ht appear as if there were an essential fundamental
natural difference between a pattern and a picture, but when we come to
consider it, it appears to be rather a distinction than a difference.

A pattern may be an arrangement of lines, forms, and a harmony of planes
and tones of colour.

But these words would describe in general terms a picture also.

Certain recurrences of line and form; certain re-echoing notes of the
same, or allied colour, are necessary to both pattern and picture. The
abstract ingredients appear to be the same in both cases.

A picture indeed may be considered as a pattern of another sort, and the
real difference is that whereas a pattern is not necessarily a picture,
a picture is bound to be a pattern--a pattern having its quantities, its
balance of masses, its connecting lines, its various planes, its key of
colour, its play of contrasts, its harmony of tones.

Technically, a picture may be considered as an _informal_ pattern,
mainly of tone and values; while a pattern may be considered as a
_formal_ pattern, mainly of planes of colour.

The ancient art of the East was all frankly pattern-work, whatever the
subject pictured. Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Chinese, Moorish and
Arabian art, in all their varieties, show the dominating sense of
pattern, and the invention of the instinctive decorators in the use of
colour.

The Japanese, also, are instinctive decorators, though in a less formal
and more impressionistic way, and with much more naturalistic feeling.
Their pictures printed from colour blocks, as well as their "kakimonos,"
painted on silk, are frankly pattern-pictures, the pattern motive being
quite as strong or stronger than the graphic or representative motive.

Mediaeval and early Renaissance painting in Europe was frankly more or
less formal and of the nature of ornament, and even in its freest and
fullest development, in the works of the great masters of the sixteenth
century of Venice and Florence, a certain decorative or architectural
feeling was never forgotten.

Painting was still in close association with architecture, and was the
chief adornment of churches and palaces; thus it preserved a peculiar
distinction and dignity of style. The Dutch school did more perhaps to
break these old decorative and architectural traditions than any other,
with their domestic and purely naturalistic motives, their pursuit of
realism, atmospheric effect, and chiaroscuro--that fascinating go