Selections from Previous Works Part 17

"Mais il y a trois cents ans depuis le temps de Henri Huit."

"Eh bien; chacun a ses convictions; vous ne parlez pas contre la religion?"

"Jamais, jamais, monsieur, j'ai un respect enorme pour l'eglise Catholique."

"Monsieur, faites comme chez vous; allez ou vous voulez; vous trouverez toutes les portes ouvertes. Amusez vous bien."

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART. (FROM CHAPTER XIII. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.)

Those who know the Italians will see no sign of decay about them. They are the quickest-witted people in the world, and at the same time have much more of the old Roman steadiness than they are generally credited with. Not only is there no sign of degeneration, but, as regards practical matters, there is every sign of health and vigorous development. The North Italians are more like Englishmen, both in body, and mind, than any other people whom I know; I am continually meeting Italians whom I should take for Englishmen if I did not know their nationality. They have all our strong points, but they have more grace and elasticity of mind than we have.

Priggishness is the sin which doth most easily beset middle-cla.s.s, and so- called educated Englishmen; we call it purity and culture, but it does not much matter what we call it. It is the almost inevitable outcome of a university education, and will last as long as Oxford and Cambridge do, but not much longer.

Lord Beaconsfield sent Lothair to Oxford; it is with great pleasure that I see he did not send Endymion. My friend Jones called my attention to this, and we noted that the growth observable throughout Lord Beaconsfield's life was continued to the end. He was one of those who, no matter how long he lived, would have been always growing: this is what makes his later novels so much better than those of Thackeray or d.i.c.kens.

There was something of the child about him to the last. Earnestness was his greatest danger, but if he did not quite overcome it (as who indeed can? It is the last enemy that shall be subdued), he managed to veil it with a fair amount of success. As for Endymion, of course if Lord Beaconsfield had thought Oxford would be good for him, he could, as Jones pointed out to me, just as well have killed Mr. Ferrars a year or two later. We feel satisfied, therefore, that Endymion's exclusion from a university was carefully considered, and are glad.

I will not say that priggishness is absolutely unknown among the North Italians; sometimes one comes upon a young Italian who wants to learn German, but not often. Priggism, or whatever the substantive is, is as essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is a Semitic characteristic; and if an Italian happens to be a prig, he will, like Tacitus, invariably show a hankering after German inst.i.tutions. The idea, however, that the Italians were ever a finer people than they are now, will not pa.s.s muster with those who knew them.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that modern Italian art is in many respects as bad as it was once good. I will confine myself to painting only. The modern Italian painters, with very few exceptions, paint as badly as we do, or even worse, and their motives are as poor as is their painting. At an exhibition of modern Italian pictures, I generally feel that there is hardly a picture on the walls but is a sham--that is to say, painted not from love of this particular subject and an irresistible desire to paint it, but from a wish to paint an academy picture, and win money or applause.

The last rays of the sunset of genuine art are to be found in the votive pictures at Locarno or Oropa, and in many a wayside chapel. In these, religious art still lingers as a living language, however rudely spoken.

In these alone is the story told, not as in the Latin and Greek verses of the scholar, who thinks he has succeeded best when he has most concealed his natural manner of expressing himself, but by one who knows what he wants to say, and says it in his mother-tongue, shortly, and without caring whether or not his words are in accordance with academic rules. I regret to see photography being introduced for votive purposes, and also to detect in some places a disposition on the part of the authorities to be a little ashamed of these pictures and to place them rather out of sight.

The question is, how has the falling-off in Italian painting been caused?

And by doing what may we again get Bellinis and Andrea Mantegnas as in old time? The fault does not lie in any want of raw material: nor yet does it lie in want of taking pains. The modern Italian painter frets himself to the full as much as his predecessor did--if the truth were known, probably a great deal more. I am sure t.i.tian did not take much pains after he was more than about twenty years old. It does not lie in want of schooling or art education. For the last three hundred years, ever since the Caraccis opened their academy at Bologna, there has been no lack of art education in Italy. Curiously enough, the date of the opening of the Bolognese Academy coincides as nearly as may be with the complete decadence of Italian painting. The academic system trains boys to study other people's works rather than nature, and, as Leonardo da Vinci so well says, it makes them nature's grandchildren and not her children. This I believe is at any rate half the secret of the whole matter.

If half-a-dozen young Italians could be got together with a taste for drawing; if they had power to add to their number; if they were allowed to see paintings and drawings done up to the year A.D. 1510, and votive pictures and the comic papers; if they were left with no other a.s.sistance than this, absolutely free to please themselves, and could be persuaded not to try and please any one else, I believe that in fifty years we should have all that was ever done repeated with fresh naivete, and as much more delightfully than even by the best old masters, as these are more delightful than anything we know of in cla.s.sic painting. The young plants keep growing up abundantly every day--look at Bastianini, dead not ten years since--but they are browsed down by the academies. I remember there came out a book many years ago with the t.i.tle, "What becomes of all the clever little children?" I never saw the book, but the t.i.tle is pertinent.

Any man who can write, can draw to a not inconsiderable extent. Look at the Bayeux tapestry; yet Matilda probably never had a drawing lesson in her life. See how well prisoner after prisoner in the Tower of London has cut out this or that in the stone of his prison wall, without, in all probability, having ever tried his hand at drawing before. Look at my friend Jones, who has several ill.u.s.trations in this book. {294} The first year he went abroad with me he could hardly draw at all. He was no year away from England more than three weeks. How did he learn? On the old principle, if I am not mistaken. The old principle was for a man to be doing something which he was pretty strongly bent on doing, and to get a much younger one to help him. The younger paid nothing for instruction, but the elder took the work, as long as the relation of master and pupil existed between them. I, then, was mailing ill.u.s.trations for this book, and got Jones to help me. I let him see what I was doing, and derive an idea of the sort of thing I wanted, and then left him alone--beyond giving him the same kind of small criticism that I expected from himself--but I appropriated his work. That is the way to teach, and the result was that in an incredibly short time Jones could draw. The taking the work is a _sine qua non_. If I had not been going to have his work, Jones, in spite of all his quickness, would probably have been rather slower in learning to draw. Being paid in money is nothing like so good.

This is the system of apprenticeship _versus_ the academic system. The academic system consists in giving people the rules for doing things. The apprenticeship system consists in letting them do it, with just a trifle of supervision. "For all a rhetorician's rules," says my great namesake, "teach nothing but, to name his tools;" and academic rules generally are much the same as the rhetorician's. Some men can pa.s.s through academies unscathed, but they are very few, and in the main the academic influence is a baleful one, whether exerted in a university or a school. While young men at universities are being prepared for their entry into life, their rivals have already entered it. The most university and examination ridden people in the world are the Chinese, and they are the least progressive.

Men should learn to draw as they learn conveyancing: they should go into a painter's studio and paint on his pictures. I am told that half the conveyances in the country are drawn by pupils; there is no more mystery about painting than about conveyancing--not half in fact, I should think, so much. One may ask, How can the beginner paint, or draw conveyances, till he has learnt how to do so? The answer is, How can he learn, without at any rate trying to do? It is the old story, organ and function, power and desire, demand and supply, faith and reason, etc., the most virtuous action and interaction in the most vicious circle conceivable. If the beginner likes his subject, he will try: if he tries, he will soon succeed in doing something which shall open a door.

It does not matter what a man does; so long as he does it with the attention which affection engenders, he will come to see his way to something else. After long waiting he will certainly find one door open, and go through it. He will say to himself that he can never find another. He has found this, more by luck than cunning, but now he is done. Yet by and by he will see that there is _one_ more small unimportant door which he had overlooked, and he proceeds through this too. If he remains now for a long while and sees no other, do not let him fret; doors are like the kingdom of heaven, they come not by observation, least of all do they come by forcing: let him just go on doing what comes nearest, but doing it attentively, and a great wide door will one day spring into existence where there had been no sign of one but a little time previously. Only let him be always doing something, and let him cross himself now and again, for belief in the wondrous efficacy of crosses and crossing is the corner-stone of the creed of the evolutionists. Then after years--but not probably till after a great many--doors will open up all around, so many and so wide that the difficulty will not be to find a door, but rather to obtain the means of even hurriedly surveying a portion of those that stand invitingly open.

I know that just as good a case can be made out for the other side. It may be said as truly that unless a student is incessantly on the watch for doors he will never see them, and that unless he is incessantly pressing forward to the kingdom of heaven he will never find it--so that the kingdom does come by observation. It is with this as with everything else--there must be a harmonious fusing of two principles which are in flat contradiction to one another.

The question of whether it is better to abide quiet and take advantage of opportunities that come, or to go farther afield in search of them, is one of the oldest which living beings have had to deal with. It was on this that the first great schism or heresy arose in what was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The schism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects--animals and plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search of prey is formulated in animals; the other--that it is better on the whole to stay at home and profit by what comes--in plants. Some intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle during which the schism was not yet complete.

If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression further, I would say that it is the plants and not we who are the heretics. There can be no question about this; we are perfectly justified, therefore, in devouring them. Ours is the original and orthodox belief, for protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable; it is much more true to say that plants have descended from animals than animals from plants. Nevertheless, like many other heretics, plants have thriven very fairly well. There are a great many of them, and as regards beauty, if not wit--of a limited kind indeed, but still wit--it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the advantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters are narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the details of their business sufficiently well--as well as though they kept the most nicely- balanced system of accounts to show them their position. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our intolerant and bigoted way of trying to convert them: eating is only a violent mode of proselytising or converting; and we do convert them--to good animal substance, of our own way of thinking. If we have had no trouble with them, we say they have "agreed" with us; if we have been unable to make them see things from our points of view, we say they "disagree" with us, and avoid being on more than distant terms with them for the future. If we have helped ourselves to too much, we say we have got more than we can "manage." But then, animals are eaten too. They convert one another, almost as much as they convert plants. And an animal is no sooner dead than a plant will convert it back again. It is obvious, however, that no schism could have been so long successful, without having a good deal to say for itself.

Neither party has been quite consistent. Who ever is or can be? Every extreme--every opinion carried to its logical end--will prove to be an absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves: this is a kind of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what may be called travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many animals are sessile, and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are in the main liers-in-wait. It may appear, however, on the whole, like reopening a settled question to uphold the principle of being busy and attentive over a small area, rather than going to and fro over a larger one, for a mammal like man, but I think most readers will be with me in thinking that, at any rate as regards art and literature, it is he who does his small immediate work most carefully who will find doors open most certainly to him, that will conduct him into the richest chambers.

Many years ago, in New Zealand, I used sometimes to accompany a dray and team of bullocks who would have to be turned loose at night that they might feed. There were no hedges or fences then, so sometimes I could not find my team in the morning, and had no clue to the direction in which they had gone. At first I used to try and throw my soul into the bullocks' souls, so as to divine if possible what they would be likely to have done, and would then ride off ten miles in the wrong direction.

People used in those days to lose their bullocks sometimes for a week or fortnight--when they perhaps were all the time hiding in a gully hard by the place where they were turned out. After some time I changed my tactics. On losing my bullocks I would go to the nearest accommodation house, and stand drinks. Some one would ere long, as a general rule, turn up who had seen the bullocks. This case does not go quite on all fours with what I have been saying above, inasmuch as I was not very industrious in my limited area; but the standing drinks and inquiring was being as industrious as the circ.u.mstances would allow.

To return, universities and academies are an obstacle to the finding of doors in later life; partly because they push their young men too fast through doorways that the universities have provided, and so discourage the habit of being on the look-out for others; and partly because they do not take pains enough to make sure that their doors are _bona fide_ ones.

If, to change the metaphor, an academy has taken a bad shilling, it is seldom very scrupulous about trying to pa.s.s it on. It will stick to it that the shilling is a good one as long as the police will let it. I was very happy at Cambridge; when I left it I thought I never again could be so happy anywhere else; I shall ever retain a most kindly recollection both of Cambridge and of the school where I pa.s.sed my boyhood; but I feel, as I think most others must in middle life, that I have spent as much of my maturer years in unlearning as in learning.

The proper course is for a boy to begin the practical business of life many years earlier than he now commonly does. He should begin at the very bottom of a profession; if possible of one which his family has pursued before him--for the professions will a.s.suredly one day become hereditary. The ideal railway director will have begun at fourteen as a railway porter. He need not be a porter for more than a week or ten days, any more than he need have been a tadpole more than a short time; but he should take a turn in practice, though briefly, at each of the lower branches in the profession. The painter should do just the same.

He should begin by setting his employer's palette and cleaning his brushes. As for the good side of universities, the proper preservative of this is to be found in the club.

If, then, we are to have a renaissance of art, there must be a complete standing aloof from the academic system. That system has had time enough. Where and who are its men? Can it point to one painter who can hold his own with the men of, say, from 1450 to 1550? Academies will bring out men who can paint hair very like hair, and eyes very like eyes, but this is not enough. This is grammar and deportment; we want wit and a kindly nature, and these cannot be got from academies. As far as mere _technique_ is concerned, almost every one now can paint as well as is in the least desirable. The same _mutatis mutandis_ holds good with writing as with painting. We want less word-painting and fine phrases, and more observation at first-hand. Let us have a periodical ill.u.s.trated by people who cannot draw, and written by people who cannot write (perhaps, however, after all, we have some), but who look and think for themselves, and express themselves just as they please,--and this we certainly have not. Every contributor should be at once turned out if he or she is generally believed to have tried to do something which he or she did not care about trying to do, and anything should be admitted which is the outcome of a genuine liking. People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy. A cat is good company when it is purring, or a dog when it is wagging its tail.

The sketching-clubs up and down the country might form the nucleus of such a society, provided all professional men were rigorously excluded.

As for the old masters, the better plan would be never even to look at one of them, and to consign Raffaelle, along with Plato, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Dante, Goethe, and two others, neither of them Englishmen, to limbo, as the Seven Humbugs of Christendom.

While we are about it, let us leave off talking about "art for art's sake." Who is art, that it should have a sake? A work of art should be produced for the pleasure it gives the producer, and the pleasure he thinks it will give to a few of whom he is fond; but neither money nor people whom he does not know personally should be thought of. Of course such a society as I have proposed would not remain incorrupt long.

"Everything that grows, holds in perfection but a little moment." The members would try to imitate professional men in spite of their rules, or, if they escaped this and after a while got to paint well, they would become dogmatic, and a rebellion against their authority would be as necessary ere long as it was against that of their predecessors: but the balance on the whole would be to the good.

Professional men should be excluded, if for no other reason yet for this, that they know too much for the beginner to be _en rapport_ with them. It is the beginner who can help the beginner, as it is the child who is the most instructive companion for another child. The beginner can understand the beginner, but the cross between him and the proficient performer is too wide for fertility. It savours of impatience, and is in flat contradiction to the first principles of biology. It does a beginner positive harm to look at the masterpieces of the great executionists, such as Rembrandt or Turner.

If one is climbing a very high mountain which will tax all one's strength, nothing fatigues so much as casting upward glances to the top; nothing encourages so much as casting downward glances. The top seems never to draw nearer; the parts that we have pa.s.sed retreat rapidly. Let a water-colour student go and see the drawing by Turner in the bas.e.m.e.nt of our National Gallery, dated 1787. This is the sort of thing for him, not to copy, but to look at for a minute or two now and again. It will show him nothing about painting, but it may serve to teach him not to overtax his strength, and will prove to him that the greatest masters in painting, as in everything else, begin by doing work which is no way superior to that of their neighbours. A collection of the earliest known works of the greatest men would be much more useful to the student than any number of their maturer works, for it would show him that he need not worry himself because his work does not look clever, or as silly people say, "show power."

The secrets of success are affection for the pursuit chosen, a flat refusal to be hurried or to pa.s.s anything as understood which is not understood, and an obstinacy of character which shall make the student's friends find it less trouble to let him have his own way than to bend him into theirs. Our schools and academies or universities are covertly but essentially radical inst.i.tutions, and abhorrent to the genius of Conservatism. Their sin is the true radical sin of being in too great a hurry, and the natural result has followed, they waste far more time than they save. But it must be remembered that this proposition like every other wants tempering with a slight infusion of its direct opposite.

I said in an early part of this book that the best test to know whether or no one likes a picture is to ask oneself whether one would like to look at it if one was quite sure one was alone. The best test for a painter as to whether he likes painting his picture is to ask himself whether he should like to paint it if he was quite sure that no one except himself, and the few of whom he was very fond, would ever see it.

If he can answer this question in the affirmative, he is all right; if he cannot, he is all wrong.

I must reserve other remarks upon this subject for another occasion.

SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. (FROM CHAPTERS XV. AND XVI. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.)

The morning after our arrival at Biella, we took the daily diligence for Oropa, leaving Biella at eight o'clock. Before we were clear of the town we could see the long line of the hospice, and the chapels dotted about near it, high up in a valley at some distance off; presently we were shown another fine building some eight or nine miles away, which we were told was the sanctuary of Graglia. About this time the pictures and statuettes of the Madonna began to change their hue and to become black--for the sacred image of Oropa being black, all the Madonnas in her immediate neighbourhood are of the same complexion. Underneath some of them is written, "Nigra sum sed sum formosa," which, as a rule, was more true as regards the first epithet than the second.

It was not market-day, but streams of people were coming to the town.

Many of them were pilgrims returning from the sanctuary, but more were bringing the produce of their farms or the work of their hands for sale.

We had to face a steady stream of chairs, which were coming to town in baskets upon women's heads. Each basket contained twelve chairs, though whether it is correct to say that the basket contained the chairs--when the chairs were all, so to say, froth running over the top of the basket--is a point I cannot settle. Certainly we had never seen anything like so many chairs before, and felt almost as though we had surprised nature in the laboratory wherefrom she turns out the chair-supply of the world. The road continued through a succession of villages almost running into one another for a long way after Biella was pa.s.sed, but everywhere we noticed the same air of busy thriving industry which we had seen in Biella itself. We noted also that a preponderance of the people had light hair, while that of the children was frequently nearly white, as though the infusion of German blood was here stronger even than usual.

Though so thickly peopled, the country was of great beauty. Near at hand were the most exquisite pastures close shaven after their second mowing, gay with autumnal crocuses, and shaded with stately chestnuts; beyond were rugged mountains, in a combe on one of which we saw Oropa itself now gradually nearing; behind, and below, many villages, with vineyards and terraces cultivated to the highest perfection; farther on, Biella already distant, and beyond this a "big stare," as an American might say, over the plains of Lombardy from Turin to Milan, with the Apennines from Genoa to Bologna hemming the horizon. On the road immediately before us, we still faced the same steady stream of chairs flowing ever Biella-ward.

After a couple of hours the houses became more rare; we got above the sources of the chair-stream; bits of rough rock began to jut out from the pasture; here and there the rhododendron began to shew itself by the roadside; the chestnuts left off along a line as level as though cut with a knife; stone-roofed _cascine_ began to abound, with goats and cattle feeding near them; the booths of the religious trinket-mongers increased; the blind, halt, and maimed became more importunate, and the foot-pa.s.sengers were more entirely composed of those whose object was, or had been, a visit to the sanctuary itself. The numbers of these pilgrims--generally in their Sunday's best, and often comprising the greater part of a family--were so great, though there was no special festa, as to testify to the popularity of the inst.i.tution. They generally walked barefoot, and carried their shoes and stockings; their baggage consisted of a few spare clothes, a little food, and a pot or pan or two to cook with. Many of them looked very tired, and had evidently tramped from long distances--indeed, we saw costumes belonging to valleys which could not be less than two or three days distant. They were almost invariably quiet, respectable, and decently clad, sometimes a little merry, but never noisy, and none of them tipsy. As we travelled along the road, we must have fallen in with several hundreds of these pilgrims coming and going; nor is this likely to be an extravagant estimate, seeing that the hospice can make up more than five thousand beds. By eleven we were at the sanctuary itself.

Fancy a quiet upland valley, the floor of which is about the same height as the top of Snowdon, shut in by lofty mountains upon three sides, while on the fourth the eye wanders at will over the plains below. Fancy finding a level s.p.a.ce in such a valley watered by a beautiful mountain stream, and nearly filled by a pile of collegiate buildings, not less important than those, we will say, of Trinity College, Cambridge. True, Oropa is not in the least like Trinity, except that one of its courts is large, gra.s.sy, has a chapel and a fountain in it, and rooms all round it; but I do not know how better to give a rough description of Oropa than by comparing it with one of our largest English colleges.

The buildings consist of two main courts. The first comprises a couple of modern wings, connected by the magnificent facade of what is now the second or inner court. This facade dates from about the middle of the seventeenth century; its lowest storey is formed by an open colonnade, and the whole stands upon a raised terrace from which a n.o.ble flight of steps descends into the outer court.

Ascending the steps and pa.s.sing under the colonnade, we find ourselves in the second or inner court, which is a complete quadrangle, and is, so at least we were told, of rather older date than the facade. This is the quadrangle which gives its collegiate character to Oropa. It is surrounded by cloisters on three sides, on to which the rooms in which the pilgrims are lodged open--those at least that are on the ground-floor, but there are three storeys. The chapel, which was dedicated in the year 1600, juts out into the court upon the north-east side. On the north-west and south-west sides are entrances through which one may pa.s.s to the open country. The gra.s.s at the time of our visit was for the most part covered with sheets spread out to dry. They looked very nice, and, dried on such gra.s.s, and in such an air, they must be delicious to sleep on. There is, indeed, rather an appearance as though it were a perpetual washing-day at Oropa, but this is not to be wondered at considering the numbers of comers and goers; besides, people in Italy do not make so much fuss about trifles as we do. If they want to wash their sheets and dry them, they do not send them to Ealing, but lay them out in the first place that comes handy, and n.o.body's bones are broken.

On the east side of the main block of buildings there is a gra.s.sy slope adorned with chapels that contain figures ill.u.s.trating scenes in the history of the Virgin. These figures are of terra-cotta, for the most part life-size, and painted up to nature. In some cases, if I remember rightly, they have hemp or flax for hair, as at Varallo, and throughout realism is aimed at as far as possible, not only in the figures, but in the accessories. We have very little of the same kind in England. In the Tower of London there is an effigy of Queen Elizabeth going to the city to give thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This looks as if it might have been the work of some one of the Valsesian sculptors.

There are also the figures that strike the quarters of Sir John Bennett's city clock in Cheapside. The automatic movements of these last-named figures would have struck the originators of the Varallo chapels with envy. They aimed at realism so closely that they would a.s.suredly have had recourse to clockwork in some one or two of their chapels; I cannot doubt, for example, that they would have eagerly welcomed the idea of making the c.o.c.k crow to Peter by a cuckoo-clock arrangement, if it had been presented to them. This opens up the whole question of realism _versus_ conventionalism in art--a subject much too large to be treated here.

As I have said, the founders of these Italian chapels aimed at realism.

Each chapel was intended as an ill.u.s.tration, and the desire was to bring the whole scene more vividly before the faithful by combining the picture, the statue, and the effect of a scene upon the stage in a single work of art. The attempt would be an ambitious one though made once only in a neighbourhood, but in most of the places in North Italy where anything of the kind has been done, the people have not been content with a single ill.u.s.tration; it has been their scheme to take a mountain as though it had been a book or wall and cover it with ill.u.s.trations. In some cases--as at Orta, whose Sacro Monte is perhaps the most beautiful of all as regards the site itself--the failure is complete, but in some of the chapels at Varese and in many of those at Varallo, great works have been produced which have not yet attracted as much attention as they deserve. It may be doubted, indeed, whether there is a more remarkable work of art in North Italy than the crucifixion chapel at Varallo, where the twenty-five statues, as well as the frescoes behind them, are (with the exception of the figure of Christ, which has been removed) by Gaudenzio Ferrari. It is to be wished that some one of these chapels--both chapel and sculptures--were reproduced at South Kensington.