hotographs,
etchings, or engravings, their simple, flat frames of oak, birch,
sycamore, etc., with their mats, if mats are used, toning with the
gray, brown, or black of the picture. Fantastically carved and
decorated frames are things of the past, both frame and mat being now
essentially a part of the picture and blending with it, while setting
it off to the best advantage. Passepartout is an inexpensive
substitute for framing, particularly of small pictures, and is
effectively employed with a properly colored mat and binding. White
mats are still in occasional use for water colors and for
black-and-whites, but for photographs we find a more grateful warmth in
following the tone of the picture.

ENGRAVINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

Engravings and photogravures most satisfactorily reproduce paintings,
as hand work always has more life than the photographic copy. All
reproductions, however, bring the works of world-famous artists within
our reach, and enable us to be on intimate terms with the animals of
Rosa Bonheur, the peasants of Millet, the portraits of Rembrandt,
Rubens, Van Dyck, Sargent, and Gainsborough, the landscapes of Corot,
Daubigny, Dupre, and Turner, and the madonnas of Raphael, Botticelli,
Bodenhauser, and Correggio. Amateur photography, with its soft pastel
effects in black, green, white, red, and gray, is making rapid strides
and doing much to advance the cause of art in the home. The
hand-colored photograph is acceptable if the coloring is true and
rightly applied, while certain charming colored French prints, so like
water colors as to be hardly distinguishable from them, have distinct
worth. Then there are the reproductions of our present-day
illustrators, in both black-and-white and colors, and in which we seem
to have a personal interest. Originals are always costly and hard to
get, the exception being the obscure but worthy artist whose fame and
fortune are yet to be won. The carved Florentine frame is a valuable
setting for certain colored heads or painted medallions.

SUITABILITY OF SUBJECTS

Although any good picture may be hung with propriety in almost any of
the first-floor rooms, heads of authors and pictures having historic
and literary significance seem especially suggestive of the library;
musicians and musical subjects of the music room, or wherever one's
musical instruments may be; dignified subjects, such as cathedrals,
with the game and animal pictures which used to hang