CLXXXIII
I have... gone for great masses of light and shade, relieved against one another, the only bright local colour being the blue of the workmens’ coats and trousers. I have intentionally avoided the whole business of “flat decoration” by “making the things part of the walls,” as one is told is so important. On the contrary, I have treated them as pictures and have tried to make holes in the wall—that is, as far as relief of strong light and shade goes; in the figures I have struggled to keep a certain quality of bas-relief—that is, I have avoided distant groups—and have woven my compositions as tightly as I can in the very foreground of the pictures, as without this I felt they would lose their weight and dignity, which does seem to me the essential business in a mural decoration, and which makes Puvis de Chavannes a great decorator far more than his flat mimicry of fresco does.... Tintoretto, in S. Rocco, is my idea of the big way to decorate a building; great clustered groups sculptured in light and shade filling with amazing ingenuity of design the architectural spaces at his disposal: a far richer and more satisfying result to me than the flat and unprofitable stuff which of late years has been called “decoration.”...
Above all, I thoroughly disbelieve in the cant of mural decorations preserving the flatness of a wall. I see no merit in it whatever. Let them be massive as sculpture, but let every quality of value and colour lend them depth and vitality, and I am sure the hall or room will be richer and nobler as a result.
C. W. Furse.