Painting, he tells us, is 'of a
different quality to mathematics,' and finish in art is 'adding more
fact'! Portrait painting is a bad pursuit for an emotional artist as it
destroys his personality and his sympathy; however, even for the
emotional artist there is hope, as a portrait can be converted into a
picture 'by adding to the likeness of the sitter some dramatic interest
or some picturesque adjunct'! As for etchings, they are of two
kinds--British and foreign. The latter fail in 'propriety.' Yet,
'really fine etching is as free and easy as is the chat between old chums
at midnight over a smoking-room fire.' Consonant with these rollicking
views of art is Mr. Quilter's healthy admiration for 'the three primary
colours: red, blue, and yellow.' Any one, he points out, 'can paint in
good tone who paints only in black and white,' and 'the great sign of a
good decorator' is 'his capability of doing without neutral tints.'
Indeed, on decoration Mr. Quilter is almost eloquent. He laments most
bitterly the divorce that has been made between decorative art and 'what
we usually call "pictures,"' makes the customary appeal to the Last
Judgment, and reminds us that in the great days of art Michael Angelo was
the 'furnishing upholsterer.' With the present tendencies of decorative
art in England Mr. Quilter, consequently, has but little sympathy, and he
makes a gallant appeal to the British householder to stand no more
nonsense. Let the honest fellow, he says, on his return from his
counting-house tear down the Persian hangings, put a chop on the
Anatolian plate, mix some toddy in the Venetian glass, and carry his wife
off to the National Gallery to look at 'our own Mulready'! And then the
picture he draws of the ideal home, where everything, though ugly, is
hallowed by domestic memories, and where beauty appeals not to the
heartless eye but the family affections; 'baby's chair there, and the
mother's work-basket . . . near the fire, and the ornaments Fred brought
home from India on the mantel-board'! It is really impossible not to be
touched by so charming a description. How valuable, also, in connection
with house decoration is Sententia No. 351, 'There is nothing furnishes a
room like a bookcase, _and plenty of books in it_.' How cultivated the
mind that thus raises literature to the position of upholstery and puts
thought on a level with the antimacassar!

And, finally, for the young workers in art Mr. Quilter has loud words of
encouragement. With a sympathy that is absolutely reckless of grammar,
he knows from experience 'what an amount of study and mental strain _are_
involved in painting a bad picture honestly'; he exhorts them (Sententia
No. 267) to 'go on quite bravely and sincerely making mess after mess
from Nature,' and while sternly warning them that there is something
wrong if they do not 'feel _washed out_ after each drawing,' he still
urges them to 'put a new piece of goods in the window' every morning. In
fact, he is quite severe on Mr. Ruskin for not recognising that 'a
picture should denote the frailty of man,' and remarks with pleasing
courtesy and felicitous grace that 'many phases of feeling . . . are as
much a dead letter to this great art teacher, as Sanskrit to an Islington
cabman.' Nor is Mr. Quilter one of those who fails to practice what he
preaches. Far from it.