[incomplete] Letter to A.H. Mackmurdo, responding to a request for his views on decoration

RA Collection: Archive

Reference code

RI2/44

Title

[incomplete] Letter to A.H. Mackmurdo, responding to a request for his views on decoration

Date

[c.1890]

Level

Item

Extent & medium

1 document of 7 pages

Previous reference codes

2067

Content Description

States that the English are an inherently commercial people and this has impacted on how art is practiced and marketed. That "socialistic spirit" will have to be fully developed if public wall painting is to thrive. Raises the Westminster frescos as a totem of failure in public perception. Complains of the prevailing state of city climates. Enters into a rangy meditation on universal cultural truth and the relative natures of Nationalism, Socialism, Individualism and Cosmopolitanism. Asserts that the state of the air now precludes the use of sculpture on the exterior of buildings, it should move inside and become polychromatic, name checks Gilbert and Onslow Ford as proponents, also Swan. Raises Bates, Simonds among a new generation of the Art-Workers Guild. The letter breaks off at the point he begins to discuss mosaic.