LECTURE I.

This lecture was written first in 1869 for University College, before my appointment there as Slade Professor. It was afterwards considerably augmented and read at Birmingham, and again, with alterations, at Manchester. As first written it was intended to draw attention to the great "realistic" powers of Michelangelo, the appreciation of which had been forced upon me by a recent visit to Rome, and again by Braun's photographs of the Sistine Chapel, which had just been published. It may be said that, until these were done, there were portions of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel which were completely unknown to all who had not had the rare fortune of seeing the originals from a scaffolding. There is much in this lecture which has now become commonplace; but at the time it was written the ideas it expresses were not so widely diffused; I publish it almost as it was written, omitting only some too dangerous generalizations.

The qualities of mind required to produce a work of art are two—the power of design, and the power of imitation.

The power of design, again, is of two kinds—constructive and ornamental.

The first of these, or constructive design, has its simplest expression in the form which a savage gives to the ordinary objects of his daily use; in the shape which he gives to his hatchet, or to the rude vessels in which he cooks his food.

The second, or ornamental design, in the patterns which he cuts on the prow of his boat, or traces with a stick on his pottery, or the mud walls of his hut.

The power of imitation shows itself in its simplest form in his wretched attempts to represent animal forms when he introduces them into his decorative efforts, and is therefore necessarily a part of ornamental design.

Thus we may have—first, constructive design pure and simple. Then, ornamental design as applied to constructive work, either purely composed of patterns without reference to natural forms, or including the imitation of objects, and thirdly, we may have a kind of ornamental, design of which the imitation or realization of nature is the principal and most important aim. It is obvious that these three divisions include the whole world of art. It is impossible that I can touch in the space of one lecture on anything approaching to all the various branches of constructive and decorative art, but I will attempt to define the form of truth which I think to be the basis of beauty in all these classes of work.

Among uncivilised peoples the art of design, both ornamental and constructive, is generally far in advance of that of imitation, for whereas their attempts in the latter direction are mostly of a very feeble kind, or so hideous as to be positively alarming, very frequently the forms of their pottery and the patterns with which they decorate it and other things are of a beauty which the most educated artist of taste could not surpass. The art of design, is, or I should say, has been till within the last fifty or sixty years, employed in every work which men's hands produce; for I think I am right in saying that until the progress of civilisation developed the principle that beauty is not essential to our happiness, nothing that man did with his hands was wrought without a desire, however slight, of making it pleasant to look at, at least from his own point of view. It is only since the enormous advance made in the science of engineering that the necessity of beauty has been completely ignored: but it has now got to this point, that men take a pride in showing how deficient in interest a structure can be made; for they reckon it not only useless, but a waste of time, which we all know means money, to give a single thought to their work which should redeem it from utter hideousness, and help to make it agreeable to the eye; their practical minds revolt from so foolish an idea. I do not wish to discuss now the question of the utility of beauty; I cannot but believe that the beauty of things is of use as far as our happiness in this world is concerned, that some connection between beauty and usefulness there must be, and that that state of things must be wrong, where, in the name of utility and progress we have to suffer from such oppressive nightmares of engineering work as in the last twenty years have grown up in our great cities. The worst and most tasteless efforts in architecture that our great towns afford—and there is no lack of them—are better than the outrages that our men of science inflict on us in their railway bridges and other works; for the former may afford a trifling pleasure, even if of an unreasonable kind, to people ignorant of art, while the latter are only regarded even by the most uncultivated as at best an unavoidable necessity in the progress of things. I do not even believe that the hideousness of these things is a necessity of their construction; they are done out of a kind of brag to show what a triumph of cheapness engineering can achieve. Besides, I refuse to believe in the necessity for construction of that kind being done entirely from the point of view of cheapness as long as money is wasted in the reckless way that is common in railway affairs, and as long as enormous fortunes are made out of them. But this is a digression from the main subject of my lecture; nor, I think, would any amount of protest, supported by the best arguments in the world, be of any avail against what is considered so necessary by the scientific and practical men who are the pride of our age and of our country.

I will return then to the point I was considering. If we examine the elements of beauty in constructive design we shall find that two things are essential. First, fitness for the purpose which the object made is intended to fulfil; and second, good workmanship in making it.

In those objects which are made simply for use without afterthought of beauty, fitness for the purpose for which they are designed is evidently an essential. Whatever beauty is to be found in this class of objects is inherent, so to speak, in their nature, or rather, I should say, arises from the necessity of their construction. Art, or the artistic sense, has nothing to do with determining their forms, which are entirely suggested by perfect adaptation to their purpose, and vary but little in any country or at any period of the world's history. Among them I may take as examples the more ordinary implements of agriculture, carpentry, &c.; the form of a spade, or a rake, or a hatchet, or an oar is determined entirely by its appropriateness to the purpose for which it is intended. All this kind of objects has a certain beauty of its own which you will recognize when 1 speak of them as picturesque, the word usually applied to the beauty of a homely object, but which is none the less a beauty of a very important kind, and is the basis of the beauty of all works of constructive design. Sometimes we find this beauty to be of a very high order, as in the case of the plough, the beautiful lines of which have always been the admiration of artists, and which no alterations of detail can spoil; all kinds of sailing craft, too, will occur to you as possessing beauty of a special kind, which arises entirely from the necessities of their construction, and in nowise because there has been a desire to make a beautiful object, and I could mention many other things of the kind. We have then here what I may term the beauty of fitness, which is really nothing but a form of truth or realism. When a manufactured object is so made as to be perfectly fitted for the purpose for which it is designed, when, as in the case of simple objects of universal use the form has been so modified by continual and gradual improvements (without ulterior intention of making it more beautiful) as to have all that is requisite and nothing that is superfluous, and when in addition it is constructed in the manner best calculated to make it strong and durable, it has this beauty, which I call the beauty of fitness. Now these are the characteristics of all that kind of work of which the rules are handed down from father to son, or from master to apprentice, and which is called therefore traditional work; consequently, we always find that traditional work has some elements of beauty in it; and this is why artists and people of artistic tastes admire and frequently collect ordinary and perhaps trifling objects of traditional workmanship; things which are often a cause of wonder and sometimes of ridicule to those who have not considered the matter from this point of view, and so cannot see any beauty in common things; but it is the inherent beauty of truth in them which makes them interesting to the collectors.

Such things as these, however, cannot be said to be works of high artistic order; for that a second element of beauty is required, namely, beauty of workmanship. By this I understand that, in addition to a knowledge of a strong and durable method of construction, the workman should have an eye capable of appreciating nice delicacies of proportion, and a trained and skilful hand which shall enable him to execute them with perfect neatness and precision of finish; he must have the power of carrying out to perfection the idea of the design. Good workmanship is but rarely to be met with at the present time; the workman has got such a habit of doing bad and cheap work, that he cannot (or will not) copy what any skilled workman could have done sixty years ago. A skilled workman now, with rare exceptions, is nothing but a machine, or rather part of the machinery which he serves, repeating from morning to night the same action with the monotonous and perfect regularity of a machine, and utterly incapable of doing anything else, or he is a workman skilled only in concealing the badness of the work he produces. Up to the beginning of this century good work was common ; the tradition of it was universal; indeed, it is almost impossible to find any sort of old work which is not constructed on good principles and well executed. But with the rapid increase of trade, consequent on the introduction of steam and steam-machinery, came the desire of rapidly making money, and people soon found out that substituting bad work for good was the best way of doing this, so that the tradition of good workmanship soon began to die out, and has now for some time been extinct, and has to be created again.

Now this beauty of fitness, which is nothing more or less than truth or reality of construction, and which I have spoken of as the first essential, depends on much more than the mere fact that the object is useful for the purpose for which it was intended. It means that every point should be attended to which is advantageous for that purpose—that every portion of the fabric should have something to do with the construction, and not be introduced falsely for the sake of ornament, or as frequently happens for no purpose at all; also that every portion of the work should be what it appears to be, and do the work which it appears to do. It is not by any means sufficient that a chair should be comfortable and firm to make it a well-designed chair; it must be designed in the best way to produce these and other results. So that a chair made of common materials, and even roughly made (roughly, that is, as regards the finish of its appearance, but finished as regards the perfect fitting and fitness of its parts), may be an object of more intrinsic beauty than the performance of a fashionable upholsterer; and if to this beauty of construction be added beauty of workmanship, it is capable of becoming a true work of art without addition of decoration or ornament of any kind. In nothing more than in our dwelling-houses and furniture is this truth of construction necessary; with the exception of isolated works of good architects and artists, there is nothing in which it is more ignored. And here I must pause to interpolate a vehement protest against the usual application of the words ugly and handsome or beautiful. The very general idea is that plainness is ugliness in these matters (is not indeed the word plain a synonym for ugly?). I mean that furniture is considered ugly unless it be decorated with scrolls or inlaying or gilding, and has useless and unnecessary curved lines about it. For a thing to be called handsome, the word so commonly applied to houses and furniture, it must have cost a good deal of money; it must be well overlaid with ornament, no matter how debased, inappropriate, or badly done; and it must cost, or appear to have cost, a good deal of money. A house is not considered handsome unless it is covered with stucco or artificial stone ornaments. The architect who in the present day builds for a man of wealth a plain brick-house, whose beauty consists in its proportions, and in the good execution of whatever detail of ornament there may be—such houses as were built by thousands in the last century—is a daring man, and is rarely to be found, for his commissions will be few. Let him run up a shoddy-house, with staring plate-glass windows which let in twice as much light as is wanted, and make one feel as if one were sitting in the chilly open air; let the structure be bad in its proportions, and the rooms, staircases, and passages ugly in shape, and very possibly ill-contrived for comfort, then let him cover it inside and out with meaningless and tasteless ornament, as badly executed as it is designed—above all, let it look as if it cost a great deal of money—let him, I say, build a thousand such, and he will find a thousand wealthy men to occupy them. If we examine into the cause of this state of things, we shall find it to consist in more than a mere change of fashion. Changes of fashion up to this present century have always been from one kind of good work to another. A Queen Anne house is different from an Elizabethan house, but both are equally strongly and well built, and both have elements of beauty in them from their perfect construction and finish of detail; but the change of style in the present day is quite a different matter; it is a change from a reality to a sham. Is it worth while to consider wherein lies the root of this evil? I think it is; and at the risk of fatiguing you with what may appear to be somewhat too much in the nature of a sermon, I will do so. It is indeed the dread of appearing not to be able to afford handsome things which is at the bottom of the general decline of good work, which we find surrounding us on all sides; it is, combined with the other evil I have spoken of, viz., the desire of rapidly making fortunes, the root of all that is bad and sham in art about us. We English are not naturally an artistic people. Do not let me be misunderstood. I do not mean to say that there are not genuine artists of as high talent in England as elsewhere, and that there are not connoisseurs of art as distinguished here as elsewhere, but the class of each is a small one compared to the great number of artists whose interest is more in the gain resulting from their labours than in the labour itself, or to the number of those who wish to gain the reputation of connoisseurs without any very genuine love of art to begin with; and it is nothing more or less than the desire of a people, not by nature artistically gifted, to appear endowed with a taste for the beautiful, which they do not and cannot possess, which causes the vast multiplication of tasteless objects of art and art-manufacture with which we are inundated. Up to the end of the last century, those people who had good taste, and the means of cultivating it, did so with great success, and by their patronage of good art at home and the beautiful works they introduced from other more favoured countries, enriched England with many most valuable treasures of art. But, at the same time, those who did not care for art, or who had no means to patronise it, were content to live in a homely way, and desired nothing beyond the rather homely, but always well-contrived and well-executed things which supplied their wants in the way of furniture and house-decoration. Now, however, that a large proportion of people with much money and little taste consider it necessary to fill their houses with what are called handsome things, those things are supplied to any extent—to such an extent that it would be impossible for all the skilled workmen in the kingdom to supply good work at the rate at which it is wanted — so in its place is supplied an enormous amount of meaningless and characterless ornamental work, created for this class of people, who think they have satisfied all the demands of good taste by having the latest novelty; the latest novelty generally being something not new in form or design (or if new, only because it has not been done before for very shame), but done by the last new mechanical invention for cheapening labour, or the last new invention for making a flimsy sham take the place of good work not understood or appreciated; and thus the habit of doing nothing but bad work is formed, and ignorance accepts it all through the country. This is, I am afraid, a result of our civilisation, and is as much a part of it, as it is a part of it that the misery of one class of our population is always increasing in proportion to the wealth of another; and just as no amount of charity, however lavishly bestowed in almsgiving, will ever alleviate the miserable condition of our poorer classes, so no amount of what I may call almsgiving to art in the form of buying pictures (no matter how high the prices given) will ever change the poverty-stricken condition in which the larger portion of our community finds itself with regard to art. This is a theme which it would not be difficult to enlarge upon to a wearisome extent, for the system of making expensive shams take the place and assume the name of beautiful work is so universal at this time and in this country, is so part and parcel of the spirit of the age, that people have really come to believe that progress means this and nothing more. It is thought to be the greatest advance in art and manufacture that this century has made over all that have preceded it, that bad construction and bad workmanship can be so concealed by bad ornament as to be made to pass for a thing of value. This would be distressing enough if we were not proud of it; but we are, and it is this which makes one feel the hopelessness of any serious effort in the cause of truth and beauty. But I have said enough on this point for the present at all events, though the causes I speak of are so real, that I shall have occasion to allude to them and to their effects once or twice again in the course of my lecture.

I will proceed with the consideration of the necessary elements of beauty in constructive design. If I dwell mostly on the beauty of well-constructed furniture, it is not only because it is one of the chief necessities of our lives, but because it serves best as an illustration of all the points I am touching upon, not only in the matter of truth of construction and good workmanship, but in its capabilities for the application of the second kind of design I spoke of, namely, ornamental design. Also because there has really been a great move made lately by certain architects and artists to furnish and decorate our houses with something better than what upholsterers supply us with so freely; moreover, there are schools of design all over the kingdom for the purpose of educating workmen, where all sorts of devices are tried to supply them with the taste which has been denied them by nature, and of which they have lost the tradition. Now with regard to the cottage-chair I introduced before my last long digression, do not imagine that I mean that it is necessary to have such chairs in our drawing-rooms — beautiful carving and beautiful inlaying are most important additions to the beauty of furniture — but I do assert that an old-fashioned cottage arm-chair, constructed as it is for purely useful purposes, constructed for strength combined with lightness, constructed for durability, constructed for comfort, and above all, constructed by artificers who, knowing that they have no decorative gift beyond a kind of modest and homely taste arising partly from their purely traditional teaching, have not attempted to add decoration which they do not understand, — I say that chairs of this kind might well take the place of most of what we hear called the elegant chairs in our houses. Such furniture as this chair, which has served me for an illustration, is made with few variations of form from tradition, and being used for the commonest purposes, it has never been thought worth while to art-educate the workman who makes it; and while the furniture remains in its simple, useful, and picturesque form, the workman has not acquired that kind of half-knowledge which is so characteristic of most of the art-workmen who have studied in our schools of design, who have a peculiar knack (I am speaking from experience, as having assisted for two years in inspecting the designs and awarding the medals at the annual national competition of the schools at South Kensington), who have a peculiar gift for seizing upon the half of an idea in a piece of good work or ornament, and that always the wrong half. This is plain-speaking; but if the evil is to be remedied, and we are all interested in the matter that much, it is only by plain-speaking that it can be done. I believe one of the great difficulties in finding good art-workmen to arise from the fact that more money is to be made in other branches of art than in designing or executing the more useful kinds of decorative work. Any man gifted with exceptional facility of design, immediately sets himself to making water-colour drawings or painting pictures, for he finds it a much more rapid means of making money; and this is one of the results of the notion so deeply ingrained in us—that art consists only in painting pictures. But this whole matter of the Avorking of our Schools of Design and of the condition of our art-workmen is a separate branch of the subject of decorative work, and cannot be dismissed in a few words; to consider the matter properly, and the remedies that might be applied, would require a separate lecture. "We have therefore but two kinds of good work in furniture (and other kinds of art-manufacture) possible. One is this almost extinct traditional work I have spoken of. and which remains only in the construction of the most homely objects; and the other is the work of highly-gifted and original minds, which has an independent and higher quality of beauty than the other. Such work as this, I need not say, is very rare, but we fortunately have men among us capable of originating it, and if it is rightly understood and followed, it is capable of producing a school doing work scarcely inferior to the original. Rightly understood, I say, for it is only if rightly understood that it is possible for a good tradition of work to arise out of it. I will not dwell on the failures consequent on the efforts such men have made; it is sufficient to say that upholsterers and house-decorators, unless their productions have been under the immediate and careful control of architects or artists of talent, have been just as successful in seizing the wrong end of every idea which has been given them, as they are in producing the meaningless imitations of the more debased sort of last-century tables and chairs, which constitute most of our drawingroom furniture. I hope I have now said enough to explain my meaning, when I say that Truth is the real basis of Beauty in constructive design; that without reality of construction and good workmanship no object of art-manufacture can have any claim to be considered a work of art.

I will now pass to the consideration of ornamental design. And first I will treat of it briefly in reference to its application to constructive design, reserving for the second part of my lecture that third class of work which I spoke of where the rendering of nature is the principal object of the artist.

I have spoken much about excellence of workmanship being a necessary condition for a manufactured object to be a good work of art. Indeed this is essential to all artistic work, and is quite as important in all branches of ornamental design as in construction. But there is another form of Truth which is quite as needful, and that is, that for decoration applied to construction to be beautiful it must first of all be appropriate. Inappropriate decoration will spoil the best designed and best executed construction. I dwelt at length on this point in my lecture at Birmingham, giving several illustrations of what I considered bad decoration, but I will not do so here as my lecture as delivered there was too long, and would be longer still now with the additions that I have since made in re-writing it. I will, however, put into shorter form what I said there, merely saying that the general principles I lay down will apply just as well to one form of art-manufacture as another. I have been asked to make some remarks specially applicable to the staple manufacture of this city and its neighbourhood, but the fact is I have absolutely no special knowledge concerning Calico-printing and hardly know the condition that the industry is in at present. I do not remember that this particular branch was represented to any extent at the Annual Competition for the National Medals at South Kensington. I remember the designs for printing muslins for dresses, and that they showed particularly well, but I cannot remember whether they came from this immediate neighbourhood or not. However, as I have said, whatever general remarks I make concerning appropriate decoration will apply equally well to Calico-printing as to other branches of art-manufacture. Certain remarks that I will make here in regard to colour will be applicable. There is this obvious difficulty in speaking both of patterns pure and simple, and of colour, that there is absolutely no criterion by which we can judge of the beauty of a pattern or of beauty of colour. Both these things depend so entirely upon the capacity that the eye has for judging of proportion or of harmony that there is nothing to be said on the matter. If I say that mauve, magenta, and all the new aniline dyes are offensive colours with a harsh metallic tint which renders them utterly unfit to be used, and impossible to harmonize in any kind of ornamental work, whether in the dyeing of silks, the printing of chintzes, muslins, or wall-paper, I only state my own conviction, with which those will not agree whose eyes are not offended with these colours. The same thing happens with regard to patterns; if I say that a pattern is ugly, vulgar, and badly designed, I can bring forward no argument in favour of my assertion, for the thing admits of no proof. But if an imitation of nature is introduced, I have some foundation for an argument on the matter. I can say, for instance, that the animals introduced into the ornament on the beautiful bronze bowls of Assyrian workmanship in the British Museum are perfect for decorative work of the kind, for though done in the simplest possible manner, merely engraved in outline without attempt at detail or relief, they so thoroughly breathe the spirit of the creatures represented and seize upon all the salient and most important points of character that the most finished sculpture or painting could not surpass them. Also I can explain by examples what I mean by inappropriate decoration, confining myself at present to certain objectionable forms of decoration for furniture, condensing on this point what I said at Birmingham. The illustration that I first take I choose because the particular article of furniture is so common in our drawing-rooms, and because it happens to point the moral of my lecture in many ways; because, besides showing what is bad, I can also explain what I think might be good and appropriate. I should say that a bunch of roses or a lapdog, painted in a slovenly way on the black japan of a coal-scuttle is as inappropriate a piece of decoration as ever was devised, and would spoil instead of improving the best contrived coal-scuttle (ftn 1) Yet it is undoubtedly one of the most successful ideas in the whole range of our art-manufactures, for there is hardly a drawing-room in the kingdom where there is not some such elegant work of art to be seen. It is not difficult to trace the source of this particular form of bad decoration; it arises entirely from a somewhat vulgar feeling, hidden in the depths of our hearts, that there is something rather common-looking in a coal-scuttle which makes it suitable enough for a kitchen, but out of place in a drawing-room; hence the introduction of the roses and the lap-dog (varied occasionally by a picture of a church by moonlight) was considered to give great elegance to what would otherwise be rather an objectionable piece of furniture. Now as a good fire is one of the glories of our rooms, I cannot see that a coal-box is much out of place in them even if we are obliged to have a black and unsightly object; nor do I see that when left in its simple undecorated condition it is necessarily so unsightly; it is a piece of furniture like another, and has its own inconspicuous place in the chimney-corner; and if it is not an object we should single out for our admiration, it at all events does not obtrude itself on our gaze. But when it comes to be decorated with bad painting and tawdry gilding it forces itself upon our notice as though it were some kind of elegant vase for holding pot-pourri. Fortunately, however, for those who like and can afford handsome furniture there is a most simple way of making a coal-scuttle a really decorative object in a most appropriate manner, and that is by making it of copper or brass and keeping it polished; moreover an admirably appropriate form of decoration might be applied (the idea is not my own, for I have seen it done once in imitation of an old brass pail), by embossing the metal of which they are made with a kind of repoussé work; this might be very effective, but it requires a real artist to do it well, and those are not easily to be found who will devote their energies to the beautifying of so humble an object. This instance of a painted coal-scuttle may for all I know be trite enough with writers on the revival of good art; but I have chosen it for the reasons I gave above, that is, on account of its being an extreme case of inappropriate decoration, and also because it is a very obvious one on account of the utter want of any connecting idea between roses and coals. I will therefore continue to use it as an illustration to my arguments, as one instance will serve to illustrate the matter as well as a dozen. The incongruity which I have dwelt upon, this disconnection of ideas between coals and roses or churches by moonlight, is not the only cause of inappropriateness of that form of decoration as applied to objects of such ordinary use in our houses. We will suppose some suitable subject to be chosen for its embellishment; let us say a landscape, representing the mouth of a coal-pit. If this landscape were well painted by a good artist every one, I think, would agree that it was quite out of place on anything so subject to rough usage as our coal-box; à fortiori, if it is badly done it is still more out of place, for bad work has no business to be done at all; so that even if the roses and lap-dog were appropriate in one sense they would not be in another; they have no place on a coal-scuttle if well done, still less if they are ill done. I can indeed imagine a kind of painting which would be suitable where the things represented would be so simply and conventionally treated as to require only a skilful and intelligent workman to do the painting, a man not necessarily fitted for a higher kind of decorative art, such painting as we see in Oriental lacquer-work; indeed this simple form of decorative painting is the origin of all our modern japan-work (witness the name); but the treatment of it has by this time become entirely debased; the incessant craving for novelty has led our workmen far away from the original idea, so that they imagine a bad imitation of a watercolour drawing or a chromo-lithograph to be better than the broad and simple effects to be got with sober colour and subdued gilding: nothing but the name of this kind of work remains, and we must go back to the fountainhead if we wish to recover the spirit of the original. I must omit much that I should wish to say concerning the very bad condition of the decorative arts in the matter of plate and jewellery; merely saying that there is a reason for its very bad state in the fact that it is a kind of work which is of no value unless the very highest sort of artistic design and the best and most refined workmanship is expended upon it, and that we have not the workmen to do this. The love of display is at the root of this more than of any kind of bad art. A mans show of plate now is reckoned of value according to its quantity and weight; ignorance of and indifference to the quality of the workmanship as compared to the massiveness of the vessel, and what is called the richness of the ornamentation, is the cause of a more complete decay of art in these things than in any other. But I must quote a passage from Dickens bearing on this point, in which with that clearsighted intuition which enables him always to seize on the precise points he requires to illustrate his subject, he has with wonderful conciseness described the condition to which vulgar ostentation has brought us in these matters. He is describing a rich man's dinner-party— “Hideous solidity," he says, "was the characteristic of the plate. Everything was made to look as heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible. Everything said boastfully,—Here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much an ounce; wouldn't you like to melt me down? A corpulent straddling épergne, blotched all over as if it had broken out in an eruption rather than been ornamented, delivered this address from an unsightly silver platform in the centre of the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished with four staring heads, each obtrusively carrying a big silver ring in each of its ears, conveyed the sentiment up and down the table and handed it on to the potbellied salt-cellars. All the big silver spoons and forks widened the mouths of the company expressly for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment down their throats with every morsel they ate." I can add nothing that will better express my meaning with regard to bad art of this sort than this graphic description. I therefore take leave of this part of my subject; but before entering on the matter of Decorative Painting I wish to say a few words on the question of Styles of Art, which is applicable both to what I have said and to what I am going to say in the second part of my lecture, and about which decorative artists and art-workmen trouble themselves a good deal; much more, I think, than is necessary.

If I have dwelt at some length on what I consider false and bad in decorative work it is because by showing you what is wrong I can best explain what I think to be right. For when I wish to lay down any law as to what is beautiful in ornamental design, I cannot say much more than that what is appropriate and well executed is good art.

Subject to the negative conditions treated of above, there is nothing that may not be done in decorative work. If I am asked what is a good pattern for a chintz hanging or for a wall-paper, I can only say that any well-designed and well-executed appropriate pattern is good. And it is this difficulty, I think, of deciding upon what ought to be after the conditions are well understood of what ought not to be that has led so many into the belief that there is no salvation in art out of particular styles j some standing up for English Gothic, others for French Gothic, others for Greek, others for Moorish, and others believing that there is no safety out of a particular century. The violent reaction which took place against what was an obviously bad condition of decorative art about fifty or sixty years ago, headed, as far as my knowledge goes, by Pugin, and which is known by the name of the Gothic Revival, induced men anxious for a better state of things into an extreme of purism, which became a sort of watchword by which the good and earnest workers in the cause of art were to be known.

Now no one who has seen the painted windows in St. George's Chapel, designed by Benjamin West, where all the conditions of stained glass are misunderstood or ignored, where an attempt was made to produce the effect of the highly elaborated light and shade of the oil-pictures in fashion at the time, and where no thought was given to adapting the work to the exigencies of the surrounding architecture,—no one who remembers the pseudoclassical monuments of military and naval heroes rising to a heaven of blue slate through ponderous masses of marble clouds, which encumber Westminster Abbey and others of our cathedrals, will suppose that this reaction came a moment too soon. But it is not because these things are done in what is called a Classic style, instead of what is called a Gothic style, that they are bad; it is because they are in the first place genuinely bad work of their kind, which would look bad wherever it was placed, and secondly but less so, because classical work is out of place and could with difficulty be made to look harmonious in a Gothic cathedral. I say less so because the Elizabethan monuments and the almost purely classic work of James the First's time certainly do not look out of place in the Gothic architecture of our cathedrals, and there are numberless instances all through Europe of the happy adaptation of one style to another.

It must be remembered too that if the decorators and painters of the thirteenth century did not introduce light and shades into their work it was because their art was in its infancy, and that the whole of the best art of Europe from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries shows one continuous struggle to get nearer to the realization of the splendid effects of roundness and solidity of Nature; the beauty and grandeur of the work of those early masters depending on something quite different from the fact that their pictures are painted with flat colours and without perspective. If I dwell on this point it is because the belief in the efficacy of flat tints and black outlines is still strong among us, especially among architects, who in this respect assumed a practice of laying down the law for the guidance of artists.

Anyhow this determined insistance upon the necessity of a purely flat kind of decoration has produced as a result, a kind of work quite as unfortunate, if not more so, than the vulgar rococo ornament which it has superseded. In the use of diapers for hangings, our school of design teachers and workmen imagine they have found a safe harbour of refuge from the difficulties which beset them in their voyages in search of appropriate patterns. They appear to be quite unaware that it is just as difficult to make a good diaper as any other form of decorative pattern, and they have opportunities for violent juxtaposition of colour which they never had before the numberless new dyes now in fashion were invented, or when the custom of making shaded designs of flowers and scrolls obliged them, to a certain extent, to break up their tints. These most excruciating contrasts of colour, that are only too commonly found in houses, more especially in paperhangings, where we see the most violent blues opposed to raw red and orange and magenta patterns on arsenic-green grounds, are accepted by people in general as being in what they call the Gothic taste. Tiles in this Gothic taste, too, are very common, in which magenta and green are the prominent colours. Indeed, people have come to this point, that they will not have harmonious colour when it is to be got. It was always possible to fall back on Turkey carpets if one could not find other things to one's taste, with the certainty of finding them good and rich in colour; but they were evidently too harmonious for the taste of the majority, so that wools dyed in England of harsh bright blue, magenta, and purple colours, were sent out with the idea of improving the taste of the Oriental makers, and it is now almost impossible to find any Turkey carpets that are not as crude and disagreeable as English ones (ftn. 2). The Orientals certainly manage these harsh colours as well as it is possible: but colours that are bad to begin with cannot be made to look anything but disagreeable. The fact is that mauve, magenta, and all the new aniline dyes, are offensive colours, with a harsh metallic tint which renders them utterly unfit to be used, and impossible to harmonize in any kind of ornamental work, whether in the dyeing of silks, or the printing of muslins, chintzes, and wall-papers. But let me return to the question I was considering. There is really nothing objectionable or inappropriate in the imitation of Nature in surface decoration, provided it is kept in subservience to the more important necessities of decorative design. When the qualities of design, and the beauties of form, and colour, and workmanship are of the highest order, as in the works of the great Italian masters of the sixteenth century, the imitation of relief even to the point of deception is admissible, because it becomes subordinate to the other qualities which are more difficult of attainment. The reason that the flying cherubs and festoons of flowers which we so constantly introduced in the debased art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which are frequently so skilfully done as to be absolutely deceptive, and appear detached from the walls; the reason why this is bad art is because the trick of imitating relief from the surface is a very easy one, and is the only power the artist has: the decoration being badly designed, the figures and flowers being ill-drawn, and bad in colour, the whole decoration interferes with the general unity of design in the architecture; and for this reason it is bad art.

Again, the reason why the attempt to introduce the light, and shade, and relief of an oil-painting in stained glass is bad art, is—not because stained glass was made of flat tints in the thirteenth century—but because, in the first place, a window, which is meant to admit light, carries with it the idea of transparency, and therefore should not be encumbered with heavy shading; and secondly, because, however well the light and shade may be imitated, the presence of the lead-lines brings us back constantly to the idea of a flat surface, so that the kind of painting which best accords with this is the best for the purpose. The reason why the imitation of relief is not admissible in the more ordinary kinds of wall-decoration, is, first, that the means of execution are of a very imperfect kind;—the common block-printing, used for wall-papers, cannot produce that subtlety of workmanship which is necessary for the design to be carried out as a work of high art, whereas it can be so managed as to produce a coarse kind of illusion, thus elevating the lower quality above the higher; and, secondly, because supposing we could so imitate a natural form, a climbing rose let us say, in a wall-paper, as for a moment to deceive us into thinking it was real; the continual repetition of the same form which is a necessary part of any printed or stencilled decoration would undeceive us in a moment. But between the limits of a diaper on the one hand, and deceptive light and shade on the other, there are a hundred different ways, or degrees rather, of suggesting the roundness of objects in this form of ornamental design, which are perfectly reasonable and allowable; and here again I may refer you to Oriental designs, as showing admirably how far the imitation of natural forms, flowers, fruit, birds, &c., may be carried without attempt at illusion.

And the consideration of this subject brings me naturally to the second part of my lecture, wherein I shall devote myself entirely to that kind of ornamental design I mentioned at the beginning, "in which the imitation or realisation of Nature is the principal and most important aim of the artist."

This, of course, naturally comprehends the whole art of painting, whether purely decorative, as in the great works of the great Italian masters, or in the form in which it is more common in the present day, that of cabinet-pictures; but do not be afraid that I am going to inflict upon you a disquisition on the whole history and practice of painting; I shall merely treat of it, as I have treated of constructive and ornamental design, as but a part in fact of the great world of art, and with reference to the necessity of truth as the great essential of beauty.

In this part of my subject, although it will be impossible for me to discuss the matter properly without referring to much that is false and bad in the state of the art at the present time, it will be my pleasure to show you, to the best of my ability to what glorious heights of excellence genius may arrive when it devotes itself entirely and without afterthought of anything but achieving perfection to the one single idea of the study of the Truth of Nature in her noblest and most beautiful forms. But as I am about to make an attempt to show that an essential Element of Beauty in this Art of painting is Realism, or the power of realising what is beautiful in Nature, it would appear necessary at first to make some definition of what this Beauty of Nature really is; but we are met at the outset by the apparently insurmountable difficulty that, tastes differing, as they do, so widely on matters of beauty, it would seem futile to endeavour to set up a positive standard of beauty to which all men might agree. Indeed, to lay down a distinct law on this point, to make as it were a science of aesthetics, as there is a science of mathematics, so that we might have a distinct logical basis for a decision concerning the beauty of a work of Nature, or for settling the comparative beauty of two objects, so that we might say, for instance, "This flower or this face is more beautiful than that," not "I like this flower or this face better than that," with all the ramifications of argument that could be brought to bear on the question, would be a fitter exercise for the reasoning powers of a philosopher than of an artist, whose business it is not so much to argue on what is beautiful, as to take it for granted that what he considers beautiful is fit for his purpose.

I will state however, as briefly as I can, what I think can be said as bearing upon this point. In the first place, I am myself so distinctly conscious of the beauty of certain things, that I feel there must be a reasonable ground for my admiration. Here of course is no argument, for another person may say the same thing, in reference to certain things which I not only do not admire, but positively dislike. Nevertheless there are certain extremes of beauty and ugliness which all nations, raised above a state of barbarism, have agreed to accept in all ages. The beauty of a lily or a rose has never, that I know of, been contested; and the ugliness of a toad is proverbial; so it appears evident that there is some kind of standard to be found. In the second place, I am inclined to deny that the differences of taste and opinion, which I have referred to as creating the difficulty I am dealing with, indicate any allowable ground for those differences, for this reason—that people are so apt to mistake what they admire for what they enjoy; and that it is this confusion in our minds as to what is really enjoyable in outward objects that causes the difficulty of setting up a standard of their beauty. There are, of course, many people who have no enjoyment in the works of Nature or art, and with such there is no concern here. But there is another class of persons who have a genuine enjoyment in beautiful things; but who, from the extremely artificial state in which we live in our present condition of civilisation, cannot really tell to what extent the beauties of Nature give them pleasure. They frequently fancy that they admire or enjoy things, which, if they could or would examine their minds, they would possibly find are very wearisome to them. They admire what they think it right to admire, and what they admire they think they must enjoy. And this, it may be remarked, may be the reason why the art of semi-civilised nations is generally of uniform beauty within a certain range. Having no education in art, they form no artificial tastes. Their enjoyment is in simple things, and they are not ashamed of it, so they do not aspire to express in art more than they are capable of enjoying; whereas in our high -pressure state of civilisation, there is a large number of people, who, though they may have small knowledge of what is beautiful and limited powers of enjoyment, are not content unless they appear to take pleasure in things which are really beyond their powers of appreciation. Such as these draw unconsciously to themselves a distinct line between what they select for admiration, and what they really enjoy in their hearts; and it is among them that those differences, those oppositions of taste and opinion arise that make the difficulty I have been discussing; and it is for, and by, these pretenders, as I may call them, that so much second-rate art is produced as we see around us. But I will dwell no longer on this matter; it would take too long to discuss the point in all its bearings: nor indeed am I prepared to do so, for the whole question is surrounded with very great difficulties, and I leave it to pass to the point more immediately requiring consideration.

It will hardly I think be denied that Truth to Nature is the most important necessity in any kind of work which professes to imitate Nature, but there is more to be said on this point than would at first sight appear. The art of painting is, after all, but a part of the art of Ornamental Design, and the power of imitation is rarely unaccompanied by some power of design.

It is pretty obvious that when a savage makes a rough drawing in imitation of an animal, some feeling of design must enter into his imitation, for he has to decide upon the action he will represent, and the position it has to occupy on the vessel or wall on which he draws it; this he will do in the way which makes it most pleasant to his eyes—and the art of design is this and nothing more. Michelangelo himself in painting a figure does no more than make the best imitation of nature he can, and arrange the figure in the form and position which best pleases him. But one or other of the powers called into play is pretty sure to predominate, and this creates two classes of art, which, to my thinking, are more closely allied than is generally supposed; at least by far too much distinction is made between them, as if they were opposing qualities, rather than so closely connected that it is difficult to draw the dividing line between them. I mean the Real and the Ideal—Realism and Idealism. These are generally set in opposition to each other; we hear of schools of Realists and schools of Idealists; and certainly the Ideal is apt to be sneered at by so-called Realists as being something which is untrue to Nature and therefore beyond the scope of art; Realism, again, is looked down upon by Idealists as being unworthy the aim of men of high artistic gifts; but this denotes a confusion of ideas concerning the necessities of a work of art which leads on the one side to those poor substitutes for photography in the shape of elaborate studies from nature which some of our modern artists give us under the name of Realism—poor substitutes I call them, because the subtlety with which photography represents the more unimportant truths of nature can never be rivalled by human handiwork; or to a still lower class of picture in which the notion of Realism is achieved by the identity of some historical accessory, as though one should paint the flight of Napoleon from Waterloo, and make the interest of the picture depend on the fact that the coach is painted from the real original at Madame Tussaud's, an idea which fully comes up to our modern notions of Realism. On the other side, under the name of Idealism, of High Art, of the Grand Style, and I know not what, we have a more insufferable amount of bombastic work forced upon us than it is conceivable men could do under the pretence of representing nature. But real shades of difference there are between Realism and Idealism, caused by the operation of one or the other tendency I have spoken of in the artist's mind. To this point I shall recur further on.

Still, so far from Realism being, as some suppose, in opposition to the development of Beauty in Art, I affirm that the highest Beauty is attained by the highest application of the realistic or imitative faculty. Truth I have affirmed to be the essential of Beauty; how is truth in art to be arrived at but by the power of realising the beauties of Nature to the utmost?

Here I must pause, for I find myself in face of the difficult question, How are we to decide on what is true to Nature? Opinions vary on this point almost as much as tastes differ with regard to what is beautiful. Among those who practise art you will find some who differ at every point on the relative truth of artistic productions. The fact is, that those who are really capable of judging of the truth of a work of art will be found to be infinitely fewer in number than is supposed; yet, I imagine, there are very few who will not say, that though they know nothing about beauty or art, they are at least capable of judging whether a picture be true to nature or not; indeed there is no point on which people arc commonly so touchy, or which they are so tenacious in holding, as this of being able to decide whether a picture is “like“ or not; and this is the reason — they mistake part of the truth for the whole, or an unimportant truth for an important one. The ignorant sight-seer, who stops his listless wandering in the British Museum to look over the shoulder of a student drawing from one of the antique statues, stands amazed at what appears to him to be the truthfulness of what is possibly but a very feeble copy of the original; for him it is enough that the arms and legs are represented in due number, and in approximately correct positions; that the eyes are correct in being open, and the mouth in being shut, that the light falls on the proper side; he makes no question but that he has the power of seeing that the drawing is true to the original. Really it may be so unlike that the veriest tyro in art, or the most superficially-gifted amateur, can see the faults at a glance. This is an extreme case of a glaring kind, and therefore perhaps the better adapted for illustration, as it is on that account obvious to every one. But the same kind of ignorance, though of different degrees according to the knowledge of the observer, is constantly shown in the appreciation of pictures from Nature. Her truths are so many, so subtle, and so various, that it requires that born insight of an artist which is his greatest gift to discover but a part of them; and even having the gift, his whole life is spent in acquiring that knowledge, for not only docs he day by day discover some new beauty to which he was blind before, but he finds in doing so how little he really knows.

This insight into the truths of nature, coming partly as a gift and partly acquired by the closest and most continual observation, combined with the power of expressing his knowledge is what I understand the power of Realism to be; and these truths are what the uncultivated cannot see—they are to be found only by those who diligently seek after them. The broad external facts of Nature are patent to everybody. An ignorant person discovers in a landscape picture that moonlight is represented, for he sees the moon in the sky, the reflection in the water, the light catching the roofs of the houses and the tops of the trees, and candle-light shining through the windows. The picture may be the veriest daub, without a single point given correctly, but this fact of the moonshine is made clear, and the unpractised observer gazes with fond admiration on what he considers a miracle of truthful painting. What does he know of the relative values of tone and colour, truth of perspective, aerial and linear, and other matters which require a lifetime of observation to represent faithfully. It seems simple pedantry to him if you tell him the picture is bad because thoroughly untrue. Can he not see with his own eyes? Does he not know what moon-light is like? &c. &c. And so a mass of work, better no doubt than the very bad I have just quoted as an example, is accepted by the public as being admirably true, which though rendering cleverly enough unimportant things, is thoroughly false on all points where a real artistic insight is necessary. And the converse of this is equally true, that the noblest works of high art are completely misunderstood and ignored by the general mass of people, and not unfrequently by artists, because they contain truths which are beyond their comprehension, or which have not been sufficiently studied to take the important place in their minds which they ought to hold. The artist who has the profoundest insight into the noblest truths, and neglects no point in his work which is calculated to give them the highest expression, unquestionably produces the noblest work; and yet, in spite of this apparently obvious fact, Mr. Leslie, in his Handbook for young painters, has what I cannot but call the daring to assert that there is no such thing as what is commonly called " High Art," and declares emphatically that a picture by Ostade, who aimed at nothing but the literal representation of coarse and ignoble subjects, never caring to look for any form of beauty in Nature (ftn. 3), is as high a work of art as a picture by Raphael (he says, as far as I remember, "I should consider a picture by Ostade on a level with one by Raphael"), the whole of whose life was devoted to searching through Nature for the most beautiful forms and the loftiest characteristics, and who, by the acclamation of the world has been recognised as not only having found the highest beauty, but as having expressed it in his best work in a more consummately refined and graceful manner than any painter. This is the lesson Mr. Leslie has given to young painters, and admirably, I may say, has it been learnt. Still every truth of Nature thoroughly understood and expressed has a charm in its own degree. The stump of a tree and a broken-down railing is quite enough to make a good picture if it is painted with due understanding of the subtle relations of tone and colour which pervade all Nature. But to convey the fact that there is in a particular spot a certain stump of a tree of which you give a portrait by the side of a certain broken railing of which you give a portrait, is not painting a work of art at all.

Most of our popular art depends for its success almost entirely on the facts represented in the pictures and not on the art which is expended in the painting of them; a certain amount of technical skill is required no doubt by the more knowing of the public, but very little of it will go a long way. The public generally not being very profoundly instructed on the point of art, but perfectly understanding the point of a scene from Shakspere or one of Scott's novels, the artist whose only desire is to make a popular success, does his best to amuse the public with what they can appreciate, and represents his subject without regard to the more important and nobler truths of Nature, which he knows would be thrown away upon the ignorant, only looking for just enough of reality as is sufficient to make his point obvious to them.

Hence the complete absence of what is called style in the popular school of painting in England, and of the contempt with which foreign schools, better educated in the practice of their art and more serious in aim, look down on such work. Those critics who speak of style as an academic quality to be acquired as if it were something separate from truth, fail to see that beauty is only to be attained in art by the study of what is profoundly and not superficially true. Style I understand to be that power of realising the beauty of Nature which is only to be attained by study, and the power of expressing this knowledge as one who has had a complete education in his craft. An academic style, taken in the bad sense in which critics use it, is nothing but a mannerism, and is the result of the student adopting, without understanding them, the peculiarities of work of a certain painter or school, rather than studying the truths of Nature with a view to arrive ultimately at her highest beauties. This form of mannerism is extremely common in foreign schools, where acres of canvas and paper are covered with masses of theatrical and bombastic figures, who neither look nor behave as any mortals could look or behave under any circumstances. Every one who knows anything of German art, for instance, knows well the scowl and the clenched fist which does duty for the tragic passions of their heroes; most of the efforts at high art which have been made in this country till within the last few years have included this scowl as the kind of stamp which marks a work of style, or what is called historical art, as distinguished from a "genre" picture. But there is not much fear at present of a stilted or grandiose style spreading amongst us; the popular work of which I have been speaking is far too much of a favourite among us. English artists as a rule are too independent to adopt a manner; unfortunately they are frequently too independent to submit to any kind of schooling. The multiplicity of picture exhibitions that we have encourages young artists to exhibit pictures before they have learnt anything of their craft; and, once having gained a place at an exhibition, perhaps even made a success by a display of talent never to be developed, those are very few who have the perseverance to school themselves further. The mannerism of English artists is more often that of complete ignorance, and ignorance has a manner of its own made to conceal ignorance. This mannerism is known by the name of cleverness. That dexterous manipulation, those brilliant performances with transparent shadows and sparkling lights, with which the walls of our exhibition-rooms are yearly covered, are only displays of ignorance. They serve to conceal from a public amazed at the dexterity of the performance, the fact that the painter knows nothing of his art. If the pictures are not on this wise, they are what is called realistic, the realism consisting in the most elaborate painting of trivial details while the great and important truths of Nature are unknown and uncared for; so that the value of the work is reckoned according to the patience of the artists in realising trifles, and the success of the picture is in proportion to the time the artist has taken in painting it.

This is not all the art to be found in England. We have among us men of poetic minds and sincere and serious aims who will never condescend to paint for popularity ; and that very spirit of independence which is so fatal to conceited facility, is perhaps a means of securing a certain amount of originality which otherwise might have been confined, at all events for a time, by the trammels of academic teaching. Not that I mean to say that education can ever fetter genius ; on the contrary, a deficiency of early training of a good kind interposes a forest of difficulties to prevent the artist of genius from giving form to his thoughts which he never completely clears to the end of his life. I am referring rather to the enforced adoption of certain bad and stilted methods of work which is to be found in some foreign schools, and which may well shackle a man of talent, if not a man of great genius. It is to these schools that we owe those ludicrous exhibitions of the human form which are fondly supposed to be done in obedience to the style of the great Italian masters, where the beautiful and varied play of the muscles under the skin is represented by something to be found in a sack of potatoes rather than in a human body. No one has ever been worse treated in this respect than the gigantic genius to whom I have already referred, and to the study of whose works I shall devote the rest of my paper, as that will best explain what I mean when I speak of Realism as giving the highest form of beauty. I mean the great Michelangelo Buonarotti, justly styled by his countrymen "The divine"—a man whom as an artist I place on a level with, and in some respects above, the greatest known of Greek artists.

I have referred a while back to the predominance of one or other of the faculties which go to the making of high artistic work; I mean the powers of design and of imitation: now in Greek art the love of design seems to predominate over that of imitation; in Michelangelo's the two seem to hold an equal place. I do not mean that the Greeks had less of the imitative faculty, but that they kept it in subordination to that of design. Nor do I say that Michelangelo in any way excelled the Greeks in anything that he did in the way of study from Nature, for the work of Phidias is brought to a perfection of truth and beauty which Michelangelo may have striven after but which he certainly never achieved, at all events in his sculpture; though I shall show you a copy of one of his painted figures shortly, which to my mind equals in perfection of beauty anything done by Phidias, and that out of the force of his own single genius, for the work of Phidias was completely unknown to him. But this I say, that Michelangelo's best work is in no way inferior to the very highest Greek work in point of design, and that his imitative faculty not being kept in subordination, he was enabled to see truths that no Greek ever dreamed of expressing. Above all, his vast imaginative gift, the stormy poetry of his mind, the passionate Italian nature that was in him, the soul of Dante living again in another form, and finding its expression in another art, led him to contemplate a treatment of the human form which the intellectual Greek considered beyond the range of his art.

The Greeks aimed at the perfection of decorative design, and insomuch as the study of the human form helped them to arrive at that perfection, they carried it further and to a more consummate point than has ever been done before or since. Bat they gave themselves small scope for the display of human passion; when they represented it, it was in a cold and dignified manner which fails to awaken our sympathies. The figures of fighting warriors on the pediment of the temple of Ægina, receive and inflict wounds, and meet their death, with a fixed smile, which shows that the artist intended to avoid the expression of pain or passion. The Greek artists have the supreme right to the title of Idealists; they are the true worshippers of the ideal; the ideal of beauty once achieved, they cared not to vary it. Witness the most perfect specimen of their decorative art which remains, the most perfect in the whole world; I mean the frieze of the Parthenon. There is not in the hundreds of figures which form the Panathenaic procession, except by accidents of execution, any variation of character in the beautiful ideal forms represented, whether they be of man, woman, or animal; enough remains of the faces to show that they conform to two or three types throughout without variety of character or expression — all is as perfect as the most profound knowledge, the most skilful workmanship, and the highest sense of beauty can make it. But with the great Florentine the realistic tendency is obvious from the beginning, not to work up to an ideal of humanity, but to study it in its countless forms of beauty and grandeur, and its ever-varying moods, and to represent these as truthfully as the deepest contemplation of Nature could enable him to do. I have not time to discuss further the subject of Greek art, but what I have said will show my meaning plainly enough, and I hope make it clear that I have no want of appreciation of those sublimely beautiful works which will be the school of art for the whole world as long as the world lasts. In Michelangelo we have an instance of a mind gifted with the highest imaginative faculties, and with the most profound love and veneration for all that is most noble, most beautiful, and grandest in Nature, following with the most unwearying perseverance the road most calculated to develop these faculties, by studying with accurate minuteness the construction of the human form, so as to be able to give the highest reality to his conceptions. Luca Signorelli's imaginative faculty was akin to that of Michelangelo, and some go so far as to think that this painter's work had an influence on Michelangelo. This may possibly be true, and no doubt Michelangelo may have admired this painter's work greatly. But I do not see the necessity for supposing that Michelangelo was indebted to him for ideas, when we consider the vastness of his genius. The difference I wish to point out between two men, alike in the character of their genius is, that Michelangelo's marvellous knowledge of the human form, in which he stands alone, enabled him to give a splendid and truthful beauty to his figures, and to dwell on subtleties of modelling and of outline, which are not to be found in Luca Signorelli's work. Astonishing as is the power of Luca Signorelli's imagination, and admirably true as are the action and expression of his figures, he fell short precisely on that point of realism which makes the enormous gulf between him and the greater artist. Michelangelo I consider the greatest realist the world has ever seen; the action, expression, and drawing of his figures down to the minutest folds of drapery and points of costume, down to the careful finish given to the most trivial accessories (when used) such as the books his figures hold, and the desks they write on, are all studied from the point of view of being as true to Nature as they can be made. It was not he but his imitators and followers who made human bodies like sacks of potatoes; he who never made, never could make, a fault of anatomy in his life, has had such followers; and who would seem, moreover, to have gloried in thinking how Michelangelesque was their work. It is his followers again and not he, who make their saints and prophets write with pens without ink, on scrolls of paper without desks.

And here there is a very general misconception, which I must dwell on for a short time, it is so very important that it should be set right. I have heard it said again and again, by artists (who ought to know better) and others, that Michelangelo's works may be grand in style, they may be imaginative, they may even be beautiful (sometimes), but they cannot be said ^to be true to Nature on account of their exaggeration. You will all recognize that this is the common way in which Michelangelo's works are spoken of. Now my first notion connected with a lecture on Art was that of vindicating Michelangelo's honour on this point. There are, I think, many reasons, and perhaps some good ones, for this opinion. The best and most universally known of his works is the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, a work executed when he was sixty years old, by which time his magnificent manner had possibly developed into somewhat of a mannerism (ftn. 4)—that is to say, that whereas throughout his life the necessities of his subjects, chosen no doubt especially for the purpose, obliged him to depict the human form in every beautiful variety of action and position, in his later years this pleasure of exercising his ingenuity in inventing and correctly representing difficulties of foreshortening seemed to grow upon him, and in some parts of the Last Judgment—especially in the upper part—outweighed the more simple dignity with which most of it is invested. The stupendous work which to my mind has done most to make his name immortal is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, executed twenty years before the Last Judgment, which is on the end wall of the same chapel; and it is on this work that I take my stand in placing Michelangelo as the chief of realistic painters; not so much on the Last Judgment, tremendous as it is both in conception and execution. Another, and the most important reason for the charge of exaggeration is, that for some reason or another no great man has ever suffered so much at the hands of the engravers. All with one accord have taken it into their heads that Michelangelo's work cannot be properly copied unless limbs and muscles are exaggerated in a way which they would never dream of using with another man's work; in fact, they think it necessary to import into their work every exaggerated defect which they find in the works of his imitators, or rather the defects of exaggeration to be found in the school formed on Raphael after his death. Raphael, indeed, himself is not exempt from having made exaggerated imitations of the great master. The Incendio del Borgo is perhaps the beginning of that lumpy and inflated style, so different from the simple and elegant work of Michelangelo. Finding apparently that Michelangelo is not so Michelangelesque as they expected, they feel bound to improve upon him; and the greatest master of drawing the world has ever seen has had the most ill-drawn travesties of his finest works passed off on those who are unable to visit the originals and judge for themselves. Still those who have eyes to see, can very plainly make out from the wretched stuff that engravers have given us what manner of man it was whose work is thus caricatured. It is obvious that the mind which could conceive figures so amazingly grand in intention could not be guilty of altering Nature for the purpose of producing the grotesque forms and faces shown us by the engravers. I fortunately a little time ago had the opportunity of verifying for myself what I had surmised to be true, but much as I expected in the way of beauty before entering the Sistine, I was prepared rather to be overwhelmed by a magnificent grandeur of imagination and design than to be charmed by refined beauties of form and face; and another element of beauty I found which I had not expected, for the engravings carefully avoid representing it in their copies, and on a point of excellence for which the palm has generally been given to another painter. I mean the amazing subtlety, variety and truth of expression in the faces of the Titanic beings who sit enthroned over one's head in that amazing work. Raphael has been considered the master of expression and beauty of face, Michelangelo of grandeur of form; I find the latter supreme in all. He it was who found in Nature what beauty and what grandeur lies in the most trivial actions, and first had the power to depict them. Raphael's receptive mind seized at once on the idea, adapted it to his style, and followed close on the great master's steps. The possibility of verifying the truth of what I say is now, fortunately, within reach of all amateurs of art; for within the last eighteen months this amazing work of which I am speaking,—in which the variety is so great that Vasari may well say, "That no man who is a painter now cares to seek new inventions, attitudes, draperies, originality, and force of expression,"—this great work has been reproduced in all its details in photography; the enterprising German who has rendered this most important service, having taken no less than 140 negatives, all (with the exception of seven or eight from the Last Judgment) being taken from the ceiling. These photographs are a revelation in art; no one until now who has not seen the original fresco has had the slightest idea of what Michelangelo's work is. I have made copies of two of these photographs to a large scale for the purpose of giving you some idea of the beauty of his stupendous style; and, as I say, the photographs are within the reach of all who care to possess them, so every one who pleases may have the opportunity of verifying the truth of my words.

I allude to two of the naked figures which sit in pairs on the architectural projections which form the sides of the prophets' thrones. Each pair of these figures holds between them a large medallion, on which, in imitation of a relief in bronze and gold is painted a subject from the Book of Kings, or supports a ponderous festoon of leaves and acorns, which is a common feature of decoration in classical architecture, but employed in a totally new way by Michelangelo, which the original inventor of the idea was far from dreaming of. For there are no less than twenty of these figures, and Michelangelo has taken advantage of their employment to represent not only almost every kind of action of which the position of these figures could suggest to his great genius, but for the display of every variety and mood of the human mind. One of these seems the very type of life and activity; he laughs as he shifts the ribbon by which he supports his medallion from one shoulder to the other; he is in the act of uncrossing his legs as he does it, and the great master of design has arrested him in the middle of this complicated, and, to any other artist, almost impossible movement. An instantaneous photograph could not seize on the action with more absolute accuracy, and there is that look of life in his light and active limbs that you almost expect him to continue his movement. More grand is the other as he sits calmly reposing on his ponderous burden, profoundest and most melancholy thought reflected on his God-like face. Others seem to catch some faint sound of the inspiration which the cherubs of God are whispering in the ear of the prophet or sibyl below, and start with affrighted and awestricken looks. There is another laughing figure even more beautiful than this one; he lifts with ease his heavy weight of leaves and acorns, while his fellow looks at him with an angry glance as he struggles to raise his own share which has slipped from his shoulder. There is a pair who converse over their task, and another pair perform it with careless indifference, as it weary and uninterested; and all these various pictures are depicted with a realism of expression and action, a beauty of form and face, an absolute accuracy of anatomical expression, a splendour of light and shade, a roundness of modelling, and minuteness of finish to perfect drawing of every nail on hand or foot, and the graceful turn of every lock of hair, which never flags for a moment, and which is never at fault. The beauty of the heads of these figures is beyond all that ever was done in art; nothing of Raphael's, to my mind, approaches them; and oh one point he differs widely from the Greeks; while he gives to many of his faces the beautiful refinement of a woman's, he has never sacrificed one atom of the manliness. The figure before us, with all the melancholy tenderness of its face, has nothing but the character of a man, and the figure is massive as rock, with all the beauty of its forms. Not so the Greeks, who made their Apollos so effeminate that it is difficult to tell from the head whether a man or woman is represented. The beauty of the heads of these figures is, as I say, beyond all that ever was done, but it is hardly more extraordinary than the beauty of the bodies and limbs. The hands and feet especially are invariably perfect, and being the most difficult part of the figure show in contrast to most of our modern work, for they are precisely the parts that are always the most perfectly done and the most finished. But more wonderful than all is the harmony of design; the figures being in pairs, and facing each other, they are made to a certain extent to correspond. The perfectly natural way in which this is done without forcing the action of the figures into similar forms is not the least astounding part of the work. One pair is in action, another in repose, and yet it never occurs to the spectator till he begins to examine the work as a composition that this is a matter of most careful arrangement. The lines of composition too of each figure are not only most harmonious in themselves, but in perfect harmony with every figure round it. But what shall I say? In what words shall I express myself when I come to speak of the inspired beings—sibyls and prophets — who sit enthroned below? The realization of these sublime forms is carried to the highest pitch. Nothing so true as the expression and action of these figures down to the most trivial points was ever done. The most magnificent of these figures to my thinking is the prophet Isaiah; he receives inspiration from a cherub, who, with excited looks, is pointing behind him, his flying drapery indicating that he has come, like the winged Mercury of the Pagans, with a direct message from Heaven. With all the grandeur of this figure, the movement and expression are as exactly true as any painter of child-life could desire. Turn to the prophet himself; what a subtle combination of expressions on his face! His right hand drawing forth the book wherein he records the inspirations he receives from Heaven, he listens to the Divine message with a mingled expression of attention and wonder. His downcast eyes have a fixed look, as though they saw not; his brow is half raised in wonder, half frowning in deepest thought, and a slight look of bewilderment plays hesitating round his mouth, as with his left hand he seems to indicate that he has received the message and turns with the intention of recording it. The massive grandeur of his features is in accordance with the dignified repose of the action, and over all there is the lofty look of the prophet not unaccustomed to hold intercourse with his God. I believe this to be the most triumphant realization of a complicated expression and action combined with the most consummate grandeur of face and form that was ever achieved. The first impression of the sight of this figure in its gigantic size on the ceiling sixty feet above one's head is that of amazement at the mighty art that produced it; in this case Nature really seems to have been surpassed, and a new creation made. But the imagination of the artist, how justly called divine, rises to yet higher flights when he treats of the creation of the world, and the history of our first parents in the centre compartments of the ceiling. But throughout, from beginning to end, through all the hundreds of groups and figures which make up this triumph of the decorative art, there is this one predominant feeling; that no matter how supremely difficult the position or action of the figures, no matter whether he be representing prophet, cherub, or ordinary mortal, or even those scenes where the Almighty manifests His glory in acts of creation, the expression of face and figure is realized with the utmost attention to truth. The draperies take not the least important place in this expression; they clothe and express the forms of the limbs without affectation, and in the most natural manner; as the figure moves so the drapery moves; as the figure rests so the drapery falls. Everything is in perfect balance; the turn of the shoulders follows the movement of the head; the limbs answer to and balance each other exactly as in Nature; and the figures have thus a more absolute vitality than any other artist has ever been able to give. All other artists, except perhaps Raphael, and he only when he had caught the inspiration from Michelangelo is to be excepted, seem to place their figures in attitudes; it is his amazing and almost incredible power of seizing the passing movement that makes Michelangelo's figures appear positively alive; an instant more and the position is changed. To draw from one of his figures is like drawing from Nature itself; it was only in copying portions of these figures that I appreciated how profound a Realism underlies the Ideal of this greatest of artists.

These are the mighty works that, like the gorgeous symphonies of Beethoven and the choruses of Handel, stand out in sublime solitude above the efforts of other men. It will be well for students, and indeed for all artists, to remember that, if they wish to catch some reflections of the beauties that appear revealed in these lofty creations of genius, they will fail most egregiously if they only aspire to imitate them; whereas it is in the power of each one to follow in the steps of this most glorious master, by seeking in Nature as he did, for some of her hidden truths, by never condescending to substitute dexterity for knowledge, or to catch applause by wilfully falsifying for fear that Truth should be misunderstood. In this way they will find that it is not necessary to treat of angels or prophets to produce a thing of beauty, for realism of this noble kind can glorify the humblest subject.

Footnotes:

1. The reader will see by the date of this lecture that this passage was written some years before Mr. Mark Tattison's use of this illustration.

2. Lately vast quantities of carpets and rugs from Turkestan and the neighbouring countries have been imported into Europe far exceeding in beauty the old Turkey carpets alluded to in the text. The East is now being exhausted of all its traditional manufactures, never, I fear, to be restored.

3. This rather sweeping statement requires some modification; I meant it to apply to O.stade's treatment of figures; in beauty of tone and light and shade he is only second to Rembrandt, and his execution is subtle and delicate in the highest decree.

4. A lecture written later will show that further study of this celebrated fresco has considerably modified my views of it; though there is some truth in what is here written.