Modern Painting Part 6

Leader, and how much more flowing and supple the drawing of the sea-sh.o.r.e is than the village seen against the sunset, Mr. Smith thinks he understands what is meant. But remembering the fifteen hundred pounds he paid for the cream sky and the treacle trees, he is quite sure that nothing could be better.

The ordinary perception of the artistic value of a picture does not arise above Mr. Smith's. I have studied the artistic capacity of the ordinary mind long and diligently, and I know my a.n.a.lysis of it is exact; and if I do not exaggerate the artistic incapabilities of Mr.

Smith, it must be admitted that the influence which his money permits him to exercise in the art world is an evil influence, and is exercised persistently to the very great detriment of the real artist.

But it will be said that the moneyed man cannot be forbidden to buy the pictures that please him. No, but men should not be elected Academicians merely because their pictures are bought by City men, and this is just what is done. Do not think that Sir John Millais is unaware that Mr. Long's pictures, artistically considered, are quite worthless. Do not think that Mr. Orchardson does not turn in contempt from Mr. Leader's tea-trays. Do not think that every artist, however humble, however ignorant, does not know that Mr. Goodall's portrait of Mrs. Kettlewell stands quite beyond the range of criticism. Mr. Long, Mr. Leader, and Mr. Goodall were not elected Academicians because the Academicians who voted for them approved of their pictures, but because Mr. Smith and his like purchased their pictures; and by electing these painters to Academic honours the taste of Mr. Smith receives official confirmation.

The public can distinguish very readily--far better than it gets credit for--between bad literature and good; nor is the public deaf to good music, but the public seems quite powerless to distinguish between good painting and bad. No, I am wrong; it distinguishes very well between bad painting and good, only it invariably prefers the bad. The language of speech we are always in progress of learning; and the language of music being similar to that of speech, it becomes easier to hear that Wagner is superior to Rossini than to see that Whistler is better than Leader. Of all languages none is so difficult, so varying, so complex, so evanescent, as that of paint; and yet it is precisely the works written in this language that every one believes himself able to understand, and ready to purchase at the expense of a large part of his fortune. If I could make such folk understand how illusory is their belief, what a service I should render to art--if I could only make them understand that the original taste of man is always for the obvious and the commonplace, and that it is only by great labour and care that man learns to understand as beautiful that which the uneducated eye considers ugly.

Why will the art patron never take advice? I should seek it if I bought pictures. If Degas were to tell me that a picture I had intended to buy was not a good one I should not buy it, and if Degas were to praise a picture in which I could see no merit I should buy it and look at it until I did. Such confession will make me appear weak-minded to many; but this is so, because much instruction is necessary even to understand how infinitely more Degas knows than any one else can possibly know. The art patron never can understand as much about art as the artist, but he can learn a good deal. It is fifteen years since I went to Degas's studio for the first time. I looked at his portraits, at his marvellous ballet-girls, at the washerwomen, and understood nothing of what I saw. My blindness to Degas's merit alarmed me not a little, and I said to Manet--to whom I paid a visit in the course of the afternoon--"It is very odd, Manet, I understand your work, but for the life of me I cannot see the great merit you attribute to Degas." To hear that some one has not understood your rival's work as well as he understands your own is sweet flattery, and Manet only murmured under his breath that it was very odd, since there were astonishing things in Degas.

Since those days I have learnt to understand Degas; but unfortunately I have not been able to transmit my knowledge to any one. When important pictures by Degas could be bought for a hundred and a hundred and fifty pounds apiece, I tried hard to persuade some City merchants to buy them. They only laughed and told me they liked Long better. Degas has gone up fifty per cent, Long has declined fifty per cent. Whistler's can be bought to-day for comparatively small prices; [Footnote: This was written before the Whistler boom.] in twenty years they will cost three times as much; in twenty years Mr. Leader's pictures will probably not be worth half as much as they are to-day.

What I am saying is the merest commonplace, what every artist knows; but go to an art patron--a City merchant--and ask him to pay five hundred for a Degas, and he will laugh at you; he will say, "Why, I could get a d.i.c.ksee or a Leader for a thousand or two."

PICTURE DEALERS.

In the eighteenth century, and the centuries that preceded it, artists were visited by their patrons, who bought what the artist had to sell, and commissioned him to paint what he was pleased to paint. But in our time the artist is visited by a showily-dressed man, who comes into the studio whistling, his hat on the back of his head. This is the West-End dealer: he throws himself into an arm-chair, and if there is nothing on the easels that appeals to the uneducated eye, the dealer lectures the artist on his folly in not considering the exigencies of public taste. On public taste--that is to say, on the uneducated eye--the dealer is a very fine authority. His father was a dealer before him, and the son was brought up on prices, he lisped in prices, and was taught to reverence prices. He cannot see the pictures for prices, and he lies back, looking round distractedly, not listening to the timid, struggling artist who is foolishly venturing an explanation. Perhaps the public might come to his style of painting if he were to persevere. The dealer stares at the ceiling, and his lips recall his last evening at the music-hall. If the public don't like it--why, they don't like it, and the sooner the artist comes round the better. That is what he has to say on the subject, and, if sneers and sarcasm succeed in bringing the artist round to popular painting, the dealer buys; and when he begins to feel sure that the uneducated eye really hungers for the new man, he speaks about getting up a boom in the newspapers.

The Press is in truth the great dupe; the unpaid jackal that goes into the highways and byways for the dealer! The stockbroker gets the Bouguereau, the Herkomer, the Alfred East, and the Dagnan-Bouveret that his soul sighs for; but the Press gets nothing except unreadable copy, and yet season after season the Press falls into the snare. It seems only necessary for a dealer to order an artist to frame the contents of his sketch-book, and to design an invitation card--"Scenes on the Coast of Denmark", sketches made by Mr. So-and-so during the months of June, July, and August--to secure half a column of a goodly number of London and provincial papers--to put it plainly, an advertis.e.m.e.nt that Reckitts or Pears or Beecham could not get for hundreds of pounds. One side of the invitation card is filled up with a specimen design, usually such a futile little thing as we might expect to find in a young lady's sketch-book: "Copenhagen at Low Tide", "Copenhagen at High Tide", "View of the Cathedral from the Mouth of the River", "The Hills of----as seen from off the Coast". And this topography every art critic will chronicle, and his chronicling will be printed free of charge amongst the leading columns of the paper. Nor is this the worst case. The request to notice a collection of paintings and drawings made by the late Mr. So-and-so seems even more flagrant, for then there is no question of benefiting a young artist who stands in need of encouragement or recognition; the show is simply a dealer's exhibition of his ware. True, that the ware may be so rare and excellent that it becomes a matter of public interest; if so, the critic is bound to notice the show. But the ordinary show--a collection of works by a tenth-rate French artist--why should the Press advertise such wares gratis? The public goes to theatres and to flower-shows and to race-courses, but it does not go to these dealers'

shows--the dealer's friends and acquaintances go on private view day, and for the rest of the season the shop is quieter than the tobacconist's next door.

For the last month every paper I took up contained glowing accounts of Messrs. Tooth & MacLean's galleries (picture dealers do not keep shops--they keep galleries), glowing accounts of a large and extensive a.s.sortment of Dagnan-Bouveret, Bouguereau, Rosa Bonheur: very nice things in their way, just such things as I would take Alderman Samuelson to see.

These notices, taken out in the form of legitimate advertis.e.m.e.nt, would run into hundreds of pounds; and I am quite at a loss to understand why the Press abandons so large a part of its revenue. For if the Press did not notice these exhibitions, the dealers would be forced into the advertising columns, and when a little notice was published of the ware, it would be done as a little return--as a little encouragement for advertising, on the same principle as ladies'

papers publish visits to dressmakers. The present system of noticing Messrs Tooth's and not noticing Messrs. Pears' is to me wholly illogical; and, to use the word which makes every British heart beat quicker--unbusinesslike. But with business I have nothing to do--my concern is with art; and if the noticing of dealers' shows were not inimical to art, I should not have a word to say against the practice.

Messrs. Tooth & MacLean trade in Salon and Academy pictures, so the notices the Press prints are the equivalent of a subvention granted by the Press for the protection of this form of art. If I were a statistician, it would interest me to turn over the files of the newspapers for the last fifty years and calculate how much Messrs.

Agnew have had out of the Press in the shape of free advertis.e.m.e.nt.

And when we think what sort of art this vast sum of money went to support, we cease to wonder at the decline of public taste.

My quarrel is no more with Messrs. Agnew than it is with Messrs. Tooth & MacLean; my quarrel--I should say, my reprimand--is addressed to the Press--to the Press that foolishly, unwittingly, not knowing what it was doing, threw such power into the hands of the dealers that our exhibitions are now little more than the tributaries of the Bond Street shop? This statement will shock many; but let them think, and they will see it could not be otherwise. Messrs. Agnew have thousands and thousands of pounds invested in the Academy--that is to say, in the works of Academicians. When they buy the work of any one outside of the Academy, they talk very naturally of their new man to their friends the Academicians, and the Academicians are anxious to please their best customer. It was in some such way that Mr. Burne-Jones's election was decided. For Mr. Burne-Jones was held in no Academic esteem. His early pictures had been refused at Burlington House, and he resolved never to send there again. For many years he remained firm in his determination. In the meantime the public showed unmistakable signs of accepting Mr. Jones, whereupon Messrs. Agnew also accepted Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones was popular; he was better than popular, he stood on the verge of popularity; but there was nothing like making things safe--Jones's election to the Academy would do that. Jones's scruples would have to be overcome; he must exhibit once in the Academy. The Academicians would be satisfied with that. Mr. Jones did exhibit in the Academy; he was elected on the strength of this one exhibit. He has never exhibited since. These are the facts: confute them who may, explain them who can.

It is true that the dealer cannot be got rid of--he is a vice inherent in our civilisation; but if the Press withdrew its subvention, his monopoly would be curtailed, and art would be recruited by new talent, at present submerged. Art would gradually withdraw from the bl.u.s.ter and boom of an arrogant commercialism, and would attain her olden dignity--that of a quiet handicraft. And in this great reformation only two cla.s.ses would suffer--the art critics and the dealers. The newspaper proprietors would profit largely, and the readers of newspapers would profit still more largely, for they would no longer be bored by the publication of dealers' catalogues expanded with insignificant comment.

MR. BURNE-JONES AND THE ACADEMY.

_To the Editor of "The Speaker"._

SIR,--Your art critic "G. M." is in error on a matter of fact, and as everybody knows the relationship between fact and theory, I am afraid his little error vitiates the argument he propounds with so much vigour. It was _after_, and not before, his election as an a.s.sociate that Mr. Burne-Jones made his solitary appearance as an exhibitor at the Royal Academy.--Yours truly, etc.,

R. I.

Sir,-It has always been my rule not to enter into argument with my critics, but in the instance of "R. I." I find myself obliged to break my rule. "R. I." thinks that the mistake I slipped into regarding Mr. Burne-Jones's election as an a.s.sociate vitiates the argument which he says I propound with vigour. I, on the contrary, think that the fact that Mr. Burne-Jones was elected as an a.s.sociate before he had exhibited in the Royal Academy advances my argument. Being in doubt as to the particular fact, I unconsciously imagined the general fact, and when man's imagination intervenes it is always to soften, to attenuate crudities which only nature is capable of.

For twenty years, possibly for more, Mr. Burne-Jones was a resolute opponent of the Royal Academy, as resolute, though not so truculent, an opponent as Mr. Whistler. When he became a popular painter Mr.

Agnew gave him a commission of fifteen thousand pounds--the largest, I believe, ever given--to paint four pictures, the "Briar Rose"

series. Some time after--before he has exhibited in the Academy--Mr.

Jones is elected as an a.s.sociate. The Academicians cannot plead that their eyes were suddenly opened to his genius. If this miracle had happened they would not have left him an a.s.sociate, but would have on the first vacancy elected him a full Academician. How often have they pa.s.sed him over? Is Mr. Jones the only instance of a man being elected to the Academy who had never exhibited there? Perhaps "R. I."

will tell us. I do not know, and have not time to hunt up records.

G. M.

THE ALDERMAN IN ART.

Manchester and Liverpool are rival cities. They have matched themselves one against the other, and the prize they are striving for is--Which shall be the great art-centre of the North of England. The artistic rivalry of the two cities has become obvious of late years.

Manchester bids against Liverpool, Liverpool bids against Manchester; the results of the bidding are discussed, and so an interest in art is created. It was Manchester that first threw her strength into this artistic rivalry. It began with the decorations which Manchester commissioned Mr. Madox Brown to paint for the town hall. Manchester's choice of an artist was an excellent and an original one. Mr. Madox Brown was not an Academician; he was not known to the general public; he merely commanded the respect of his brother-artists.

The painting of these pictures was the work of years; the placing of every one was duly chronicled in the press, and it was understood in London that Manchester was entirely satisfied. But lo! on the placing in position of the last picture but one of the series an unseemly dispute was raised by some members of the Corporation, and it was seriously debated in committee whether the best course to pursue would not be to pa.s.s a coat of whitewash over the offending picture. It is impossible to comment adequately on such barbarous conduct; perhaps at no distant date it will be proposed to burn some part of Mrs. Ryland's perfect gift--the Althorp Library. There may be some books in that library which do not meet with some councillor's entire approval.

Barbarism on one side, and princely generosity on the other, combined to fix attention upon Manchester, and, in common with a hundred others, I found myself thinking on the relation of Manchester and Liverpool to art, and speculating on the direction that these new influences were taking.

There are two exhibitions now open in Manchester and Liverpool--the permanent and the annual. The permanent collections must first occupy our attention, for it is through them that we shall learn what sort and kind of artistic taste obtains in the North. At first sight these collections present no trace of any distinct influence. They seem to be simply miscellaneous purchases, made from every artist whose name happens to be the fashion; and considered as permanent ill.u.s.trations of the various fashions that have prevailed in Bond Street during the last ten years, these collections are curious and perhaps valuable doc.u.ments in the history of art. But is there any real a.n.a.logy between a dressmaker's shop and a picture gallery? Plumes are bought because they are "very much worn just now", but then plumes are not so expensive as pictures, and it seems to be hardly worth while to buy pictures for the sake of the momentary fashion in painting which they represent.

Manchester and Liverpool have not, however, grasped the essential fact that it is impossible to form an art gallery by sending to London for the latest fashions. Now and then the advice of some gentleman knowing more about art than his colleagues has found expression in the purchase of a work of art; but the picture that hangs next to the fortuitous purchase tells how the taste of the cultured individual was overruled by the taste of the uncultured ma.s.s at the next meeting. I could give many, but two instances must suffice to explain and to prove my point. Two years ago Mr. Albert Moore exhibited a very beautiful picture in the Academy--three women, one sleeping and two sitting on a yellow couch, in front of a starlit and moonlit sea. In the same Academy there was exhibited a picture by Mr. Bartlett--a picture of some gondoliers rowing or punting or sculling (I am ignorant of the aquatic habits of the Venetians) for a prize. The Liverpool Gallery has bought and hung these pictures side by side.

Such divagations of taste make the visitor smile, and he thinks perforce of the accounts of the stormy meetings of councillors that find their way into the papers. Artistic appreciation of these two pictures in the same individual is not possible. What should we think of a man who said that he did not know which he preferred-a poem by Tennyson, or a story out of the _London Journal_? Catholicity of taste does not mean an absolute abandonment of all discrimination; and some thread of intellectual kinship must run through the many various manifestations of artistic temperament which go to form a collection of pictures. Things may be various without being discrepant.

The Manchester Gallery has purchased Lawson's beautiful picture, "The Deserted Garden"; likewise Mr. Fildes' picture of a group of Venetian girls sitting on steps, the princ.i.p.al figure in a blue dress with an orange handkerchief round her neck, the simple--I may say child-like--scheme of colour beyond which Mr. Fildes never seems to stray. The Lawson and the Fildes agree no better than do the Moore and the Bartlett; and the only thing that occurs to me is that the cities should toss up which should go for Fildes and Bartlett, and which for Lawson and Moore. By such division harmony would be attained, and one city would be going the wrong road, the other the right road; at present both are going zigzag.

But notwithstanding the multifarious tastes displayed in these collections, and the artistic chaos they represent, we can, when we examine them closely, detect an influence which abides though it fluctuates, and this influence is that of our discredited Academy. The Manchester and Liverpool collection are merely weak reflections of the Chantrey Fund collection. Now, if the object of these cities be to adopt the standard of taste that obtains in Burlington House, to abdicate their own taste--if they have any--and to fortify themselves against all chance of acquiring a taste in art, it would clearly be better for the two corporations to hand over the task of acquiring pictures to the Academicians. The responsibility will be gladly accepted, and the trust will be administered with the same honesty and straightforwardness as has been displayed in the administration of the moneys which the unfortunate Chantrey entrusted to the care of the Academicians.

The sowing of evil seed is an irreparable evil; none can tell where the wind will carry it, and unexpected crops are found far and wide. I had thought that the harm occasioned to art by the Academy and its corollary, the Chantrey Fund, began and ended in London. But in Manchester and Liverpool I was speedily convinced of my mistake. Art in the provinces is little more than a reflection of the Academy. The majority of the pictures represent the taste of men who have no knowledge of art, and who, to disguise their ignorance, follow the advice which the Academy gives to provincial England in the pictures it purchases under the terms--or, rather, under its own reading of the terms--of the Chantrey Bequest Fund. One of the first things I heard in Manchester was that the committee had been fortunate enough to secure the nude figure which Mr. Hacker exhibited this year in the Academy. And on my failing to express unbounded admiration for the purchase, I was asked if I was aware that the Academy had purchased "The Annunciation" for the Chantrey Bequest Fund. "Surely," said a member of the committee, "you agree that our picture is the better of the two." I answered: "Poor Mr. Chantrey's money always goes to buy the worst, or as nearly as possible the worst, picture the artist ever painted--the picture for which the artist would never be likely to find a purchaser."

Last month the Liverpool County Council a.s.sembled to discuss the purchase of two pictures recommended by the art committee--"Summer", by Mr. Hornel; and "The Higher Alps", by Mr. Stott, of Oldham. The discussion that ensued is described by the _Liverpool Daily Post_ as "amusing". It was ludicrous, and those who do not care a snap of the fingers about art might think it amusing. The joke was started by Mr.

Lynskey, who declared that the two pictures in question were mere daubs. Mr. Lynskey did not think that the Glasgow school of painting had yet been recognised by the public, and until it had he did not see why the corporation should pay 500 for these two productions, merely for the sake of experimenting. Thereby we are to understand that in forming a collection of pictures it is the taste of the public that must be considered. "Of course," cry the aldermen; "we are here to supply the public with what it wants." I repeat, the corporations of Manchester and Liverpool do not seem to have yet grasped the fact that there is no real a.n.a.logy between a picture gallery and a dressmaker's shop.

The next speaker was Mr. Burgess. He could not imagine how any one could recommend the purchase of such pictures. The Mr. Burgesses of twenty-five years ago could not understand how any one could buy Corots. Mr. Smith asked if it were really a fact that the committee had bought the pictures. He was a.s.sured that they would be bought only if the council approved of them; whereupon Alderman Samuelson declared that if that were so they would not be bought. Dr. c.u.mmins compared the pictures to cattle in the parish pound, and it is reported that the remark caused much laughter. Then some one said--I think it was Mr. Smith--that the pictures had horrified him; whereupon there was more laughter. Then a member proposed that they should have the pictures brought in, to which proposition a member objected, amid much laughter. Then Mr. Daughan suggested that the chairman and vice-chairman should explain the meaning of the pictures to the council. More laughter and more County Council humour. The meeting was a typical meeting, and it furnishes us with the typical councillor.

In the report of the meeting before me a certain alderman seems to have been as garrulous as he was irrepressible. He not only spoke at greater length than the rest of the councillors put together, but did not hesitate to frequently interrupt the members of the committee with remarks. Speaking of pictures by Millais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti, he said:--"We have had exhibitions, and the works of these great artists were at various times closely scrutinised, and they had borne the most careful scrutiny that could be directed to them. Now I defy you to take a number of pictures such as those in dispute, and do the same with them." No one could have spoken the words I have quoted who was not absolutely ignorant of the art of painting. Imagine the poor alderman going round, magnifying-gla.s.s in hand, subjecting Millais and Holman Hunt to the closest scrutiny. And how easy it is to determine what was pa.s.sing in his mind during the examination of the Glasgow school! "I can't see where this foot finishes; the painter was not able to draw it, so he covered it up with a shadow. In the pictures of that fellow Guthrie the gra.s.s is merely a tint of green, whereas in the 'Shadow of the Cross' I can count all the shavings."

But we will not seek to penetrate further into this very alderman-like mind. He declared that the Glasgow school of painting was "no more in comparison to what they recognised as a school of painting than a charity school was to the University of Oxford." I am sorry our alderman did not say what was the school of painting that he and his fellow-aldermen admired. In the absence of any precise information on the point I will venture to suggest that the school they recognise is the school of Bartlett and Solomon. The gallery possesses two large works by these masters--the Gondoliers, and the great picture of Samson, which fills an entire end of one room. But what would be of still greater interest would be to hear our alderman explain what he meant by this astonishing sentence:--"The only motive of Mr. Hornel's picture is a mode of art or rather artifice, in introducing a number of colours with the idea of making them harmonise; and this could be done, and had been done, by means of the palette-knife."

I have not the least idea what this means, but I am none the less interested. For, although void of sense, the alderman's words allow me to look down a long line of ill.u.s.trious ancestry--Prud'homme, Chadband, Stiggins, Phillion, the apothecary Homais in "Madame Bovary". After pa.s.sing through numerous transformations, an eternal idea at last incarnates itself in a final form. How splendid our alderman is! Never did a corporation produce so fine a flower. He is sententious, he is artistic. And how he lets fall from his thick lips those sc.r.a.ps of art-jargon which he picked up in the studio where he sat for his portrait! He is moral; he thinks that nude figures should not be sanctioned by the corporation; he believes in the Bank, and proposes the Queen's health as if he were fulfilling an important duty; he goes to the Academy, and dictates the aestheticism of his native town. There he is, his hand in his white waistcoat, in the pose chosen for the presentation portrait, at the moment when he delivered himself of his famous apophthegm, "When the nude comes into art, art flies out of the window."

The alderman is the reef which for the last five-and-twenty years has done so much to ruin and to wreck every artistic movement which the enthusiasm and intelligence of individuals have set on foot. The mere checking of the obstruction of the individual will not suffice; other aldermen will arise--equally ignorant, equally talkative, equally obstructive. And until the race is relegated to its proper function, bimetallism and sewage, the incidents I have described will happen again and again.

A marvellous accident that it should have come to be believed that a corporation could edit a picture gallery! Whence did the belief originate? whence did it spring? and in what fancied substance of fact did it catch root? A tapeworm-like notion--come we know not whence, nor how. And it has thriven un.o.bserved, though signs of its presence stare plainly enough in the pallid face of the wretched gallery.

Curious it is that it should have remained undetected so long; curious, indeed, it is that straying thought should have led no one to remember that every great art collection of the world has grown out of an individual intelligence. Collections have been worthily continued, but each successive growth has risen in obedience to the will of one supreme authority; and that it should have ever come to be believed that twenty aldermen, whose lives are mainly spent in considering bank-rates, bimetallism, and sewage, could collect pictures of permanent value is on the face of it as wild a folly as ever tried the strength of the strait waistcoats of Hanwell or Bedlam. But as Manchester and Liverpool enjoy as fair a measure of sanity as the rest of the kingdom, we perforce must admit the theory of unconscious acceptation of a chance idea.

But I take it that what is essential in my argument is not to prove that aldermen know little about art, but that twenty men, wise or foolish, ignorant or learned, cannot edit a picture gallery. Proving the obvious is not an amusing task, but it is sometimes a necessary task. It may be thought, too, that I might be more brief; the elderly maxim about brevity being the soul of wit may be flung in my teeth.