Ars et Natura

Selwyn Image (1849-1930) graphic art: Left: The Tragic Mary (1890); Center: The Century Guild Hobby Horse (1884); Right: Representative Painters of the Nineteenth Century (1899); The sphere of art is in the region of the imagination, and the office of the imagination is to render us sensitive to the most exquisite pleasures of which our nature is capable.  ~ Selwyn Image (1884) Notes:                     The Century Guild was established by the architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851 – 1942), and his assistant, Herbert Percy Horne (1864 – 1916), in close collaboration with designer Selwyn Image (1849 – 1930). They aspired to elevate crafts to the status of art, integrate both art and crafts in domestic interiors, and democratize good design. Hobby Horse was their publication. ( William Morris Gallery )

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861–1875), Morris & Co. (1875–1940) Left: Golden Lily  (1899, J.H. Dearles) on wallpaper in indigo Right: Sunflower (1879, William Morris) on velvet in saffron/vellum                     You have heard, I think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the æsthetic movement in England, and said (I assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some æsthetic young men.  Well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what Mr. Gilbert may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all.  It is because these two lovely flowers are in England the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art—the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy.  And so with you: let there be no flower in your meadows that does not wreathe its tendrils around your pillows, no little leaf in your Titan forests that do

Nocturne: Black and Gold — The Falling Rocket (James McNeill Whistler, 1875) Nocturne: Black and Gold — The Fire Wheel (James McNeill Whistler, 1875)                     Scarcely so much can be said for any other pictures of the modern schools: their eccentricities are almost always in some degree forced; and their imperfections gratuitously, if not impertinently, indulged. For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay [founder of Grosvenor Gallery] ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face. John Ruskin “Letter LXXIX, June, 1877” from  Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain on the exhibit at Grosvenor Gallery (London, 1877)  ☙❧

Albert Moore (1841-1893); Left: Azaleas (1868);  Right (top to bottom): Dreamers (1882), Apples (1875), A Musician (1867)  On the paintings of Albert Moore:                     His painting is to artists what the verse of Théophile Gautier is to poets; the faultless and secure expression of an exclusive worship of things formally beautiful. That contents them; they leave to others the labours and the joys of thought or passion. The outlines of their work are pure, decisive, distinct; its colour is of the full sunlight. This picture of  “ Azaleas ”  is as good a type as need be of their manner of work. A woman delicately draped, but showing well the gentle mould of her fine limbs through the thin soft raiment; pale small leaves and bright white blossoms about her and above, a few rose-red petals fallen on the pale marble and faint—coloured woven mat before her feet; a strange and splendid vessel, inlaid with designs of Eastern colour; another—clasped by one long slender hand and filled