FOR many years pictures alone were regarded as fine art. Art study meant picture painting, while art appreciation was synonomous with picture discussion. The realization that art quality in pictures is identical with art quality in chairs and rugs has been gradual. This realization will lead to a better choice and a more, consistent use of pictures in interior decoration. One needs to have not only a feeling for a beautiful picture, but a sense of its fitness as a wall decoration, and of its harmony with any type of furnishings to be used with it.

During the historical periods painting developed with other branches of art. The High Renaissance in Italy found expression for its qualities in pictures, furniture, textiles and other art objects simultaneously. The painters of the days of Louis XV, like Watteau and Fraganard, expressed precisely the qualities in their pictures that the cabinetmakers, the textile weavers and the metal workers expressed in their fields. Thus are periods clearly defined, but it is sufficient for us to see the correspondence between pictures and other objects of art expressing the same idea.

Strictly period rooms should have strictly period pictures; not always pictures painted in that period, for many period pictures, like period furniture, were poor expressions of the period idea; but what they should have is a picture whose spirit and feeling are precisely that expressed by the other articles in use during that period. In rooms, however, in which the strict period idea is not intended, a wider range of picture choice is possible. There is no reason, however, for a wild and unrelated choice in pictures any more than in other decorative objects. The same harmony of idea should be apparent that is felt in any other quality that the room expresses. These are the fundamental points in the choice of pictures for interior decoration.

Another and closely related element is the medium in which the picture is expressed. There are oils, water colours, prints, photographs, etchings and steel engravings. These textures have about the same relation to each other that burlap, linen, cotton bed-ticking, chiffon and cane-seated chairs have. It is impossible to harmonize them all in the one room, or, in fact, to bring any two or three of them closely together.

If there is one oil painting in the ordinary room, it is a delicate matter to introduce any other picture in any other medium. Of course, it is possible that a water colour might be broadly enough treated and of a subject closely enough allied to make it possible. A photograph of an oil painting, similarly treated, in a similar spirit, might be, under some conditions, used. Very rarely is it possible to combine any of these excepting prints with photographs, etchings with steel engravings, or, occasionally, a water colour with oil.

Too many pictures together in any media indicate bad taste. We can learn much from the Japanese in that regard. They hang one picture at a time of the right size in the right place and, after having enjoyed that for some time, change it for another, and another; but they never present their pictures in herds or droves.

As to frames, what they are and what they should be, volumes could be written. The birth and evolution of the picture frame is a subject that no one has, so far, exploited The function of the frame is to hold the picture in place, demark it slightly from the wall on which it is hung, but still relate it to the wall, and make easy the transition from it to the picture. \ When a picture frame does this, and in no way detracts from the picture itself, it is good. When it attracts attention by its garish glitter, its erratic ornament, or its prodigious size, at the expense of the picture itself, it is one of the surest indexes of bad taste on the part of the owner.

Whatever is on the wall is a part of it or it is not decorative. Right here let it be said that those frames which project forward like an unnatural growth cease to be decorative. One feels them to be a thing separate from the wall itself. In the good days, when pictures were really decorations, they were either painted on the wall, painted to fit wall spaces, or hung in panels or other spots to which they were suited in size and shape.

Of late, owing to the influence of the Decadent Renaissance, they have been surrounded by ornate, vulgar and expensive gilt frames whose only excuse for being was their showiness and their cost. The sooner, this over-ornamented style in picture frames is eliminated, the sooner pictures will take their rightful place as a factor in the decorative idea. It is because of these abuses that pictures have fallen somewhat into disuse by all good decorators and most sensible house furnishers.

For years the gilt frame held the field. Of late there has been a decided improvement, and when gilt is used it is now toned either warm or cool, and very much dulled, so that it seems, in many instances, to relate, somewhat, to the picture itself, being similarly keyed. Quite frequently, even now, it is not sufficiently keyed so that it has any relation to the wall surface upon which it is hung. Both the picture and the wall should be taken into consideration in the choice of a frame with reference to its value and intensity relationship.

The motifs of decoration upon gilt picture frames are generally of a historic character, some Florentine, some French and others Flemish. These motifs are the same that appeared in furniture and other art objects and, of course, are expressive of the period ideas for which they stood. It is a strange fancy to have taken these historic motifs, enlarged them and made them more prominent, and then to have worked them into a picture frame. These frames are often of totally unrelated periods, and are used on pictures expressing ideas so foreign to those expressed by the motifs that they are quite antagonistic in character.