to recognize and to second. It is merely with reference to its placing—to its apparent intended service—to its fixed location and its consequent exclusion from the category of "gallery pictures" or "easel pictures" that the words decoration and decorative are here applied to certain paintings. For throughout his career this artist has leaned strongly toward the treatment of his expressional and significant painting in a decorative way.

Decoration in the more usual sense has been also a large part of his work. Thus, when in 1878 he contracted with Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt for a carved ceiling, it appeared that his intentions in the matter were those which could have been suggested only by a mind full of the decorative idea. "A carved ceiling" might have been almost anything; but this one was an elaborate composition of colored sculpture, or, if you please, of polychromy in relief; certainly one of the most remarkable undertakings of the time. What seem to be (for the true constructional character of the ceiling is not here guaranteed) what seem to be the beams, the constructional part of the ceiling, were of light-colored walnut. The panels within were filled with figures of armed warriors and of draped women of about half life-size, and these panels were framed by rim within rim, moulding within moulding, of elaborate sculptured pattern. All these sculptured patterns, all these figures, were invested with color in a way which it is hard to describe; for different chosen woods, alloys of metal of which some are of Japanese origin, opaque and colored glass, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and even coral are combined to give delicately tinted color and subtle variety of surface to the work. That ceiling has been broken up; but there has been great good judgment shown in its rearrangement. The panels of the ceiling are now arranged so that they are well lighted both by day and by night, and show admirably. Although the original design has disappeared, the separate panels, each with its enclosing mouldings and woodwork, at least four by six feet in superficies, are well displayed. One of these panels is here engraved [page 6]. Here also is given part of a decorative frieze in which castings specially made of blue glass were used with ivory and with carvings in solid nacre, in combination with the carved walnut.

Dry Bed of the Dayagawa River.

Drawn by John La Farge.

Study for Values.

Similar work has been done by Mr. La Farge in connection with his own paintings, and sometimes where no paintings were used. This use, on a large scale, of rich material, rich in color, in surface and in lustre, as a medium for sculpture, is almost peculiar to this artist among modern men. Others who have cared for color in sculpture have played with it, rather, in small objects of the cabinet; and this remains true in a general way in spite of a pleasant use of enamel in some French work in bronze of a more important or, at least, more pretentious character.

On the Bayou Têche; Study for Values.

At a time not far removed from the undertaking of the ceiling and the mantelpiece above mentioned, a monument was put up in the Newport Cemetery under the direction of Mr. La Farge [page 16]. He associated with himself in this task the sculptor, since so widely known, but then a young man, Augustus St. Gaudens, who had already worked with him on the carved and colored ceiling. Every student of architectural designs will be struck by the informal character of this design: the steps which are clearly not meant to be ascended and which have an obvious symbolic meaning; the horizontal cross sunk in the table of the monument in such a way that few persons can be so placed as to see it favorably; the inscription carved upon the butt or foot of that cross; the apparently disproportionate slenderness of the upright cross with its thin cylindrical shaft; the placing of other inscriptions on the body of the massive base in which no specially arranged panels or medallions have been prepared for them; and, most of all, the treatment of the leaf sculpture which, though composed carefully enough and far enough in itself from being a piece of crude realism, is yet realistic in its disposition—suggesting the natural fall of sprays and branches of leafage allowed to dry and harden in the sun. No architect—as we now understand the term—no architect, even one who had kept himself free from the neo-classic influence and the teaching of the schools, could have designed such a piece as this. It is the more interesting to see how the highly trained decorative artist who has not been fettered by the taught maxims of the architect's school or the architect's office has handled this problem—a problem rarely met by decorators of modern experience.