The building at the back seems to have been painted with the sc.r.a.pings of a dirty palette, and the sky in the left-hand corner comes out of the picture. I have only to add that the picture has been purchased out of the Chantry Bequest Fund, and the purchase is considered to be equivalent to a formal declaration that Mr. Hacker will be elected an a.s.sociate of the Royal Academy at the next election.
Mr. Hacker"s election to the Academy--I speak of this election as a foregone conclusion--following as it does the election of Mr. Stanhope Forbes, makes it plain that the intention of the Academy is to support to the full extent of its great power a method of painting which is foreign and unnatural to English art, which, in the opinion of a large body of artists--and it is valuable to know that their opinion is shared by the best and most original of the French artists--is disintegrating and destroying our English artistic tradition. Mr.
Hacker"s election, and the three elections that will follow it, those of Mr. Shannon, Mr. Alfred East, and Mr. Bromley, will be equivalent to an official declaration that those who desire to be English Academicians must adopt the French methods. Independent of the national disaster that these elections will inflict on art, they will be moreover flagrant acts of injustice. For I repeat, among the forty Academicians there is not one who considers these future Academicians to be comparable to Mr. Whistler, Mr. Albert Moore, Mr. Swan, or Mr.
Sargent. No one holds such an opinion, and yet there is no doubt which way the elections in the Academy will go.
The explanation of this incredible anomaly I have given, the explanation is not a n.o.ble one, but that is not a matter for which I can be held responsible; suffice it to say, that my explanation is the only possible explanation. The Academy is a private commercial enterprise, and conducts its business on the lines which it considers the most advantageous; its commercialism has become flagrant and undeniable. If this is so--how the facts can otherwise be explained I cannot see--it is to be regretted that the Academy got its beautiful site for nothing. But regrets are vain. The only thing to do now is to see that the Academy is no longer allowed to sail under false colours.
This article may awaken in the Academy a sense that it is not well to persist in open and flagrant defiance of public opinion, or it may serve to render the Academicians even more stiff-necked than before.
In either case it will have accomplished its purpose.
THE ORGANISATION OF ART.
No fact is more painful to the modern mind than that men are not born with equal brains; and every day we grow more and more determined to thwart Nature"s desire of inequality by public education. Whether everybody should be taught to read and write I leave to politicians--the matter is not important; but that the nation should not be instructed in drawing, music, painting, and English literature I will never cease to maintain. Everything that has happened in England for the last thirty years goes to prove that systematised education in art means artistic decadence.
To the ordinary mind there is something very rea.s.suring in the words inst.i.tutions, professors, examinations, medals, and t.i.tles of all kinds. All these things have been given of late years to art, and parents and guardians need no longer have any fear for those confided to their charge: the art of painting has been recognised as a profession! The princ.i.p.al inst.i.tution where this profession is practised is called the Royal Academy. It owes its existence to the taste of a gentleman known as George the Third, and it has been dowered by the State to the extent of at least three hundred thousand pounds. Professors from Oxford, even bishops, dine there. The members of this inst.i.tution put R.A. after their names; the president has been made a baronet; there was even a rumour that he was going to be made a lord, and that he was not we must consider as another blow dealt against the dignity of art.
Literature does not offer so much scope for organisation as painting; but strenuous efforts are being made to organise it, and, by the aid of academies, examinations, and crowns, hopes are entertained that, before long, it will be brought into line with the other professions.
And the journalists too are anxious to "erect their craft to the dignity of a profession which shall confer upon its members _certain social status_ like that of the barrister and lawyer". Entrance is to be strictly conditional; no one is to have a right to practice without a diploma, and members are to be ent.i.tled to certain letters after their names. A movement is on foot to Churton-Collinise English literature at the universities, and every month Mr. Walter Besant raises a wail in the _Author_ that the peerage is not as open to three-volume novelists as it is to brewers. He bewails the fact that no eminent man of letters, with the exception of Lord Tennyson, has been made the enforced a.s.sociate of brewers and politicians. Mr.
Besant does not think that t.i.tles in these democratic days are foolish and absurd, pitiful in the personality of those who own them by inheritance, grotesque in the personality of those on whom they have been conferred. Mr. Besant does not see that the desire of the baker, the brewer, the butcher, and I may add the three-volume novelist, to be addressed by small tradesmen and lackeys as "yer lordship", raises a smile on the lips even of the most _blase_.
I am advocating an unpopular _regime_ I know, for the majority believe that art is in Queer Street if new buildings are not being raised, if official recognition of merits is not proclaimed, and if the newspapers do not teem with paragraphs concerning the homes of the Academicians. The wailing and gnashing of teeth that were heard when an intelligent portion of the Press induced Mr. Tate to withdraw his offer to build a gallery and furnish it with pictures by Messrs.
Herkomer, Fildes, Leader, Long, are not forgotten. It was not urged that the pictures were valuable pictures; the merit or demerit of the pictures was not what interested, but the fact that a great deal of money was going to be spent, and that t.i.tles, badges, medals, crowns, would be given to those whose pictures were enshrined in the new temple of art. The Tate Gallery touched these folk as would an imposing review of troops, a procession of judges, or a coronation in Westminster Abbey. Their senses were tickled by the prospect of a show, their minds were stirred by some idea of organisation--something was about to be organised, and nothing appeals so much to the vulgar mind as organisation.
An epoch is represented by a word, and to organise represents the dominant idea of our civilisation. To organise is to be respectable, and as every one wants to be respectable, every one dreams of new schemes of organisation. Soldiers, sailors, policemen, members of parliament, independent voters, clerks in the post office, bus drivers, dockers, every imaginable variety of worker, domestic servants--it is difficult to think of any cla.s.s that has not been organised of late years.
There is a gentleman in parliament who is anxious to do something in the way of social organisation for the gipsies. The gipsies have not appealed to him; they have professed no desire to have their social status raised; they have, I believe, disclaimed through their king, whoever he may be, all partic.i.p.ation in the scheme of this benevolent gentleman. Nor does any sense of the absurdity of his endeavour blight the worthy gentleman"s ardour. How should it? He, like the other organisers, is an unreasoning instrument in a great tendency of things. To organise something--or, put it differently, to educate some one--is to day every man"s ambition. So long as it is not himself, it matters no jot to him whom he educates. The gipsy under the hedge, the artist painting under a hill, it matters not. A technical school of instruction would enable the gipsy to harness his horse better than he does at present; and the artist would paint much better if he were taught to stipple, and examined by salaried professors in stipple, and given prizes for stippling. The general mind of our century is with education and organisation of every kind, and from this terrible general mind art seems unable to escape. Art, that poor little gipsy whose very condition of existence is freedom, who owns no code of laws, who evades all regulations, who groups himself under no standard, who can live only in disastrous times, when the world"s attention is drawn to other things, and allows him life in shelter of the hedges, and dreams in sight of the stars, finds himself forced into a uniform--poor little fellow, how melancholy he looks on his high stool in the South Kensington Museum, and notwithstanding the professors his hand drops from the drawing-board, unable to accomplish the admired stipple.
But solemn members of parliament are certain that official recognition must be extended to art. Art is an educational influence, and the Kensington galleries are something more than agreeable places, where sweethearts can murmur soft nothings under divine masterpieces. The utilitarian M.P. must find some justification for art; he is not sensible enough to understand that art justifies its own existence, that it is its own honour and glory; and he nourishes a flimsy lie, and votes that large sums of money shall be spent in endowing schools of art and founding picture galleries. Then there is another cla.s.s--those who have fish to fry, and to whom art seems a convenient frying-pan. Mr. Tate craves for a museum to be called Tate"s; or, if his princely gift gained him a t.i.tle, which it may, the museum would be called--What would be an appropriate name? There are men too who have trifles to sell, and they talk loudly of the glories of modern art, and the necessity of a British Luxembourg.
That France should have a Luxembourg is natural enough; that we should have one would be anomalous. We are a free-trading country. I pa.s.s over the failure of the Luxembourg to recognise genius, to save the artist of genius a struggle with insolent ignorance. What did the Luxembourg do for Corot, Millet, Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, p.i.s.saro? The Luxembourg chose rather to honour such pretentious mediocrities as Bouguereau, Jules Lefebvre, Jules Breton, and their like. What has our Academy done to rescue struggling genius from poverty and obscurity? Did it save Alfred Stevens, the great sculptor of his generation, from the task of designing fire-irons? How often did the Academy refuse Cecil Lawson"s pictures? When they did accept him, was it not because he had become popular in spite of the Academy?
Did not the Academy refuse Mr. Whistler"s portrait of his mother, and was it not hung at the last moment owing to a threat of one of the Academicians to resign if a place was not found for it? Place was found for it seven feet above the line. Has not the Academy for the last five-and-twenty years lent the whole stress and authority of its name to crush Mr. Whistler? Happily his genius was sufficient for the fight, and it was not until he had conquered past all question that he left this country. The record of the Academy is a significant one. But if it has exercised a vicious influence in art, its history is no worse than that of other academies. Here, as elsewhere, the Academy has tolerated genius when it was popular, and when it was not popular it has trampled upon it.
We have Free Trade in literature, why should we not have Free Trade in art? Why should not every artist go into the market without t.i.tle or masquerade that blinds the public to the value of what he has to sell?
I would turn art adrift, t.i.tleless, R.A.-less, out into the street and field, where, under the light of his original stars, the impa.s.sioned vagrant might dream once more, and for the mere sake of his dreams.
ART AND SCIENCE.
"Mr. Goschen," said a writer in a number of the _Speaker_, "deserves credit for having successfully resisted the attempt to induce him to sacrifice the interests of science at South Kensington to those of art." An excellent theme it seemed to me for an article; but the object of the writer being praise of Mr. Tate for his good intention, the opportunity was missed of distinguishing between the false claims of art and the real claims of science to public patronage and protection. True it is that to differentiate between art and science is like drawing distinctions between black and white; and in excuse I must plead the ordinary vagueness and weakness of the public mind, its inability very often to differentiate between things the most opposed, and a very general tendency to attempt to justify the existence of art on the grounds of utility--that is to say, educational influences and the counter attraction that a picture gallery offers to the public-house on Bank Holidays. Such reasoning is well enough at political meetings, but it does not find acceptance among thinkers. It is merely the flower of foolish belief that nineteenth century wisdom is greater than the collective instinct of the ages; that we are far in advance of our forefathers in religion, in morals, and in art. We are only in advance of our forefathers in science. In art we have done little more than to spoil good canvas and marble, and not content with such misdeeds, we must needs insult art by attributing to her utilitarian ends and moral purposes.
Modern puritanism dares not say abolish art; so in thinly disguised speech it is pleaded that art is not nearly so useless as might easily be supposed; and it is often seriously urged that art may be reconciled after all with the most approved principles of humanitarianism, progress, and religious belief. Such is still the att.i.tude of many Englishmen towards art. But art needs none of these apologists, even if we have to admit that the domestic utility of a Terburg is not so easily defined as that of mixed pickles or umbrellas. Another serious indictment is that art appeals rather to the few than to the many. True, indeed; and yet art is the very spirit and sense of the many. Yes; and all that is most national in us, all that is most sublime, and all that is most imperishable. The art of a nation is an epitome of the nation"s intelligence and prosperity.
There is no such thing as cosmopolitanism in art? alas! there is, and what a pitiful thing that thing is.
Unhappy is he who forgets the morals, the manners, the customs, the material and spiritual life of his country! England can do without any one of us, but not one of us can do without England. Study the question in the present, study it in the past, and you will find but one answer to your question--art is nationhood. All the great artistic epochs have followed on times of national enthusiasm, power, energy, spiritual and corporal adventure. When Greece was divided into half-a-dozen States she produced her greatest art. The same with Italy; and Holland, after having rivalled Greece in heroic effort, gave birth in the s.p.a.ce of a single generation to between twenty and thirty great painters. And did not our Elizabethan drama follow close upon the defeat of the Armada, the discovery of America, and the Reformation? And did not Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney begin to paint almost immediately after the victories of Marlborough? To-day our empire is vast, and as our empire grows so does our art lessen.
Literature still survives, though even there symptoms of decadence are visible. The Roman, the Chinese, and the Mahometan Empires are not distinguished for their art. But outside of the great Chinese Empire there lies a little State called j.a.pan, which, without knowledge of Egypt or Greece, purely out of its own consciousness, evolved an art strangely beautiful and wholly original.
And as we continue to examine the question we become aware that no further progress in art is possible; that art reached its apogee two thousand five hundred years ago. True that Michael Angelo in the figures of "Day" and "Night", in the "Slave", in the "Moses", and in the "Last Judgment"--which last should be cla.s.sed as sculpture--stands very, very close indeed to Phidias; his art is more complete and less perfect. But three hundred years have gone since the death of Michael Angelo, and to get another like him the world would have to be steeped in the darkness of another Middle Age. And, pa.s.sing on in our inquiry, we notice that painting reached its height immediately after Michael Angelo"s death. Who shall rival the splendours, the profusion of Veronese, the opulence of Tintoretto, the richness of t.i.tian, the pomp of Rubens? Or who shall challenge the technical beauty of Velasquez or of Hals, or the technical dexterity of Terburg, or Metzu, or Dow, or Adrian van Ostade? Pa.s.sing on once again, we notice that art appears and disappears mysteriously like a ghost. It comes unexpectedly upon a people, and it goes in spite of artistic education, State help, picture dealers, and annual exhibitions. We notice, too, that art is wholly untransmissible; nay, more, the fact that art is with us to-day is proof that art will not be with us to-morrow. Art cannot be acquired, nor can those who have art in their souls tell how it came there, or how they practise it. Art cannot be repressed, encouraged, or explained; it is something that transcends our knowledge, even as the principle of life.
Now I take it that science differs from art on all these points.
Science is not national, it is essentially cosmopolitan. The science of one country is the same as that of another country. It is impossible to tell by looking at it whether the phonograph was invented in England or America. Unlike art, again, science is essentially transmissible; every discovery leads of necessity to another discovery, and the fact that science is with us to-day proves that science will be still more with us to-morrow. Nothing can extinguish science except an invasion of barbarians, and the barbarians that science has left alive would hardly suffice. Art has its limitations, science has none. It would, however, be vain to pursue our differentiation any further. It must be clear that what are most opposed in this world are art and science; therefore--I think I can say therefore--all the arguments I used to show that a British Luxembourg would be prejudicial to the true interests of art may be used in favour of the endowment of a college of science at South Kensington. Why should not the humanitarianism of Mr. Tate induce him to give his money to science instead of to art? As well build a hothouse for swallows to winter in as a British Luxembourg; but science is a good old barn-door fowl; build her a hen-roost, and she will lay you eggs, and golden eggs. Give your money to science, for there is an evil side to every other kind of almsgiving. It is well to save life, but the world is already overstocked with life; and in saving life one may be making the struggle for existence still more unendurable for those who come after. But in giving your money to science you are accomplishing a definite good; the results of science have always been beneficent. Science will alleviate the wants of the world more wisely than the kindest heart that ever beat under the robe of a Sister of Mercy; the hands of science are the mercifulest in the end, and it is science that will redeem man"s hope of Paradise.
ROYALTY IN ART.
The subject is full of suggestion, and though any adequate examination of it would lead me beyond the limits of this paper, I think I may venture to lift its fringe. To do so, we must glance at its historic side. We know the interest that Julius the Second took in the art of Michael Angelo and Raphael: had it not been for the Popes, St. Peter"s would not have been built, nor would "The Last Judgment" have been painted. We know, too, of Philip the Fourth"s great love of the art of Velasquez. The Court of Frederick the Great was a republic of art and letters; and is it not indirectly to a Bavarian monarch that we owe Wagner"s immortal _chefs-d"oeuvre_, and hence the musical evolution of the century? With these facts before us it would be puerile to deny that in the past Royalty has lent invaluable a.s.sistance in the protection and development of art. Even if we turn to our own country we find at least one monarch who could distinguish a painter when he met one. Charles the Second did not hesitate in the patronage he extended to Vand.y.k.e, and it is--as I have frequently pointed out--to the influence of Vand.y.k.e that we owe all that is worthiest and valuable in English art. Bearing these facts in mind--and it is impossible not to bear them in mind--it is difficult to go to the Victorian Exhibition and not ask: Does the present Royal Family exercise any influence on English art? This is the question that the Victorian Exhibition puts to us. After fifty years of reign, the Queen throws down the gauntlet; and speaking through the medium of the Victorian Exhibition, she says: "This is how I have understood art; this is what I have done for art; I countenance, I court, I challenge inquiry."
Yes, truly the Victorian Exhibition is an object-lesson in Royalty. If all other records were destroyed, the historian, five hundred years hence, could reconst.i.tute the psychological characteristics, the mentality, of the present reigning family from the pictures on exhibition there. For in the art that it has chosen to patronise (a more united family on the subject of art it would be hard to imagine--nowhere can we detect the slightest difference of opinion), the Queen, her spouse, and her children appear to be singularly _bourgeois_: a staid German family congenially and stupidly commonplace, accepting a little too seriously its mission of crowns and sceptres, and accomplishing its duties, grown out of date, somewhat witlessly, but with heavy dignity and forbearance. Waiving all racial characteristics, the German _bourgeois_ family mind appears plainly enough in all these family groups; no other mind could have permitted the perpetration of so much stolid family placidity, of so much "_frauism_". "Exhibit us in our family circle, in our coronation robes, in our wedding dresses, let the likeness be correct and the colours bright--we leave the rest to you." Such seems to have been the Royal artistic edict issued in the beginning of the present reign. In no instance has the choice fallen on a painter of talent; but the middling from every country in Europe seems to have found a ready welcome at the Court of Queen Victoria. We find there middling Germans, middling Italians, middling Frenchmen--and all receiving money and honour from our Queen.
The Queen and the Prince Consort do not seem to have been indifferent to art, but to have deliberately, and with rare instinct, always picked out what was most worthless; and regarded in the light of doc.u.ments, these pictures are valuable; for they tell plainly the real mind of the Royal Family. We see at once that the family mind is wholly devoid of humour; the very faintest sense of humour would have saved them from exhibiting themselves in so ridiculous a light. The large picture of the Queen and the Prince Consort surrounded with their children, the Prince Consort in knee-breeches, showing a finely-turned calf, is sufficient to occasion the overthrow of a dynasty if humour were the prerogative of the many instead of being that of the few. This masterpiece is signed, "By G. Belli, after F.
Winterhalter"; and in this picture we get the mediocrity of Italy and Germany in quintessential strength. These pictures also help us to realise the private life of our Royal Family. It must have spent a great deal of time in being painted. The family pictures are numberless, and the family taste is visible upon them all. And there must be some strange magnetism in the family to be able to transfuse so much of itself into the minds of so many painters. So like is one picture to another, that the Exhibition seems to reveal the secret that for the last fifty years the family has done nothing but paint itself. And in these days, when every one does a little painting, it is easy to imagine the family at work from morn to eve. Immediately after breakfast the easels are set up, the Queen paints the Princess Louise, the Duke of Edinburgh paints Princess Beatrice, the Princess Alice paints the Prince of Wales, etc. The easels are removed for lunch, and the moment the meal is over work is resumed.
After having seen the Victorian Exhibition, I cannot imagine the Royal Family in any other way; I am convinced that is how they must have pa.s.sed their lives for the last quarter of a century. The names of G.
Belli and F. Winterhalter are no more than flimsy make-believes. And are there not excellent reasons for holding to this opinion? Has not the Queen published, or rather surrept.i.tiously issued, certain little collections of drawings? Has not the Princess Louise, the artist of the family, publicly exhibited sculpture? The Princess Beatrice, has she not done something in the way of designing? The Duke of Edinburgh, he is a musician. And it is in these little excursions into art that the family most truly manifests its _bourgeois_ nature. The sincerest _bourgeois_ are those who scribble little poems and smudge little canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a dinner-party. The amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. A staid German family dabbling in art in its leisure hours--the most inartistic, the most Philistine of all Royal families--this is the lesson that the Victorian Exhibition impresses upon us.
But why should not the Royal Family decorate its palaces with bad art?
Why should it not choose the most worthless portrait-painters of all countries? Dynasties have never been overthrown for failure in artistic taste. I am aware how insignificant the matter must seem to the majority of readers, and should not have raised the question, but since the question has been raised, and by her Majesty, I am well within my right in attempting a reply. The Victorian Exhibition is a flagrant representation of a _bourgeois_, though a royal, family. From the beginning to the end the Exhibition is this and nothing but this.
In the Entrance Hall, at the doorway, we are confronted with the Queen"s chief artistic sin--Sir Edgar Boehm.
Thirty years ago this mediocre German sculptor came to England. The Queen discovered him at once, as if by instinct, and she employed him on work that an artist would have shrunk from--namely, statuettes in Highland costume. The German sculptor turned out this odious and ridiculous costume as fast as any Scotch tailor. He was then employed on busts, and he did the entire Royal Family in marble. Again, it would be hard to give a reason why Royalty should not be allowed to possess bad sculpture. The pity is that the private taste of Royalty creates the public taste of the nation, and the public result of the gracious interest that the Queen was pleased to take in Mr. Edgar Boehm, is the disfigurement of London by several of the worst statues it is possible to conceive. It is bad enough that we should have German princes foisted upon us, but German statues are worse. The ancient site of Temple Bar has been disfigured by Boehm with statues of the Queen and the Prince of Wales, so stupidly conceived and so stupidly modelled that they look like figures out of a Noah"s Ark. The finest site in London, Hyde Park Corner, has been disfigured by Boehm with a statue of the Duke of Wellington so bad, so paltry, so characteristically the work of a German mechanic, that it is impossible to drive down the beautiful road without experiencing a sensation of discomfort and annoyance. The original statue that was pulled down in the interests of Boehm was, it is true, bad English, but bad English suits the landscape better than cheap German. And this disgraceful thing will remain, disfiguring the finest site in London, until, perhaps, some dynamiter blows the thing up, ostensibly to serve the cause of Ireland, but really in the interests of art. At the other end of the park we have the Albert Memorial. We sympathise with the Queen in her grief for the Prince Consort, but we cannot help wishing that her grief were expressed more artistically.
A city so naturally beautiful as London can do without statues; the question is not so much how to get good statues, but how to protect London against bad statues. If for the next twenty-five years we might celebrate the memory of each great man by the destruction of a statue we might undo a great part of the mischief for which Royalty is mainly responsible. I do not speak of Boehm"s Jubilee coinage--the melting-pot will put that right one of these days--but his statues, beyond some slight hope from the dynamiters, will be always with us.
Had he lived, London would have disappeared under his statues; at the time of his death they were popping up by twos and threes all over the town. Our lovely city is our inheritance; London should be to the Londoner what Athens is to the Athenian. What would the Athenians have thought of Pericles if he had proposed the ornamentation of the city with Persian sculpture? Boehm is dead, but another German will be with us before long, and, under Royal patronage, will continue the odious disfigurement of our city. If our Royal Family possessed any slight aesthetic sense its influence might be turned to the service of art; but as it has none, it would be well for Royalty to refrain. Art can take care of itself if left to the genius of the nation, and freed from foreign control. The Prince of Wales has never affected any artistic sympathies. For this we are thankful: we have nothing to reproach him with except the unfortunate "Roll-call" incident. Royalty is to-day but a social figment--it has long ago ceased to control our politics. Would that Royalty would take another step and abandon its influence in art.
ART PATRONS.
The general art patron in England is a brewer or distiller.
Five-and-forty is the age at which he begins to make his taste felt in the art world, and the cause of his collection is the following, or an a.n.a.logous reason. After a heavy dinner, when the smoke-cloud is blowing l.u.s.tily, Brown says to Smith: "I know you don"t care for pictures, so you wouldn"t think that Leader was worth fifteen hundred pounds; well, I paid all that, and something more too, at the last Academy for it." Smith, who has never heard of Leader, turns slowly round on his chair, and his brain, stupefied with strong wine and tobacco, gradually becomes aware of a village by a river bank seen in black silhouette upon a sunset sky. Wine and food have made him happily sentimental, and he remembers having seen a village looking very like that village when he was paying his attentions to the eldest Miss Jones. Yes, it was looking like that, all quite sharp and clear on a yellow sky, and the trees were black and still just like those trees. Smith determines that he too shall possess a Leader. He may not be quite as big a man as Brown, but he has been doing pretty well lately.... There"s no reason why he shouldn"t have a Leader. So irredeemable mischief has been done at Brown"s dinner-party: another five or six thousand a year will henceforth exert its mighty influence in the service of bad art.
Poor Smith, who never looked attentively at a picture before, does not see that what inspires such unutterable memories of Ethel Jones is but a magnified Christmas card; the dark trees do not suggest treacle to him, nor the sunset sky the rich cream which he is beginning to feel he partook of too freely; he does not see the thin drawing, looking as if it had been laboriously scratched out with a nail, nor yet the feeble handling which suggests a child and a pot of gum. But of technical achievement how should Mr. Smith know anything?--that mysterious something, different in every artist, taking a thousand forms, and yet always recognisable to the educated eye. How should poor Smith see anything in the picture except what Mr. Whistler wittily calls "rather a foolish sunset"? To perceive Mr. Leader"s deficiency in technical accomplishment may seem easy to the young girl who has studied drawing for six months at South Kensington; but Smith is a stupid man who has money-grubbed for five-and-twenty years in the City; and through the fumes of wine and tobacco he resolves to have a Leader. He does not hesitate, he consults no one--and why should he?
Mr. Leader put R.A. after his name--he charges fifteen hundred.
Besides, the village on the river bank with a sunset behind is obviously a beautiful thing.... The mischief has been done, the irredeemable mischief has been achieved. Smith buys a Leader, and the Leader begets a Long, the Long begets a Fildes, the Fildes begets a d.i.c.ksee, the d.i.c.ksee begets a Herkomer.
Such is the genesis of Mr. Smith"s collection, and it is typical of a hundred now being formed in London. In ten years Mr. Smith has laid out forty or fifty thousand pounds. He asks his friends if they don"t like his collection quite as well as Brown"s: he urges that he can"t see much difference himself. Nor is there much difference. The same articles--that is to say, identically similar articles--vulgarly painted sunsets, vulgarly painted doctors, vulgarly painted babies, vulgarly painted manor-houses with saddle-horses and a young lady hesitating on the steps, have been acquired at or about the same prices. The popular R.A.s have appealed to popular sentiment, and popular sentiment has responded; and the City has paid the price. But Time is not at all a sentimental person: he is quite unaffected by the Adelphi reality of the doctor"s face or the mawkish treacle of the village church; and when the collection is sold at auction twenty years hence, it will fetch about a fourth of the price that was paid.
Mr. Smith"s artistic taste knows no change; it was formed on Mr.
Brown"s Leader, and developing logically from it, pa.s.sing through Long, Fildes, and d.i.c.ksee, it touches high-water mark at Hook. The pretty blue sea and the brown fisher-folk call for popular admiration almost as imperatively as the sunset in the village churchyard; and when an artist--for in his adventures among dealers Mr. Smith met one or two--points out how much less like treacle Mr. Hook is than Mr.