PICTURES 395 Children's rooms should have pictures that interest children and also have esthetic merit. It is sometimes possible to find story- telling pictures that meet these qualifications. Children's pictures should be large enough to be seen easily, and should be hung on the children's eye level. Pictures should be changed as the chil- dren grow and learn to appreciate better ones. A child's painting is hung in the room shown on page 424. Elegant rooms provide the proper settings for valuable paint- ings; many distinguished rooms have been built around beautiful paintings. See the lower picture on page 121. A family portrait is suitable for a conservative room of the finer type, unless the picture is very Modern, in feeling. Simple cottage rooms should have pictures that are consistent with them in subject matter, technique, and framing. Maps, en- gravings, or reproductions of plain genre pictures by Millet, Breton, Jan Vermeer, Hals, Potter, and others look well in Early American and other simple rooms. Framed samplers and mottoes are also in the same spirit as these rooms. Combining Pictures. All the pictures in one room should be friendly in texture, scale, subject matter, and color. Prints, water colors, and oils can be combined if they are equally vigorous. It is well to have some variety in the size of the pictures in a room, without any of them being out of scale. The pictures in an ordinary-sized living room might well range from the size 14 by 18 inches to the size 20 by 24 inches, if there are only three or four pictures in the room. One picture should dominate in size and beauty, and it should have the place of honor, which is usually above the fireplace. Suitable pictures are shown on page 59. The subject matter of the various pictures in one room should be reasonably concordant Monotony is not desirable, but neither is great difference such as that between a picture of a forest fire and one of a small child. It is disturbing to see one picture with small houses and figures hung close to another picture with large houses and figures. Pictures in the same room are likely to be harmonious with each other in color if they are chosen particularly for that room. Usu- ally it is desirable to combine pictures that have different colors dominating. Probably the principal mistake to avoid in color is having some pictures too light or too dark for the others.