then thy bond, thy pound of flesh ; 
 
 But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed- 
 One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods 
 Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate 
 Unto the state of Venice. ” 
 
 The Duke of Venice, dignity in his countenance and in every fold of his gorgeous robes, 
 sits in the centre of the piece, Portia on his right. Shylock, horror dawning upon his features, 
 leans upon a staff to the right of the panel. Bassanio, Antonio, Gratiano, Nerissa and officers 
 of the court stand or sit, singly or in groups, on every honest face the reflection of joy in the 
 “ consummation much to be desired ” and the final triumph of justice. The whole scene is 
 so admirably drawn, so excellently placed and, more, so ably and yet gaily coloured that it 
 IS difficult to imagine a more pleasing and satisfactory interpretation of the centuries-old 
 story than this sculptured panel twenty feet by four and a half which commands the staircase 
 of the Library. 
 
 To the left of this and facing the door of the Hall is that scene of mirth from “ The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor ” in which the bearded and corpulent Falstaff, disguised as the old woman 
 of Brentford, runs the gauntlet of the suspicious husbands. The flirtatious knight is the centre 
 of a group, surrounded by the five men, while Mrs. Page, on the left of the panel, leans forward 
 beckoning : 
 
 “ Come, Mother Prat, come give me thy hand,” 
 
 a smile of cynical amusement graven on her features ; and so faithfully is Falstaff portrayed 
 that, looking at this frieze, one actually feels the old man’s discomfort in his ungainly dress 
 and sees m his hobbling attitude his inward perturbation and difficulty m maintaining the 
 foolish part as the jealous Ford’s blows rain upon his unprotestmg back. 
 
 Opposite this again is that dramatic banquet scene from ** Macbeth ” where the new 
 king, Macbeth, distraught with fear, addresses the apparition of his murdered predecessor : 
 
 ” Avaunt ! and quit my sight ! let the earth hide thee ! 
 
 Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold ; 
 
 . Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
 
 Which thou dost glare with ! ” 
 
 Finally, above the remaining wall is depicted, m glowing colour and with delicate treat- 
 ment, that whinrsical “ Tempest ” scene : 
 
 “ Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” 
 
Panel in Ceiling ol Board Room, United Kingdom Provident Institution, London. 
 
 1901. 
 
THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 17 
 
 Looking at the frieze as a whole, one is struck by the wide, all-inclusive range of its appeal, 
 and at the same moment by its decorative beauty. Unfortunately, such coloured plaster 
 work cannot adequately be displayed except in very large rooms or halls, and neither 
 the Trocadero, the Throgmorton Restaurant, nor the Passmore Edwards Free Library really 
 offers that ideal opportunity for the setting which would bring these charming and powerful 
 friezes the appreciation of which they are certainly worthy for the breadth of their conception 
 and the excellence of their execution. Moreover, instead of being cast in plaster, one regrets 
 that they were not modelled in some more substantial and permanent medium. 
 
III. 
 
 End of 
 
 Coloured Piaster 
 Period. 
 
 Unitarian Church, 
 Liverpool. 
 
 URING the next few years, Gerald Moira turned his skill of 
 hand and eye to many different forms and media of applied 
 decoration. He designed and executed windows m stained 
 glass and panels m mosaic ; he painted walls or ceilings, 
 exteriors or interiors, friezes or lunettes for such widely diverse 
 buildings and purposes as a Liverpool church, business offices 
 m the Gity of London, ocean liners, private houses, an 
 exhibition pavilion m Pans, and the Central Criminal Court 
 m Old Bailey, for Moira’s art is as versatile as it is apt, as wide 
 as it IS original. After he had found himself in the coloured 
 plaster work already described, he went on from success to greater success. 
 
 In addition to all this he was painting easel pictures. 
 
 The period when Lynn Jenkins and himself collaborated in coloured plaster really came 
 to an end with the completion of the frieze in the Free Library at Shoreditch, although the 
 two artists continued to share the same studio for some time, and the next important under- 
 taking tackled by Moira was his exclusive work. This was the decoration of the Library 
 and Vestry of the Unitarian Church at Ullet Road, Liverpool, a work he carried out with 
 great distinction, and the one which was probably the mam avenue to his appointment m 
 September, 1900, as Professor of Mural and Decorative Painting at the Royal College of 
 Art m South Kensington, a post he has filled with great credit and eclat for twenty-two years. 
 
 The Library and Vestry of this Church were the gift of the late Sir John Brunner, Bart. 
 The actual work given to Moira was a decorated frieze around the Library, which he designed, 
 modelled and painted entirely alone ; the ceiling of the Library, a great barrelled roof about 
 forty feet long and divided by rafters into three bays ; and, in the vestry of the building, 
 the ceiling and a large panel above the fireplace. All this took nearly three years to do. 
 
 The Library ceiling represented the chief part of the work (Plate 6). The scheme is 
 unconventionally allegorical, yet eminently suited to its purpose and wholly sound artistically 
 and technically. The Earth, occupying a large portion of the ceiling, is broadly treated. 
 Above it and m the centre is the flaming sun of Perpetual Light, his rays darting m all 
 directions ; opposite the Earth a great figure of Time, raising into the air a beautiful woman. 
 Truth. In the two hands of Truth are held respectively a lamp and a mirror. Beneath her, 
 four figures strive unsuccessfully towards her. These are the four enemies of Truth, the 
 cardinal vices. Ignorance, Envy, Superstition and Jealousy, from whose attacks Time now 
 rescues her. 
 
 Grouped upon the Earth and m Space are numerous figures, some of them portrait 
 figures and others allegorically represented, of many great men and women, important 
 representatives of humanity m all departments of human activity, irrespective of creed or 
 country, who look upon the triumph of Truth assisted by Time, Light and Knowledge, a 
 triumph towards which all of them m their own lives have laboured unceasingly. Among 
 them are David, Moses, Solomon, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, 
 Faraday, Newton, Phidias, Gallileo, Leonardo da Vmci, and many others. Following an old 
 
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THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 19 
 
 tradition of medi 2 Eval and Renaissance painters Moira included also the donor, Sir John 
 Brunner, among them. 
 
 Dark clouds interrupt the beneficent rays of Light m Space, and rocks break up an 
 otherwise smooth and lovely sea. From the lamp grasped m the hand of Truth long slender 
 lines curve and curl gracefully about all these figures, binding and connecting them and 
 signifying their common destiny and purpose. 
 
 This ceiling is wonderful m its conception and brilliant m its execution ; rich m its 
 painting and universal m its appeal ; a sermon and a parable as befits a Church ; a thing 
 of beauty as befits a splendid building. 
 
 The ceiling of the Vestry is divided into four triangular spaces, which are filled by four 
 pictures, representing respectively Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Charity, each of these 
 subjects being treated conventionally but with striking and beautiful effect. Beneath this is 
 a picture of the flaming sun rising majestically above the horizon. Finally, a lunette at one 
 end of the Library roof bears a Tree of Knowledge, with the names of more of Life’s leading 
 representatives inscribed upon its fruit. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
 Following the completion of this magnificent decoration, Moira’s attention was diverted 
 into a very different channel. In 1899, Mr. T. E. Collcutt, F.R.I.B.A., was building a Pavilion 
 for the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company at the International Exhibition at Paris. 
 He invited Gerald Moira to decorate it. In January, 1900, the artist therefore went to Paris 
 and in the short space of time between then and May of that year performed prodigies of 
 labour : for Moira, if necessity demands it, is capable of designing and painting tremendous 
 mural decorations m a very short period, and, extraordinary as it may seem, although done 
 so rapidly they bear all the hall-marks of excellence and fine art. 
 
 This Pavilion involved both exterior and interior decoration. Outside was a coloured 
 decoration under the loggia entrance and a coloured plaster relief around the central dome. 
 (This was, I believe, the last coloured plaster relief done by Moira, and incidentally the last 
 occasion in which he collaborated with Lynn Jenkins.) Inside the building he painted panels 
 in the large dome and the pendentives, and there were two large lunettes. More- 
 over, he became responsible for and supervised the whole of the internal colour scheme of the 
 Pavilion. 
 
 Looking back over work of this kind, it seems a thousand pities that it is invariably doomed 
 so soon to destruction ; that though the most wonderful gem may be transferred from the 
 creative brain of a great artist with all the skill and technique of his experience and genius, it must 
 perish when its immediate purpose is fulfilled and the building is demolished to make room 
 for something else, its life being often only a few months. On the other hand, one is consoled 
 by the thought that the application of ability and skill can be used to make even the most 
 transitory building beautiful, and, although the work itself may not last, its influence remains to 
 add to the general sum of effects of beauty upon those who have been privileged to enjoy it. 
 
 @ @ @ 
 
 P. & 0. Pavilion, 
 International 
 Exhibition, Paris 
 
 
20 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 Lloyd’s Register, 
 London. 
 
 The successful Unitarian Church ceiling at Liverpool soon brought Gerald Moira a 
 similar commission, this time m the city of London. Mr. Collcutt, who had already put 
 a considerable amount of work m his way m connection with the Pans Pavilion and the saloons 
 of certain P. & 0. steamships (with which we will deal more fully later), was engaged on new 
 offices for Lloyd’s Register, and Professor Moira was instructed to decorate the 
 ceilings of the boardroom and the staircase and to design and make the big stained-glass 
 windows to light the staircase. 
 
 The boardroom ceiling (Plate 7) was a difficult problem, and one that tested all Moira’s 
 ability and now maturing genius. It is a large barrelled ceiling, divided into three bays. 
 The centre bay was broken up into many smaller panels, richly bordered. In these Moira 
 painted allegorical figures representing the four ancient elements : Earth, Air, Fire and 
 Water ; and these in their turn are flanked by smaller panels containing the signs of the 
 Zodiac. 
 
 In four large outer lunettes were painted spirited, charming and graceful allegorical 
 representations of the Four Winds of Heaven ; and at one end is a tremendous lunette, 
 (Plate 8) running the length of the room, in which one sees a beautiful female figure, the Spirit 
 of the Sea, attended by her sea-maidens, driving a team of scaly and monster sea-horses 
 through tempestuous waves. 
 
 The artist came back to realism, however, when he designed the windows for the staircase. 
 In these, beautiful examples of the highest art of illumination, is shown the ancient and 
 honourable trade of shipbuilding, the mam themes being the building of a sailing ship and 
 the building of a steamship. 
 
 The ceiling of the staircase dealt again with ships. Here a series of four roundels records 
 the evolution of ocean vessels from the early sailing ships to the days of all-pervadmg steam. 
 First a Greek tea-clipper, propelled by sail and oar ; then a masted sailing ship, its sails 
 domed out by an imaginary wind ; in the third of the series one of those quaint vessels that were 
 neither wood nor steel — part timber, part iron — a record of that passing phase when the 
 mercantile marine developed so rapidly ; and finally a modern ocean liner completes the series 
 and brings their story up to date. All these are connected by broad bands of floral decoration and 
 the remainder of the ceiling and staircase consists of harmonious plain colours relieved by black 
 marble bands. 
 
 The complete decorative scheme, whether regarded panel by panel, lunette by lunette, 
 or as a complete whole, is superb. It is a true sign of London s greatness that here in the 
 heart of the city, m the very axial centre of the world’s commerce, should exist so priceless 
 and perfect a gem of art. This magnificent office building, where the tangled ends of a mighty 
 Empire’s shipping are held and controlled, is indeed m no whit outdone by the fabled wonders 
 of ancient oriental palaces. There are gold and precious stones and ornament, and all the 
 splendour that modern science and vast wealth can jointly assemble, and it is good to con- 
 template that not the least of the treasures m this unparalleled office palace is the work of a 
 modern artist and that that work adds richness to its magnificence. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
Plate 13. 
 
 ARMORIAL STAINED GLASS WINDOW. 
 
 On Staircase of Central Criminal Court, London (photographed from the Cartoon). 
 
 1902-1906 
 
Plate 14 
 
 THE RUSSIAN BALLET. 
 Water Colour. 
 
 1917. 
 
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Plate 13. 
 
 THE CRYSTAL VASE. 
 1909. 
 
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THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 2i 
 
 Entirely different was Moira’s next undertaking, although it too was the interior decoration 
 of a palatial London office. This was a ceiling of the Board Room of the United Kingdom 
 Temperance and General Provident Institution m the Strand (Plate 9). 
 
 The ceiling is twenty-five feet m length, with rounded ends. In the centre Moira 
 painted a digriified figure of a woman. Providence, surrounded by children and the fruits 
 of the earth. Kneeling to her in an attitude of supplication. Motherhood receives her 
 benediction. 
 
 At one end. Vice and Drunkenness mounted on a great-winged eagle, fly before 
 Temperance, who has seized the reins, while Humanity, typified m the stalwart and muscular 
 figure of a man, climbs upwards. Opposite, Knowledge emerges from behind the curtains 
 of the unknown. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
 Among the mural decorations of this period of Moira’s work were some important panels 
 in mosaic, particularly a series of six m the Holborn Restaurant, London, and one m the School 
 of Art at Leeds. Those in Holborn represent Music, Dancing, Pageantry, Feasting, Oratory 
 and Singing. They are beautifully and skilfully worked m harmony with the tone of the 
 surrounding red Verona marble in which the general scheme was carried out, and with their 
 liberal but ingenious use of gold add much to the decorative effect of the Hall. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
 At this time Gerald Moira was also devoting much attention to stained glass and, in 
 addition to those occasions where he employed stained glass as part of a larger scheme of general 
 decoration, as for instance in Lloyd’s Register, and later m the Central Criminal Court, he was 
 also receiving and carrying out commissions for windows singly. 
 
 Perhaps the best example of the time, excluding the armorial windows of the Old Bailey, 
 is that which was done for Mr. Andrew Carnegie at Skibo Castle, his country seat m Scotland. 
 It consists of five lights. The centre is occupied by the figure of St. Gilbert, whose name 
 IS connected with the Castle by reason of the fact that he was Bishop of Dornoch m 1225 and 
 made Skibo his palace. It is flanked on the left by the bearded figure of Sigurd, the Dane, 
 who built the Castle in 946, while opposite is a XVI Ith Century cavalier, the Marquis of 
 Montrose, who, so local history tells, was, at one time, trapped near Skibo. 
 
 The two outer lights relate the pictorial life-story of Andrew Carnegie. On the extreme 
 left the cottage where he was born, and, in a small panel above, a representation of the sailing 
 ship that took him across the Atlantic to seek fortune, surmounted by the date 1848. On 
 the far right the remaining window bears m a panel a view of a modern ocean liner, over which 
 is the date 1898, and below a representation of the Castle itself, surrounded by a wood. 
 
 The general scheme of these windows is very fine. Their colours are rich and luxurious, 
 and do much to add to the splendour of the magnificent Scottish edifice of which they are 
 a part. 
 
 Another window which is well worthy of record is one executed at about the same period in 
 Woodlands Church in memory of Dr. Henry James Younger. The window is a symbolical 
 representation of the text, “ Unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise 
 
 United Kingdi 
 Provident 
 Institution, 
 London. 
 
 Mosaic, 
 
 Holborn 
 
 Restaurant, 
 
 London. 
 
 Skibo Castle 
 Windows 
 
22 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 with healing in His wings.” A figure of Righteousness forms the centre of the design, and 
 beneath are two figures who represent Humanity m need of comfort and healing. A suggestion 
 of landscape is given to the design by an encircling river. 
 
 This window is remarkable for its richness of colour and fine transparency. At the 
 same time, Moira has succeeded m putting into it a wealth of deep religious feeling which makes 
 it singularly beautiful in view of its purpose and its place. 
 
 In all Moira’s stained glass decorations, the actual manufacture of the glass is carried 
 out from his cartoons and designs under his personal supervision. He possesses great 
 appreciation — almost, one might say, reverence, for the intrinsic beauty of the material. 
 He will have nothing to do with painted glass, although there are many artists who use this 
 form of decoration, and many windows m important places which, perhaps deservedly enough, 
 receive much attention and admiration, but which are not in the true sense ” stained ” glass 
 at all. Moira early joined that band of artists who desire to restore to this ancient art its 
 high prestige and purity of motive. He believes m the capacity of manufacturers to produce 
 in the medium itself the rich shades of colour m his designs, and consequently finds m this 
 form of decoration an outlet for all his love of exotic colour, and a magnificent means of 
 expression of his sense of design. 
 
Plate 16. 
 
 THE SUMMIT OF THE SLAG HEAP. 
 1920. 
 

Plate 17. 
 
 THE BATHERS. 
 1911. 
 
IV. 
 
 23 
 
 E come now to what is, m Moira’s own opinion, his masterpiece, 
 his mural decorations and stained-glass windows in the new 
 Central Criminal Court, at the top of the historic Old Bailey, 
 a stone s throw away from that majestic, all-commanding 
 monument of English architecture, St. Paul’s Cathedral. 
 
 Here Moira’s powers reached their fullest maturity. All 
 the previous work he had done, splendid and able though most 
 of it was, had been a long and gently-nsing crescendo of effort 
 to apply his natural genius and the results of his years of 
 training and practical experience to the art of mural decoration, 
 which reached its highest note in the three-years’ task between 1902 and 1906, of embellishing 
 that great new stone building on the site of the Old Bailey where for centuries British justice 
 has been administered without fear or favour. 
 
 The choice of painters fell to W. E. Mountford, Esq., the architect, who went to the 
 late G. F. Watts, R.A. for advice, and it was on the recommendation of Watts, himself one 
 of the great masters of decorative painting, that Moira was chosen to decorate the South 
 Vestibule of the Great Hall, the Dome, and the ceiling and windows of the staircase, and 
 Sir W. B. Richmond, K.C.B., R.A., the North Vestibule of the Great Hall. 
 
 The decoration which fell to Moira’s lot in the Southern Vestibule consisted of three great 
 lunettes, and never has he more worthily justified his high rank as a mural decorator than he 
 did by his selection and treatment of the subjects with which he filled these three tremendous 
 spaces. 
 
 In the centre lunette is “ Justice Receiving the Homage of the Empire ; ” on the right, 
 “ Mosaic Law ” ; and on the left, “ English Law ” : surely, in their perfect fitness of their 
 subject to their place alone, ideal. A simple but a masterly conception. 
 
 “ Justice Receiving the Homage of the Empire ” (Plate 10) is a picture Moira-hke. In 
 the centre stands a statuesque figure of Justice, her face an index of dignity and honour. Her 
 right hand grasps a mighty sword, perpendicularly poised, whose point rests upon the topmost 
 of a flight of steps, and in the left a short chain from which depends a pair of scales, their 
 balance “ perfect, exact and true. ” 
 
 Grouped upon either side are various figures, and Moira has made these more than 
 ordinarily significant by portraying famous men of his own generation as well as figures 
 allegorically representing particular phases of life and conditions of mankind. The group 
 includes the leading representatives of Religion in the persons of the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, Cardinal Newman, and Dr. Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi ; then the Law in 
 those of the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. The distinguished figure of Lord 
 Roberts and that of a private soldier typify the British Army. An Indian Prince, who kneels 
 before “ Justice, ” represents the width and breadth of Empire. Finally, a stalwart blacksmith 
 bears witness to the vigour of industry, and, seated on the steps is a charming group of 
 mother and children typifying at once the people and family life. Behind all this the 
 
 The Central 
 Criminal Court. 
 Old Bailey. 
 
 “ Justice 
 Receiving the 
 Homage of the 
 Empire. " 
 
24 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 Mosaic Law. 
 
 English Law. 
 
 noble, decoratively-treated outline of St. Paul’s Cathedral lends dignity and magnificence 
 to the design. 
 
 In this lunette, with its wide comprehensiveness of soldier, statesman, ecclesiastic and 
 people, Moira has created an epic work and achieved a masterpiece. Justice acknowledges 
 neither creed nor ran k. All are equal. Yet is she acknowledged and supported by every 
 class and type. 
 
 Beneath the picture, the artist has inscribed m clear and vivid lettering, in the form of a 
 decorative, nbbon-hke frieze which is built around the Hall, the words. Poise the Cause 
 of Justice in the Scale. 
 
 “ Mosaic Law ’ (Plate 1 1) is a lunette of the same great size. It bears thirteen figures, 
 m the centre of which are Moses and Aaron, holding the tablets on which are inscribed the ten 
 commandments. The white-robed figure of Moses, patriarchal and impressive, breathes 
 the spirit of ancient law, law carried out by wise and kingly rulership. In the background, 
 shadowy but majestic, stands the rugged, many-faceted Mount Sinai. About the central 
 figure of the prophet are grouped the elders of the Israelites, picturesquely costumed, m attitude 
 of reverent attention to the divine commands. 
 
 Beneath, and continuing the written line, are painted the words, Moses gave unto the 
 people the Laws of God. " 
 
 “ English Law ” (Plate 12) is the opposite lunette. For the subject for this, the artist 
 has turned back to the days of King Alfred. 
 
 d he scheme is carried out m the same restrained, effective style as that m each of the 
 other two lunettes. Large as is the work, there are but thirteen figures m the whole 
 composition, and each of them is treated m the same severe and dignified manner. Again 
 there is a series of steps, though in this instance m the mam they number only two, with a 
 third higher step at each end. 
 
 In the centre of the piece, Alfred the Great is seated, with long white hair and noble 
 head surmounted by a simple crown of gold. His hoary beard flows down on to his 
 voluminously draped garment. In the left hand he grasps a roll of manuscript ; his right is 
 extended towards his counsellors. 
 
 About the king are old men — Druids, counsellors and captains the fathers and leaders 
 of the early Britons. A monk-garbed ancient holds upright a shepherd s crook. Before him 
 a little group of three represent the people of the island, one of them a boy who clasps m his 
 arms a wolf-hound. 
 
 In the background that strange architectural device of earliest England, the great, ungainly 
 rooks of Stonehenge, with their high and uncouth arches, overshadows the kingly group, an 
 echo of that ancient temple that stood for what was then considered justice and the Law. Behind 
 this again, solid rough-hewn masonry stretches in an endless wall built to withstand all 
 invaders and outlive the lives of many men. 
 

 Plate 18. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 1910. 
 

 Plate 19. 
 
 A JULY DAY. 
 1915. 
 
i 
 
 r. .n' 
 
 
THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 25 
 
 Finally, the line of writing is completed under this lunette with the quotation, Right 
 Lives by Law and Submits by Power. 
 
 These three panels are not only executed with monumental simplicity and nobility, and 
 clarity of design, but are eminently satisfying m achievement of fitness to purpose. Moreover, 
 their colouring, typically Moira-like, is rich and splendid, so that they emanate life and the 
 gloriousness of living and doing. They cover a world of thought and throw a significant light 
 upon the ideals of a great people, exemplified m this magnificent building where Justice is 
 tempered with Mercy. 
 
 In the Dome the scheme is carried out a little further yet. In the four panels into which 
 it IS structurally divided, Moira has painted four allegorical figures, “ Art,” ” Truth,” 
 “ Labour,” and “ Learning,” and each one of these figures bears, m its combined simplicity 
 and dignity, the imprint of his genius. In the spaces between these figures are smaller 
 panels embellished v/ith the city arms. 
 
 Not by any means the least important examples of Gerald Moira’s work in the Central 
 Criminal Court are the two stained glass windows that light the mam staircase and a side of 
 the upper Central Hall. It is doubtful if there can anywhere be found two more interesting or 
 pleasing instances of the art of stained glass illumination than are these two, one above the 
 other — certainly not m any modern building. 
 
 The richness of the colour schemes, in which reds, deep purples and glowing orange 
 predominate, and the individual character of the design combine to give an effect that is 
 infinitely satisfying and peaceful. 
 
 The upper window is circular and about six feet in width. Moira has woven into the 
 design the armorial bearings of the Recorders of the City of London. The idea is as ingenious 
 as the execution is brilliant. The deep, soft colours are excellently balanced, and daringly 
 as they are combined are none the less delicate and harmonious m their complete effect. The 
 window is sunk into a deep bay, the wall being of tremendous thickness, and this has a curious 
 effect of carrying the window into the distance, rather adding to than detracting from its 
 effectiveness, except that the projecting wall tends to cut off a thin crescent from the bottom of 
 the window when it is viewed from the Great Hall. 
 
 The lower and larger window is situated directly below the armorial window, and whereas 
 the upper one is circular in shape, this is of the “ arch ” type. Here again are repeated the same 
 rich, deep shades of reds and purples, woven with whites and greens into floral and allegorical 
 designs with Moira’s unerring skill of design and colour management. The heavy lead lines 
 are manipulated with singularly telling effect. 
 
 In the lower part of the window are three scroll-shaped sections which tell the historical 
 story of the building. In the centre, on a two-piece panel of deep violet, is painted a 
 reproduction of the external facade of the new building, over which are inscribed the words : 
 ‘‘New Central Criminal Court, 1906.” To the left of this representation is a. small panel 
 
 Stained Glass 
 Windows, 
 
 Old Bailey. 
 
26 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 bearing the words : ' This Building was Erected by the Corporation of the City of London 
 1902-1906 ” ; and on the right in a third panel, the names of its creators, in the following 
 order : 
 
 GEO. MOUNTFORD, Architect. 
 
 F. W. POMEROY, Sculptor. 
 
 SIR WM. RICHMOND, R.A., Painter. 
 
 GERALD MOIRA, Painter. 
 
 Thus are perpetuated the names of those who have made this great monument to Justice 
 worthy of its great purpose. The decorations by Gerald Moira and Sir William Richmond 
 although they are utterly different in motive and plan, have added an intimate warmth and 
 interest to bare walls that would otherwise have weighed upon the visitor with a forbidding 
 austerity, dignifying and at the same time beautifying the Hall of which they are an integral 
 part, and the effect is heightened and re-doubled by the stained glass windows by means of 
 which Moira has contrived to soften and pacify the lofty grandeur of the interior of the building. 
 Thanks chiefly to Moira’s unfailing sense of “ fitness to purpose ” his mural and illuminative 
 decorations have m this monument to his genius, secured and confirmed for him his rightful 
 place among the modern masters of decoration. 
 
Plate 20. 
 
 FERRETING. 
 
 1921. 
 
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Plate 21. 
 
 THE CORNISH FLORAL DANCE 
 1922. 
 
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 27 
 
 HE somewhat irregular intervals between mural and ceiling 
 decorations and stained glass windows, and such time as was 
 left over from his professorial duties at the Royal College of 
 Art, was devoted by Moira to the making of easel pictures. 
 
 Although he has made mural decoration his main work in life 
 and has achieved in that direction one of the topmost places 
 among contemporary artists, his pictures have brought him 
 hardly less distinction — probably for the natural reason that 
 his infallible decorative skill must and does show itself in and 
 through all his work. 
 
 With occasional exceptions no year has passed since he gained his professorship, or at 
 any rate since the completion of his long task at the Old Bailey, but he has somehow found time 
 and opportunity to create one or more pictures to be sent to and hung in the Royal Academy. Picture* 
 Besides these, many water-colours, pastels (a favourite medium) and lithographs now scattered 
 about the world in private houses and public galleries bear witness to his indefatigable industry 
 and remarkable and versatile talent. 
 
 As one would naturally expect, his pictures are in the main large in size, for although he 
 has on occasion given his attention to smaller works, the tendency that arises no doubt 
 out of his intimacy with big decorations that run in tens of feet, and in which sometimes 
 a single figure will reach eight or nine feet in height, is to deal always with canvas of considerable 
 area. Strangely enough, however, two of his more intense pictures are not of this class. 
 
 One of them, “ The Crystal Vase,” measures only thirty^eight inches by forty, and the other, 
 
 “ The Summit of the Slag-heap ” is somewhat smaller. 
 
 “ The Crystal Vase ” (Plate 15) was painted and exhibited at Burlington House in 1909. 
 
 The picture is that of a girl rather more than half length, nude except for a cloth of rich, 
 
 brown, flowing material draped across the lower part and supported in the left hand. On the 
 
 right is a large, glorious, crystal vase, its lid encircled by the right hand and arm of the woman. “The Crystal 
 
 In the deep-cut convolutions of the glass a myriad lights scintillate and sparkle, red, blue, 
 
 yellow, as the spectrum is broken up and thrown out from its glancing edges. The marvellous 
 
 irridescence of crystal is truthfully and delightfully expressed in every brush-stroke, ranging 
 
 through every rich gradation of colour. And the soft, creamy skin of the naked human body, 
 
 with its seductive shadows and entrancing curves, serves to accentuate and to be accentuated by 
 
 the glowing, pleasantly-glinting life and light in this excellent example of the glass-cutter’s art. 
 
 Only a Moira could have achieved the wonderful decorative juxtaposition of living woman and 
 artificial vase and have treated the two-fold subject with such a wealth of rich, vibrant, expressive 
 feeling and beauty. Its drawing is perfect, its composition is unimpeachable, its treatment is 
 masterly. And through it all there is discernible a quality that defies definition, a quality that 
 stamps it all as more than merely technical, as. Indeed, sublime. 
 
 Strangely enough, “ The Summit of the Slag-heap ” though executed ten years later, 
 is subtly suggestive of the same indefinable quality. There is in th^se two pictures — and to 
 some extent in another of Gerald Moira’s paintings, ” The Bathers, ” — an elusive feeling of 
 
28 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 “ The Summit of 
 the Slag-heap. 
 
 “ The Bathers. ” 
 
 romance, of something deeper than the simple record of material phenomena. While “ The 
 Crystal Vase ” is half still-life and half figure-study, “ The Summit of the Slag-heap ” is an 
 exercise m tragedy, and The Bathers ” a record of a common scene of the water’s edge ; 
 and yet, notwithstanding the width asunder of their subjects, every one of these three pictures 
 bears the same subtle trace and mark of that infinite understanding or emotion, whatever it 
 may be, that indicates to whoever has eyes to see and thoughts to read the true genius of the 
 true artist. There is an inexpressible content in each one of them that makes it a masterpiece 
 and that moves the susceptible observer to a feeling akin to awe. 
 
 “ The Summit of the Slag-heap ” (Plate 16) is startlingly different in subject from ’’The 
 Crystal Vase.” It was painted in 1920 for exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, where it was 
 one of the twenty-five pictures of ” Twenty-five British Painters. ’’ Whereas “ The Crystal 
 Vase ” IS a picture suggestive of luxury, “ The Summit of the Slag-heap ” is suggestive at 
 once of toil and sorrow. In the centre of the canvas a woman kneels silhouetted against 
 a dull sky, her head bowed in an attitude of gentle submission and infinite despair and hope- 
 lessness and resignation. Beneath her are outlined the black masses that one realises on sight 
 as excellently indicative of the sorrows of arduous, unremitting, soul-destroying labour — 
 a poem of toiling wretchedness — a vision of a world without ambition and without joy. It 
 IS a picture that calls for tears, a picture in which one discerns the secrets of the veritable 
 bottom of life, with all the time this wonderful tender woman looking down in pity and 
 understanding ineffable. It is the accurate delineation of that country where toil is without 
 end, life without hope, eternity without joy. It is the idealisation of sorrow. It is the measure 
 of immeasurable pathos. And yet mysteriously it expresses the Sublime Great Accident 
 of All Things wherein m evil is incipient good. It is, after all, a parable of hope above 
 hopelessness and a lesson m eternal pity. 
 
 ” The Bathers,” 191 1, (Plate 17) strikes a totally different note. This is a large canvas, 
 the figures little short of life size. The observer stands upon a sunny, check-patterned portico 
 looking out over a calm blue-green sea. The central figure is that of a woman. She wears 
 a bathing costume over which is thrown with apparent negligence a fleecy wrap. Before her 
 stands the dainty, nude and graceful figure of a young girl. They are mother and daughter. 
 
 In the middle distance a rugged island cliff rears itself into the sky. Overhead a pair of 
 sea-gulls flutter. Two slender pillars define the limits of the porch and on the right a second 
 woman is seen seated beyond the fence that joins a pillar. Two rich red curtains hang from the 
 unseen roof of the verandah. A rotund vase of big-petalled flowers stands upon its chequered 
 floor. A strand of pebbled, golden sand divides the water from the portico. 
 
 Such are the bare constituents of the picture. But it is more than that. It is a charming 
 and beautiful record of the gentle love of a mother for her child, of the budding pride and 
 incipient destiny of youth and beauty. 
 
 I have classed these three pictures more or less together because of that mysterious 
 quality that is common to therh all, that transcends mere subject, that is not a matter of a 
 period, that is not all technique even, but that is certainly the quality that makes pictures 
 greater than mere paint dexterously and cunningly applied to canvas. One almost wonders 
 

 
 QC, 
 . w 
 o 
 B 
 
 uJ ^ 
 
 
THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 29 
 
 if in these examples of his art Moira did not paint " better than he knew. ” Not that these 
 are the only, works or even the only easel pictures of his that justify his eminence among his 
 contemporaries. By no means. July Day and " The Cornish Floral Dance, ” for instance, 
 again reflect his magic power, and, no doubt, other pictures, which the writer had not had the 
 privilege to study at hrst hand (photographs are really inadequate to convey the spirit of 
 the work — they can only show the letter), contain the mystic quality of genius too ; but in 
 those I have endeavoured to describe, there is, I submit, that incomprehensible "soul ” that 
 places them above others, even above others from the same potent brush. 
 
 London ’’ (Plate 18) is a colossal picture — indeed it should really be classed as 
 decoration — eighteen feet m height, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy m 1910. 
 It took London by storm. I can perhaps best describe it by quoting briefly from some of 
 the numerous contemporary notices : 
 
 On the 1st .May, 1910, The Observer said of this picture : " It is a thousand pities that 
 
 Professor Moira’s splendid decorative painting, " London, ” is not destined for some public 
 building where it may serve as ocular demonstration of the manner in which a wall decoration 
 shpuld be treated by a modern artist .... It is true Professor Moira’s crowded group 
 of people — workers and idlers, rich and poor, children and grown-ups, all assembled under 
 an imaginary classic portico by the river opposite St. Paul s Cathedral, and the wharves and 
 business houses that line the bank — are a h ttle too playful and lack the monumental character 
 which IS expected m mural decoration on this scale. But apart from this the panel has a 
 noble rhythm of design, which is inhnitely more pleasing than the monotony of symmetrical 
 arrangement, and a corresponding rhythm of beautiful colour dominated by the blue of the 
 clouded sky which is echoed throughout the lower part of the composition 
 
 The Standard of May 3rd : " But the last word must be reserved for a decorative picture 
 that reaches excellence and fascination, and is very near to greatness — Mr. Gerald Moira’s 
 London.’ You look upon the city from the south side of the river ; before you all the 
 variety of association and form enumerated by Wordsworth m the famous sonnet that 
 Westminster Bridge, and not the City, inspired. In the near foreground hgures on a large 
 scale are disposed most skilfully. The thing is one great whole ; and it somehow is so 
 notwithstanding the quite un-English character of most of the people. Intelligent and pleasant 
 French tourists, one might say — come over with return tickets. Somehow you do not grumble 
 at it. Besides, m one or two of the figures the note of characteristic industry and typical labour 
 is struck nobly. It is a London that is lived m as well as a London that is seen. Its profound 
 pictorial qualities and high decorative sense would make Mr. Moira’s picture the worthy 
 companion of the hnest instances of decoration at this moment m the Avenue D’Antin. 
 Certainly by La Touche and Aman jean and Rene Menard might be placed this scarcely less 
 than august utterance of Mr. Gerald Moira.’ 
 
 Again, The Evening Standard of May 4th said : " Room X is dominated by Mr. Gerald 
 Moira’s big decoration of * London. In spite of its sea le. tl us . . . can be judged as a 
 
 picture. It IS in the convention of an easel as distinct from a wall jramtmg, and though 
 admirably decorative in comj^osition is treat'ed with only the necessary avoidance of realism. 
 
 L.ontion. 
 
30 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 •• The Blue 
 Carpet 
 
 “July Day.” 
 
 As a rule, in work of this size the most a painter can do is to fill up well-designed spaces with 
 good colour, but Mr. Moira has made his actual paint interesting, and his brush work is 
 perfectly adapted to the scale of the whole. The view, St. Paul’s from the Surrey side, is 
 characteristic and yet unhackneyed ; the symbolical mingling of glitter, grime, pleasure, 
 poverty and labour looks natural and not arranged with a moral, and even the unsettled weather 
 seems typical of the subject. Mr. Moira is to be congratulated on a very fine piece of work. ’ 
 
 And so on. These are fair extracts from the concensus of contemporary criticism. 
 
 A picture to which the word " gorgeous ” very aptly applies is ' dhe Blue Carpet 
 (Plate 5). This was painted m 1917, and again was an Academy work. The carpet is the 
 luxuriant soft carpet of Nature ; the blue is the beautiful blue of countless flowers and the 
 summer sky. In the foreground a woman reclines, seated easily on the ground, her back 
 resting against the trunk of a great tree. Two boys, one lying full length, the other erect, 
 complete the human models except for two half-perceived hgures of children in the distance. 
 Between the three, and spread upon the grass and the flowers are the paraphernalia of a picnic. 
 A buge moss-covered boulder fills the middle distance, allowing just a glimpse beyond of sunny, 
 golden landscape. A rich blue sky, paling down horizonwards, is over everything. 
 
 “ The Blue Carpet ” is a magic carpet — well calculated to carry one away to a land where 
 Nature is free and open, where innumerable blue-bells bloom, where geologic rocks and sunshine 
 between them dissipate all the morbid sundry little worries of the present, where life is an 
 easy resting on Nature’s own blue carpet. This is the effect of this picture — decorative 
 and superlatively happy and peaceful. 
 
 In " July Day ” (Plate 19), Gerald Moira’s Academy picture of 1915, there is again the 
 sympathetic juxtaposition of startling living colour in pleasing contrasts and form. It has 
 some points in common with ” The Bathers.” There is the rich, green-streaked blue of 
 semi-placid water, huge white, moss-tipped cliffs, a brilliant blue sky relieved by clouds of 
 fleecy white, and on the foreshore women and a man. B1 ue, red and white are the key colours. 
 A woman m the immediate foreground is decked in white blouse, brown skirt and a cloak of 
 flaming scarlet ; the same, resplendent hue is repeated m the stripes of a wrap that is being 
 cast aside by a girl a little further away, revealing a pleasing and graceful figure clad in a 
 flesh-fitting costume. Between the two, a woman, wi th bl ue-stnped blouse and apron, 
 dandles a naked, rosy-cheeked babe, and on the left, half-hidden by a wall of rock, the, figure 
 of a man, wearing about his loins a covering of red, completes, with one exception, the group. 
 The exception is another girl, more distant, who laves her feet m a small creek that washes 
 from the mam sea. Little splashes of red in the foreground add the final harmonious touches to 
 the pleasant scene. This picture was purchased by the Trustees of the Canadian National 
 Gallery at Ottawa. 
 
 Another picture that serves well to typify Moira s unerring composition and masterly 
 control of large canvases -is a grouj.i portrait of his children which was seen at Burlington 
 House in 1916, together with another large decoration, ” Lhe War Workers his chief 
 works of that 
 
 year. 
 
F^t' 
 
7161 
 
Plate 26. 
 
 CANADIAN LUMBERMEN IN WINDSOR PARK. 
 1917. 
 
Plate 28. 
 
 A WAR ALLEGORY, 
 1916. 
 

 1 • ' 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 31 
 
 The portrait group shows four young boys, their ages varying from two to six. They 
 are apparently haphazardly grouped (though indeed that seeming carelessness of arrangement 
 becomes on examination a skilfulness) m a sunlit room. The three elder children are wearing 
 white, fleecy woollen suits and the “ baby ” a frock of some white material that accords 
 perfectly with the remainder of the picture. The white surrounding walls and the pleasant 
 sunny aspect of the rooms with its vision of a beautiful garden seen through the white-painted 
 French window ; even the lightness and the whiteness of the furniture, and the odd splashes 
 of colour in cushions here and there, all go to make a happy portrait record and an effective, 
 pleasing picture. 
 
 Not the least quality about this soundly-versatile artist’s work is the demonstration of his 
 ability to take a given space of any shape or size and convert it to a perfectly-balanced work 
 of art. This he has more than once shown m circular pictures, as also m a series of cross- 
 shaped decorations in a London Church (which are dealt with in a later chapter). 
 
 One of his best circular pictures is ' Pastoral (Plate 1). This was shown first in 1921 
 at Toronto and later at the ** Colour Magazine " Exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries. The 
 picture IS reproduced m these pages and can therefore be judged by the reader for himself, 
 but I cannot pass mention of it without reference to the delightful colour-scheme, with its 
 imposing construction of enormous mechanism ; the fantastic combination of man and Pan ; 
 the inviting woodland scene and tree-topped hill with its coaxing, sunny, winding path. Even 
 the glorious blue patches of the early autumn sky lend their dynamic colour with pleasing 
 effectiveness to the whole, and the pleasant rural figures of woman and child have their place. 
 Altogether it is as excellent an example of what can be done by flawless composition with 
 quaint subject and difficult design as one might ever find. 
 
 A picture that for sheer, luxuriant, brilliant, rich, exotic colour and grace of design, that 
 comes near to surpassing in those qualities anything that Moira has done- — it is Moira-out- 
 Moira d — IS ” La Lune, ” his Academy work of 1912. It is reminiscent of the wonderful, 
 glorious plumage of birds of paradise, of bnght-hued tropical flora. One hardly imagines an 
 ordinary palette capable of producing so gay and vivid a galaxy of colour. But then, Moira’s 
 IS rarely an ordinary palette. 
 
 And with it all, La Lune ’ is a charming picture, as it is a quaint conception. A 
 dusky, beautiful girl reclines at full length on a bank of cloud, one arm resting easily on an end 
 of the crescent moon. Her clothing is the weird drapery of the milky way that changes subtly 
 and fantastically from stormy firmament to streaming waves of seething, gossamer cloud. 
 Cupids, not too conventional, attend this Queen of the Evening. The silver moon casts a 
 spectral radiance that gives a weird quality to the rich rainbow hues of the heavy, surging 
 clouds eddying about the recumbent figure, and a thousand tiny star-points flicker out of and 
 between their dense and rolling masses. 
 
 Two other important pictures are “ Ferreting ” and “ The Cornish Floral Dance.” 
 They are two pictures quite different in treatment and in subject — the first is a charming 
 decorative picture, its size 38 ms. X 38 ins. ; the other, somewhat larger, would better be 
 described as a jjictonal decoration. 
 
 “ Sons of 
 Gerald Moira." 
 
 " Pastoral ” 
 
 " La Lune.' 
 
32 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 herretmg. 
 
 “ The Cornish 
 Floral Dance. ” 
 
 Water Colours. 
 
 “ Ferreting ’ (Plate 20) is a painting that bears a charm peculiar to itself. It is a cruel 
 sport turned into a thing of beauty. Since this book is not the place for a sermon I must 
 content myself with dealing with the painting ; if its inner meaning is to point a finger at 
 wanton cruelty performed m the name of sport then the pill is deliciously coated. 
 
 1 hree great boulders that tell the age-long geologic story of Nature take their important 
 places on the canvas. One of these, only partly seen, forms a natural seat for a mother. 
 Lolling negligently against a second, that rears up m the centre, a purple-sweatered, healthy 
 boy of ten or so takes a lazy, nonchalant interest m the business of the sport. Beneath, a 
 brown-smocked, dark-haired lad, hands upraised, awaits the exit, from a dark hole below the 
 boulder, of the ferret — and the rabbit. Already two of the furry animals have fallen victims 
 to the game. Their still bodies he beside the orifice, presently to be joined by yet others. 
 The mother of the boys, clad m a fur-edged yellow jumper and a mauve-hned skirt, looks 
 interestedly on. 
 
 “ The Cornish Floral Dance ’’ (Plate 21) on the other hand is slightly “ impressionistic.” 
 While it is certainly a faithful pictorial record of a quaint, amusing custom, it is at the same 
 time treated m a whimsical, dainty, impressionistic, though always definitely decorative 
 manner. The little village visible on the hill, the placid harbour with its solid breakwater, 
 tipped by a lighthouse whose winking light flashes out through the hazy evening twilight, its 
 homely fishing boats dotted about the surface of the water ; the distant landscape thrown back 
 by three slender, bushy-topped trees ; and in the foreground the moving figures of the merry 
 procession of the floral dance. 
 
 A curious, corduroy-vested villager bangs the drum ; another, a mere pudgy, check- 
 capped boy, distends his cheeks m an obviously successful effort to add the reedy resonance 
 of a big brass instrument to the sum of the musical programme. Young men and girls, 
 visitors and natives, dance a joyful peregrination to their tune, wandering onwards up the 
 hillside. Altogether a happy, charming, exuberant picture. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
 There are many other ”oils ” more than worthy of record, but these I have attempted to 
 describe will suffice to give the reader an impression of the wide variety and consistent effective 
 quality of Gerald Moira’s work. Still more numerous are his water-colours, and the Professor 
 handles water-colour with the same sure skill. Two examples from his brush are reproduced 
 in these pages, “ The Russian Ballet ” (Plate 14), and ” Pegwell Bay ” (Plate 33). 
 
Plate 29. 
 
 STATIONS OF THE CROSS, XII . 
 
 at St. Paul’s, Knlghtsbridge. 
 
 1921, 
 
Plate 30. 
 
 STATIONS OF THE CROSS. XIV. 
 At St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge. 
 
 1921. 
 

VI. 
 
 33 
 
 HE decorations that have formed the greater part of Moira’s 
 work during the last decade fall naturally into two categories : 
 marine and mural. 
 
 The marine decorations have consisted of the embellish- 
 ment of no fewer than seventeen ocean-going liners, those of 
 the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, a vast 
 amount of work of which since, alas, no small proportion has 
 been lost beneath the waves. 
 
 For the mam part, these decorations have taken the form 
 of lunettes and panels in the public rooms of the liners. 
 Sometimes it has been a pair of face-to-face lunettes, in other case friezes, panels, roundels 
 in stateroom, smoke room, public saloon or staircase. 
 
 Typical lunettes are reproduced in Plates 22, 23 and 24, and smaller panels in Plate 25. 
 
 The artistic decoration of public rooms of the P. & O. lines v/as placed by the Company 
 in the hands of their architects, Messrs. Collcutt & Hamp, and it was directly due to Mr. 
 Collcutt that Professor Moira was chosen for the work. It is safe to say that it could not 
 have been more wisely allocated. 
 
 The ship on which the artist lavished more labour than on any other was the SS. “ Medina, ” 
 which received that special distinction in honour of its service in carrying the King, then 
 Prince of Wales, to India. This was early in Moira’s career. 
 
 Mr. Collcutt called upon him for the embellishment of the royal “ Medina’s ” walls, 
 and for the great royal coat of arms that was painted on her bows. It is a thousand pities 
 that she is no longer afloat to bear witness to the patient and successful endeavours of the 
 artist to render her worthy of her royal passengers. 
 
 But she IS gone — a casualty in the great war. And all that remains of the charming 
 decorations that garnished her are some of Moira’s original colour sketches and a few photo- 
 graphs that are inadequate to convey the rich beauty of these decorations. 
 
 Out of the seventeen ships for which and on which Gerald Moira has laboured, six have 
 since sunk or been sunk, and, as m the case of the “ Medina, ” the work is for ever lost. 
 
 S S§ H S 
 
 To turn to mural decorations apart from ships, Moira’s work has during the last decade 
 covered many various purposes and places. 
 
 The great war was not without its telling effect on the work of Gerald Moira, as indeed of 
 every artist. The five years of the greatest event that has ever scored the hearts of nations 
 could not fail to affect and colour his labours. At least four of his large mural decorations 
 and many smaller pictures have recorded some phase of the great upheaval and one may 
 hope that these may play their part m the lesson to those generations of the future who must 
 for ever beware a repetition of the ghastly international struggle. 
 
 The largest of his war works was done for the Canadian National War Memorial — a 
 collection of historical war paintings by the most eminent and able artists of the period. 
 
 Marine 
 
 Decorations. 
 
 War 
 
 Decorations. 
 
34 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 " Canadian 
 Lumbermen in 
 Windsor Park. ” 
 
 The Third 
 Canadian 
 Stationary 
 Hospital. ” 
 
 Moira’s contributions to this collection consisted of a triptych, about thirty feet in width 
 by tv/elve in height, “ No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital at Doullens, ” and a twelve feet by 
 ten feet painting “ Canadian Foresters in Windsor Park. ’’ 
 
 No section of the great British Empire army was more picturesque than the lumbermen 
 from Canada. In 1916 the first battalion of these stalwart sons of the forest came to Virginia 
 Water ; when the war reached its victorious close there were twenty thousand Canadians 
 cutting timber m Great Britain and France, and even m Italy, and trimming and shaping 
 it m great mills and creating from it aerodromes and war-works generally. Clad in their 
 blue overalls and khaki shirts with their soft, wide, western hats they became in many places 
 a familiar sight, 
 
 Moira was so impressed by that first battalion, as he saw them pursuing their strenuous 
 toil m the beautiful, shady forest of Windsor that he was impelled to put them on to canvas. 
 He began. Shortly afterwards that indefatigable Art Adviser to the Canadian War Memorials 
 Committee, Mr. P. G. Konody, happened to see the work and it was immediately commissioned 
 as one of the decorations for the great collection which had then just begun to materialise. 
 
 The picture, or decoration (Plate 26) is an excellent composition and still a perfectly 
 veracious record. The season is the early summer. Looming beneath a brilliant blue sky 
 centred with dazzling white is the historic royal castle, reflecting in its gaunt, grey stone the 
 beauty of the summer day. The royal standard flutters from the keep. The rich foliage of 
 giant trees runs the whole gamut of greens m the expert arrangement of nature, from the 
 massed dark-fohaged column m the foreground to the more distant spreading of younger 
 growths with their touch of arboreal yellow. 
 
 A massive tree has just been felled. Its shaggy naked end bears witness to the efficacy 
 of double-handled saw and keen-edged axe wielded by the foresters. Four hearty soldier- 
 lumbermen are grouped about the huge log as they commence to sever it again into practicable 
 and portable length. Another is perched upon a load of these logs that have been wrested 
 from their native forest and are soon to feel the tang of the whirring saw m the lumber mill. 
 On the extreme left, a group brings up a second team for yet another load. 
 
 The picture is a document of Empire, a record of loyal labour, an epic of strength, with, all 
 of which it unites the qualities of highest art and powerful decoration. 
 
 Different' m scheme and subject is the other Canadian picture “ The Third Stationary 
 Hospital,” (Plate 27). When the British trench line formed itself into an impassable barrier 
 to defend which men gave up their limbs and lives, there sprang up m the villages and towns 
 behind them many — far too many — hospitals, where the wounded defenders were cared for 
 and their wounds treated with the utmost skill and kindness. For this sad purpose, the most 
 suitable available buildings were commandeered, among them many fine old French chateaux. 
 
 One such, at Doullens, behind that part of the line manned by the Canadian Divisions, . 
 was converted into and equipped as a stationary hospital. Once it had been one of Frances 
 finest' mansions. 
 
 Here Moira was sent under the direction and protection of the Canadians to obtain t.he 
 data for his decoration which was to record for the benefit of Canada that particular phase 
 
Plate 31. 
 
 THREE PANELS, 
 
 In the Chancel at St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge. 
 1915-1916. 
 
Plate 32. 
 
 BLESSING THE GOSPELLER. 
 
 In All Saints’, Margaret Street, London. 
 1920. 
 
Plate 33. 
 
 PEGWELL B.AY. 
 Water Colour 
 1913. 
 
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THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 35 
 
 of the great war in which they took so loyally their share. He remained there for many weeks, 
 becoming imbued with the wonderful spirit of the army and marvelling at the assiduous, 
 gentle, tender, never-ceasing care bestowed by nurses and sisters and doctors amid all the 
 ghastly, naked horrors of war on the smashed humanity that came from the nearby trenches 
 to be patched up and saved from death. 
 
 No man could see all this and fail to feel it to the very soul. So Moira’s triptych is one of 
 his deepest works. It reveals at once the spirit of tender love, the tragedy and wickedness 
 of war, and the phoenix-like spirit of the wounded that, half recovered from their wounds, 
 wrest joy out of sport while waiting for their return to the horrors of the trenches. 
 
 The centre panel depicts the chapel of the chateau converted into a receiving room, into 
 which the wounded are taken to have their field-dressings removed before they are placed 
 m the wards. The fine old building with its half-domed end from which the Virgin and 
 Child look down, and with its massive arches, makes a splendid, dignified background for 
 a typical army-hospital scene. A kind-faced sister occupies the centre of the panel ; upon a 
 camp bed and covered by a blanket lies a wounded man, beside whom a white-garbed doctor 
 prepares to attend him. On the left a soldier limps one-legged along upon the arm of a 
 comrade ; another man, bare to the waist, is being treated by two doctors m efficient manner. 
 
 The left panel epitomises the convalescent stage, when the men have sufficiently 
 recovered to be able to benefit by the open air. A soldier lies m his camp bedstead beneath 
 a white awning that shelters him from the sun. The picturesque town of Doullens is m the 
 centre of the wide landscape. A team of Americans indulge m their national game of baseball 
 below. A uniformed officer wearing on his arm and back the badges of his Brigade talks to 
 the patient, while the gentle nurses attend his wants. The dignified drapery of curtains 
 throws into the distance a curious tree. 
 
 The opposite panel shows the evacuation of patients to the Base Hospital. An old 
 gateway of the inner fortifications stands erect m the middle of the picture and the outer 
 wall of the building is painted m sharp perspective on the right. Here and there a tree breaks 
 up the composition. In the foreground, stretcher-bearers carefully carry the patient to the 
 waiting ambulance, while the sister supervises the operation. 
 
 Into the whole triptych Moira has contrived to instil a great feeling of sympathy besides 
 creating a splendid decoration. The white and blue and red of the costumes of the nurses 
 and the sisters, the rich colours of the landscapes, and the architectural beauties of the buildings 
 lend themselves beneath his able brush to the making of a triptych well worthy to rank high 
 m the collection of decorations by all the great artists of the day. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
 Though these were perhaps Moira’s most important war paintings, they were not by any War Memorials 
 means all. War memorials have been many and have taken many forms — not a few have 
 been the painted panels representative of some phase of the war or the connection with it of 
 those whom the memorials were designed to commemorate. The Canadian pictures fall 
 of course within this class, but more definitely the panel painted for Messrs. Gray, Dawes 
 & Company provides a decorative record. 
 
36 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 This picture is in a sense a border to a list of names — and yet it is in itself a dramatic 
 pictorial summary of the devastation and the death-dealing curse of war. 
 
 In the immediate foreground a group of young men, attired in the various uniforms of 
 air, land and sea, indicate the sources from which the Empire army was drawn. A column 
 of infantry stretches marching down through the rolling landscape and past the hop-fields 
 of Kent to the sea. Down in the hollow of the coast line nestles the port of Dover with 
 Dover Castle standing near, a landmark and a sentinel. Looking out over the Channel, 
 one sees the familiar leave boat with its queer designs of “ camouflage, ’’ and, just behind, 
 the equally familiar Belgian leave boat. A little further out, escort destroyers await the 
 departure of the men for the French coast, and, backing them up again, destroyers and cruisers 
 of the Fleet on the watch for any indication of the presence of the enemy. 
 
 Across the Channel there bursts forth from out the ground a veritable hell of fire and smoke 
 and terror — the destination of the young manhood assembled in lovely Kent to be marshalled 
 for the fight. It is a picture that is a war record m the most literal sense. 
 
 “ Stations of 
 the Cross," 
 St. Paul’s, 
 Knightsbridge 
 
 Chancel 
 Portrait Panels 
 
 “ Blessing the 
 Gospeller.” 
 
 But the war has passed, and at its end Moira welcomed no less than others the opportunity 
 to practise his art again on subjects of peace. One of his earliest undertakings after it came 
 to a close was a series of small ecclesiastical decorations, “ Stations of the Cross,” for a London 
 church, St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge. These are not yet finished. There are to be in all 
 fourteen, but so far only eleven of them are in place. (Plates 29 and 30). 
 
 Those of them which are finished present a powerful series of incidents from the 
 crucifixion and within the small and somewhat awkward shape of the cross-shaped gilt frames, 
 the artist has succeeded in achieving eleven remarkable examples of unconventional and 
 realistic ecclesiastical painting. He has contrived to interpret the old story m a new way 
 and yet adhere to the general conception of the subject. On the bare, inhospitable walls 
 of the church these “ Stations of the Cross ” are as gems set in steel. 
 
 These, however, are not the only products of Moira’s genius m St. Paul s. A series of 
 twelve panels set upon the walls glorify and embellish the Chancel. These are rectangular 
 narrow panels three feet m height bearing each the portrait of a dignitary of the Church. 
 (Plate 31). 
 
 Each one of these panels is an erect portrait painted with a wealth of gorgeous colour. 
 These ecclesiastics in their rich robes of office offered Moira an excellent opportunity for the 
 use of his sense of decoration, an opportunity of which he took full advantage, and the 
 flaming reds and golds and purples add life to the somewhat austere blankness of the 
 walls. The portraits are, moreover, powerful and living presentations, and, looking at them, 
 one feels oneself in the presence of the great. 
 
 Yet another ecclesiastical work, and perhaps the most important single canvas, is the 
 “ Blessing of the Gospels ” in All Saints’, Margaret Street. 
 
 The ceremony of ” Blessing the Gospeller ” takes place on St. Peter and St. Paul s day 
 every year. Moira’s picture of it is about ten feet by eight in size (Plate 32). Beneath the 
 light of candles in gold candelabra and the swirling of the fumes of holy incense, the Rev. 
 
Plate 34. 
 
 MISTRESS DOROTHY HAZARD DEFENDS THE FROME GATE. 
 
 From a decoration in the Council Chamber, City Hall, Bristol 
 
 1917. 
 
Plate 33. 
 
 THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 
 
 Decoration in the Brazil Centenary Exhibition at Rio de Janeiro. 
 1922. 
 

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THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 37 
 
 Geoffrey Held kneels before the Bishop of Nassau. The Bishop, his strong, resolute face 
 set off by his magnificent robes of gold with sleeves of chiffon shot with scarlet, recites the 
 Gospel from the open page of a book held in the hands m the kneeling priest. Clad m robes 
 of wonderful scarlet emblazoned with gold, the Vicar, the Reverend McKay, stands erect, 
 hands clasped in prayer. The Master of Ceremonies, clothed m evening dress, survival 
 of those days when his predecessors attended m full burnished armour, looks on, arms folded. 
 Choristers m scarlet and white are seen at the edge of the picture, and two officials m lace-edged 
 capes hold aloft lighted candles m golden candlesticks, while another carries the incense. 
 
 In the background of the picture are vaguely seen other pictures, the pipes of an organ 
 and the gothic tracery of altar arches. Above is inscribed, m Latin, the Gospel of the Day. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
 Among his later works Moira has contributed a decoration as one of a series of large 
 panels for the Council Chamber in the Council House of Bristol. The panels were each filled with 
 a decoration illustrating some incident in Bristol’s history, and Moira, for his picture, chose 
 that extraordinary scene when Mistress Dorothy Hazard, a woman of Cromwellian times, 
 and, moreover, of Cromwellian courage, defended her beloved city against the invading 
 forces of Rupert. (Plate 32). 
 
 The story goes that Rupert had been greatly successful m these Western counties and 
 when he marched upon Bristol in 1643 with his victory-satiated troops, his record of un- 
 conquerabihty preceded him and cast such fear into the hearts of the governor and the garrison 
 that, in the hope of securing better terms than would be the portion of a conquered city, they 
 proposed to surrender without a fight. 
 
 Not so Mistress Dorothy. Nothing of the fear of the Royalists about her. Raging against 
 the pusillanimous policy of the governor, she decided that if men-at-arms would not do their 
 duty, she, with the aid of the washerwomen of the city, would show them how. So, gathering 
 around her all the womenfolk and such of the soldiers as would react to her dauntless 
 enthusiasm and obey her commands she waited at the Frome gate, prepared to defend it with 
 woolsacks and with blankets and with life. 
 
 And such IS the marvellous power of great courage that these women, backed up by a 
 handful of soldiery and a piece or two of inadequate artillery, repulsed the invaders and won 
 everlasting glory, putting to shame the weakness of the governor whose valour had been 
 dissipated by the mere echo of Rupert s past successes. 
 
 Moira has contrived to put into this picture all the romance and the strangeness of the 
 scene of preparation at the Frome gate. Mistress Dorothy, majestic in her courage and 
 resplendent in black velvet dress and scarlet cape, exhorts her supporters to effort and directs 
 the arrangements for the reception of the Royalists. A seething mob of valiant women rush 
 hither and thither m the frenzy of hasty preparation. Toiling men strain at the rope of a 
 heavy cannon. On the battlemented wall above the gate itself the flag of the city is hoisted 
 as a signal to the approaching army that resistance will be made, and soldiers in armour prepare 
 to give battle. 
 
 “ Mistress 
 Dorothy Hazard 
 defends the 
 Frome Gate, 
 Bristol." 
 
38 
 
 THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 Rio de Janeiro 
 
 Exhibition 
 
 Pieces. 
 
 The Queen’s 
 Doll’s House- 
 
 The citadel-like gateway and its tower, built of solid masonry, loom up repellantly, 
 and through an arch of St. John’s Church on the city walls one glimpses the rolling landscape 
 over which the Royalists must come. The quaint squared portcullis adds its decorative effect 
 to the strange scene. The city arms graven on the wall serve as inspiration for the defenders. 
 The cobbled street adds realism and quamtness to the picture. 
 
 It IS an interesting as well as a beautiful representation, and Moira has well justified his 
 reputation as a decorator m this pictorial reproduction of one of those incidents of splendid 
 courage with which English history abounds. 
 
 s s s ■ s s 
 
 The Brazil Centenary Exhibition at Rio de Janeiro has provided an opportunity such as 
 Moira delights m. For this great festival he undertook a tremendous triptych and two large 
 panels. 
 
 The decorations for one of the large halls at the Exhibition were to consist of a series of 
 paintings allegorically representing the Five Oceans. Three of the five were given to Gerald 
 Moira : the Atlantic, the Arctic and the Antarctic. 
 
 The triptych was devoted to the Atlantic Ocean and the two separate panels to the Arctic 
 and the Antarctic Oceans respectively. These splendid examples of the art of Gerald Moira 
 are reproduced m these pages (Plates 35 and 36). The triptych, gay and riotous in colour, 
 curiously combines the gaiety and the seriousness of the peoples that inhabit the shores of 
 the majestic Ocean. 
 
 The panels are austere and dignified. The ice-blue cold of the Poles is revealed at the 
 same time as the majesty of their great wastes. The two figures by means of which the artist 
 has personified the Arctic and the Antarctic Oceans, and the towering icebergs, bespeak the 
 wonder and immensity of their rigorous beauty. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
 I cannot close this summary of Moira’s works without reference to a task on which he is 
 just now engaged, a task of singular and unusual interest. 
 
 It IS a ceiling decoration m miniature. A year "or more ago, that indefatigable and 
 brilliant architect. Sir Edwin L. Lutyens, R.A., drew up plans for a presentation doll s house 
 for Her Majesty the Queen. The building was to be unique, a perfect model of a palatial 
 residence about ten feet by eight, the joint work of all the most eminent artists of the time, 
 complete with sculpture, mural decorations, pictures and period furniture, and equipped with 
 all the necessities of so magnificent, if diminutive, a residence, even down-to the silver faucets 
 that control the water for the tiny baths. 
 
 There was hardly a distinguished Royal Academician who was not to contribute to this 
 curious little model of splendour, nor a famous manufacturer whose name stands for some 
 household thing that is the best of its kind, who was not to donate something of his special 
 manufacture. Her Majesty accepted the gift, and the artists enthusiastically began. Moira 
 IS designing, making and decorating the ceiling of the Dining Room, which is forty-two inches 
 m length, and twenty m width. The ceiling is divided into a number of panels, all dominated 
 by a comparatively large oval ceritre panel. 
 
 I 
 
Plate 36. 
 
 THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 
 
 Decorative panel in the Brazil Centenary Exhibition at Rio de Janeiro. 
 
 1922. 
 
 THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN. 
 
 Decorative panel in the Brazil Centenary Exhibition at Rio de Janeiro. 
 
 1922. 
 
THE ART OF GERALD MOIRA 
 
 39 
 
 It IS delightfully done. In the centre panel, a goddess of Plenty holds sway from the 
 height of the clouds, floating about the building. From a high balcony of the palace, seen rising 
 into the clouds, an orchestra discourses sweet music. About the goddess the four rectangular 
 corner panels are filled with fauns and nymphs who bring to her from the terrestrial sphere 
 the fruits of the earth and the richness thereof. In the four panels that surround the centre 
 oval, allegorical figures represent the four seasons and illustrate the beneficence of Providence. 
 
 Small as the whole ceiling is it is an exquisite little piece of work, and, when it is mounted 
 in its place above the diminutive walls and bears the perfect little chandeliers and candelabra 
 that It IS destined to support, will be well calculated to charm and attract all who see it, even 
 where all its surroundings compete in charm and attraction. 
 
 He IS also designing the colour scheme of the walls, and painting the miniature portraits 
 that are to adorn them. Moreover, in order that the whole room shall be in perfect keeping 
 with the ceiling, he will design the over-doors, which are to be in grisaille and the luxurious 
 little carpet for the room’s floor. 
 
 It IS a singular testimony to the versatility of his art that at the same time as he is working 
 on this miniature and composite creation, he is also engaged on a decoration sixteen feet m 
 width which IS to form a war memorial for the Union Jack Club. 
 
 This latest work is not sufficiently far advanced to allow of description in any detail, 
 but the cartoon and the colour scheme — in so far as the latter is already carried out — indicate 
 that this will be not the least worthy of a place in the list of Gerald Moira’s works. 
 
 s s s s s 
 
 Thus through many different channels of art has Moira added to the works of art of the 
 present day. Coloured plaster, stained glass, mosaic and mural paintings have all come 
 within his scope and been utilised for the embellishment and enrichment of buildings as various 
 in their nature and their destiny as they have been numerous. Thus has this distinguished 
 artist shown how intimate, how much the concern of all classes, is the art of mural decoration, 
 how manifold its purpose, and how infinitely wide its service. 
 
 The power of Moira’s art is as great and telling, and bears as much the quality of fitness, 
 as did that of the masters of previous generations and centuries. Applied, as it has been, 
 equally to restaurant, to shop, to church, to private residence, it bears living, potent witness 
 to a wonderful field that has hitherto either been ignored by great painters or passed over as 
 unv/orthy their best efforts. 
 
 Moira IS one of those artists who has never been content to imitate others. His work 
 bears throughout the traces of his own originality and ability. Surveyed as a whole, it has 
 of course shown in the later years a more experienced technique than in the earlier years, 
 but not at any time since he began his career as a mural decorator has there been any doubt 
 of his rank. With his innate ability coupled to his high purpose m devoting his art also to the 
 common uses of life rather than reserving it, as once it was reserved, for great churches and 
 palaces, he has marked an epoch m the application of Decorative Art. Henceforward, it is not 
 too much to expect that one day the general public will learn to love and admire great paintings 
 because great paintings will surround them m all the places where they are wont to assemble. 
 Certainly, Gerald Moira’s ambition and striving — yea, and achievement, to this end, are 
 magnificent. 
 
 Union Jack Club 
 War Memorial. 
 
PART II. 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS 
 ON DECORATIVE ART. 
 
 By Gerald Moira. 
 

 
 
 
 
 '■if''"* 
 
 'li 
 
 
 I 
 
 ) 
 
I. 
 
 43 
 
 RT to-day IS suffering from archaeology. The criticism one 
 hears, whether of painting, sculpture, architecture or design, 
 IS generally prefaced by “ it is so beautifully Titianesque ” 
 or “ it IS such pure Gothic,” and if the work is modern and 
 does not directly recall the past or cannot be definitely fixed 
 on to this or that it is usually either made the subject of adverse 
 criticism or left well alone. 
 
 The comparison between old and new is the easiest form 
 of criticism. The mere culling and “ swattmg-up ” of ancient 
 arts are comparatively easy, but the ability to form an accurate 
 judgment and an unprejudiced opinion upon the few works that are really modern is more 
 difficult of acquisition and requires a sound education in art. This, undoubtedly, is the 
 reason why archaeology has been so fashionable. 
 
 The way of the old men was certainly better. In architecture they added their style 
 to what existed or pulled down what was m their way. This was far more honest dealing than 
 what happens to-day, when the architect m adding to a Gothic church must make his addition 
 in imitation Gothic, and the mural decorator is called m to do Gothic decoration which 
 generally ends m rows of ” kiss-mammy ” angels m over-embroidered white nighties standing 
 about on cotton-wool clouds and sucking tin trumpets. What is the good of this to either 
 art or religion ? 
 
 We have no architecture to-day. When an architect talks of following tradition he 
 means being traditional. On the other hand, when the serious painter talks of tradition 
 he means adding his interpretation of nature to the interpretation of nature of the men of 
 the past. 
 
 These widely separated points of view result from the diverse curricula which artists 
 and architects are called upon to pass through, the education each is required to assimilate. 
 Whereas to-day the painter begins his real education m art from nature, the architect begins 
 his with archaeology, with studying the orders, with making full size drawings of Greek caps 
 and so on, instead of getting down to the hard facts of plan construction. The result of all 
 this is that when a painter executes a decoration in a modern theme he is usually doomed 
 to disappointment because he finds it out of sympathy with the surrounding architecture, 
 as the building is only an incompatible echo of the past. Giotto was lucky ; he was more 
 favoured. When he did his great work at Assisi he was painting in architecture of his time, 
 which explains why that work of his is so eminently satisfactory : it is so completely an 
 enrichment of a building erected by a man who thought in the art language in which they 
 both lived. 
 
 But I feel that a change is coming about. It may be that the great war will prove to have 
 been the beginning of a new era and that the economy that has been forced upon us will bring 
 about the birth of a new period m architecture for the very simple reason that it will compel, 
 in many cases, the use of cheaper materials. Concrete and steel will perhaps after all be our 
 salvation and will give the mural decorator his great chance. 
 
44 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 It yet remains to be seen whether any of the younger generation of architects will grasp 
 this opportunity fully and so come into line with the painter who has for so long only been 
 rnarkmg time. 
 
 It IS a very difficult question this, the old problem of the difference or disparity m the 
 sister arts ; whether it is not possible, whether it would not be advisable to control this disparity 
 between them by keeping a stronger hand upon the one or the other. This I have always 
 advocated, for I am firmly convinced that it would be quite possible, in a school, to teach 
 and tram architects m just the same way as students are trained and taught who desire to 
 devote their attention to portrait painting, illustration, mural decoration and so on. These 
 students are not all put through the same old mill. They are taken separately, and each is given 
 a different curriculum m accordance with the particular branch he wishes to follow ; that is 
 to say, they are dealt with as individuals and not as period students or as so many people m 
 classes with no reference either to the individual or to the individual’s hopes. 
 
 So really we are tying to the hand of architectural education the weight that is keeping 
 the mural decorator down. Architectural education is too archaeological. One hears over 
 and over again that the architect must give his client what he wants. That is all nonsense — 
 nearly all clients are only too anxious to have that which is different from what his neighbour 
 possesses, provided that it contains convenient and economic planning — and really these are 
 the only restrictions placed upon an architect. 
 
II. 
 
 45 
 
 URAL decoration can be divided into three categories : 
 ecclesiastic, civic, and domestic. Early ecclesiastical decoration, 
 which was generally confined to narrow lines and was of 
 necessity governed by dogma, gave far less opportunity for 
 originality, but what was lost in this direction was undoubtedly 
 gained in the intensity of real religious feeling that was displayed 
 by the artist in the subject, because in very early Church 
 decorative painting the artist was not even allowed the choice 
 of his models, and yet it is very curious that throughout this 
 dark time the artist’s fervour was practically the only thing 
 that kept the Church together. 
 
 But the whole-hearted sincerity which we so admire in the great Giotto, caused him to 
 fall away from the common usage that had maintained for many centuries, i.e., the use of 
 the artist merely as a means of preserving the dogma of the Church, and he was one of the first 
 to use secular subjects m ecclesiastic decoration. By so doing he brought into this art warmth, 
 the divine possibilities of human life hitherto unknown. 
 
 After the long period during which his great influence lasted came the flamboyant 
 decoration of the Renaissance with all its magnificence, but how much more distant, how 
 much less intimate to the soul in sorrow than the simple interpretations of the Bible and 
 Testament of those early Italians. It is difficult to say much about mural decoration after 
 these two periods, for it dwindled away to the feeble representation of individuals and became 
 just so much ornament. 
 
 But whatever is done in ecclesiastical decoration, it must have education for its fundamental 
 base, and I am quite certain that nothing can save this form of art but the introduction into 
 it of modern people and modern costume. It is the only way to bring the Church teaching 
 within reach of the people. In the early Italian and mediaeval periods of art it was the close 
 intimacy between the Church and the masses that made the Church so strong, and who but 
 the artists cemented this relationship ? And the artists should again show the way. 
 
 Civic art to-day has a far wider scope than that which it covered during the hey-day of 
 Italian art. Then, it generally meant the decoration of the Council-Chamber and closely 
 connected offices, but to-day civic art covers much more ground and I think we can safely 
 include the factory and its recreative rooms as well as the school, the public bath, the eating 
 house, the shop, the exhibition building (temporary or permanent), the hotel, the great ship, 
 (and why not, m the near future, the flying ship ?) and ever so many more buildings and 
 utilities. 
 
 It IS this civic decorative art or public decoration that opens such a wide vista of 
 possibilities for the mural decorator of to-day. All these opportunities are at our door, but 
 the artist has yet to show the public that he is willing to treat much of the work only as 
 temporary decoration — because it is that feeling that once done it cannot be got rid of that, 
 I feel sure, deters the public from undertaking such decoration, and therefore prevents a lot 
 of good work ever seeing the light of day. 
 
46 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 What IS he to do ? I say that, first of all, he must come off that ridiculous pedestal on 
 which he stands, and, to begin with, measure his work by the linear foot and estimate for 
 it by the foot fixed. He must be a business man for once ; after all, he is doing the work 
 for a living, and the shopkeeper keeps a shop for the same purpose. The shopkeeper will 
 quote you the price of his goods by their quantity — why should not the artist ? And we 
 very well know that m days passed by artists worked thus — and some very good artists there 
 were among them, too. Did not Rubens haggle with the King of England over the price of 
 the ceiling at Whitehall, and then, after having cut it pretty fine, decline to deliver the work 
 until he had received the money ? 
 
 Very little encouragement or advancement to art has ever come from bodies or 
 corporations; most encouragement has been through the individual patron in the past — 
 and I believe that the individual patron of to-day is and will be the person to look to for 
 encouragement to decorative art, rather than the County or City Council. In this term 
 individual patron I include the proprietors or companies carrying on the shop, the factory, 
 the steamship, the eating house, etc., etc. The principal reason is that such patrons know 
 what they want, and they want it more or less directly to attract their clients or customers. 
 I think that this is a very strong inducement to the artist to take an interest m this kind of 
 work, besides which, all this class of decoration can be, and should be, symbolical of our 
 own time. 
 
 For public CIVIC decoration there is little encouragement to-day ; lack of funds is 
 generally the excuse when the interior of the building comes to be completed. I always 
 feel that too much is lavished m sculptural figures and ornament placed too high up on these 
 buildings in cities to allow their being seen to advantage in the narrow streets. I contend 
 that much of the money usually expended in this manner should be used for interior decora- 
 tion — if this would be the means of permitting the interior to be finished. 
 
 One never hears of the architect having trouble with the City Council over the sculpture 
 account, but let him mention interior mural decoration and his Council is “on him like a pack 
 of wolves.” But it will come ; it only wants some enterprising City Council to insist upon 
 having all the enrichment inside these new buildings — and in paint, not stone — instead of 
 outside, and the lot will follow suit so as to be in the fashion. 
 
 Still, with all these hopes, there is a far greater limitation of subject, and not onlv of 
 subject, but also of artistic possibilities, than there is m the other class of civic decoration 
 I have just dealt with ; the connection with direct production m the one case, and the 
 difficulty of ever hoping to convey the various functions of a City Council in the other, are 
 very wide and are against the City Council, and it is only with allegory as subject that this 
 kind of decoration can satisfactorily be treated. At the same time, the longer one’s experi- 
 ence, the more one comes to the conclusion that allegory is the least satisfactory theme as 
 a basis for large mural work. It dates quickly, thereby becoming old-fashioned sooner than 
 a simple everyday subject, and once the spirit of the times that inspired it has passed, it can 
 naturally never return, whereas with the subject of our own time the out-of-fashion period 
 IS very short. How very valuable is the work of Hogarth, Wilkie, Frith, for instance, as real 
 
SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 47 
 
 historians, and how stale and lacking in real interest is that of Thornhill and many others 
 who devoted their art to allegory. Although Frith never attempted mural decoration, his 
 work had the making of sound decorative composition. 
 
 The opportunities afforded by the vast modern stores, offices, and the like, give great 
 scope to the decorator who, m an- honest and straightforward way, will represent the times 
 and the life in which we live as he sees them and feels them, and without any taint of 
 reminiscence, which, by the way, is one of the cardinal sms of the art of to-day. 
 
 As for domestic mural decoration — is there any domestic decoration now ? Has 
 there been any domestic decoration in the last few centuries ? None to speak of, since 
 Elizabethan and Stuart times. Perhaps a few large mansions lavishly decorated, but no great 
 wave of fashion for the decoration of the middle-class merchant’s, farmer’s or small country 
 gentleman’s house as there was in the 16th and 17th centuries, a period which is certainly 
 one of the most interesting pages of English mural decoration that we have. The wealth 
 of the decoration of this time is constantly being unfolded as the Queen Anne or Georgian 
 panelling is stripped from Elizabethan rooms in such small manor houses as abound m, say, 
 Gloucestershire and Dorset, shewing always that delightful intimate relation between the 
 owner and his home which is of such great value to-day, not only from the historian’s point 
 of view, but which goes to prove that these good people were not ashamed of their lives, 
 their trade, or their profession, and were quite pleased to have the artist represent them on 
 their walls pursuing that trade or profession. This history of their everyday lives was 
 generally depicted m panels with painted mouldings surrounded by floral decoration much 
 enriched by armorial emblems. What honest pride in that everyday life, and what 
 delightful simplicity m the depicting of it by those artists, tramping from house to house ; 
 and how little they knew what valuable pages of England’s history they were writing. 
 
 What brought this school of mural decoration to an end ? Little or nothing was done 
 during or after the reign of Queen Anne. Was it the’ architecture that came to England at 
 that time ? Or was it some subtle change m the mode of life of the people ? A certain 
 artificiality began to creep into the mode of life about this time, which continued throughout 
 the Georgian period, and the architecture became definitely formal m its set panelling. These 
 things may have had their effect, but what had more to do with the breaking of this fine 
 tradition was “ the picture.” The picture became more easy to procure, more fashionable, 
 and, of course, more portable. It was this portability and the fact that the people at this 
 time began to travel, that made the home far less the centre of life, and therefore less 
 interesting. 
 
 Is there any hope, any possibility, of revising this domestic decoration ? If there is, 
 of course it cannot be on those lines, for the man of to-day does not want his everyday life 
 depicted on the walls of his room ; and the ordinary man is not sufficiently interested in or 
 proud of his business and, moreover, he is afraid of his friends’ opinion. And yet I know a 
 man in the north of England who has two large paintings depicting his factory m his grand- 
 father’s time, and he delights to compare the factory of the pictures witn the actual factory 
 as it IS to-day. Here, again, we only want the brave patron who is willing to start the ball. 
 
48 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 Still, there Is a wider scope for domestic decoration than merely this intimate one, and 
 one cannot help feeling how much the man who is compelled to live in some dreary 
 manufacturing town misses by not decorating his rooms from floor to ceiling with gay 
 landscape or something of that sort, and the scope and pleasure this would give to the artist 
 on the one hand and to the patron on the other. And this notwithstanding the fact that such 
 a man is often willing to pay very large sums of money to cover the walls of his drawing-room 
 with some silk damask, which won’t last so long nor be so satisfactory as good paintings — 
 and the cost would be nearly the same. In this class of decoration I think the patron is 
 waiting for a lead to be given him, the artist waiting for the opportunity ; the onus therefore 
 rests with the architect ; it is for him to give way, and, in considering the interior enrichment, 
 to give more consideration to colour and less to architectural mouldings, as it is far away 
 more satisfactory to trust to colour scheme than to embark on that very difficult problem 
 of trying to carry a harmony over a number of mouldings and intervening spaces. 
 
 I have, in a very limited space, tried to divide mural decoration into its three principal 
 spheres — ecclesiastic, civic, and domestic. Civic, I hope, I have proved to be at the present 
 time m a most hopeful and healthy condition, because of its wide scope, its direct 
 interest to the community and its great and comprehensive possibilities to the resourceful 
 and imaginative artist — qualities which are most essential to the well-being of this young 
 and healthy reborn child of art, who with these attributes should go far and prosper. For 
 the other two, ecclesiastic and domestic, one cannot hold out quite such great hopes, but, 
 taking one with the other, I suppose the Church decoration has, at all events, the one saving 
 grace, i.e., that its subject is staple, founded on education as it is, and whether treated as I 
 suggested, or on worn traditional lines, it has a firm founilation as a jumping-off point, and 
 will only require courage. But what courage on the part of the clergy, the artist and the 
 layman to break through this stupid convention that the poor thing is suffering from to-day. 
 Whereas domestic decoration is m a far worse plight ; its complaint is difficult — nay, almost 
 impossible — to diagnose : it is so much in the air. Therefore to make this form of 
 
 decoration strong enough to take its proper place, the prominent place to which it is m all 
 reason entitled, it requires the utmost collaboration between the architect and the painter, 
 and only by this close sympathetic unity can any hope for its future be made possible. But 
 so long as the architect is content to leave such matters in the hands of tradesmen, so long 
 shall we have the same dreary and hopeless prospects for this most interesting and widely 
 possible form of decorative art. I have never quite understood why an architect should 
 not show the same lavish interest and initiative m the interior decoration of the house as is 
 generally bestowed on its exterior decoration and enrichment. People do not live outside 
 their houses, and it cannot be that the architect thinks that the outside is seen more than 
 the inside ; that would be ridiculous — and yet it seems to be the accepted rule so often to 
 finish the exterior to the last chip and leave the interior to look after itself ! 
 
III. 
 
 49 
 
 HERE is a vast difference between the easel painter, as he 
 is called, or the painter who paints within a frame, and the 
 decorator. The first has no restrictions put upon him. He 
 is free as to scale, free as to colour, free in the choice of the 
 mouldings around the work, and utterly ignorant as to its 
 ultimate resting place and surroundings. 
 
 This all tends not only to a looseness of scale, in its 
 broader sense, I’.e., with regard to accurate arrangement, and 
 distribution of weight of colour value as distinct from tone 
 distribution, but also, I feel, leads to the rather aimless 
 attitude towards subject which is so deplorable in modern work. In fact, the easel painter 
 knows no laws. 
 
 If we stop to think what are the conditions of the decorator, I think we find the obvious 
 ones, scale of figure, preservation of wall surface as a flat plane, and weight of darks ; and those 
 that, being technical, are not so obvious, but are, if anything, even more important. First 
 among these comes arrangement of tonality, i.e., one must have an arrangement of nicely 
 distributed darks upon a field of half tone with a pattern of small lights passing right through 
 the composition, or alternatively a light field with the half-tones nicely distributed, and m this 
 case the pattern in the darks. But there is one thing one cannot have, and that is the half- 
 tone and the light or the half-tone and the dark taking up the same amount of surface on the 
 field, because in this case the result would of necessity be a tone distribution monotonous and 
 lacking in vitality. 
 
 Then there is the question of colour value. This is even more difficult and complicated 
 than the study of tonality, because here one has counterchange plus balance, tone and harmony. 
 What I call counterchange, for want of a better word, is balance in change of colour ; and 
 balance is practically the same m all colour tone. Of course, m tone value and harmony, 
 possession of the necessary appreciation of colour to harmonise inside the decoration, as 
 well as with its surroundings, is essential. 
 
 Counter change, I am pretty certain, can be measured up very much in the same way as the 
 Greeks measured their work from the human figure downwards throughout their architecture 
 to their vases and even to their common utensils. For example, if one has a piece of red 
 on the left-hand side of the composition, it is compulsory to have the complementary on the 
 other side of equal displacement, but the red on the other side should never be more than 
 half the displacement of that on the left, and the complementary to the red on the left-hand 
 side of the composition should be equal to the red on the right, and this must go on 
 throughout the palette. 
 
 With regard to balance, let us, for argument’s sake, take the reds again. If the red is 
 of one value on the left side, the piece that balances it on the right must of necessity be either 
 darker or lighter, and it is only as they dimmish in size throughout the composition that their 
 weight of colour can be repeated. 
 
50 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 All this scientific side of composition must be definitely settled, and the value and 
 subtlety of the various colours as they run through the composition definitely fixed before 
 any attention is really given to subject, because it is only by this method of approaching the 
 vyork that one eliminates that dreadful curse to mural decoration “ the individual figure ” 
 or “ the group of figures.” When these values of weight of colour are joined together with 
 carefully considered horizontals and verticals, then can you consider your figures as 
 individuals. But do not think that subject is altogether ignored, because in composing 
 weights, due consideration must be given to the shapes these colours take in their bearing on 
 the subject. Therefore, if one is depicting a tragedy, colour shapes should have direct 
 influence on your subject. One could not in this case have the red, for instance, round and 
 easy m form, and the colours that have a more tranquil effect upon the mind contained in 
 shapes that are jagged or tragic. The composition should tell the story or subject at a distance 
 from which it is impossible to distinguish figures or any detail. In another part I make 
 reference to scale of sketch. I think the reader will realise what I set out to prove v/hen 
 considering the above remarks, because it is obvious that a sketch over a certain size would 
 necessitate too much detail to give true effect to the other more Important factors. 
 
 I have tried to show that mural decoration should be a carefully considered 
 distribution of weight of tone value and colour distribution, with a very strong regard for 
 the wall surface, a thorough knowledge of scale both within the wall surface to be decorated 
 and also m relation to surrounding architectural features. Subject comes last. 
 
 Nearly all artists consider that decoration is merely the enlarging of easel pictures. 
 Even those who talk in the big manner about decorative qualities really in their hearts think 
 this way. I suppose this is only natural : most artists are intolerant, especially when it 
 comes to accepting, or even understanding, that which, because of a lack of appreciation of 
 the difficulties of the problem, does not exactly fit m with their outlook. 
 
 This applies more particularly to the easel painter in his attitude to the mural decorator. 
 Even the men who consider themselves decorative picture painters do not really appreciate 
 the problem set, I’.e., the real decoration — and after a short conversation one finds that they 
 do not understand balance of composition, the necessity of simplicity of action in figures, 
 or groups of figures, and flatness of treatment. Their habit of painting what they like, how 
 they like, without having to bother their heads as to the surroundings and place their work 
 is to go into, naturally does not fit them for decorators. 
 
 Do not think that I am in any way running down the easel painter. I am only trying 
 to prove that a painter of easel pictures is not necessarily a decorator — usually far from it — 
 and to show that the study of mural decoration is a far more complex study than most think. 
 Students who Intend to take up this form of art as their profession must study it right through 
 from the beginning, otherwise we shall continue to have thrust upon us ridiculous things, 
 like the Royal Exchange paintings, and those that fill public buildings in Pans and many 
 cities of Europe and America. Ridiculous, I say advisedly — you cannot call them anything 
 else. 
 
IV. 
 
 51 
 
 RT Education, that vexed question which has raised and always 
 will raise the most bitter argument, is far too great a problem 
 for discussion here. Therefore I intend only to deal with it in 
 so far as it directly affects mural decoration and the mural 
 decorator, the reason why the mural decorator should undergo 
 a different course from the picture painter, and the curriculum 
 such a decoration course should embrace. 
 
 Architecture is a most necessary study, but should be 
 looked at from not quite the same standpoint as in the case of 
 training a student to become an architect, but rather from the 
 side of a thorough knowledge of scale and plan reading. 
 
 Scale naturally includes for the decorator proportion and weight, both of colour and tone. 
 This study. If taken by the student separately, must lead to confusion and generally ends m 
 understanding scale purely as architectural dimensions and in the footrule. But if this 
 architectural education, or course, is taken with the rest of the course for mural decoration, 
 no confusion is possible, because the student will very shortly realise that he is not studying 
 architecture as architecture, but as a means which will enable him more easily to realise 
 decoration m its setting and also to gam a knowledge and understanding of the architect’s aim 
 and the atmosphere he has wished to convey. This is certainly a most important point, and it 
 IS only by a proper course of architectural study that a true realisation and understanding 
 of the architect’s motive that mural decoration can possibly be an enrichment of, and a gain 
 to his general scheme. Otherwise it is merely so much painting applied with no relation or 
 sympathy to its surroundings. It is no easy matter and takes much patience, perseverance 
 and time for students to grasp thoroughly that their work m this branch of art has always 
 to subordinate itself to the will of the master hand, i.e., the designer of the building. And it 
 IS not sufficient excuse to make a fine work of art as a decoration, if that fine work of art is 
 out of sympathy with the building. 
 
 Plan reading is more difficult and much more tedious, and consequently it is much harder 
 to get students to take intelligent and sufficient interest in it. It is a dry ]ob and students 
 always display a tendency to regard the subject as a side-show. As a result, one generally 
 finds that insufficient attention is given to it, but when a student is brought to understand that 
 the decorator should be able to realise by the section the amount of shadow and therefore weight 
 of colour a certain moulding is going to hold ; that it is essential for him to possess the ability 
 to look at the budding m perspective, and many other points equally important, the thing is 
 plain sailing, because unless these habits are acquired m studentship days it becomes very 
 hard work to acquire them afterwards and their lack is always apt to hamper an artist’s sense 
 of realisation and proportion. This architectural work should be run in conjunction with life 
 drawing and painting as well as study of composition. But all life painting and drawing must 
 be set up on the canvas or paper with a due regard to the proportion of the canvas or paper, 
 and placed on it as a decorative composition, as it is only by this constant use of composition 
 and its bearing on every detail of other branches of study that a thorough appreciation of this 
 
52 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 vast and difficult problem can be appreciated. For a decorator’s education, the more detail 
 that fie puts into fiis fife drawing, tfie better. Tfie reason for tfiis ! will give later. With fife 
 painting it is different, because it has a closer relation to tfie finished mural work, and therefore 
 should have and must have a closer bearing on it ; fife painting as a study of broad effect and 
 simple decorative masses, is a far more useful part of a decorator’s education than the study 
 tfie usual art school fife student is called upon to assimilate. It must never be forgotten, of 
 course, that the figure should be beautifully placed on tfie canvas, and also that tfie study 
 should be put up as a decorative composition. With tfie model so arranged, tfie decorative 
 effect can be easily put back after each rest. Much time should be spent by students in 
 arranging models, as it is of great educational value to acquire a thorough knowledge of how 
 to make tfie most use of tfie material at one’s disposal. It is this ability to handle and tfie 
 habit of handling all studio properties that must be acquired from tfie very earliest ; m fact the 
 sooner a student begins to work upon tfie school studies as though fie were in fiis own studio, 
 and not m a class room, tfie sooner fie will be fitted to take fiis proper place in tfie world of 
 art. I am most emphatic on this, as when I look back on my student days and realise that we 
 were never even allowed to see tfie model put up, had no conception of the difficulties of 
 arrangement or studio management, and that we were sent out into the world with only a 
 certain knowledge of painting technique, I shudder to contemplate tfie utter criminal folly 
 of such an education. 
 
 I think we can safely go straight on now to figure, and its bearing upon that part of art 
 education I have already dealt with. 
 
 I always think it is better for all elementary students to carry out their first figure 
 compositions in a monochrome, as dealing with too many problems at once is confusing, and 
 the monochrome is better m chalk and charcoal on either a toned paper or brown paper. 
 In this way, starting with a toned surface, it is comparatively easy to procure a good arrange- 
 ment of darks with a carefully spotted placing of small fights upon it. When this is thoroughly 
 mastered, tfie light should be made to occupy the greater proportion upon the field of half-tones, 
 and the darker dotted through, and the same applies to the white field and dark field. These 
 problems being thoroughly understood, translate some of them into colour, but only as 
 impressions or blots, and not as detail of any sort, because this detail comes when the 
 composition is taken a stage further — the small cartoon stage. These early sketches for 
 composition, I should have said, must have some definite aim and can very well be ideas for some 
 of the spaces m the student’s architectural designs, thus making the work of practical interest. 
 
 Taking up the composition m its usual stage by small cartoon drawn m panel, one sees 
 that it IS m this stage that attention can be paid to subject in its relation to individual figures 
 or groups of figures, as in earlier stages the connection subject has with composition is its 
 bearing on the shapes of masses of tone value — and in the later stages of development of a 
 composition subject enters yet more intimately into all the details. 
 
 But let us get back to the evolution of the mural decoration ; we have now passed what 
 may be termed the three initial stages — the first impression, the colour blot, the small cartoon. 
 Then we come to the colour sketch to scale. 
 
V. 
 
 53 
 
 HE colour sketch for a mural decoration should never be more 
 than an inch and a half scale and ought not to be more than 
 an impression of what one wants the work to be, the broad 
 masses of composition of colour value, tone and rhythm of 
 line. It IS this first impression that is so immensely valuable 
 and IS a thing that m carrying out the large work you will refer 
 to again and again. Now, if the sketch is big, say six or even 
 three inches to the foot, it becomes a decoration m itself, and 
 therefore requires elaboration of detail and such elaboration 
 of detail will become too small when the decoration is enlarged. 
 Moreover, disregarding these important considerations ; m so large scale a sketch, one is 
 doing the work twice over and will arrive at the full size work stale. I think this is sound 
 advice ; inch and a half scale is easy to work to, as the sketches never become too big to treat 
 as impressions. I had the honour, years ago— about 1900 I think it was — of being taken to 
 the studio of Pavis de Chavanne to show him some sketches, and the first thing that great 
 artist asked was “ What IS the scale ? ” and I was interested to find that all his first impressions 
 were to a scale practically the same as that in which I was working, and his reasons for making 
 them to that scale were the same as I have given. 
 
 The next step is the cartoon, and the studies for the cartoon. At this stage, detail really 
 comes by its own, as it is m the cartoon that one must put everything that is to go into the 
 finished work. • If finally you find you have more than you want, it is easy enough to dispense 
 with whatever is superfluous ; therefore it stands to reason that it is better to have too much 
 rather than an insufficiency, and the same applies to life studies ; this not only for this 
 particular reason, but also because of the fact that these life drawings and drapery studies 
 may be put away for a considerable time between making them and using them, and unless 
 they are full of detail, your memory will not be sufficiently refreshed by them when it comes 
 to their transference. 
 
 I really think that white paper is best for cartooning. I did not always think so, I will 
 readily admit. Indeed, I did a lot of work on brown, with red,/ white and black chalk, but 
 this IS a long task and I am not sure that it is so satisfactory as white. White paper should 
 be used, and the subject drawn upon it with charcoal, and no trouble should be saved to make 
 this cartoon as perfect as is humanly possible, for it is here that all experiments can be made ; 
 it is here that all wild suggestions for improvement can be tried ; and in fact it is here that 
 the enthusiast can indulge himself to his heart’s delight. 
 
 But woe be it to him who plays pranks and attempts big alterations on the finished 
 decoration. Even if it is on canvas it is no easy matter ; of course if the work is on a hard 
 distemper ground like “ Deresco ” it can be scraped, but this is a laborious task — otherwise 
 you have to remove the whole thing, which won’t do the canvas any good. 
 
 Well, as I have drifted into the finished work I had better go right on, though there is not 
 much to say about it. All the work that counts has now been done ; the rest is only a little 
 better than manual labour. Still, it is hard work, paint pushing on a large scale, especially 
 
54 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 if you are using stiff wax on a rough ground. There is one point that I wish to lay emphasis 
 upon, VIZ., the necessity of having sufficient colour mixed to cover the space, as it makes so 
 much difference m keeping the surface of the wall. Be very careful that your cartoon is 
 accurately traced on the canvas after it has been squared up and the canvas squared, as by 
 this means you are certain to get every detail in its proper place ; in fact, every mechanical 
 device that can be used, should be used, to keep the drawing right — even a net with its mesh 
 of the same size as that on the cartoon, may be a help — because all decorators must remember 
 that the nearer they get to doing their finished work in one painting, the better it will be as 
 decoration and the more chance they will have of preserving the wall surface. This especially 
 applies to working on canvas away from the wall. 
 
 In designing figure compositions it is very often useful to model the figures and group 
 them together as they are wanted, drawing from this little crowd of people. The group can 
 be lighted with a candle or electric light — though it will be necessary to flatten down the 
 light and shade, otherwise this will be too strong when the drawings are used on the inch and 
 half scale colour sketch. These little figures do not require to be more than about three 
 inches and of course do not require a very deep knowledge of modelling to make. Some 
 artists cut figures out in paper and place them on their composition, but 1 do not think this 
 gives quite as satisfactory a result as the little dolls. Drapery can be put on them by rolling 
 out wax with a rolling pm until it becomes quite thin enough to fall into folds, or with bits 
 of thin stuff dipped into clay water which will become stiff and hard m quite a short time, 
 thus enabling one to erect flying drapery of a most realistic kind. 
 
 Cutting the figures out in cardboard and placing them upon the stage in the position 
 required is a favourite way with some artists, but to do this properly one must be certain of 
 the pose of the figures and design of drapery before they are actually cut out ; there is a slight 
 vagueness that comes from the clay or wax dolls can be of great service as suggestion. In 
 reality all the devices are good so long as they serve their purpose. They are all as old as 
 the hills. Veronez used the wax dolls, and some of his little stages are still m existence I 
 remember seeing one of them with a part burned where the candle had fallen down. 
 To-day, with electric light to help, what fun one can have — little bits of coloured glass and 
 one has a colour scheme ready made. I have done this often with really good results. 
 
 These model stages can be put to two very good uses. They can be used as models 
 either for the drawing of light and shade, or for the drawing of line composition. I think 
 really they are more useful as models for light and shade because, if too much reliance is placed 
 upon them for line composition, one really comes to rely upon them for the composition, which 
 IS wrong, as your composition should be the outcome of your mind s interpretation ; and all 
 devices from life drawing down to media-making or anything else are only, and can only be 
 a means to assist the artist to express himself. Therefore let me warn the student to avoid 
 the danger of using these little stages instead of his mind. 
 
VI. 
 
 55 
 
 N the limited space I have touched upon figure composition 
 only lightly. I am afraid I must give only a short space to 
 students and art teaching. 
 
 There are not many Art teachers ; but there are a good 
 many very good drawing masters. It is quite a common 
 species. I believe that most people can be taught to draw, 
 but to teach good taste or to teach a student to be an artist 
 IS not so easy. Good taste has not so many difficulties because 
 there are a few well-known processes or formulas through which 
 the student can be put. The one most common in early days — 
 that of making it difficult for the student to see too much of that which was good, so as to 
 make him more appreciative of the good — may have been all right, but could one command 
 so much obedience from young students to-day ? A theory like this would be all right in an 
 art school on a desert island. 
 
 Thoroughly impress a student with the sense of scale and one has gone a long way towards 
 laying the foundation stone of good taste m that young mind. It is scale, scale, always scale. 
 He cannot understand this by going to Technical Institutions — which is what all our Art Schools 
 throughout the country are to-day ; he can only learn it by Art education — by the education of 
 the mind in Art. Every mind has stored away in it somewhere a sense of refinement, and the 
 surest way to stifle that refinement is to stuff it full of technique. By doing that there is 
 created merely an easy method of production, which takes the place of creation. 
 
 A certain amount of technical education carried on during the Art education of a student 
 is essential : drawing from life, painting from life with studies of figure composition, and in 
 after years drawing and painting from the antique and still-hfe painting. This last study 
 should not be taken in hand until much painting and drawing from life has been done. Still- 
 life painting is most dangerously apt to stagnate the mind as it creates an academic stiffness 
 that is most difficult to eradicate. 
 
 All studies, no matter what they are, must be carefully placed on the paper or canvas, as 
 it is just as essential to have a life study well placed as any figure in a composition ; besides 
 which, care in this matter teaches and encourages the habit of good proportion and distribution 
 of spaces. 
 
 I have always insisted on students carrying out their own ideas, giving of course an 
 architectural problem, i.e., a frieze for a lecture-theatre. In this way, one complies with 
 conditions as they are found in professional life, because it is usual for an architect to come 
 to the artist with a space to decorate in the lecture-theatre of his building, expecting the artist, 
 and rightly too, to give him a suitable subject as well as a suitable decoration for such a place. 
 Therefore it is a great mistake to give students their subject as well as the space to be dealt with, 
 because it deprives them of making use of their power of selection, and tends to render them 
 hopelessly at sea when they go out in the world and have to stand on their own feet. It is the 
 old business of spoon feeding which has been unfortunately in existence for generations and 
 
56 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 which leads to that helpless feeling of not knowing what to do with which too many young 
 people are familiar who have not been allowed any voice m selection during their studentship. 
 
 And this brings us to a point where I know I will be heartily disagreed with by many, 
 by, I should say, nearly all teachers m Art Schools. I consider that students should have control 
 of the school in so far as selection goes, selection of models, posing the models, selection 
 of composition, and what is more important, selection of subject. It is quite ridiculous that 
 the head of a school should place himself on a pedestal before students posing to them as a 
 little tin god, selecting everything for them and strutting about in that tinpot way. I can 
 imagine no method more likely to destroy any confidence they may have m themselves or to 
 kill all desire to produce. The more students are left to themselves, up to a point, the better 
 for them. The art teacher has more chance of finding out what they can do and what they 
 want to do. 
 
VII. 
 
 57 
 
 HE old saying “ Art is a hard mistress,” is very true. I think 
 decorative art is a far harder mistress than what is generally 
 accepted as art, but with all the hard knocks and setbacks, 
 all the bitter disappointments experienced, who have set out 
 upon this road of life who would wish to retrace their 
 steps ? Very few. 
 
 The creation of a School of English Decorative Art that 
 will rank with such acknowledged English Schools as landstape 
 and portraiture is an accomplished fact, and I feel that the 
 Mural and Decorative School of the Royal College of Art, 
 over which I have presided for the last twenty years, has had no small part m that creation. 
 
 This building up is a slow process and those who are impatient and those who have no 
 real understanding or sympathy with the movement, refuse to see, or do not see the slow 
 evolution. Nevertheless the demand is in the air, and though one sees much that is called 
 decoration, which has no claim to that distinction because it is tainted with easel picture faults, 
 this is no reason to condemn real decoration and those few enthusiasts who understand it. 
 Unfortunately, there is always this confusion of the public mind with regard to decorative 
 art, caused by the loud talking of those who feel they will never be in the movement by their 
 brush so endeavour to get there by tub thumping ; but after all, is not every good movement 
 open to this danger of being pitched into a state of chaos through the fear of the few who do 
 not understand it ? 
 
 The critic, the educationalist, the lover of art and the art tradesman all gabble on about 
 the slow development of Italian Schools, and eternally wonder why there is not such a system 
 in England to-day. There is, there would be if all these people and those m authority over 
 Art education would give Art education a chance of development, if they would cease 
 interfering with it and continually throwing it into the melting pot. They are exactly like so 
 many children who continually dig up the seeds in their gardens to see if they are growing. 
 It is all so stupid and wasteful, not only in money, but in what is more serious, effort and 
 energy. Who was it who said : ” The young mind counts energy before wealth ” ? And 
 how true it is. Who of us ever count the cost if the effort we are putting forth in our 
 enthusiasm to produce justifies the energy ? 
 
 This waste depresses the young mind in art and has much 1o do with sapping the energy 
 and vitality of Art teaching. No effort is justifiable if that effort is to be questioned after a 
 short experience. Many of the Italian Schools lasted several generations, and the handing down 
 of that tradition was ever so carefully considered so as to avoid any break. The result of this 
 certainly was that although the hand gained an excellency of draftsmanship, the hand was 
 never allowed to dominate the mind. Smart drawing and excellent brush handling are only 
 the A B C of art, but to be used properly must have something to express ; therefore the 
 education of the mind is really more essential than that of the hand. Art has always been 
 swayed by these two great questions, domination of the mind and the teaching of efficiency. 
 The motto of the former : “ It does not so much matter how you say it so long as you have 
 
58 
 
 SOME NOTES AND THOUGHTS ON DECORATIVE ART 
 
 something to say. ’ And of the latter ; “ It does not so much matter what you say so long as 
 you say it well.” 
 
 At the present moment, technique has the best of it, but it is only because one or two 
 younger people have learned to draw and have nothing to say, and the dilettante from the 
 Foreign Office collects their drawings in Bond Street at great expense. But it is only a passing 
 phase ; the mind will dominate in the end. 
 
 I feel there is ever so much I would have liked to have said, but find it so difficult to 
 express myself, so I trust that m reading these few pages — that is if you do read them — that 
 you will be patient with me, forgive the bad style, the bad grammar, in fact the bad everything, 
 and remember that it is a few words on decorative painting by a professional decorator but 
 by a very amateurish writer. 
 
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