infinite humour. But these panels, fantastic though they be as a whole, are submitted to the discipline of M. Iacovleff s ideas as to the principles which directed their composition and which dominate all the other decorations I am about to mention. They connote an exact understanding of the architectural problem — that is, the relation of the images to the proportions of the room to be decorated, whether he must tend to increase or diminish its height, to enlarge or reduce its size in any given direction. From the strictly decorative point of view, they are conceived to avoid making “a hole in the wall” through a misplaced realism. At
first glance they are reminiscent of those
old tapestries of which the imaginary compositions happily correspond with their rôle as wall-hangings. They are even similar from the point of view of colour, in the care taken to observe a complete scale, well established, with a dominant note. While at the Restaurant “ La
Biche” this dominant is dark green, the scale chosen by the artist in the decoration commissioned by the Duchesse de Grammont for her Château de Vigoleno runs through golden yellows, ochres and apple greens. Very different is that chosen for the music-room of Prince Youssoupoff’s house at Auteuil, which is developed in whites verging on greenish, opposed by rich blacks; not that these
paintings are in grey, but it must be understood that their colouring is very delicate.
Quite different from this is the decoration at M. Hausner s house, the themes of which are taken from tales by Pushkin, certain of which were turned into operas, “The Tsar Saltan, ” “The Golden
Cockerel, ” “Rousslan and Ludmila. ” It is profoundly influenced by the character
of mural painting in Russia at the end of the fifteenth century, in which Byzantine ideas were all-powerful. M. Iacovleff has used a very bright colour scale: reds,
DECORATION IN A HALL BY ALEXANDER IACOVLEFF