THE ARTISTIC IMPROVEMENT OF POORER LOCALITIES.*
MB. HEATHCOTE STATHAM has done good service by calling attention to certain possibilities in the East End of London. Any one who knows the East End must agree with Mr. Statham that at present its terrible and uniform ugliness is a very serious matter for people who pass their lives there. The time has come when the majority of us accept as an axiom the truth which Mr. Statham puts in a very pithy form,—" Men cannot live by drain- age alone." Mr. Ruskin once stated that he never approached London without feeling degraded by its hideousness ; persons who live in the most squalid part, and who have little opportunity of escaping into the country even for a day, must be uncon- sciously very gravely affected by the absence of anything beautiful to see.
By the Dwellings Act, certain streets in the East End are to be pulled down, and it is believed that the Board of Works contem- plates many improvements. Mr. Statham, in his paper recently read at the Social Science Association, points out that the improve- ments might be msthetic, as well as sanitary. It is the natural tendency in towns situated on a river to build streets parallel to the river, but this should be, as far as possible, avoided. Your big streets, says Mr. Statham, should be at right angles to the river, for this combines a double advantage,—first, it gives you the river breezes ; and secondly, it gives you peeps of the river, which are, of course, of the highest artistic value. Except in Old Chelsea, there are at present in London very few streets of any width which open on to the Thames. Again, the necessity, from a sanitary point of view, of broad streets is much felt every day. When these are to be made, there would be a distinct artistic gain if they opened to view such buildings of the neighbourhood as have architectural merit. The fine front and gateway of the Church of St. George-in-the-East bursts on one's view in a little corner of a narrow street ; there it is almost wasted, while it would be of great value if it were visible down the long vista of some broad highway. The same may be said of a building in the West End of London, namely, the University of London, in Burlington Gardens. It is architecturally a very noble piece of work, but there is absolutely no place from which it can be seen with proper advantage.
London can, however, never be anything but hideous, while the houses are built of brick, which, as Mr. Statham says, is a very good material in itself, but has, unfortunately, a terrible facility for holding soot and dirt. Washable brick was recommended for London houses by Sir Gilbert Scott, but washable brick—brick with a glaze over it, that is— is three times as dear as ordinary brick, and so for East- End purposes it is out of the question. The land on which houses stand in London is so dear that they are now, out of motives of economy, built of many stories. Houses are as high as the rent, an East-End inhabitant punningly said. The cost of the rent of the land leaves only a very small margin for expenditure in the direction of artistic material, and so glazed brick is impos- sible. Mr. Statham suggests concrete. Concrete in London costs about one-third less than brick, so there would be a margin left for decorative purposes. This margin, it is suggested, could be thus employed,—first, by marking the joints or layers in the concrete by rusticated work, and so breaking the dead-level of the surface ; secondly, by inserting rows of glazed tiles, which could be coloured brilliantly, for brilliant colouring would stand cut well against the concrete background. There is a still cheaper mode of introducing colour, namely, by green bottle-ends, which have been inserted with admirable effect in the gables of some Northamptonshire cottages.
There is still further possibility for beautifying the outside of the house built of concrete. This is by the process called sgraijitto. Sgranitto is done by covering over a layer of black with a very thin coat of white plaster, and then producing a design in outline or silhouette, by scratching away the thin white coat. Thus a design is left in black on an apparently white ground.
Any one accustomed to visiting the houses of the poor, either in London or elsewhere, must have felt that there is a lack of decoration inside as well as outside. Some decoration can be supplied at the smallest expense, by the ingenious use of paste and scissors, and scraps of illustrations from illustrated magazines or newspapers. Many of us have seen screens cunningly fashioned by feminine hands out of such scraps with • On the Artistic Improvement of the Poorer Localities of Larne Towns. By H. Heathcote Statham. Publi.hed in the Proceedings of the Social Science Association. London : P. S. King. June, 1815. the happiest possible effect, and a little trouble of this sort would transform the at present hideous blank walls of a cottage into something very pleasant to see. Young ladies who play the bene- factress in cottages are too often content with giving material gifts, and sermonising on the subject of cleanliness and tidiness. They forget that there is very little incitement to any one to keep a place clean and tidy if it is bleak and ugly. Make a room pretty, and the owner of it will make greater effort to keep it well swept and well ordered. A great field for the utilisation of amateur talent in the way of drawing, painting, modelling, and kindred arts suggests itself in the direction of beautifying the houses of the poor. The decoration of cottages, and the real pleasure of their inmates, would probably afford keener satisfaction to the amateur artist than the rapture of cousins or the panegyrics of uncles and aunts. If the amateurs could go to the cottage, there would be fine possibilities for frescoes on the wall. These have a great advantage over pictures, first, because the future owners will be removed from the temptation of selling them ; and secondly, because of the intense interest they invariably excite in those who have seen them painted before their eyes. Giving gifts of this kind is, as it has been truly said, "a legitimate kind of charity ; it is not the same as giving away land at a reduced rate, because it is for working-men's dwellings, from mistaken feelings of philanthropy ; in giving your artistic acquirements to promote the enjoyment of your fellow-man who is in want of something to interest him, you give what he specially seeks,—not yours, but you."
The decoration which is best suited to the purposes we have mentioned seems to be decoration which suggests direct reminis- cence of the objects of nature. Pictures of men and women, rather than of gods or goddesses ; of scenes easily realised, rather than of classic story. Ornament which recalls dim visions of the rural delights, tasted of but rarely by denizens of the poorer portions of towns, has for them great attractions. A small trades- man in the East End of London showed the clergyman of his parish with great delight the Morris paper with which his room was covered,—" seems as if it was all-a-growing," he said ; and Mr. Morris himself would probably have been well pleased with the remark, although it was not worded precisely in the same manner as that in which the art-criticism of to-day usually expresses its approval.
Previous page
