Frequently a Decadent Renaissance frame is seen about such a picture as a Millet, or a French Louis XV frame on a Holbein. What could be more ridiculous than such combinations as these, and why will the intelligent public submit to such things because a picture framer or a so-called artist does not know any better? This is a field in which the common sense of the public can be relied upon to make a change as soon as it is aroused to a consciousness of the truth.

Water colours are sometimes well framed in dull, flat gilt frames, and sometimes in wooden ones. Japanese prints are generally good in dead black, flat wood mouldings. In photographs there is a very wide range. Browns are the favoured tones. The frames should be wood, in the same hue, not more intense, and of a value a little lighter than the darkest tone in the picture. This will always produce an agreeable result.

The size, width and strength of the mouldings depend upon several things and are too much a question of feeling to admit of a hard and fast rule. Large, single objects require a wider and stronger frame than delicate small ones in the same picture size. Violent motions of water, trees or animals require a stronger sustaining power than the subdued or quiet sunset or May-day farm scenes. Strong and vivid colour requires a stronger frame than neutral and finely blended combinations. Where strength and motif action prevail there width and prominence in frame appear; where quiet, closely harmonious combinations exist, a less powerful frame or support is required. Usually the frames selected are too wide and, more often than not, too much ornamented and too brilliant or intense in colour.

The matted picture has had its day. Only in rare instances now is it used. An occasional water colour, for example, a gem or jewel, being too tiny to frame, is placed upon a mat that is quite inconspicuous and related in tone to both the water colour and the frame about it. This makes an easy transition from the picture to the frame. The same thing may be said of etchings. Photographs and prints are no longer mounted on mats but are framed, as they should be, close to the picture.

The fallacy of mounting small photographs or other pictures on two or more colours, or of leaving a white or a black streak around the photograph to form another frame has long since been felt. One moulding or frame is sufficient in most instances. In rare cases a narrow gilt edge inside the wood is permissible. The intense red and green as well as the pure white mats of the olden days are gone forever, with the rest of their Victorian associates.

Hanging pictures is an art. In general, oils and other large pictures should be hung, when possible, so that the eye of the average person standing will be about opposite the centre of the picture. This is as high as pictures under ordinary circumstances can be hung. Reference has before been made to the way they should be hung. If wire or cord be used, let two appear, each parallel with the side of the frame, and each extending, in harmony with other vertical lines, to a hook at the picture moulding. Make this hanging just as inconspicuous as possible. Tone the wires to the wall if possible so that they are practically invisible. Anything which serves to emphasize the wire or picture hook is not only ugly but inconsistent.

When pictures are to be hung in groups they must be very carefully chosen. Most of us have small photographs or other pictures so personal that we think we cannot part with them and must hang them. We have no place on the wall suited to them in size or shape. We must, therefore, put two or three together, though this should be done as rarely as possible. Several groups of these upon a wall are non-decorative and generally express bad form. When groups are to be hung, say two or three, there are two things vitally important: first, the tops of these pictures must be on a straight line; second, they must be hung quite close together, say two or three inches apart, so that they seem easily to unite and form one decorative spot. To scatter or spatter them about is to use the whole decorative effect as a wall spot. These are generally better framed to stand on a table or cabinet than to arrange as wall decorations.

An important question is what shall appear under pictures if they are hung upon a wall. Sometimes we see them hung without any relation whatever to furniture pieces, that is, they are hung in any place on the wall where there seems to be a bare spot. A picture of any considerable size with a frame of any perceptible weight is not very decorative on the wall unless directly under it is some article of furniture to which it seems to belong. A picture should be hung for example over a cabinet or console. The picture alone would be an impossible excrescence, but if some articles are used on the cabinet or console which bring the group somewhere near the picture, then the console, the decorative articles and the picture together form an agreeable decorative group.

Pictures must be hung flat to the wall in order to form a part of the wall. There is only one excuse for allowing them to dip at the top, and that is that they may get a better light. This, however, does not in the least influence the matter of decoration. When pictures are hung in this way the room exists for the picture, and not the picture for the room, for they are not decoratively placed when they are so hung.

Let us try to select pictures that are in subject, in treatment and in framing, harmonious with each other and also with the various objects we are using with them in the room. Let us look to it that they are properly hung - flat, with two wires, if any - properly grouped, and related to other objects by their placement in the room. Under such conditions few pictures are essential in most rooms. Too many pictures have as bad an effect as too many of anything else, and a bad treatment of pictures is worse than a bad treatment of other things, because pictures are more capable of extremes in good and bad than most articles, and there are more ways to misuse them because of their great range possibility. The greatest care is necessary then to limit the number, carefully decide the treatment, or, when in doubt, use none.