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 superintended each piece of work, which, therefore, was never far removed from the designer’s eye. Though accomplished artists are retained by the manufacturers of London, Paris and other capitals, there can no longer be the same relation between the designer and his work. Many operations in these modern factories are carried on by machinery. This, though an economy of labour, entails loss of artistic effect. The chisel and the knife are no longer in such cases guided and controlled by the sensitive touch of the human hand. A decided, if not always intelligent, effort to devise a new style in furniture began during the last few years of the 19th century, which gained the name of “l’art nouveau.” Its pioneers professed to be free from all old traditions and to seek inspiration from nature alone. Happily nature is less forbidding than many of these interpretations of it, and much of the “new art” is a remarkable exemplification of the impossibility of altogether ignoring traditional forms. The style was not long in degenerating into extreme extravagance. Perhaps the most striking consequence of this effort has been, especially in England, the revival of the use of oak. Lightly polished, or waxed, the cheap foreign oaks often produce very agreeable results, especially when there is applied to them a simple inlay of boxwood and stained holly, or a modern form of pewter. The simplicity of these English forms is in remarkable contrast to the tortured and ungainly outlines of continental seekers after a conscious and unpleasing “originality.”

Until a very recent period the most famous collections of historic furniture were to be found in such French museums as the Louvre, Cluny and the Garde Meuble. Now, however, they are rivalled, if not surpassed, by the magnificent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, and the Wallace collection at Hertford House, London. The latter, in conjunction with the Jones bequest at South Kensington, forms the finest of all gatherings of French furniture of the great periods, notwithstanding that in the Bureau du Roi the Louvre possesses the most magnificent individual example in existence. In America there are a number of admirable collections representative of the graceful and homely “colonial furniture” made in England and the United States during the Queen Anne and Georgian periods.

See also the separate articles in this work on particular forms of furniture. The literature of the subject has become very extensive, and it is needless to multiply here the references to books. Perrot and Chipiez, in their great Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité (1882 et seq.) deal with ancient times, and A. de Champeaux, in Le Meuble (1885), with the middle ages and later period; English furniture is admirably treated by Percy Macquoid in his History of English Furniture (1905); and Lady Dilke’s French Furniture in the 18th Century (1901), and Luke Vincent Lockwood’s Colonial Furniture in America (1901), should also be consulted.

FURNIVALL, FREDERICK JAMES (1825–1910), English philologist and editor, was born at Egham, Surrey, on the 4th of February 1825, the son of a surgeon. He was called to the bar in 1849, but his attention was soon diverted to philological studies and social problems. He gave Frederick Denison Maurice valuable assistance in the Christian Socialist movement, and was one of the founders of the Working Men’s College. For half a century he indefatigably promoted the study of early English literature, partly by his own work as editor, and still more efficaciously by the agency of the numerous learned societies of which he was both founder and director, especially the Early English Text Society (1864), which has been of inestimable service in promoting the study of early and middle English. He also established and conducted the Chaucer, Ballad, New Shakespeare and Wyclif Societies, and at a later period societies for the special study of Browning and Shelley. He edited texts for the Early English Text Society, for the Roxburghe Club and the Rolls Series; but his most important labours were devoted to Chaucer, whose study he as an editor greatly assisted by his “Six-Text” edition of the Canterbury Tales, and other publications of the Chaucer Society. He was the honorary secretary of the Philological Society, and was one of the original promoters of the Oxford New English Dictionary. He co-operated with its first editor, Herbert Coleridge, and after his death was for some time principal editor during the preliminary period of the collection of material. The completion of his half-century of labour was acknowledged in 1900 by a handsome testimonial, including the preparation by his friends of a volume of philological essays specially dedicated to him, An English Miscellany (Oxford, 1901), and a considerable donation to the Early English Text Society. Dr Furnivall was always an enthusiastic oarsman, and till the end kept up his interest in rowing; with John Beesley in 1845 he introduced the new type of narrow sculling boat, and in 1886 started races on the Thames for sculling fours and sculling eights. He died on the 2nd of July 1910.

FURSE, CHARLES WELLINGTON (1868–1904), English painter, born at Staines, the son of the Rev. C. W. Furse, archdeacon of Westminster, was descended collaterally from Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in his short span of life achieved such rare excellence as a portrait and figure painter that he forms an important link in the chain of British portraiture which extends from the time when Van Dyck was called to the court of Charles I. to our own day. His talent was precocious; at the age of seven he gave indications of it in a number of drawings illustrating Scott’s novels. He entered the Slade school in 1884, winning the Slade scholarship in the following year, and completed his education at Julian’s atelier in Paris. Hard worker as he was, his activity was frequently interrupted by spells of illness, for he had developed signs of consumption when he was still attending the Slade school. An important canvas called “Cain” was his first contribution (1888) to the Royal Academy, to the associateship of which he was elected in the year of his death. For some years before he had been a staunch supporter of the New English Art Club, to the exhibitions of which he was a regular contributor. He was married in October 1900 to Katharine, daughter of John Addington Symonds. His fondness for sport and of an open-air life found expression in his art and introduced a new, fresh and vigorous note into portraiture. There is never a suggestion of the studio or of the fatiguing pose in his portraits. The sitters appear unconscious of being painted, and are generally seen in the pursuit of their favourite outdoor sport or pastime, in the full enjoyment of life. Such are the “Diana of the Uplands,” the “Lord Roberts” and “The Return from the Ride” at the Tate Gallery; the four children in the “Cubbing with the York and Ainsty,” “The Lilac Gown,” “Mr and Mrs Oliver Fishing” and the portrait of Lord Charles Beresford. Most of these pictures, and indeed nearly all the work completed in the few years of Furse’s activity, show a pronounced decorative tendency. His sense of space, composition and decorative design can best be judged by his admirable mural decorations for Liverpool town hall, executed between 1899 and 1902. A memorial exhibition of Furse’s paintings and sketches was held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1906.

FÜRST, JULIUS (1805–1873), German Orientalist, was born of Jewish parents at Zerkowo in Posen, on the 12th of May 1805. He studied philosophy and philology at Berlin, and oriental literature at Posen, Breslau and Halle. In 1857 he was appointed to a lectureship at the university of Leipzig, and he was promoted to a professorship in 1864, which he held until his death at Leipzig on the 9th of February 1873. Among his writings may be mentioned Lehrgebäude der aramäischen Idiome (Leipzig, 1835); Librorum sacrorum Veteris Testamenti concordantiae Hebraicae atque Chaldaicae (Leipzig, 1837–1840); Hebräisches und chaldäisches Wörterbuch (1851, English translation by S. Davidson 1867); Kultur und Literaturgeschichte der Juden in Asien (1849). Fürst also edited a valuable Bibliotheca Judaica (Leipzig, 1849–1863), and was the author of some other works of minor importance. From 1840 to 1851 he was editor of Der Orient, a journal devoted to the language, literature, history and antiquities of the Jews.

FÜRSTENBERG, the name of two noble houses of Germany.

1. The more important is in possession of a mediatized principality in the district of the Black Forest and the Upper Danube, which comprises the countship of Heiligenberg, about 7 m. to the N. of the Lake of Constance, the landgraviates of Stühlingen and Baar, and the lordships of Jungnau, Trochtelfingen, Hausen