During the period 1876 to 1886, the artistic awakening started by the influence of the Cen tennial Exhibition at Philadelphia had spread in a remarkable manner through the nation, and not only the architecture hut all the decora tive arts and industries had been transformed. Strong artistic personalities began to emerge; it became possible to produce in our own cities mosaics, carvings, metalwork and stained glass of the highest quality. Not only public bodies charged with the erection of State capitols, city halls, court houses and public libraries, but also private corporations building theatres and hotels began to realize the importance of en trusting the interior decoration of such build ings to great artists, and the wealthy builders of great houses followed their example. Very important was the influence of the Columbian Exhibition at Chicago (1893), in which many artists were employegl to decorate parts of the buildings with paintings; but still more import ant was the work done about 1895 in two li brary buildings, the Public Library at Boston and the Congressional Library at Washington. In the first-named the great French mural painter, Puvis de Chavannes, adorned the stair case hall; the late Edwin A. Abbey, the loan room, and John S. Sargent, the second floor corridor. The three works are in wholly dif ferent styles: the first, in light pale tones, is purely mural (see MURAL PAINTING) ; the sec ond is almost purely pictorial in brilliant colors; tHe third is sin generis, the most original, mys tically symbolic and magnificent decorative work in the country, representing by an extraor dinary series of compositions the great reli gious conceptions that have come from the East and the development of Christianity. This work has been only recently completed. The Washington decorations — of stairhall, corridors and reading-room— are by a large group of painters— II:lashfield, Vedder, Reid, Dodge, Walker, Pearce and others — very varied in treatment, partly historic, partly al legorical, producing on the whole a powerful impression of refined beauty, enhanced by the dignified decorative architecture of the interior, the work of E. P. Casey, and decorative statues by Adams, French, Bartlett and others. The Criminal Court building in New York, and later the Appellate Court in the same city, the Walker Art Gallery at Brunswick, Me. (Bowdoin Col lege), the new State Capitol at Madison, Wis., and a long list of public buildings and churches throughout the country, the library of the Uni versity Club and several great hotels in New York, and the Great Hall of the New York City College, possess decorative paintings by E. H. Blashfield, Kenyon Cox, Edward Sim mons, H. Siddons Mowbray and others of the artists named, anl by others whom there is not space to enumerate.
The most notable example of American ecclesiastical decoration, with the exception of Trinity Church in Boston, is the church of the Paulist Fathers in New York, in which Mr. W. Laurel Harris, with the assistance of other artists, has for some years been engaged upon an elaborate and highly effective scheme in which mural painting, stained glass and mosaic are combined in a highly impressive manner.
As already observed, the architects and sculp tors as well as the producers of mosaic carving, decorative stucco-work and metalwork, have all shared in the artistic revival and contributed to the success of the interior decoration of both public and private buildings. In the early 80's a group of men and women in New York calling themselves the "Associated Artists° collaborated in decorating the company rooms of the Seventh Regiment Armory and the charming little Madison Square Theatre, with draperies, embroideries, mosaic, metalwork and carved woodwork, upon quite original apart from classical traditions — a veritable American art nouveau. For a number of years
decoration of this sort, by color and ornament and effects produced by novel treatments of surfaces in wood, plaster, glass, stuffs, hang ings, mosaic, marble and onyx, was the most characteristic form of decorative art in the Uni ted States. The greatest artist in this line was Mr. Louis C. Tiffany, who has developed entirely new products in glass, of great artistic splendor, both in decorative stained glass- win dows and in exquisite objects of small size, to gether with the arts of the mosaicist and inlayer. Mention should also be made of the decorative work, chiefly ecclesiastical, of the Lamb family in New York, in stained glass, mural painting, etc.; of Mr. Friederang's work in tempera and true fresco; of the beginnings made in tapestry-weaving, and of the great advances in recent years in decorative furniture, dra peries and metalwork in the United States. And the great art of monumental interior dec oration with the aid of mural painting, although for a long time the great success of the works in Trinity .Church, Boston, and in the Albany Capitol, already alluded to, remained almost without fruit, has since made such rapid prog ress that in this field the United States has no longer any occasion as formerly for mortifica tion at the scarcity of notable examples.
The lesser art of house decoration advanced at first more rapidly than the major art sketched above. The "Centennial" at Philadelphia opened the eyes of multitudes to the possibil ities of beauty in the home through the har monious combination of artistic draperies and furniture, and revealed especially the marvelous decorative fabrics and products of Japan. The first results were, no doubt, such as would arouse wonder and amusement to-day, but they were the sincere if blundering expression of a newly awakened artistic hunger. Under all the handicaps of commercial exploitation, inade quate training, and, above all, the absence of an artistic environment and inheritance such as Europeans enjoy, the arts of domestic interior decoration have made steady progress. Hand work and artisanship have been stimulated by guilds and exhibitions; artistic manufactures, such as the weaving of brocades, rugs and hang ings of genuine artistic value, and the making of artistic furniture (see FURNITURE), have all been raised to a high plane of excellence. The architects of our houses are now in taste and competence the equals of their European con freres, and give to the interior design quite as much attention as to the exterior. Most im portant of all, the general level of taste of the public has been materially raised. Museums of fine and applied art, schools of decorative design, exhibitions, lectures and books on dec orative art, have been greatly multiplied. The two great defects of the American taste in this field are, first, an often undiscriminating love of splendor ; and secondly, a tendency to follow passing fashions and fads in decoration. Sim plicity and repose are often sacrificed to rich ness and •display. decoration and textual reproductions of historic styles, well enough in their way in certain cases and in mod eration, militate against a more natural, per sonal and original expression of taste. But there is no denying that the artistic quality, of even this sort of decoration has been steadily improving, and there is hope that with the maturing of our national character under the sobering effects of the World War, there will grow up in this field a national art having dignity, restraint, propriety and domestic ex pressiveness, appropriate to the American char acter,,and life.