Six Centuries of Painting Part 19

Keep broad lights and shadows, and also princ.i.p.al lights and shadows.

Where there is the deepest shadow it is accompanied by the brightest light.

Let nothing start out or be too strong for its place.

Squareness has grandeur; it gives firmness to the forms; a serpentine line in comparison appears feeble and tottering.

One is apt to forget in these enlightened days how greatly the art of painting benefited by the establishment of public exhibitions.

Farington's observations on this point, occasioned by the inauguration of the exhibitions at the Society of Arts from 1760, until the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, are both instructive and amusing.

"The history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the _many_ was confined to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect; whereas at this time (1819) the whole train of subjects most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and cheese that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers though combined with the highest qualities of beauty, grandeur and taste.

"To our public exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in consequence of their introduction this change must be chiefly attributed. The present generation appears to be composed of a new and, at least with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings. Generally speaking, their thoughts, their feelings and language, differ entirely from what they were sixty years ago. The state of the public mind, incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority proved incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and frequent observation, and that without proper opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true value of the fine arts."

In view of these very pertinent observations it is worth inquiring a little as to the origin of exhibitions in England, and the stimulus given by them to British art before the inst.i.tution of the Royal Academy. From the introduction to book written by Edward Edwards, in continuation of Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painters," and published in 1808, I extract the following account of them, as far as possible using his own quaint phraseology.

Although the study of the human form had long been cultivated and encouraged in Italy and France by national schools or academies, yet in England until the eighteenth century such seminaries were unknown; and it is therefore difficult to trace the origin or ascertain the precise period when those nurseries of art were first attempted in this country, especially as every establishment of that kind was, at first, of a private and temporary nature, depending chiefly upon the protection of some artist of rank and reputation in his day. The first attempt towards the establishment of an academy is mentioned by Walpole as having been formed by several artists under Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller in 1711. Afterwards we find, by other accounts in the same author, which are corroborated by authentic information, that Sir James Thornhill formed an academy in his own house, in the Piazza, Covent Garden. But this was not of long duration, for it commenced in 1724 and died in 1734; which reduced the artists again to seek some new seminary; for the public of that day were so little acquainted with the use of such schools, that they were even suspected of being held for immoral purposes.

After the death of Thornhill a few of the artists (chiefly foreigners), finding themselves without the necessary example of the living model, formed a small society and established their regular meetings of study in a convenient apartment in Greyhound Court, Arundel Street. The princ.i.p.al conductor of this school was Michael Moser, who when the Royal Academy was established was appointed keeper. Here they were visited by artists such as Hogarth, Wills, and Ellis, who were so well pleased with the propriety of their conduct, and so thoroughly convinced of the utility of the inst.i.tution, that a general union took place, and the members thereby becoming numerous, they required and sought for a more convenient situation and accommodation for their school. By the year 1739 they were settled in Peter's Court, St Martin's Lane, where the study of the human figure was carried on till 1767, when they removed to Pall Mall.

But a permanent and conspicuous establishment was still wanting, and on this account the princ.i.p.al artists had several meetings with a view to forming a public academy. This they did not succeed in doing; but they were so far from being discouraged that they continued their meetings and their studies, and the next effort they made towards acquiring the attention of the public was connected with the Foundling Hospital. This inst.i.tution was incorporated in 1739, and a few years later the present building was erected; but as the income of the charity could not, with propriety, be expended upon decorations, many of the princ.i.p.al artists of that day voluntarily exerted their talents for the purpose of ornamenting several apartments of the Hospital which otherwise must have remained without decoration. The pictures thus produced, and generously given, were permitted to be seen by any visitor upon proper application. The spectacle was so new that it made a considerable impression upon the public, and the favourable reception these works experienced impressed the artists with an idea of forming a public exhibition, which scheme was carried into full effect with the help of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, who lent their great room for the purpose.

The success of this, the first, public display of art was more than equal to the general expectation. Yet there were some circ.u.mstances, consequent to the arrangement of the pictures, with which the artists were very justly dissatisfied; they were occasioned by the following improprieties. The Society in the same year had offered premiums for the best painting of history and landscape, and it was one of the conditions that the pictures produced by the candidates should remain in their great room for a certain time; consequently they were blended with the rest, and formed part of the exhibition. As soon as it was known which performances had obtained the premiums, it was naturally supposed, by such persons who were deficient in judgment, that those pictures were the best in the room, and consequently deserved the chief attention.

This partial, though unmerited, selection gave displeasure to the artists in general. Nor were they pleased with the mode of admitting the spectators, for every member of the Society had the discretionary privilege of introducing as many persons as he chose, by means of gratuitous tickets; and consequently the company was far from being select, or suited to the wishes of the exhibition. These circ.u.mstances, together with the interference of the Society in the concern of the exhibition, determined the princ.i.p.al artists to withdraw themselves, which they did in the next year.

Encouraged by the success of their first attempt, they engaged the great room in Spring Garden, and their first exhibition at that place opened on the 9th May 1761. Here they found it necessary to change their mode of admission, which they did by making the catalogue the ticket of admission; consequently one catalogue would admit a whole family in succession, for a shilling, which was its price; but this mode of admittance was still productive of crowd and disorder, and it was therefore altered the next year. This exhibition, which was the second in this country, contained several works of the best English artists, among which many of the pictures were equal to any masters then living in Europe; and so strikingly conspicuous were their merits, and so forcible was the effect of this display of art, that it drew from the pen of Roubilliac, the sculptor, the following lines, which were stuck up in the exhibition room, and were also printed in the _St James's Chronicle_:--

Pretendu Connoiseur qui sur l'Antique glose, Idolatrant le hom, sans connoitre la Chose, Vrai Peste des beaux Arts, sans Gout sans Equite, Quitez ce ton pedant, ce mepris affecte, Pour tout ce que le Tems n'a pas encore gate.

Ne peus tu pas, en admirant Les Maitres de la Grece, ceux d l'Italie Rendre justice egalement A ceux qu'a nourris ta Patrie?

Vois ce Salon, et tu perdras Cette prevention injuste, Et bien etonne conviendras Qu'il ne faut pas qu'un Mecenas Pour revoir le Siecle d'Auguste.

"In the following season," says Edwards, "they ventured to fix the price of _admission_ at one shilling each person, but had the precaution to affix a conciliatory preface to their catalogue, which was given gratis," As it is becoming more and more usual of late years to preface a catalogue with a signed article, or, as in a recent instance, a facsimile letter, it is interesting to know that this "conciliatory preface" was written by Dr Johnson. As a doc.u.ment its value in the history of the British School of Painting demands its reproduction here in full:--

"The public may justly require to be informed of the nature and extent of every design for which the favour of the public is openly solicited.

The artists who were themselves the first promoters of an exhibition in this nation, and who have now contributed to the following catalogue, think it therefore necessary to explain their purpose, and justify their conduct. An exhibition of the works of art being a spectacle new in this kingdom, has raised various opinions and conjectures among those who are unacquainted with the practice in foreign nations. Those who set their performances to general view, have been too often considered as the rivals of each other; as men actuated, if not by avarice, at least by vanity, and contending for superiority of fame, though not for a pecuniary prize. It cannot be denied or doubted, that all who offer themselves to criticism are desirous of praise; this desire is not only innocent but virtuous, while it is undebased by artifice, and unpolluted by envy; and of envy or artifice those men can never be accused, who already enjoying all the honours and profits of their profession are content to stand candidates for public notice, with genius yet unexperienced, and diligence yet unrewarded; who without any hope of increasing their own reputation or interest, expose their names and their works, only that they may furnish an opportunity of appearance to the young, the diffident, and the neglected. The purpose of this exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour, is here invited to display his merit. Of the price put upon this exhibition some account may be demanded. Whoever sets his work to be shewn, naturally desires a mult.i.tude of spectators; but his desire defeats its own end, when spectators a.s.semble in such numbers as to obstruct one another.

"Though we are far from wishing to diminish the pleasures, or to depreciate the sentiments of any cla.s.s of the community, we know, however, what every one knows, that all cannot be judges or purchasers of works of art. Yet we have already found by experience, that all are desirous to see an exhibition. When the terms of admission were low, our room was throng'd with such mult.i.tudes, as made access dangerous, and frightened away those, whose approbation was most desired.

"Yet because it is seldom believed that money is got but for the love of money, we shall tell the use which we intend to make of our expected profits. Many artists of great abilities are unable to sell their works for their due price; to remove this inconvenience, an annual sale will be appointed, to which every man may send his works, and send them, if he will, without his name. These works will be reviewed by the committee that conduct the exhibition; a price will be secretly set on every piece, and registered by the secretary; if the piece exposed for sale is sold for more, the whole price shall be the artist's; but if the purchasers value it at less than

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XL.--SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

_National Gallery, London_]

the committee, the artist shall be paid the deficiency from the profits of the exhibition."

This mode of admission was found to answer all the wished-for purposes, and the visitors, who were highly respectable, were also perfectly gratified with the display of art, which, for the first time, they beheld with ease and pleasure to themselves.

The exhibition, thus established, continued at Spring Garden Room, under the direction and management of the princ.i.p.al artists by whom it was first promoted, and they were soon also joined by many of those who had continued to exhibit in the Strand (_i.e._ at the Society of Arts, etc.), which party being mostly composed of young men, and others who chose to become candidates for the premiums given by the Society, thought it prudent to remain under their protection. But the Society finding that those who continued with them began to diminish in their numbers, and that the exhibition interfered with their own concerns, no longer indulged them with the use of their room, and the exhibitions at that place terminated in 1764. These artists, who were mostly the younger part of the profession at that time, thereupon engaged a large room in Maiden Lane, where they exhibited in 1765 and 1766. But this situation not being favourable, they engaged with Mr Christie, in building his room near Pall Mall, and the agreement was that they should have it for their use during one month every year, in the spring. Here they contrived to support a feeble exhibition for eight years, when their engagements interfering with Mr Christie's auctions, he purchased their share of the premises, and they made their last removal to a room in S. Alban's Street, where they exhibited the next season, but never after attempted to attract public notice. It may be observed that while this Society continued there were annually three exhibitions of the works of English artists, namely, the Royal Academy, the Chartered Society, and that last mentioned, the members of which styled themselves the Free Society of Artists. Their exhibition was considerably inferior to those of their rivals. By the Chartered Society, Edwards means the artists who formed the exhibition at the Spring Garden Room, who in 1765 obtained a Charter from the king. Owing partly to internal disagreements, but more no doubt to the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, this Society gradually diminished in importance, until Edwards could write of their exhibition in 1791 that "the articles they had then collected were very insignificant, most of which could not be considered as works of art; such as pieces of needlework, subjects in human hair, cut paper, and such similar productions as deserve not the recommendation of a public exhibition,"

To the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, which was opened on the 2nd of January 1769, Reynolds sent three pictures:--

_The d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester and her son, as Diana disarming Cupid._

_Lady Blake, as Juno receiving the Cestus of Venus._

_Miss Morris as Hope nursing Love._

That all of them were, so to speak, "fancy portraits" is not entirely without significance. Portraiture, the painters bread and b.u.t.ter, was apparently deemed hardly suitable for the occasion, and among a list of the pictures which attracted most attention Northcote only includes the portraits of the _King and Queen_ by Nathaniel Dance, _Lady Molyneux_ by Gainsborough, and the _Duke of Gloucester_ by Cotes. The rest are as follows:--_The Departure of Regulus from Rome_, and _Venus lamenting the Death of Adonis_, by Benjamin West; _Hector and Andromache_, and _Venus directing Aeneas and Achates_, by Angelica Kauffmann; _A Piping Boy_, and _A Candlelight Piece_, by Nathaniel Hone; _An Altar-Piece_ of the Annunciation by Cipriani; _Hebe_, and _A Boy Playing Cricket_, by Cotes; A landscape by Barrett, and _Shakespeare's Black-smith_, by Penny.

In all, Reynolds exhibited two hundred and fifty-two pictures during the thirty-two years of his life in which exhibitions existed, namely from 1760 to 1791; of which two hundred and twenty-eight went to the Royal Academy.

Of these, or most of them, ample records and criticisms may be found in the copious literature which has grown up around his name. For our present purpose a glance at his influence, his methods, and his circ.u.mstances has seemed to me to be more in point, and as a succinct estimate of the man and his work from one of his most ill.u.s.trious contemporaries, the following pa.s.sage may be added by way of conclusion:--

"Sir Joshua Reynolds," wrote Edmund Burke six years after the painter's death, "was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portraiture he went beyond them, for he communicated to that description of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a fancy and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed, them in a superior manner, did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings ill.u.s.trate his lessons, and his lessons seem to be derived from his paintings. He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher."

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727-1788), whose name we can seldom help thinking of whenever we hear that of Reynolds, was in many ways the very ant.i.thesis of his more ill.u.s.trious rival. In his private life he most certainly was, and so far as his practical influence on his contemporaries is concerned, he is altogether overshadowed by the first President of the Royal Academy. With respect to their works there is a diversity of opinion, and it is largely a matter of personal feeling whether we prefer those of the one or of the other. Both were great artists, and on the common ground of portraiture they contended so equally, and in some cases with such similarity of method, that it is impossible to say impartially which was the greater. How is it possible to decide except on the ground of individual taste, as to whether we would rather lose Gainsborough or Reynolds as a portrait painter, without considering for a moment that the former was a great landscape painter as well? And, putting aside Wilson, whose landscape was essentially Italian, whether executed in Italy or not, the first landscape painter in England was Gainsborough. We are so accustomed to bracket him with Reynolds as a great portrait painter, so thrilled over the sale of a Gainsborough portrait for many thousands of pounds, that we are apt to forget him altogether as a landscape painter. And yet two or three of his best works in the National Gallery are landscapes, and two of them at least famous ones--_The Market Cart_ and _The Watering Place_. How many more beautiful landscapes by him there must be in existence it is impossible to say, but there can be no doubt that there are not a few which are only waiting their turn for a fashionable market, but are now reposing unappreciated in private hands. In the Metropolitan Museum at New York is a splendid example, the like of which I have never seen in this country, but which is so much closer in feeling to his numerous drawings and sketches in chalk or pencil that it is impossible to believe that no similar examples exist. If we could only bring them to light!

The fact is that the state of society in the middle of the eighteenth century was, with all its brilliance and intellect, the cause of hampering the natural development of the three great painters of that period. Reynolds came back from his stay in Italy an ardent disciple of the grand style, burning to follow the example of Raphael and Michelangelo. Romney, too, was all for Italian art, but looked further back, and worshipped the cla.s.sics. Gainsborough was a born landscape painter, and his whole time was devoted, when he was not executing commissions for portraits, to making sketches and studies of woods and valleys and trees. But so bent on having their likenesses handed about were the brilliant personages of their time, that Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney were compelled in spite of themselves to turn their attention to portraiture, to the exclusion of every other branch of their art, and as portrait painters they have made themselves and their country famous.

In the numerous sketches and studies that Gainsborough has left us, we can see how much we have lost in gaining his wonderful portraits. He loved landscape, from his earliest youth to his dying day. Loved it for itself. For among all the drawings of his which I have ever seen, I do not remember one which can be identified as any particular place. In the eighteenth century there was a perfect mania among the smaller fry for making topographical drawings, in pencil or water-colour, views of some town or mountain or castle. But with Gainsborough the place was nothing--it was the spirit of it that charmed him. A cottage in a wood, a glade, a country road, a valley, was to him a beautiful scene, whatever it was called or wherever it happened to be, and out of it accordingly he made a beautiful picture, or at least a drawing. That his pictures of landscape are so extraordinarily few while his drawings are so numerous, may be accounted for in a great measure by the exigences of portrait painting, but not entirely; and the probability is that there are many more which are now forgotten.

For an estimate of Thomas Gainsborough both in regard to his place in the story of the English School and to the abilities and methods by which he attained it, it is needless to look elsewhere than to that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, contained in the discourse delivered shortly after Gainsborough's death:--

"When such a man as Gainsborough rises to great fame without the a.s.sistance of an academical education, without travelling to Italy, or any of those preparatory studies which have been so often recommended, he is produced

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XLI.--THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

THE MARKET CART

_National Gallery, London_]

as an instance how little such studies are necessary, since so great excellence may be acquired without them. This is an inference not warranted by the success of any individual, and I trust that it will not be thought that I wish to make this use of it.

"It must be remembered that the style and department of art which Gainsborough chose, and in which he so much excelled, did not require that he should go out of his own country for the objects of his study; they were everywhere about him; he found them in the streets, and in the fields; and from the models thus accidentally found he selected with great judgment such as suited his purpose. As his studies were directed to the living world princ.i.p.ally, he did not pay a general attention to the works of the various masters, though they are, in my opinion, always of great use even when the character of our subject requires us to depart from some of their principles. It cannot be denied that excellence in the department of the art which he professed may exist without them, that in such subjects and in the manner that belongs to them the want of them is supplied, and more than supplied, by natural sagacity and a minute observation of particular nature. If Gainsborough did not look at nature with a poet's eye, it must be acknowledged that he saw her with the eye of a painter; and gave a faithful, if not a poetical, representation of what he had before him.