Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/196

LANDSCAPE PAINTING architectural unities would be violated. For the same reason a carved or gilded frame is not allowable on any purely mural decoration, the gold frame having been replaced by universal consent with a decorative border painted upon the flat surface of the wall, thus helping rather than hindering the sense of support and solidity that must be maintained at all costs. It is probable that the more the artist is willing to limit his scale of color, the more conventional he makes it, the more beautiful will be his result; and it is quite permissible to doubt whether any of the modern highly colored decorations have filled the first essential of mural art so well as the old-time tapestry with its limited scale of gray greens, gray blues, buffs, and yellows. It is quite certain at any rate that when Puvis de Chavannes in his decorations at the Sorbonne and the [150]