Apart from good design, well-planned leading and colour scheme, nearly everything depends upon the careful choice of tint in the glass itself, and immense pains and trouble are well spent in this way, since beauty of total effect, as well as particular harmonies, depend upon choice of the degree, depth, and quality of the coloured glass.

Now glass for colour work, called antique, is made in small sheets about 22 in. × 17 in. The sheets of one maker do not exceed 8 in. × 5 in. They may be classified as tints and whites. These form the palette of the stained glass artist, and furnish him with an immense range of tint and tone from which to select. But these, again, are divisible into two sorts: (1) what is called pot-metal self-colours, or sheets that are of the same metal throughout; and (2) that known as flashed, that is, when a thin skin of ruby, gold, pink, or blue is flashed upon a sheet of blue, white, pink, or amber. This flash may be lightened or removed at pleasure by fluoric acid.

The object of the maker of these small sheets of glass is to get as much variety as possible, not only in light and dark, which in the pot-metals is due to the varying thickness of the sheet, and in the flashed colours to the varying thickness of the flash, but in some cases a mixture of two or more colours in the same sheet, by which it will be seen that no two sheets even out of the same pot of metal are alike. It is the use of this variety and unexpectedness that are amongst the charms of stained glass.

We speak of stained glass, but in reality there is only one stain, properly speaking; other colours used on glass are enamels, the real colour being incorporated in the glass when made (pot-metal or flashed), and not painted on. This stain is a preparation of silver, and is mixed with a vegetable colour, yellow lake, to weaken it. It is principally used upon the whites to stain diapers, hair, etc., and when fixed in the kiln the yellow lake is burnt away, leaving a slight residue which is easily removed, and the silver is vitrified into the glass, the depth of yellow being varied according to the strength of the stain and the susceptibility of the glass.

In setting to work to design a stained glass window, it is usual first to make a coloured design to scale—1½ inch to the foot is the best.

A window may be composed of one light or of many, each separate panel inclosed by the masonry or mullions being termed a light. The question of treatment of subject as a single design extending across several lights, or as separate panels, must depend first upon the particular subject, or subjects, to be treated, then the scale of the window, and the general character of the architectural setting.

Supposing it is a subject like the Nativity, with the Adoration of the Magi, it would lend itself to treatment as a single subject extending across several lights, and to great richness and splendour of colour. The colour design in such a case would be the most important, but, as I have before said, it must be perfectly combined with, and built upon, a well-designed network of lead lines, those lines forming themselves essential elements in the design, defining the forms in bold outline, and uniting and giving value to the masses of colour. For while we may separate the problem into two parts, the design of lead lines and colour design, the window must be conceived as a whole, not merely as composition in line to be tinted.

Having made our scale sketch, the next step is to work out the full-sized cartoons, which, of course, demand more attention to drawing and detail. Many artists make as many elaborate studies for figures, drapery, and details as they would for a highly-wrought picture in oil, or mural painting. As a matter of fact, however, though any amount of good drawing and invention may be put into glass design, it should not be forgotten that beauty of pattern and effect and symbolic suggestion are the objects and not pictorial naturalism.

For main definition in the design the essential lead line is all important. It would not do to sketch in a figure in a casual way, and then surmount it with lead lines; it should be carefully considered as a piece of bold and massive outline design.

In leading we may use a bolder line for bounding and defining the main masses, and a thinner sort for subsidiary fittings; in this much will depend upon the scale of the work. The lead, which has a double groove, may be said to serve several functions. Its primary office is to hold the pieces of glass together: it forms the linework of the design, surrounding the figures and forms, separating them from each other and the background, as well as defining the secondary forms, as of drapery and other detail. Then, too, the lead joints ease the cutting of awkward shapes in the glass, which however should be avoided in planning the cartoon. Again, it may be used to obtain greater variety into large masses, as a piece of drapery, for instance.

The cartoon being made, the next thing is to make the working drawing. This is done by laying a semi-transparent piece of paper over the cartoon, and tracing merely the lead lines and thus obtaining the skeleton of the window.

The glass is cut from this drawing, the cutter cutting the glass just within the lines, thus allowing for the heart of lead. The same drawing serves also for the leadworker to glaze the finished work upon.

The shapes of the whites and light colours are seen when the sheets are laid on the drawing; but the shapes of the dark colours, through which it is impossible to see the lead lines, must be obtained in another way.

The best way is to cut the shape in thin sheet glass, which is then placed on the dark sheet of antique glass held up to the light, and moved about until the most suitable part of the sheet is found. They are then laid on the bench together, and the piece of sheet glass is pounced with a small bag of fine whitening, which, when removed, leaves its shape on the dark sheet to be followed by the cutter's diamond.

We now come to the all-important task of selecting the glass.

The ordinary trade way of doing this is to number the outline, which indicates to the cutter certain racks correspondingly numbered containing the different colours. But if it is to be really careful artistic work the designer ought himself to select each piece for his work.

The principle and idea of colour in glass design, dealing as the artist does with pure translucent colour, is necessarily distinct from those obtaining in other kinds of painting, such as mural, when opaque colours and a variety of half-tones are used. The glass designer does not attempt to shade his figures and draperies by the light and dark parts of a sheet of coloured glass. He desires to express the jewel-like quality—the quintessence of colour in every piece of glass—by the force of contrast, not in the juxtaposition of dark and light pieces of one colour merely, but by the bold arrangement of various colours, having the effect of one, but with a richness and sonorousness that the single tint does not possess.

For example, in a yellow drapery we should take a rich decided yellow as keynote. Obviously if the adjoining pieces were of the same colour, the effect would be flat and tame; but if we take a low toned yellow or neutral colour, the keynote will be screwed up to concert pitch, as it were, and if the neutral colour is followed by a reddish tone of yellow and that by another variation of yellow, that again by a decided green, and so on, we shall achieve that desideratum in stained glass—variety in unity.

The general effect will be warmer or colder as reddish or greenish tones predominate in the scheme. Care, of course, must be taken to bring these contrasted—even discordant—component parts into a harmonious whole: indeed every piece should be selected, not only to agree with and help its neighbour, but with reference to the harmony of the whole. Any undue abruptness of contrast may be brought into sufficient relation by the after painting.

The white must be treated in the same way, a mixture of warm and cold tints as a rule, the general effect of each mass being made warmer or colder as found necessary. Great care must be taken with the masses of white to prevent them looking like holes in the window: for instance, a white coming next to a dark colour would have to be a tint (or very low in tone, as we should say in painting) to hold its proper place. Only by actual experience, however, can the artist learn how one colour affects another, and how certain combinations will look in their place.

We have now reached the painting stage. All the glass has been cut and laid out on the outline. It is now looked over to see if there are any pieces that will not stand the fire—that is, that would change colour or lose brilliance. The gold pinks, brown rubies, and some sorts of pure ruby are liable to do this. Pieces of plain sheet glass may therefore be cut to the same shape to paint on, to be afterwards glazed behind the coloured pieces, so that the full brilliance is preserved.

The wings of the angel in the panel by Mr. J. S. Sparrow (to whom I am indebted for this detailed account) have been treated in this way.

The outline was made in colours ground in turpentine, fattened and made workable with japanner's gold-size, in order to stand the matte of water-colour to be added afterwards.

When the figure is drawn in this way all the pieces are stuck upon an easel glass (a large stout piece of sheet) with a composition of bees-wax and resin. As this is the first time all the pieces have been seen together the panel is carefully looked over, as a whole, to see that each piece is of a right colour and value. Some pieces may have to be cut over again; others strengthened or modified by the addition of another piece of glass. This last method is called plating, by which rich and beautiful deep toned effects can be produced.

A strong flat matte of water-colour is now laid all over the figure. This forms the half-tones, and the lights are taken out (when dry) with hog-hair brushes, the colour being first loosened by modelling the broad lights with the finger, which indeed is the best implement, and as much of the modelling should be done by it as possible.

A quill may be used to take out sharp lights. The work should now be ready for the kiln, but before firing it should be again stuck up, and looked over, and any strengthening or definition added in shadows on details by oil-colour with the addition of fat turpentine to keep it open; the dry surface of the glass being first treated with a wash of oil of tar to make the colour flow easily.

Then the diapers and hair are stained on the back of the glass, and it is ready for the kiln.

After being leaded up, the leads soldered together at the junctions, the panel is again placed on the easel, and further alterations or improvements may be made, as the leaded panel looks very different from the glass by itself. The panel is next cemented, the leads filled up with putty or cement to make it firm and water-tight. The cement is like a very thick paint, a mixture of white lead, whitening, red lead, lamp-black, dryers and raw and boiled oil.

The window may require to be supported by horizontal iron bars, if it extends over two feet. They are usually placed about fifteen inches apart, as the leaded glass might bend under the pressure of wind without extra support.

From this account we may realize what care and taste are necessary to carry out really artistic work in stained glass. The whole subject affords us a good illustration of one of the highest and most beautiful of the arts of design, severely controlled by well-defined conditions—conditions which, if followed faithfully, give it all its peculiar character, strength, and beauty. The necessities of leading and cutting the glass demand a certain severity and simplicity of design—from which a new beauty is evolved, capable in its turn of influencing other forms of art for good, as in easel painting—which harmonizes with its symbolic and religious intention as well as with the architectural and monumental character of its surroundings in its noblest forms in public and college halls and churches; while its glow and colour, suggestive symbolism, or heraldic adornment, may cheer and vivify domestic interiors with a touch of poetry and romance.

CHAPTER V.—OF THE CLIMATIC INFLUENCE IN DESIGN—CHIEFLY IN REGARD TO COLOUR AND PATTERN

WE have seen how largely Design in its manifold forms has been influenced by various physical conditions and necessities, and in pursuing the subject we can hardly fail to note that, outside those more strictly defined technical conditions we have been considering, there are certain broad controlling influences which have determined, and still determine, essential differences of character as between the products of one country and another; differences which, despite the complex network of international commerce and exchange, tending ever to obscure and confuse those native and natural differences by mixture and fusion, still persist. Indeed, as Manchester manufacturers and merchants well know, in the matter of pattern and colour they have to be taken into serious account, since we have unfortunately taken upon ourselves the responsibility of supplying Eastern markets, substituting our own ideas of pattern and colour in fabrics for the original native ones—or rather, sending back to the native Chinese and Indian second-hand notions of their own colours and patterns.

Now to what principal cause may we trace these broad differences in the choice and treatment of colour and design in different countries—those variations which enable us to assign each to its native home, north, south, east, or west, upon this parti-coloured globe of ours?

If we were to endeavour to mark upon a chart in some bright colour, say red or yellow, all those countries where, given a certain organized social life of civilization of some kind, bright sunshine was the rule, and indicate proportionally its lesser degrees in others, we should get a vivid notion of the general distribution of the colour sense: we should naturally come to the conclusion that it is to the source of all our life, light, and heat—to the sun—that we must also trace our colour sense, which is a part of the sense of sight itself. It is to the influence of sunlight, direct or indirect, and to its prevalence in a greater or lesser degree in different countries, then, that we may attribute the differences of taste and feeling for colour and pattern which mark the different quarters of the inhabited earth.

We know how we are affected by the absence or presence of sunlight in our own country, and by a heavy or light atmosphere, and are sensitive to the changes of the weather, which no doubt have their influence upon our work, and we know how different colours look in different degrees and qualities of light.

We have only to follow the pattern book of Nature herself, indeed, and see how distinctly she paints upon the globe the different zones of climate in different coloured flowers, birds, and animals corresponding with those differences; or follow her system of coloration in the ordinary procession of the seasons, without going out of our own country.

With the return of the sun and lengthening days and the new awakening of life in the spring, a delicate bloom overspreads the landscape, the dark wintry woodlands burst into blossoms and clouds of foliage, taking every tint, from the palest green to delicate amber and red; while the meadows show the rich moist green of new springing grass, embroidered with flowers, yellow, white, and blue; and the blue sky seems to repeat itself in the copses where the hyacinths grow. Gradually, as spring turns to summer, the colours deepen, the greens of trees and grass grow fuller, the flowers grow brighter and more varied in hue, crimsons and reds and purples are seen, and gardens become feasts of colour; and as the cornfields ripen scarlet poppies mingle with the gold, and the leaves of the trees, having reached their darkest tint, as autumn nears, become tinged with yellow and brown, and, before they fall, turn into wonderful harmonies of russet and gold, in part recalling, though in lower tones, some of the colours of spring.

The ripe fruit in the orchards gives a deeper note of richer and brighter colour, when the procession of flowers has reached the threshold of winter, bare and cold, though not colourless—its colours being more metallic—the silver of frost and mists, and the ruddy gold of the winter sun gilding the black trees, whereon mosses and lichens take the place of leaves and flowers, and sombre yews and hollies and firs, instead of the bright greens of spring, until the whole is veiled in ice and snow.

This drama of expressive colour is enacted before our eyes every year—those of us, at least, who are fortunate enough to live in the country, and are observers; and even to town dwellers the tale of colour to a certain extent is told by the importation of flowers, or even by the textiles in drapers' windows, or costumes in the street, as humanity responds to the approach of the sun by wearing lighter and fairer colours in the spring and summer, and getting darker and more sombre again in the autumn and winter.

We have only to glance at the various manifestations of our home arts to note these changes with the characteristic colours of our varied landscape reflected, not only in the works of our painters, but in the half-tones of our textiles and wall-papers, and throughout our decorative design, which for form, too, owes so much to the flora of our native land.

It does not seem to follow that with the greatest amount of sunlight we get the most colour; on the contrary, the zenith of light is the absorption of colour, just as darkness represents its extinction. Light and darkness are the black and white on the palette of nature, necessary to give value to her colours.

The sense of colour, too, is no doubt greatly affected by other climatic influences, such as humidity, haziness, clearness, heat and cold, as well as their accompaniments in varieties of scenery and locality, such as plains or mountains, woodland, sea-board, lake, river, agricultural land, or wild nature.

We associate brilliant colours and bold designs with eastern and southern countries, but, apart from the greater stimulus of light which might encourage the use of vivid colour, there is, I think, another reason which accounts for the bolder and franker use of colour and ornament in the south and east. Broad and full sunlight has a curiously flattening effect upon colour and pattern, and therefore colours and patterns which under a gray sky would look staring, or very strong and striking, under the full sunlight fall into plane, and become subordinated to the dominant pitch of light.

We may take as an instance the porch of the Cathedral at Pistoia. The bold black and white bands of marble which face the front of this building—as of so many mediæval Lombardic Italian cathedrals, as at Florence, Genoa, and Siena (an idea borrowed from the Saracens)—look striking enough under a gray sky, but when the sunlight falls upon the building and raises the whole pitch of light the whole mass with its projections falls into planes of broad light and shade. The black bands become gray and flat in the light, and all fall into their places in the architectural scheme, and therefore, though borrowed from the east, are quite appropriate in a climate like Italy, which can count on persistent sunshine for the most part, summer and winter. Inside the porch, in the spandril and vault, is faced with Della Robbia ware, in blue, white, and yellow, and a very beautiful piece of decoration it is. This, again, however, in a dull atmosphere might look cold and strange, but illuminated by the rich reflected light cast up from the sunlit pavement it takes all sorts of accidental lights and falls into its place admirably. Otherwise the porch is interesting from the curious blend of Byzantine, Saracenic, and classical motives and influences in decoration.

Seen in the cold and dull light of an English museum, away from their proper architectural surroundings, panels of Della Robbia ware are apt to look somewhat strong, bold, or rank in colour, which only shows they were designed in a sunny bright climate, and to be seen in a full external or warm reflected light as a rule. The very qualities that make the ware trying in one place make it right in another.

The various historic types of design in architecture and decoration are, in fact, mostly the result of the blending or uniting of elements derived from different sources. While we may in the leading types prevalent in different countries detect the fundamental prevailing influence of life, custom and habit, the result of climatic and racial conditions; we may also see, owing to social and political changes and the results of conquest or of commercial relations, other elements coming in various details of construction, form, and colour.

Our present purpose, however, is rather to seek the fundamental characteristic types and predilections traceable to the fundamental or natural conditions of locality and climate, as far as they can be followed in historic decoration.

It seems to have been in the power of certain ancient peoples to impress and to preserve the character of their life and the conditions of their habitat very strongly upon their art, so that, though their political power has long ago been swept away, their records remain practically imperishable in their monuments of art.

Of such the ancient Egyptians must always be typical.

If we look at the structure of the primitive Egyptian dwelling we shall find that it illustrates those influences of climate and locality in a very emphatic way.

In the first place, as we know, Egypt depends upon her great river, the Nile, which may be said to have made her existence possible, since its waters fertilize the whole country. It is interesting, then, to note that the primitive Egyptian dwelling was essentially suggestive of the riverside and of a country of sunshine. Its materials were those of the waterside, consisting of clay and canes and lotus reeds; the canes being used for the framing and support of the clay walls, which are built in layers between them.

The plans and diagrams of construction (from Viollet le Duc) will give a clear idea of the form and character of the primitive Egyptian dwelling. In the course of an interesting account of its construction he says: that it is a dwelling for a country where brilliant sunshine is the rule is shown by the smallness of the windows, which are furnished with lattices. The walls were frequently plastered with clay, covered with a composition made of the same clay and fine sand or white stone dust, and this furnished a ground for the painters who decorated the reeds and plastered walls with brilliant colours; the walls and ceilings of the interior were also decorated in the same way; rush mats furnished the floor and covered the lower part of the walls. Sometimes, also, we find a portico supported on bundles of reeds, the covering of which is made of wood and byblos, with a terrace of clay before the door, affording shade and coolness in front of the dwelling. Like most dwellings in eastern countries, there is a flat roof or terrace on the top of the house, approached by steps; and here awnings are spread on poles to give shade, when they can be used for sitting upon or for sleeping or enjoying the cool of the day.

When the Egyptians learned the art of building and carving in stone from the rock dwellers above the Delta, and built their great temples, they still perpetuated in stone, in the reeded and filleted columns with lotus capitals, the ornamental traditions of the reed-built primitive dwelling, and the painter still adorned them in bright primitive colours; so that we are perpetually reminded of the great riverside, from which sprung the flower of that ancient art and civilization. Another effect of climate upon art may be noted in the representation of figures. The Egyptian climate being extremely warm but equable, most out-door occupations precluded the wearing of much apparel, so that the figure nude and lightly clad plays an important part in Egyptian design, as in Greek.

At a time like the present, when the world of design suffers rather from what might be called too generous or too mixed a diet; when the tendency is to over-elaborate, to combine too many elements; to be lost either in an overdone flamboyance of curvature, or in a straining after a forced and inappropriate naturalism, a study of Egyptian art may be recommended as a wholesome corrective. The simplicity, severity, and restraint, abstract and yet vivid characterization of form, frank and primitive coloration, purposeful intention, and mural motives and methods are full of suggestiveness and value to the student and decorative designer.

Another instance of the influence of primitive timber construction over stone may be seen in comparing the ancient Persian column with its timber prototype still in use. Persia, indeed, is another eastern country which has preserved almost unbroken traditions in design from a very remote past, and may be said to be the source of the most beautiful types of ornamental art the world has ever seen, and especially in three leading forms—coloured and glazed tiles and bricks, pottery, and textiles. To judge from the wonderful decoration of glazed bricks discovered a few years ago at Susa, forming part of the ancient forum and palace of Darius, destroyed in the reign of Xerxes, b.c. 485-465, excavated by M. and Mme. Dieulafoy,7 the artistic skill of the Persians in this kind of work, and their sense of its value, and the treatment of colour and ornament, dates back to a very early period.

In the famous frieze of archers, which formed part of the wall decoration of this palace, the figures are frankly repeated in design though alternating in the patterns and colours of their dress, boldly relieved upon a field of turquoise blue, formed by the glazed bricks by which the frieze is constructed. The figures and ornament must have been moulded or stamped in relief upon the clay while soft, and cut up into bricks, and afterwards fired and glazed in the method of Robbia ware; the whole scheme is severely simple but very effective in its proper position upon the walls of one of the large courts of the palace, mostly in reflected light under projecting porticoes, and would be very impressive and at the same time truly mural and reposeful in feeling and colour.

Such a scheme of frank colour and fine detail could hardly have been conceived except in a country of brilliant light. Some doubt exists as to the exact position of the frieze upon the wall. Figures of similar scale in Assyrian work and also at Persepolis were placed not far, if at all, above the eye level.

Upon the dress of one set of the archers is figured, it is supposed, the fortress of Susa itself, which was built upon a mount.

There is much interesting ornamental detail in the dresses, which afford excellent authorities for the costume of Persian warriors of that period. We see also the palm-leaf border, a primitive form, type and forerunner of a whole tribe of border design. The rosette is said to resemble "the full-blown Star of Bethlehem, conspicuous among all other flowers, among the herbage clothing the stretches of Susiana and the tablelands of Iran (Persia) after the first rains in early spring." (Perrot and Chipiez, p. 137.)

We may note, too, what seems obviously the prototype of the Moorish battlement, defined in blue bricks above the figures, suggesting they are guarding the citadel.

The Moorish or Arabian form constantly occurs as an ornamental cresting in carved woodwork, and also appears to have suggested an ornamental form largely used with variations in eastern carpets, notably those of Turkistan.

The treatment of the design has the severity and simplicity of early Asiatic monumental art, and is allied in treatment to the Assyrian relief work, but is more subtle and refined, and shows a finer decorative and colour sense.

In the treatment of blue the Persians always seem to have been particularly successful, and their later tile work in the Mohammedan period is well known, and continues down to our own time.

The love of blue and its use in tile work and pottery seems to have been general all over the east; it may be because of the adaptability of the metallic oxide colour to firing, but also it may be due to the pleasant relief and sense of coolness such decoration would afford to the eye in courts and interiors screened from the sun.

The old Nankin blue, so famous in Chinese porcelain, in the so-called hawthorn pattern, was described by one of the emperors as the blue of the sky showing through the white clouds after the south rain.

In carpets Persia about our sixteenth century reached a pitch of perfection in design, colouring, and material which, it would seem, has never been reached before or since. In these works we, of course, pass to a very different and much later period of Persian history, after the Arabian invasion in the seventh century, and the conversion of its people to the Mohammedan religion, under which Persian art developed in such delicate, rich, and beautiful forms.

There are very magnificent specimens of the finest types of Persian carpets now in the national collection at South Kensington, the Persian collection having been recently rearranged in the new galleries in Imperial Institute Road to very great advantage as regards lighting and opportunities of study.

The famous Holy Carpet of the mosque at Ardebil is perhaps the finest example, though there are others more inventive in pattern, if not more delicate in design or harmonious in colour. A curious feature in the pattern of this carpet is a hanging lamp, such a lamp as is used for lighting mosques, with a painted glass body, probably suspended by chains from the roof. The lamp is repeated at the end of the main ornament of the field of the carpet, facing opposite ways.

The inscription worked in Arabic characters into the carpet at one end is given in translation thus: "I have no refuge in the world other than thy threshold. My head has no protection other than this porchway, the work of the slave of this holy place, Maksond of Kashan in the year 946" (corresponding to our a.d. 1540). We thus see that it is a carpet destined for an entrance, or porchway, of a mosque, and the woven images of the lamps probably indicated the real lamps suspended overhead to light the entrance to the mosque. So that, though they seem strange objects in the pattern of a carpet, they have a certain appropriateness and significance in this particular one. Fire, too, was a sacred emblem of the ancient Persians.

Persia might be said to be a country of gardens, of deserts, and of abundant sunshine. It is for the most part a high table-land, and is described as a climate of extremes. "Nowhere in the habitable world is there so sharp a contrast between the heat of noon and the cold of night, between the brown bare rock and the verdant meadow, between the gorgeous hues of natural plains and the absolute bareness of arid wastes." (Perrot and Chipiez.)

Such a description is very suggestive. We seem to see natural reasons for the interest and beauty of Persian art in the varied physical conditions of their country and climate.

The love of the sheltered, walled-in, and natural garden is very evident in their literature; and the influence of their flora upon their design of all kinds is evident enough.

The idea of the eastern paradise is a garden. We have it in the Bible in the Garden of Eden—an inclosed pleasance or park full of choice trees and rare flowers, animals of the chase, and birds. This idea recurs constantly in Persian design. The very scheme of the typical carpet seems derived from it—a rich vari-coloured field hedged about with its borders. The field is frequently obviously intended for a field of flowers, and sometimes suggests a wood or an orchard of fruit trees. The idea of the green oasis to the traveller in the desert; the grateful relief of the colour and shade of green trees and fresh flowers; the sound of waters; the delight of the horseman and the hunter; the dark forest full of dangerous animals—are not these things irresistibly suggested in Persian design?

The same sensitiveness to natural beauty and the influence of climate is shown in their poets. The astronomer-poet of Persia, Omar Khayyám, sings of the awakening spring. It is a period, too, associated with the termination of a religious fast, Ramazan, which is analogous to our Lent, perhaps.

Omar invites his reader to come forth, like a true poet, seeking inspiration in the wilderness.

Spring in Persia must be a much more sudden burst of life and efflorescence than we can realize from our own timid and coy climate. Even in Italy the spring generally comes all at once with a burst of bloom and a profusion of blossoms and flowers, and in its strength the sun straightway leads on into summer before one is aware. This gives one an idea what it must be in a country like Persia—the country of the rose and the nightingale as well as of the vine, of which Omar the poet is eloquent.

Then, too, it is an agricultural country. "He who guides a plough does a pious deed" is one of the precepts of the early Parsee religion, which also, as its main conception, presents the constant strife of good against evil, light against darkness, personified by the contest of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

The sturdy and honest peasant was the backbone of the country in ancient times, and furnished those sturdy warriors who built the power of the ancient kings. And in the political changes or conquests to which Persia has been subject in the course of her history, her people would always appear to have had a recuperative power, or a power of absorbing their conquerors, or perhaps a certain tenacity of purpose, or a conservation of the vital part in old beliefs and traditions which have been favourable to art.

How far that art was original, in the time of Persia's ancient greatness as a conquering power, in the time of Darius, when the palace at Susa was built—how far it was influenced from other sources, or contributed to by artists of other nations, must always be more or less a matter of conjecture; but in the Susa work we are reminded of Assyrian decoration, and even of Greek and Egyptian influence.

The Persian art, however, which has had the most influence upon the neighbouring Asiatic countries, and upon Europe, has been produced since the Arabian conquest in the seventh century, and the conversion of the country to the Mohammedan faith. Even then, however, although in Mohammedan art the representation of animals is forbidden, the Persians were neutral and independent; in Persian design animals have been freely introduced, and with charming decorative effect. It is supposed, indeed, that Persian art is really the source of invention of many forms commonly called Arabian and Indian, and these forms have travelled both east and west, and have been modified in the countries of their adoption. The Persians seem to have been in Asia much what the Greeks were in Europe—both great adaptors and great originators in design.

One might trace elements and influences and types of form and treatment from other countries and races in Persian art, but one traces Persian influence to a far greater extent in the art of other countries.

In India, which was also invaded by Islam, and was colonized by Persians, the Arabic type of art also became naturalized in architecture and decoration. Here again we have a country of the sun. Here again we find tile decoration in great beauty, and the use of bright colours and intricate design. Intricacy both of colour and pattern is perhaps the chief characteristic of Indian design.

One feature in Indian, as in Arabic dwellings, may be noticed as a direct result of the persistent sunshine turned to decorative account—one common to eastern countries—the pierced screen or lattice window, which tempers the fierce light of the sun and breaks it into small stars of light.

The rich carved timber overhanging windows, with its lattice screen so characteristic of old Cairo and Arabian life, is repeated with variations in India, and not only in wood but in stone and faïence. We find small ogee-pointed windows with perforated lattices cut in sandstone of intricate design and delightful ornamental effect. There are some in the India Museum from Agra. But the loveliest of all are those in the mosque of the Palace at Ahmedabad, consisting of most delicate and intricate designs of trees cut in stone, which fill the arched openings. One of these windows is here illustrated. There is nothing more delicate or beautiful in the whole range of architectural ornament.

In the tomb of Yusuf Shah Cadez, at Multan, occur large perforated screens in tile work. This tomb, an excellent reproduction of which is to be seen in the India Museum, is a fine example of Mohammedan tile work and decoration in two blues—turquoise and ultramarine—on a warm white ground. In the luminous atmosphere of India, beneath the deep blue vault of the sky, such colour on such surface must be very beautiful.

Perhaps the love of intricate ornament in Indian carved and pierced work in the doors, window casements, and lattices may be due in part to the certainty of obtaining a bright, crisp, rich, sparkling effect in the broad and strong sunlight, where every touch would tell, and the fret or lattice work over a pierced opening would have all the richness and delicacy of lace.

Then in the solemn and dimly-lighted splendour of the interior of the mosques, the Mohammedan, alike in Arabia, Turkey, Persia, or India, found a grateful contrast and relief to the eye, while his religious imagination and emotion were stimulated. Much the same feeling intensified which comes over one who passes from the brilliant Venetian sunlight on the piazza, the glittering quays and dancing light and colour of Venice, into the subdued, cool, and golden shade of St. Mark's.

This wonderful contrast of bright and dark, of glitter and solemnity, the splendour of sunlight and the solemnity of shade, can only be fully appreciated in southern or eastern countries. The pitch of light being higher the shade seems deeper, and yet it is a shade full of colour always. When the sun sinks, in the short afterglow everything seems fused in an atmosphere of luminous colour and half-tone, which transfigures and glorifies everything. We get an approach to it on the finest summer evenings in England, but with a different and generally less romantic background. It would appear, though, that climates which are characterized by constant sunlight and heat favour rather traditional than individual forms of art. The sun, the giver of life and light, becomes overpowering, always present, and in its searching beams leaves no hiding-place for the romantic imagination, except in temples and mosques at sunrise or sunset, or under the moon. We may have an equable and warm climate like Egypt, where all is sharply defined in the light of a clear and serene atmosphere, with a regulated, ordered life, as in her ancient days, under a long succession of dynasties, and we see the outcome in art—measured, calculated according to strict method and authority and convention, with but little room for individual feeling.

In Persia we find a climate of sharp contrasts, hot sun by day and sharp cold at night, verdure and desert, bare rock and flowery meadow side by side, and we get a wonderfully varied art, rich in colour and fantasy.

In India the invention, though kindred, perhaps even largely borrowed, seems tamer, the intricacy more calculated, the richness more mechanical; and we find this with a dependent people in a land of fiercer and more permanent sunshine, pursuing mostly an agricultural life, like the ancient Egyptians, under conditions practically unchanged for centuries.

In Greece, which fused and absorbed Asiatic elements in her art, we see another country of the sun, yet subject to winds and variations and marked transition of the seasons—a mountainous, rocky country, beautiful in form and embracing the sea. In art she has given us the perfection of figure sculpture.

In Italy, with hardly less sun, yet by no means beyond the reach of wintry cold, severe winds, great rains and sometimes snow, yet with a burning summer for the most part, which has decidedly fixed the types in her architecture, we find a union of many elements, a halfway house between east and west, where Asiatic feeling unites with Greek and Roman, Saracen and Norman, Gothic with Renascence, in an unexampled wealth and profusion of inventive design in architecture, sculpture, painting, and all the family of artistic handicrafts, which makes her a happy hunting ground for the artist, an inexhaustible treasure-house of beauty and suggestion.

We might follow the chariot of the sun, from the land of its rising, Japan, a climate more near to our own, and note her wonderful display of manipulation and imitative skill, in all ways of handicrafts dominating by a certain grotesqueness as well as naturalistic impressionism; or, passing to her great foe China, see something of the same tendencies and stages in the rising of her art, breaking off, as it were, at a stage of restrained conventionalism—or westward, along the southern shores of the blue Mediterranean, following in the footsteps of the Moors, and note the wonderfully ornate but somewhat heartless splendour of their art in Spain: the gilded magnificence of the Alhambra, with its glittering pendentive ceilings, borrowed, as some think, in the first place from Persia, and the wonderful jewel-like sparkle and intricate fancy of its ornament with its ever-recurring star-forms and scimitar-like scrolls.

And then turning northwards into France, with one hand touching the sunny south and the other dipped in the gray English Channel, we should find some of the same elements, but very differently mixed, with a very distinct character of art. Cold in colour, correct in form, brilliant in workmanship, quick-witted, dramatic; ever experimenting and inquiring, and desiring, like the ancient Greeks, some new thing.

Pursuing our journey northwards, we might pause in Flanders and Holland and mark how closely associated with local conditions of life and climate are their forms of art, more especially as illustrated in the art of their past days—the pictures of rich Flemish burgher life of the Middle Ages, the knights and ladies with a certain sternness and stiffness of demeanour, as of an energetic and yet patient people accustomed to contend with difficulties, proud, yet devotional, and fond of comfort, kneeling, well-clad in velvets and rich furs against a northern climate.