Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/108

86 Considering the success with which reduced white has been used in the rooms of the German primitives in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, it is rather remarkable that this color has not been more in vogue in this country. One of the few instances where it has been successfully used is in the rooms devoted to the study series of paintings in the Evans Wing of the Boston Museum. Here the rough plaster has been left in its natural color, which is a reduced white. Another room where this color has been used is the gallery for paintings in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, but here the north light makes the color appear somewhat cold.

A word of warning is, perhaps, not amiss in regard to samples. Any color depends so largely upon the light in the room in which it is to be used that it should be tried out with a large sample actually on the walls of the room before any decision is made in regard to it. Wherever possible, also, one of the pictures which is to go in the room should be placed against the color to try the effect. A certain wall covering which has been used recently in this country which, in the sample, is a lovely green, on the walls of the room in which it is hung appears much too brilliant. Another green which in the sample looks rather unattractive, as a background is one of the best.