superintended each piece of work, which, therefore, was never far removed from the designer’s eye. Though accomplished artists are retained by the manufacturers of London, Paris and other capitals, there can no longer be the same relation between the designer and his work. Many operations in these modern factories are carried on by machinery. This, though an economy of labour, entails loss of artistic effect. The chisel and the knife are no longer in such cases guided and controlled by the sensitive touch of the human hand.
A decided, if not always intelligent, effort to devise a new style in furniture began during the last few years of the 19th century, which gained the name of “l’art nouveau.” Its pioneers professed to be free from all old traditions and to seek inspiration from nature alone. Happily nature is less forbidding than many of these interpretations of it, and much of the “new art” is a remarkable exemplification of the impossibility of altogether ignoring traditional forms. The style was not long in degenerating into extreme extravagance. Perhaps the most striking consequence of this effort has been, especially in England, the revival of the use of oak. Lightly polished, or waxed, the cheap foreign oaks often produce very agreeable results, especially when there is applied to them a simple inlay of boxwood and stained holly, or a modern form of pewter. The simplicity of these English forms is in remarkable contrast to the tortured and ungainly outlines of continental seekers after a conscious and unpleasing “originality.”
Until a very recent period the most famous collections of historic furniture were to be found in such French museums as the Louvre, Cluny and the Garde Meuble. Now, however, they are rivalled, if not surpassed, by the magnificent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, and the Wallace collection at Hertford House, London. The latter, in conjunction with the Jones bequest at South Kensington, forms the finest of all gatherings of French furniture of the great periods, notwithstanding that in the Bureau du Roi the Louvre possesses the most magnificent individual example in existence. In America there are a number of admirable collections representative of the graceful and homely “colonial furniture” made in England and the United States during the Queen Anne and Georgian periods.
See also the separate articles in this work on particular forms of furniture. The literature of the subject has become very extensive, and it is needless to multiply here the references to books. Perrot and Chipiez, in their great Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité (1882 et seq.) deal with ancient times, and A. de Champeaux, in Le Meuble (1885), with the middle ages and later period; English furniture is admirably treated by Percy Macquoid in his History of English Furniture (1905); and Lady Dilke’s French Furniture in the 18th Century (1901), and Luke Vincent Lockwood’s Colonial Furniture in America (1901), should also be consulted. (J. P.-B.)
FURNIVALL, FREDERICK JAMES (1825–1910), English
philologist and editor, was born at Egham, Surrey, on the 4th of February 1825, the son of a surgeon. He was called to the bar in 1849, but his attention was soon diverted to philological
studies and social problems. He gave Frederick Denison Maurice
valuable assistance in the Christian Socialist movement, and was
one of the founders of the Working Men’s College. For half a
century he indefatigably promoted the study of early English
literature, partly by his own work as editor, and still more
efficaciously by the agency of the numerous learned societies
of which he was both founder and director, especially the Early
English Text Society (1864), which has been of inestimable
service in promoting the study of early and middle English.
He also established and conducted the Chaucer, Ballad, New
Shakespeare and Wyclif Societies, and at a later period societies
for the special study of Browning and Shelley. He edited texts
for the Early English Text Society, for the Roxburghe Club
and the Rolls Series; but his most important labours were
devoted to Chaucer, whose study he as an editor greatly assisted
by his “Six-Text” edition of the Canterbury Tales, and other
publications of the Chaucer Society. He was the honorary
secretary of the Philological Society, and was one of the original
promoters of the Oxford New English Dictionary. He co-operated
with its first editor, Herbert Coleridge, and after his death
was for some time principal editor during the preliminary period
of the collection of material. The completion of his half-century
of labour was acknowledged in 1900 by a handsome testimonial,
including the preparation by his friends of a volume of philological
essays specially dedicated to him, An English Miscellany
(Oxford, 1901), and a considerable donation to the Early English
Text Society. Dr Furnivall was always an enthusiastic oarsman,
and till the end kept up his interest in rowing; with John
Beesley in 1845 he introduced the new type of narrow sculling
boat, and in 1886 started races on the Thames for sculling fours
and sculling eights. He died on the 2nd of July 1910.
FURSE, CHARLES WELLINGTON (1868–1904), English
painter, born at Staines, the son of the Rev. C. W. Furse, archdeacon
of Westminster, was descended collaterally from Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and in his short span of life achieved such
rare excellence as a portrait and figure painter that he forms an
important link in the chain of British portraiture which extends
from the time when Van Dyck was called to the court of Charles I.
to our own day. His talent was precocious; at the age of seven
he gave indications of it in a number of drawings illustrating
Scott’s novels. He entered the Slade school in 1884, winning the
Slade scholarship in the following year, and completed his education
at Julian’s atelier in Paris. Hard worker as he was, his
activity was frequently interrupted by spells of illness, for he had
developed signs of consumption when he was still attending the
Slade school. An important canvas called “Cain” was his first
contribution (1888) to the Royal Academy, to the associateship
of which he was elected in the year of his death. For some years
before he had been a staunch supporter of the New English Art
Club, to the exhibitions of which he was a regular contributor.
He was married in October 1900 to Katharine, daughter of John
Addington Symonds. His fondness for sport and of an open-air
life found expression in his art and introduced a new, fresh and
vigorous note into portraiture. There is never a suggestion of
the studio or of the fatiguing pose in his portraits. The sitters
appear unconscious of being painted, and are generally seen in
the pursuit of their favourite outdoor sport or pastime, in the
full enjoyment of life. Such are the “Diana of the Uplands,”
the “Lord Roberts” and “The Return from the Ride” at the
Tate Gallery; the four children in the “Cubbing with the York
and Ainsty,” “The Lilac Gown,” “Mr and Mrs Oliver Fishing”
and the portrait of Lord Charles Beresford. Most of these
pictures, and indeed nearly all the work completed in the few
years of Furse’s activity, show a pronounced decorative tendency.
His sense of space, composition and decorative design can best
be judged by his admirable mural decorations for Liverpool
town hall, executed between 1899 and 1902. A memorial exhibition
of Furse’s paintings and sketches was held at the Burlington
Fine Arts Club in 1906.
FÜRST, JULIUS (1805–1873), German Orientalist, was born of Jewish parents at Zerkowo in Posen, on the 12th of May 1805. He studied philosophy and philology at Berlin, and oriental literature at Posen, Breslau and Halle. In 1857 he was appointed to a lectureship at the university of Leipzig, and he was promoted to a professorship in 1864, which he held until his death at Leipzig on the 9th of February 1873. Among his writings may be mentioned Lehrgebäude der aramäischen Idiome (Leipzig, 1835); Librorum sacrorum Veteris Testamenti concordantiae Hebraicae atque Chaldaicae (Leipzig, 1837–1840); Hebräisches und chaldäisches Wörterbuch (1851, English translation by S. Davidson 1867); Kultur und Literaturgeschichte der Juden in Asien (1849). Fürst also edited a valuable Bibliotheca Judaica (Leipzig, 1849–1863), and was the author of some other works of minor importance. From 1840 to 1851 he was editor of Der Orient, a journal devoted to the language, literature, history and antiquities of the Jews.
FÜRSTENBERG, the name of two noble houses of Germany.
1. The more important is in possession of a mediatized principality in the district of the Black Forest and the Upper Danube, which comprises the countship of Heiligenberg, about 7 m. to the N. of the Lake of Constance, the landgraviates of Stühlingen and Baar, and the lordships of Jungnau, Trochtelfingen, Hausen
