Mr. Vanderbilt's HOUSE and COLLECTION - Offices & Stables

***Click HERE to view the introduction to this book.*** 

 ***Photos and text from Mr. Vanderbilt's House and Collection, described by Edward Strahan pseudo Earl Shinn - the Holland Edition published in 1883.***

FACADE
FROM FIFTH AVENUE
DRAWN AND ENGRAVED BY HIBON

VIEW OF THE KITCHEN
***HEADPIECE***

PILLAR SEPARATING THE STALLS.

 LIKE every other part of the establishment, the Offices and Stables are adapted to their ends, with a completeness that can no farther go, but without one touch of luxury that is only for display. A glimpse of the Pantry has already been given, looking somewhat like an ordinary jeweler's shop, at least when the fireproof safes in both their upper and lower stories are open, and acting the part of its own watchman by the completeness of its burglar-braving armor. The culinary arrangements are correspondingly exhaustive, giving the last word of thoroughness, and occupying a large airy hall below-stairs. In the design forming the headpiece***above*** to this chapter is seen the "battery," in graded coppers, like the helmets of slain knights in an armory; the refrigerators, with transparent doors; the
cauldron of hot water, bearing a general resemblance to Trajan's column; the mortars, the strainers, the tin-kitchens; and all of these accessory to the mighty alembic, the stove with as many gates as Thebes, occupying a wall of the room, and making the heart of the Chef to laugh with the thought that here at last he has Opportunity that is a match for Ability.

VIEW  INTO THE STABLES FROM THE TAN-BARK CIRCUIT USED FOR EXERCISE.

The stabling, only a street or two away, is certainly luxurious, but entirely without affectation. In a handsome stone building, two stories in height, are found the accommodations for coaches and animals, divided into three principal stables. In the design of the view into the stable on this page is seen the skylighted court, surrounded by a walk of tan, in which the horses can be exercised in any weather. In the centre of this apartment, on a flooring of cement, are collected some of the lighter trotting-wagons, interesting for the time they have made, in famous encounters, when attached to the traces of trotters whose exploits are famous the world over. Wagon-trotting, the American specialty, has recorded some of its white-letter days in these filmy vehicles, the masterpieces of an art unknown in other countries. In these wheels, invisible in action, the wonderful Yankee wood, the hickory, seems to realize the ideal of tenacity unencumbered by weight. As an example of the lightness in carriage-architecture attained by American builders, 

COACH-HOUSE
PHOTOGRAVURE

PORTRAIT OF MAUD S.
FROM LIFE
PHOTOGRAVURE

it may be mentioned that the foremost wagon seen in the engraving weighs but fifty-nine pounds; it is more readily lifted than many a chair in the mansion; when the shafts are attached, it flies after the racer without encumbering him, and the driver gets the best time out of his horse without having to fork him like a jockey, but comfortably sitting in a cushioned scat. It was made by Charles Caffrey & Co., of Camden. Beyond is seen the no-top road-wagon, one hundred and seventeen pounds with the shafts, made by J. B. Brewster; in the background, same maker, is a topped road-wagon, weighing one hundred and fifty pounds. ***Trivia Question - Make the connection to Mona Strader Schlesinger Bush Williams von Bismarck de Martini.*** 

The favorite horses of the stud are Aldine, Early Rose and Maud S. It may be mentioned that the cost of Aldine was fifteen thousand dollars, and that of Early Rose thirteen thousand and twenty-five, making the original value to the proprietor of this famous team twenty-eight thousand and twenty-five dollars. The boulevards leading from the city along the Hudson have been daily witnesses of the exploits of this unrivaled pair of trotters. Maud S., having often been allowed to compete in public races, is still more widely famous, her time in many a hard-won match having become historical, whether for short spurts or for a long stay. One of her greatest triumphs was for staying-power. It was in Kentucky, where the heroine often spends her summers, attracted by the taste of the famous blue grass; on the occasion mentioned, Maud trifled at first, and lost three heats, "tied" the fourth, and finally won the fifth, sixth and seventh, leaving at a distance of eighty yards behind her the horse which at first was in the van. Maud S. is the fastest trotter the world has known, having made a mile in 2 minutes 93/4 seconds.  Her fame is therefore quite unrivaled  and we can well understand the desire of the patent-medicine firm which offered the proprietor twenty-five thousand dollars for the mere privilege of changing her name from Maud to that of the nostrum made in the establishment, an invitation that was the sincerest form of quackery. Since the above was written Maud S. has been sold to Mr. Robert Bonner, the New York publisher.   The owner of these steeds is well known as probably the best driver on the road, as was, in an earlier day, his father before him; and a taste for choice horse-flesh is combined in his case with far-sighted views on breeding and maintenance, which have long been an active influence in the improvement of the strain in the United States.

The stabling consists of twelve box-stalls, in the more ample of which the high-strung animals just named walk about without any kind of fastening, and converse with their favorite grooms when in an affable mood. Six ordinary stalls accommodate the heavier coach-horses, separated by columns of bronze and trimmed with the most tasteful carpeting of woven straw. The floors are of narrow waxed plank, as is the ceiling, through which the food descends by a mechanical contrivance. These stalls, where the principal animals have their apartments indicated by engraved door-plates, occupy the building seen through the doorway of the exercising court; a fuller view of them is yielded by one of the photogravure plates. Another plate shows the carriage-house alongside, with a row of family coaches of all kinds; here are the blankets of Aldine, the Rose and Maud, merely to feel which would make a sick coachman well; here are the various fur robes, the arsenal of whips, shafts and tongues, in cabinets or ranged along the wall. The polished floor, of variegated woods, is usually covered by breadths of thick matting. In this coach-house, which is hung with appropriate pictures, is to be found an elaborate whip, perhaps the most artistic ever made, offered to the proprietor by some of his friends, and showing on its ivory handle a cameo portrait of himself, with trains of cars, ocean steamers, etc., chasing each other along the stock, as an indication that the time obtained when the whip is under use is immensely superior to mere time of steam or wind. 

STABLE
PHOTOGRAVURE

Click HERE to see where the stables stood.

Mr. Vanderbilt's HOUSE and COLLECTION - Apartments

***Click HERE to view the introduction to this book.*** 

 ***Photos and text from Mr. Vanderbilt's House and Collection, described by Edward Strahan pseudo Earl Shinn - the Holland Edition published in 1883.***

DAWN
PAINTED BY J. LEFEBVRE      PHOTOGAVURE
CEILING IN A BEDROOM.

OLD CONSERVATORY VIEW.     BY D. LANCELOT.

Such description as it is proper to give of the family rooms on the first floor may begin with the Boudoir, the northernmost chamber of the suite, looking out on Fifth Avenue, and measuring twenty-six feet long by eighteen feet wide. It is finished in a woodwork, for dado and door-frames, entirely composed of ebony, inlaid with ivory. The walls are covered with a brocade of dark-blue silk, manufactured in France from a pattern furnished for the purpose from America; the blue is watered with lines of gold thread, interspersed with small dragonflies in gold; the carpet is also blue, inlaid with small gold figures of Turkish device. The ceiling presents, in two long panels, paintings of Cupids engaged in music and dancing. The mantelpiece shows a frame and columns of yellow marble with Ionic capitals, over which rises the mantel-hood, an elaborate arched affair, in ebony, with shelving and cabinets. The central arch supports a painted frieze by the late Mr. Christian Herter, in what may be called the Belgian style of art; it represents the Triumph of Cupid, 

A CORNER IN THE NORTH BEDROOM.     BY CH. GOUTZWILLER.

showing the soldier, the maiden and even the monk, bringing tribute to the love-god enthroned as king.    A quantity of beautiful bric-a-brac fills the shelving and arcades of this mantel - a clock with a seated nymph, Gerome's Sword-Dance and Almeh in silver, and a pair of fine Solon pate-sur-pate vases, sixteen inches high, showing graceful Greeks engaged in gardening and tree-planting. The divans and chairs are completely cushioned, so as to conceal the frames, and are covered with the same blue and gold moire as the walls.

Seven family paintings are hung in this room, including the proprietor's father, that well-known New York figure whose fine gray head yielded such an unusual chance to the portraitist, and his married daughters.

Turner's "Fountain of Indolence" has been sometimes hung in this room, and, more recently, in the Picture-Gallery below. In the photogravure plate illustrating this apartment it appears conspicuously, so that a good idea of it, in all but its sumptuous color, may be got from that engraving. It measures sixty-four by forty-one inches, and has never been otherwise engraved. It is by far the largest and most important Turner in America. It was first exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1834, and was obtained in 1882 from the dealers Agnew & Sons.   In this sumptuous and visionary 

BOUDOIR
 SECOND FLOOR—NORTH - EAST CORNER
 PHOTOGAVURE

VIEW IN THE UPPER LIBRARY
 PHOTOGAVURE

composition Turner gives fullest play to his dream, translating Thomson's vision of idleness into a no-man's-land of playing fountains and balancing stone-pines, with a reclining fisher and half-seen maidens almost lost in the vermilion vapors of sunset.

PORTION OF STUDY.     BY CH. GOUTZWILLER.

Beside it, in the same plate, is seen a curious Japanese cabinet, six and a half feet high, in which the ornamentation is odd and only to be thought of by Orientals. On a basis of reddish plum-tree wood are applied scenes of farming and fishing in a kind of sketch-work of ivory - the ivory outlines, in relief, defining the trees, the figures and the clouds.

Another cabinet, separately represented in one of the plates, is of ebony inlaid with ivory, and has been placed here in harmony with the architectural fittings of the apartment. It is of renaissance style, is seven feet high, and its ivory bas-reliefs are of high artistic value. The largest of these reliefs shows Venus with her doves, with Adonis sitting on a rock beneath a tree, in his enchanted garden, while Cupids pour on him the life-giving showers from their urn among the clouds.

A largo Japanese screen in this room, five by three and a half feet, shows two mother-of-pearl phoenixes, with tails in scales of tortoise-shell, perched on a golden tree on the black ground of the panels.


A lady's Bedroom, to the south of this Boudoir, is the culmination of everything elegant, delicate and fresh contained in the house. The furniture is the most choice, the most elegant, that the mansion contains. In this exquisite room, where silver toilet-services, embroidered silks and delicate hangings vie with masterly paintings to refresh the attention, it would seem that the dreams must be propitious and the waking pleasant. Among the fragile glitter of the upholstery, where everything seems to start bright and crisp from the hands of the artificer, there is one worn-looking object, and only one; it is the little Bible, placed on the candlestand at the head of the bed. The frieze and cove of the chamber are in rosewood and mahogany. Silken damask, in flowers and vines, covers the wall.

The unusual delicacy and elegance with which this chamber is appointed throughout, find their culmination in the painting on the ceiling, certainly one of the most refined works of art to be found in the world devoted to such a destination.   This is "The Awakening of Aurora," a floating and visionary chain of life-size figures occupying all the ceiling-space.   The artist is Jules Lefebvre, whose "Mignon" and "Toilet of the Bride" we shall encounter in the Picture-Gallery, and who has already sent some of his finest works to America, such as "The Dew" (in the Astor collection), the "Cigale," the "Dawn," the "Odalisque," etc.   The composition here, at first sight, seems principally to consist of the light gossamer clouds of daybreak, among which, faintly and gradually, figure after figure steals  into sight. Aurora Sleeps,
cushioned on the vapors, her head wrapped in veils of white and pillowed on her arm. Below her the red sun rises out of the dark ocean.   She is awakened by a Zephyr of the morning, a moth-winged spirit which sings in her ear; another little Zephyr, still sleeping, curls under her arm.   Above, across the flying clouds, the moon-goddess passes quickly in her chariot, drawn by obedient nymphs; crowned with her crescent, and shooting her last arrow at one of the mischievous Loves of night, the cold queen of the darkness recedes from the scene with precipitation and tumult, leaving the realm to Aurora alone.   This imaginative rendering of the awakening of the world is expressed in figures of such accomplished grace, tenuity and delicacy, that it seems as if 

ANTIQUE EBONY AND IVORY CABINET
SUBJECT   OF   PRINCIPAL  IVORY-Venus and Adonis
PHOTOGAVURE

VIEW OF GALLERY, MAIN ENTRANCE
 WITH PERSPECTIVE OF ATRIUM AND DRAWING-ROOM
PHOTOGAVURE

some old Greek chisel had been resuscitated to carve them in bas-relief from the  marbles of Paros;  modern art would  

THE SOUTH BEDROOM.     BY CH. KREUTZBERGER.

have appeared hardly competent to caress into being these unsubstantial draperies, these tapering and moulded limbs, these faces from which every trace of the empire of carnal sense has been kept away.

In truth, it would be hard to find another artist of our time competent to treat such a subject with such elevation. This ceiling-picture should go to posterity with the "Source" of Ingres, as our highest achievement in pure classic, as the studious nineteenth century comprehends it. It is only fair to say that the artist is fully cognizant of the great leap of his genius consecrated in this lucky picture. We have heard him, in ordinary conversation, allude to the "Plafond" as his masterpiece, the achievement which best satisfies himself, that by which he would fain be principally known to the future, and that whose reproduction he would wish his children to see, to treasure and prize after his death.

A family portrait in this chamber deserves special cognizance, although the portrait-gallery, in a general sense, hardly falls within the purview of such a work as this. It is the half-length likeness of a daughter of the house, also by Jules Lefebvre; a figure with an expression strangely compounded of gaiety and native dignity, turning with a glad smile to regard the spectator, in an attitude that well conveys the effect of walking and the sense of arrested motion. The painting of this canvas, as narrated by M. Lefebvre, shows the conscience with which the higher class of French artists accept their tasks. The painter had received the commission to execute the likeness during a temporary halt of his sitter and her parents in Paris. The original picture, a half-length, was considered finished when the family left the capital for a Swiss excursion. On their return the artist, seeing with delight his sitter transformed by a health-giving tour, with pulses heightened, with frame and movement more elastic, with complexion brilliant from the mountain air, and with eyes grown more lustrous, resolved at once, without any bargaining, to reject the picture already made and prepare a little surprise in the shape of a new portrait "I tore the first picture from top to bottom without hesitation," were his own words lately, perhaps not literally and materially accurate, in describing the incident. A second likeness, three-quarter length, whose posture and general treatment can be seen in one of' the designs inserted in the text, was sketched in and worked at with enthusiasm; and its peculiar air of elastic movement, its carriage as of a health-goddess, and its hunting-nymph complexion, are explained by the fact that the portrait is a souvenir of a happy mountain tour.

Underneath the "Aurora" overhead hang the canopy-draperies of the bed, in rich stuffs, desending from a carved tester near the ceiling. Among the mahogany and rosewood fittings of the room will be noticed the framework of the principal door, of three which open from the chamber; it is of marquetry-work, renaissance style, with vases of flowers inlaid; the dado is likewise of hardwood finish, with its polish interrupted by designs in marquetry.

A set of chairs, with a reclining-chair or chaise lounge  of very light and dainty design, are by Allard fils, of Paris; to cover these, a valuable series of ancient Italian embroideries, of silk on silk, has been sacrificed.   Scenes of courtship, suggesting the most romantic episodes of Ariosto and Tasso, occupy the shield-shaped spaces devoted to these groups, and decorate the chair-backs. A tall Dutch antique clock, by Johannes Neuman, of Amsterdam, plays an old-fashioned tinkling tune; on its dial, a changing face of the moon shows in numbers the day of the month; in another circle, over a figure of Time, a slide indicates the day of the week.

Stepping out upon the balcony - from either of the windows between which reposes the silver toilet service on its 

TRIUMPH OF LOVE.     BY CHRISTIAN HERTER.

dressing-case—we find ourselves looking across the avenue towards the gardens of a charitable institution, and, just opposite, the principal cathedral of America. This recessed balcony is the subject of the design forming the tailpiece to the first chapter. It is the most ambitious piece of architecture to be found anywhere in the stonework of the house, and forms a choice nook, with its vases of growing plants, its graceful Ionic pillars and pilasters, and its ceiling all aglow with gold mosaic. The bronze railing here, corresponding with that which forms a crest for the vestibule, is of more elaborate pattern than that surrounding the garden-plats below. Like all the constructive bronzework about the building, it is cast in a faultless manner by the well-known Bureau Brothers, of Philadelphia.

Another bedroom, the next to the south, differs from the last and attracts attention by its unmistakable air of masculine usage and proprietorship. Here is a very magnificent and imperial-looking bed, fit to shelter the dreams of power or of authority; its canopy is a heavy tabernacle of the richest stuffs, and its carvings are hardly adequately seen in its reflection within the mirror, as depicted in the large design inserted in the text. This chamber is finished in rosewood inlaid with satinwood; the silken damask covering the walls shows the quaintest designs, of the old Persian style, with horses or hippo-griffins of heraldic character bursting from the fantastic blossoms which climb over the tissue. Undeniably, the fittings of this room are as rich as those to be found in the residences of kings, though richness does not seem to be the chief object, a decidedly austere and utilitarian air pervading all the conveniences with which the chamber is provided.   A dressing-room adjacent has proved one of the most expensive chambers in the mansion; the tubbing and basin arrangements are of silver, set in mahogany, while the wainscoting, to the height of eight feet, 

VIEW OF BALCONY FROM NORTH BEDROOM.     BY D. LANCELOT.

is in glass opalescent plaques or tiling of gold, blue and silver tints, gilded on the backs and set securely in the cement; the dressing-room ceiling is vaulted in the Pompeian style; the approach to this toilet-room is dissimulated by the sliding doors, consisting of very large plate-glass mirrors; these mirrors yield at a touch, though they are with their framework very heavy, being set in chiseled brass.

FAN
DECORATED BY PROSDOCINI                                                                     PHOTOGAVURE

The boudoir and pair of chambers just described form a suite on Fifth Avenue. Facing at a right-angle to these, and fronting on the lateral street, is a room the perfection of cosiness and snugness. Every accessory invites to intelligent thought and study. The walls are lined with a large and choice selection of books.   Besides the evidences of a literary taste manifested in this Study, are the signs of a musical propensity, shown in the large piano and the other instruments of sound; sporting tastes are encouraged too, and it is not unusual to find a light rowing-boat carried bodily into the room and forgotten on the floor. A carved wooden sofa-chest, like those of the 

PLANTS IN CONSERVATORY.      BY D. LANCELOT.

Medici period, a wooden mantelpiece of corresponding device, with rich stamped leathers on the wall above,—reading-lamps, literary utensils, and every temptation to a student's life,—portraits and busts, the familiars of the readers thoughts, compose the intellectual and the literal furniture.

The life-size head of Longfellow, engraved in line by Marshall, hangs above the reading chair; this portrait, accepted by the poet in the most final manner by his autograph attached to all the impressions of the proof edition, was the last likeness made during his lifetime. The publisher of this print, Mr. George Barrie, who likewise issues the present work, was entirely unprepared, though not necessarily surprised, to see, on a chance visit, the selection he had made of what in his view was the Longfellow-portrait most likely to satisfy the critical, thus endorsed and accepted in a typical house, famous for the fastidiousness of its art-selections.

The busts of Moliere, and other eminences of the bewigged period of literature, look down from the book-cases. On the mantel is seen the life-mask of Washington, taken from nature by the great Houdon, and cast in bronze in our times by Maurice Power. A more intelligent and fruitful choice of books than is to be found in the thousands which conceal the walls of this Study, seldom gladdens the literary visitor in a fashionable house. The other apartments, whose linings of silk and damask, of mosaic and leather and ebony, have been cheerfully praised, must yield after all in preciousness to the room which is lined with brains. 

PLANTS IN CONSERVATORY.     BY D. LANCELOT.

CHIMNEYPIECE IN BOUDOIR
DRAWN BY M. GAULARD. PRINTED BY LEMERCTER

Mr. Vanderbilt's HOUSE and COLLECTION - Stairs and Corridors

***Click HERE to view the introduction to this book.*** 

 ***Photos and text from Mr. Vanderbilt's House and Collection, described by Edward Strahan pseudo Earl Shinn - the Holland Edition published in 1883.***

STAIRCASE
 WITH   LAMPIDIERE   BY NOEL
 DRAWN BY NORDMANN.  DRAWN BY CHAMPENOIS

STAINED GLASS WINDOW DESIGNED BY JOHN LAFARGE

LAMPIDIERE BY NOEL

To the right as one enters from the Vestibule, is the staircase, accommodated in a corner of the building, and doubling on itself to the summit of the edifice, as one looks upward. It is wide and gradual in ascent, and redeems its simplicity of plan by much opulence of ornament. The newel of this stairway is a female figure in bronze overlaid with gold, cast by Barbedienne from the model by Tony Noel. The figure is in the purest taste of Francis I., a type of the sumptuous French renaissance. A slave with the air of a queen - the forehead encircled with a tiara such as Cellini placed on the head of Diane de Poitiers, - the coiffure of that far-sought intricacy which Michael Angelo used for his Vittoria Colonna - in fact, the whole treatment redolent of renaissance pomp. The figure stands with that real but elaborate grace, easy but not unpremeditated, which belongs to the period of art which it affects, and which  is neither Greek nor realistic, but in the best sense decorative.    With her hands, the lamp-bearer lightly encircles a crystal urn, from which springs a crown of lights. The effect of the statue, and indeed of the whole staircase, is best seen at night, when the jets of light are blazing. A free use of colored ornament enters into the detail of the statue; in the shape of gems of cut crystal of many-colors, introduced wherever there is a pretext for them; thus jewels thickly stud the broad belt which adorns the hips, as well as the thongs of the sandals and the figures of the diadem.    Edme-Antony-Paul Noel is a Paris-born artist, whose studio is in the rue Val-de-Grace.

PANEL IN THE ATRIUM GALLERY.

His professor was M. Guillaume, and he likewise received instruction from Cavelier and Lequesne. This figure was executed in 1881. The artist is a "prix de Rome," having acquired that honor in 1868; he received a first-class medal at the Salon of 1874, and was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1878, during the Exposition Universelle. The urn which the light-bearer sustains is a fanal of plate crystal, of general oval form, and bearing a correspondence with those which are found on the onyx columns of the drawing-room; its frame is of bronze overlaid with gold, and richly jeweled along the principal lines. It is very large, and with the branch of lustres which sprouts from its summit adds greatly to the apparent height of the figure. The founder having destroyed the mould, only one casting of the royal image has been made. The latter is only life-size, though it seems larger. It wears a patient air of welcome, calm and not servile, as it stands sentinel at the foot of the stairway and ushers the visitors up the broad low steps. These are laid with heavy carpet, so that no footfall is heard as the stairs are mounted.

The stair-rail of bronze is of a light and intricate design, of course made expressly for its place and function. The pattern is of twisted strap-work, coiling into spirals and branches, and looks elegantly fragile between the solid stairs, whose edges are elaborately paneled  and the hand-rail, which is a broad affair, cushioned and padded and covered with deep-red plush. Paneling of wood, imitating courses of beveled stone, accompanies the ascent of the stairway

ATRIUM GALLERY-THIRD FLOOR
DRAWN BY THURWANGER. PRINTED BY LEMERCIER.

GALLERY
THIRD  FLOOR OF THE ATRIUM
PHOTOGRAVURE

SCENE FROM D'URFE'S "ASTREE"
TAPESTRY  FROM THE ROYAL  MANUFACTORY  OF FONTAINEBLEAU
EPOCH   OF   LOUIS XIV
PHOTOGRAVURE

on the wall-side, to a considerable height upon the wall, above which the wall-covering is a deeply-modeled design of rectangular interlaced lines on a gold ground.

VIEW OF THE STAIRCASE.

The six fine tapestries stretched around the corridor of the first story and on the staircase deserve particular attention. Four of them are broad and two narrower, but they form  a single  series  that   has never been divided since the manufacture. The width of the larger pieces is somewhat unusual, three of them being respectively one hundred and sixty inches wide, and the narrower ones one hundred and twenty-eight and one hundred and twenty-four inches, and the height equal for all. One of the narrower ones is represented in the engraving of the stairway inserted in the text. A broader tapestry of the set is seen in the photogravure plate, a representation so perfect that the threads may be counted in many places. Here we have a pompous garden-view, suppositiously classic, but really inspired by the landscape-gardening of De Noter. The scene passes in front of a rule-and-line perspective of square lakes, marble banks, bowery trees and arcaded casinos, stretching off to an aerial distance.   Between the nearest fountains, ever on flow in parabolas of woollen-work, stretches the woollen pond, in which the lover plays on the woollen strings of his lute and the maiden sings from a woollen sheet of music. They sit under an embroidered canopy in a decorated barge, and a swarthy oarsman rows them. In the foreground are large decorative plants and blossoms, standing out in rather enforced contrast; this placing of conspicuous flowers, birds, vines, and other ornaments familiar to the weaver's art, border-wise in front, in a style of pure ornament and rather outside the purpose of the picture, is one of the oldest traditions of designing for tapestry, as distinguished from designing for fresco, mosaic or other species of wall-decoration; it is so innately connected with tapestry-making, that we find the tradition too strong for Raphael himself, who places the row of water-birds and aquatic plants on the edge of the "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," as he would not have done if he had conceived his subject in fresco.


The subjects of these six tapestries are taken from Honore d'Urfe's romance of "Astree," a work of 1624. We are reminded by Sainte-Beuve that, dead as this effort of imagination has fallen now, it was in its time the guide of fashion and the criterion of taste. The gallants and ladies of Louis XlV.'s court used to form garden-parties and masquerades, where every guest assumed the personage of some hero or heroine out of the "Astree;" in society, it was the rage for people of condition to call themselves by some name among the characters of the romance, by which names they signed their correspondence and caused themselves to be addressed at assemblies. The mania was not again equaled in French society until the 1840 period, when the dandies and lions assumed the names of Balzac's heroes, and insisted
on being known in the raouts as Rastignac, Lenoncourt, de Trailles, Ronquerolles, d'Esgrignon and d'Ajuda-Pinto.

The history of the six "Astree" tapestries can be traced from step to step back to their manufacture. They were executed at the royal tapestry-works of  Fontainebleau, by order of Louis XIV., as a present from that sovereign to the Landgrave of Hesse. Le Brun being the director of the king's tapestry manufacture, it is obvious that these subjects, if not designed by him, must have satisfied his inspection. They remained in the Landgrave's palace until the terrible conflagration which destroyed the edifice, when they were saved and transported to Munich. About 1826 they were acquired by a German connoisseur  Mr. Charles Damian Disch, of Cologne, a man of taste whose collection was celebrated among all others. They were preserved by this collector until his death, in 1881, and appeared in the public sale made by his heirs of his collections, in 1882, when they were purchased for  the present   owner,   and  arrived in   the  most brilliant state   in  America.    Their fine borders are perfect and uncut, composed of garlands of fruits and flowers, interspersed with medallions. They are all of a correspondingly festive and champetre kind; in addition to those mentioned, one represents a concert of half-a-dozen richly-dressed persons, playing guitars, bass-viol and kettle-drum under a balcony, beside a square parterre of flower-beds in ambitious perspective; another, a pair of nymphs near a statue of Diana,with a cavalier addressing them from behind a fountain. Strict attention has been paid in each by the old designer to the purpose of his work as a wall-decoration, more than half of the upper portion being occupied by soft and agreeable verdures, and the apparent wall-space being magnified by the most elaborate and far-reaching devices of perspective.

The gallery surrounding the first-story corridor is decorated with bas-reliefs and paintings, best seen from a central position in the Atrium below; the reliefs show shields, separated by smiling female masks, or, nearer the corners, seated Cupids with appropriate accessories. Of the four paintings seen as centre-pieces of one gallery, three are here represented, either in the full-page colored plate, the photogravure plate, or the design inserted in the text. They show   the Seasons,  personified   by reclining   figures,  with   grapes,   or burning  censers, or 

THE FORTUNE-TELLER
TAPESTRY  SCREEN.    DESIGNED BY BOUCHER
PHOTOGRAVURE

other attributes as that kind of allegory demands; they were painted in New York, by a French artist sojourning there during the erection of the house.

On the first landing is seen a fine, tall eight-day clock of the antique style; the maker Jean Christian Sauer, of Amsterdam.

It remains to mention the stained-glass windows, found on the first-story and second-story landings. These are twelve 

A LANDING ON THE STAIRCASE.

feet in width. The artist is the well-known New York painter John La Farge, who of late years has almost   abandoned easel-painting to give himself up to fascinating experiments in the  manufacture and design of   colored glass.

The subject of the first window completely occupies the space, with one harmonious, united composition. It is an allegory of "Commerce." We see the beneficent Power throned in the midst, with nymphs pouring treasure before her from cornucopias, or unfolding the masterpieces of the loom. At her feet is a river, the emblem of the carrying power of trade, with merry young Greek boatmen approaching in antique barges, hung with shields around the gunwales. The shields, the stuffs, the jewels and other treasures are so many pretexts for the employment of the most brilliant and original colors which glass can be made to yield. Jewels are represented by cut crystal, set in the leads, and shining with the full blaze of transmitted, instead of reflected, light. Draperies and ornaments are made of sheets of unaltered glass, whose veining and variegation are done in the original manufacture: a mosaic of such fragments constitutes the picture, and by this means a burning glow and purity of color is reached which painting on glass cannot possibly equal. It is really curious to see how the artist, in his truly inventive and thoughtful method, has avoided all the pitfalls and

PERSPECTIVE OF THE ATRIUM GALLERIES.

inconsistencies of the European manufacture. Modern French stained glass is in stupefying contrast with modern French painting, being conventional, heavy, and covered with 

COMMERCE
STAINED GLASS   DESIGNED BY LA FARGE
DRAWN BY M. GAULARD   PRINTED BY LEMERCIER

STAINED GLASS WINDOWS SECOND LANDING
 DESIGNED BY J. LAFARGE
PHOTOGRAVURE 

STAINED GLASS WINDOWS SECOND LANDING
 DESIGNED BY J. LAFARGE
PHOTOGRAVURE 

a pitiful mantle of poverty.    Modern German glass attempts Rembrandt effects, so that often, through the  most inconsistent of devices, a figure is modelled with exaggeration and heaviness by laying on the painting in a degree out of all proportion when it is considered that a window is architecturally a light-admitting contrivance; and nothing can be more technically inappropriate than to express the  light and shade falling across a deeply-shadowed   portrait by sunshine actually transmitted through its substance.    Modern English glass, obviously in a transitional state, does not sin by opacity, but sins often by the poverty of its tyro-like linear design, playing over thin, membranous-looking breadths of glass.    The devices invented by M. La Farge have come to him after long study of those old cathedral "cartwheels" and "rosaces" to which time has given its magic of improvement.    The irregularities and gradations caused by the action of the centuries, in the varying degrees of transparency and crudity of the colors, are what give the medieval windows their splendor.   A suggestion of this effect in modern glass has been achieved by the artist in the clouded and opaline colors he causes to be melted in his sheets of irregular crystal: from the fragments thus obtained he builds his mosaic, with scarcely any painting, except for faces and other flesh-portions.    Guided by a delicate and inspired taste, he has thus achieved the most singular triumphs of luck and opportunity, in which often a boldly conventional style reaches a height of realism that leaves the plodding "realistic" artist far behind.    Thus the blue inlaid, veined, wrinkled waves inthis composition, the peacock's tail in the Japanese parlor, and the fluffy tunic of the lady in the "Hospitality" window, are effects of realistic painting, conquered by tact and genius from accidental pickings-up and conventional applications of glass fragments arbitrarily forced into appropriateness.

The "Hospitality" subject, just alluded to, is divided into three sections. It forms the stairway-light on the upper story. A woman, with a very bright and beautiful face of welcome, sits by her husband's side, under an arbor, in the central department, and both extend their hands in a gesture of salutation. "Prosperitas" approaches them on one side, with a horn of plenty, and "Hospitalitas" kneels on the other with a brimming cup, and there are accessory children and cherubs to fill the remaining spaces of the window. None can help noticing the goblin-like sagacity with which are shaded, out of chance morsels of variegated glass, the leaves and grapes of the trellis, the swimming clouds, the downy wings of a cherub, or the rich draperies of the large figures. The balance of dark and light, as in all of Mr. La Farge's glasswork, is kept half-way between realism and conventionalism; the windows are not too glaring, nor on the other hand are they darkened with paint like Munich windows, in the ridiculous effort to make a Caravaggio effect.

The very great success which has attended this ingenious artist's enterprises and experiments is all the more  noteworthy and encouraging in a school of art as unformed and tentative as that of this country really is at the present time. This gorgeous, unreasoning, unintellectual, sensuous and most admirable instinct for color, for the beauty and splendor and harmony of tones, is very rarely the attribute of a primitive school of painting, but comes rather with the full-fledged power and opulence of one in its meridian sway. It has nothing to do necessarily with elevation of thought, or purity of expression, or even with noble draughtsmanship - all of which the "primitives" may possess, - it has no earthly connection with material prosperity, with triumphs of mechanical enterprise, or with schools of literature and philosophy; independent of all these it is in some respects superior to them all and holds its sway over man's emotional nature by right divine. Nor can it be taught in the schools: it is not amenable to the rules of the text-books; more, possibly, than any other of the artist's equipments must it be born with him and be part of him, like the instinct of the bee, like the veritable fire of genius. And to find this supreme talent developed so fully in our modern, materialistic, disbelieving and eminently practical times is truly one of the most encouraging signs of the well-doing of the national art, and, consequently, of the national civilization.

CARVED MOTIF IN THE ATRIUM GALLERY.

HOSPITALITY STAINED GLASS WINDOW.
    DESIGNED BY LAFARGE
DRAWN  BY  LEROY PRINTED  BY JEHENNE