OIL PAINTINGS

Really fine oils are costly, and no house can stand more than one or two at most, because of the impossibility of giving them the correct lighting and the distance they require, without which their best effect is lost.  Properly, an oil painting should be given a wall or even a whole room to itself, as water colors and colored prints seem colorless, and black-and-whites cold, by comparison.  The deep gold frame is its best setting.  Gold frames and mats are usually effective on colored pictures of any kind in bringing out certain colors, dark ones especially, though artists are growing to use wood frames filled to harmonize with and throw into relief some one tone in the picture, the mat taking the same color.  Gilt has no place on photographs, etchings, or engravings, their simple, flat frames of oak, birch, sycamore, etc., with their mats, if mats are used, toning with the gray, brown, or black of the picture.  Fantastically carved and decorated frames are things of the past, both frame and mat being now essentially a part of the picture and blending with it, while setting it off to the best advantage.  Passepartout is an inexpensive substitute for framing, particularly of small pictures, and is effectively employed with a properly colored mat and binding.  White mats are still in occasional use for water colors and for black-and-whites, but for photographs we find a more grateful warmth in following the tone of the picture.

ENGRAVINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

Engravings and photogravures most satisfactorily reproduce paintings, as hand work always has more life than the photographic copy.  All reproductions, however, bring the works of world-famous artists within our reach, and enable us to be on intimate terms with the animals of Rosa Bonheur, the peasants of Millet, the portraits of Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Sargent, and Gainsborough, the landscapes of Corot, Daubigny, Dupre, and Turner, and the madonnas of Raphael, Botticelli, Bodenhauser, and Correggio.  Amateur photography, with its soft pastel effects in black, green, white, red, and gray, is making rapid strides and doing much to advance the cause of art in the home.  The hand-colored photograph is acceptable if the coloring is true and rightly applied, while certain charming colored French prints, so like water colors as to be hardly distinguishable from them, have distinct worth.  Then there are the reproductions of our present-day illustrators, in both black-and-white and colors, and in which we seem to have a personal interest.  Originals are always costly and hard to get, the exception being the obscure but worthy artist whose fame and fortune are yet to be won.  The carved Florentine frame is a valuable setting for certain colored heads or painted medallions.

SUITABILITY OF SUBJECTS