LECTURE II.

I have no intention in the present discourse of passing in review the whole history of Old and New Art, or of drawing out at length the comparison between them. I intend, on the contrary, so far from attempting to exhaust the subject, to confine myself to the consideration of a few reasons only for the difference between our Modern Art and that of previous ages — a difference to my mind not in favour of the former — and to a brief inquiry as to how far we may hope that our work will ever attain as high a standard as that of the Old Masters, and what direction it should take to arrive at this result.

I have been led to the discussion of this subject, because it is not uncommonly believed and asserted, that the Art of our day may be shown to be in advance of that of the past; or rather, that, if not equal to it in some so-called technical or academical qualities, it is acquiring so many important "new lights" from the general progress of knowledge, that its development into an Art taking its standpoint on a higher ground than that which we have been accustomed to call High Art, is only a question of time, of the spread of a more general art-education, and, more especially, of certain ideas.

We are all familiar with the argument, which, while it admits that the great artists of history, whether Greek or Italian, may have conceived and realized an ideal of the human form which in these days we cannot pretend to rival, yet insist that ideas on this subject are, to use a modern vulgarism, "played out;" that we want our art to be more in accordance with the spirit of the age, which is an age of realities and progress; that our art must be above all realistic, and show us Nature as we see her around us, and that it must also progress and keep pace with the advancement of science and education, so as to give us something new. As science is perpetually startling us with new discoveries, so art must also break new ground and strike out a fresh path. I do not say that the argument, 'put into this broad and coarse form, exactly expresses the opinion of any really thoughtful persons; but it is at the root of much that is written and said on the subject, and that by persons in a position to influence public taste, and who at all events imagine they have well considered the subject; and it is so plausible as to require refutation.

It is apparently not obvious to every one at first sight wherein lies the great distinction between science and art, which restrains the latter within certain impassable boundaries, while there is apparently no possible limit to the discoveries and novelties of which the former is capable. Persons who argue in the way just noticed do not see how it is the very essence of an art to have a certain ideal or standard, which is understood to be a limit, though it may never be actually attained; while in the case of science the field of operation is ever widening; that as art can only appeal to our minds or hearts through our senses, unless it does so on some principle of choice or selection, we gain no more from it than we gain from the observation of Nature itself. Now since the human form and face, containing as they do the highest qualities of beauty which Nature presents for our admiration, form the highest study to which an artist can devote himself, and since the aspects not only of human but of all natural beauty are the same in all ages, it follows that there is no new discovery to be made in the matter, and that the only possible development is in the power of expression. Not seeing, or even caring to see this, our modern critics are not in a position to judge how near to perfection in the attainment of this ideal the art of the past arrived, or how nearly it reached the limits beyond which art is incapable of further progress. What then they really desire in the present day, is a kind of art which shall appeal more directly to minds incapable of appreciating its more elevated characteristics. This they persuade themselves would be a higher development, because appealing to a wider range. But here we must pause. A wider range — of what? Of sympathies? No; but of minds incapable of large sympathies. The argument that the progress of knowledge has given us new and more varied themes for expression, and therefore tends to produce a further development of art, must fall to the ground, unless it can be shown that these themes are of a kind that lend themselves specially to artistic treatment.

The truth is, that any attempt to rival or surpass the chef d'œuvres of the past must be made on the same conditions and in the same spirit that animated the producers of those great works. Were science to discover for us the cause of every natural phenomenon that exists — nay, were it to reach the inmost sources of life or light — the glow of the evening sky would be none the more or less beautiful, nor the grace of a child's movements one whit diminished or increased. These indeed are eternal and unchangeable beauties, and it is with these that the artist has to do; and though he may never be able to attain to the complete expression of them, the end of them has always been and ever will be within the range of his conceptions, since they live for ever for his continual contemplation. I have therefore no hesitation in saying that art has lost more than it has gained by our modern modes of thought and feeling, and that if it be asked why we cannot put away the traditions of the past, and work in the modern spirit, the answer is, that the modern spirit is becoming daily more opposed to the artistic spirit, and is precisely what hampers its expression; that what is good in the art of to-day, is good in the same way, and for the same reasons, as the old; that we have no lights on the subject which were not also clear to the old masters; and that where we seem to have struck out a new path, we have only chosen one which they purposely and rightly rejected; while where we seem to have discovered a new truth, it proves to be one beside the question.

Now there are, I think, two causes to be found for the immense difference in the aim and results of our modern work as compared with that of the ancients. One of these is a noble cause; and is due to the spread of a philosophy, I might almost call it a religion, which insists that there are certain qualities, moral or divine, inherent in ideas or impressions of beauty, which the artist must recognise in order to produce a high form of art. The second is an ignoble cause, and may be broadly stated as due to the fact that artists, from motives of indolence or interest, have allowed themselves to be led by the opinion of the public, instead of being, as of old, indifferent to it, or themselves leading the way to a better appreciation on the part of the public of the capabilities of art. Now both these causes have, curiously enough, led to the same result; I mean they have both been instrumental in leading to a prevalent belief that the imitation of Nature, or perhaps I should say the record of impressions of Nature, is the aim and purpose of the artist. It will be necessary then, before going further, that we should inquire in what way and how far a mere imitation of Nature may result in a work of art. And in speaking of imitation, I must be understood to use the word in the sense of copying. Fuseli indeed marks a difference between copying and imitation, and defines it in this way: " Precision of eye and obedience of hand are the requisites of the former, without the least pretence to choice, what to select, what to reject; whilst choice, directed by judgment or taste, constitutes the essence of imitation, and alone can raise the most dexterous copyist to the noble rank of an artist." It seems to me, however, that it is impossible for an artist not to choose what he is going to paint; he may choose stupidly, but a choice of some kind he must make; so, with this slight difference, I apply Fuseli's definition of copying to what I mean by imitation.

When I say that the belief of which I am speaking is a very prevalent one, I judge not only by what is said and written on the matter, but by the large quantity of merely imitative work which is to be met with in our numerous art-exhibitions, and the amount of success such work meets with. Now it is quite true that an imitation of Nature may be a work of art; when at its best, it calls forth all the highest technical qualities of the painter, the qualities that distinguish him as a painter from the poet, who presents to us Nature in another way. These technical qualities, this "precision of eye and obedience of hand" requisite for the rendering of colour and form, include the whole art of painting, and are found in perfection only in the work of the most highly-gifted artists; but they distinctly belong only to the painter as such, and are independent of the higher mental faculties. On the other hand, being the qualities which are necessary to his existence as a painter, those without which he is nothing, they take the lowest place among the artistic faculties. The fact however remains, that a mere imitation of Nature, what is called realistic painting (though I should be inclined to call it materialistic, a true realism being of the highest forms of art (ftn. 2)) — the fact remains that this imitative painting may be so admirably done as to become of a high order of merit. It is the essence of portrait-painting, though for a good portrait other qualities are doubtless required. It is the essence also of landscape-painting, though for good landscapes other qualities are required, and it is all that is necessary for still-life painting. Nevertheless it is only the groundwork of ideal art, and is like the language in which the poet expresses his thoughts. It is indeed the language of art, and may be used by the artist for three purposes. It may be used by the mere imitator to present the ordinary aspects of Nature; it may be used by an artist of taste to express, through a knowledge of these aspects, his selection of what he considers best worth portraying; and thirdly, by the gifted man of genius to give form to his imagination, which, rising above mere " choice directed by judgment and taste," directs itself to the higher flights of creative powers. This imaginative power of the artist is the result of the selection and combination of the impressions received during a long and intimate acquaintance with Nature; depending, according to Mr. Darwin, on the strength and variety of our impressions, on the rapidity with which they are conveyed to our mind, and our power of retaining and combining them. Mr. Ruskin also explains the imagination to be a certain mode of regarding or combining the ideas which . the mind has received from external Nature, the impressions being thus obviously the groundwork for the imagination, and the highest art that which gives form to the imagination of the artist, not that -which records impressions received immediately from Nature herself. And this imaginative faculty in the hands of men of great genius is of a truly creative kind; for is not the result of their combinations akin to the creation of a new world for the enjoyment, intellectual and moral, of those who can understand it? Has not Michelangelo created for us a new and superior order of beings? whose grandeur may indeed be felt but not defined; so that writers have exhausted language in the attempt to give utterance to the emotion called up by his power. As when Reynolds impressively says, " I feel a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite;" and Fuseli, "His women are moulds of generation, his infants teem with the man, his men are a race of giants;" and Ruskin, "His inexplicable power proceeds from an imaginative perception almost superhuman, which goes whither we cannot follow, and is where we cannot come; throwing naked the final, deepest root of the being of man, whereby he grows out of the invisible, and holds on his God home;" and again, when he speaks of "the troops of terror torn up from the earth by the four-quartered winds of the Judgment" . . . . making "the hair stand up and the words be few;" — language which bears witness to faculties of a truly creative nature, for of none other could it be used. So then the aim of all high art is — the aim of all art (except that which professes to be portraiture)— should be to create a world in which our imaginations should be excited to the contemplation of noble and beautiful ideas; and in proportion as it fails to do this, so does it differ from the great art of the old masters, who, intentionally or instinctively, ever had this aim in view.

It is not difficult then to see the reason why landscape-painting is necessarily put in the second rank of art; for even if the impressions recorded be of the highest beauty, still it is but a record and an imitation, though still an imitation which may come under the head of Fuseli's second definition as being "directed by judgment and taste;" and it is one most difficult of accomplishment, requiring artistic skill of the highest order, on account of the subtle and fleeting effects which it is the delight and glory of the landscape-painter to recall. And of the same nature as this highest form of landscape is the more elevated form of portrait-painting, which aims at recording not only the features and costume, but all the nobler characteristics of the subject, taking, however, a second place, as being a recording and not a creative art. Lower than this must be placed what is called still-life painting, and that kind of landscape which is of the matter-of-fact portrait kind. However beautiful the subject chosen for imitation may be, these only appeal to us in so far as the subject in Nature itself appeals to us, or please us according to the amount of technical skill displayed. Still lower again is that kind of realistic portrait-painting which we find in the modem French school, which presents a specious appearance of originality by ignoring the necessity for presenting the subject to us under an agreeable form, and so repels us in spite of an undoubted technical skilfulness. To this kind of realism I am not sure that I do not prefer our own fashionable school of portraiture, as showing the faint tradition of a desire to ennoble the subject by the treatment. The basest degradation of the art is, however, revealed in that brutal rendering of noble subjects, in which the French realistic painters take especial delight; where with insolent bravado everything is done with a direct intention of disgusting us, and of showing how an ignoble and ferocious mood may triumph over the purity and dignity with which such themes have been hitherto invested. Of this kind is the "Salomé" of Regnault, which it is worth while to compare with the graceful treatment of the same figure by the early Italian painters.

Nearly on the same level, but not always so low, are the Dutch painters, who treat us to gross representations of drunken scenes; they are not so low, because the pleasure they take in these things is merely stupid, and not cynical. With the Dutch painters indeed, as in the case of Ostade (who does not always descend to these subjects, but as often paints for us the homely pleasures of a contented if somewhat degraded peasantry), there is constantly a perception of the poetical beauty of glowing light and softened and mysterious shade, and a delicate skill in rendering them, which makes us forget the poverty and grossness of the idea. There is no such redeeming feature, however, in the same scenes when painted by Jan Steen, whose remarkable power of rendering expression only adds, as one may say, to his disgrace, so that the better the art displayed in the imitation the more base is the result (ftn. 3).

Now if we reflect a moment on the various styles of painting I have thus briefly noticed, we shall find that they are all, with the exception of the higher kind of portraiture, of comparatively modern invention; they have all come into practice since the end of the sixteenth century, up to which period art rested on that high level of which I have spoken, being of a purely creative and ideal nature. We may call them, if we please, developments of that high school, but the development is from a creative to an imitative art. Now the creative necessarily includes the imitative; that is to say, a knowledge of natural forms and a fully-trained power of imitating them is what the creative artist starts from — they are the indispensable instruments of his genius; to descend again to the level of mere imitation, and to remain there as if there were nothing higher, is therefore to take up a distinctly lower position. Nor can we consider the position thus assumed to be a new one, for it is not to be supposed that the Florentine and Venetian painters, who painted the landscape of their backgrounds with such exquisite perception of the very essence of its beauty, never painted landscape pure and simple for want of appreciation; it was because they felt it but an imperfect form of art which should rely simply on its power of recalling impressions. Titian indeed has left us pictures of almost pure landscape, but they are rather in the nature of a diversion from his other and more serious work, being painted but occasionally out of the fulness of his delight in the beauty of his native mountain scenery.

And so of fruit and flower-painting. There was no painter up to the end of the sixteenth century who would not have scorned to sit down to make a picture of a bunch of roses or a plate of peaches. In their beautiful ideal representations of the Infant Christ and His Virgin Mother, these men could indeed conceive no more delightful manner of enriching their pictures with forms of beauty than by decorating them with garlands of fruit and flowers, and we may be sure they took as keen a pleasure in painting these innocent beauties of nature as any stilllife painter of the Dutch, French, or English schools. Herein, however, lies the difference between the old and the new feeling in such matters. A work of pure imitation per se was a thing unknown up to the end of the sixteenth century, not because it did not occur to the sculptors and painters of those times to produce such work, but because they rejected it as not worthy of consideration, knowing well that true art is a different thing. Modern art, on the other hand — I mean that part of it which is modern in spirit — aims at nothing more than recalling the impressions which all of us, who have a few shreds of poetic sensibility, receive from the more obvious beauties of Nature, and in this way makes an appeal to a wide circle of sympathies, though, as I have already noticed, those sympathies may be of the shallowest kind. In rendering what is purely beautiful, it finds its expression in that school of landscape-painting which has reached perhaps its highest point in some of Turner's best work; its lowest in the mass of still-life flower and fruit-painting, of which I suppose William Hunt is the most refined and skilful exponent. With that other phase of modern art which deals not with the beauty of Nature but its grossness or inanity, I have for the present nothing to do.

For the difference above noticed I have said that there are two causes, one noble and one ignoble. To begin with the first: it seems rather startling to say that a noble idea may also be a misleading one; but it is rather in the application of the idea to art, not in other considerations to which it gives rise, that the idea appears to me fallacious. Now when I speak of a noble philosophy of art, amounting almost to a religion, it is obvious whom I have in my mind as the exponent of this philosophy or the prophet of this religion — the name of Mr. Ruskin cannot fail at once to present itself. It is with no small amount of diffidence, and with some misgiving, that I venture to differ from so gifted a writer, especially on a point which he would, and indeed in all his teaching does insist on as a vital one. With diffidence, for it is quite possible that I have missed, either altogether or in part, his meaning, or do not see deeply enough into it; with misgiving, for he has the world enough against him already, and it may be (if indeed he is ever aware of the fact) a natural source of vexation to him to find that I, occupying a post analogous to his own, and holding a responsibility for art-teaching which must make my views in some sense of importance for right or wrong, should hold on a point of vital interest in art-teaching an opinion different from his own. But I feel that this idea of his which I am about to challenge leads to so much that is false in the art of this country, and to the production of so much of this merely recording work, under the notion that such is the true aim of the painter, that I boldly run whatever risk may befall me in endeavouring to point out its error.

I quote Mr. Ruskin's own words from the second volume of Modern Painters, where he enunciates his whole theory of art. They are as follows: — "I wholly deny that the impressions of beauty are in any way sensual; they are neither sensual nor intellectual, but moral; " (ftn. 4) and again in a later work, the Crown of Wild Olive: — "No statement of mine has been more earnestly and oftener contradicted than that good taste is essentially a moral quality." I can hardly therefore be mistaken as to the assertion, though, as I say, I may have failed to grasp the whole of the meaning. With regard to the sense of the word "sensual," he explains it in the sentence before the one first quoted as equivalent to "æsthetic;" "the term 'æsthesis,'" he writes, "properly signifies mere sensual perception of the outward qualities and necessary effects of bodies." This, although true, slightly degrades the meaning of the word æsthetic, which may surely be applied to our mental as well as our sensual perceptions. The word sensual too has come to be used in a lower meaning than æsthetic (as when we speak of "sensual" pleasures, meaning the pleasures by which we gratify our lower appetites), so I prefer, for fear of misapprehension, the word "æsthetic."

Now in insisting that our ideas and impressions of beauty are in reality what Mr. Ruskin denies them to be, æsthetic, I labour under the disadvantage of appearing to abstract from them that elevated character which Mr. Ruskin has ascribed to them in his chapters on typical beauty. But observe, I do not in any way deny the truth, the philosophical truth, of this view of ideas of beauty; I only say it is beside the question, and may easily lead to false conclusions with regard to art. It is not that I hold the error to lie in the assertion of the moral quality in impressions of beauty, but in the inference that the perception of this quality is essential to the production of a true work of art, and that it is under the influence of such perception that all good art has been produced. I can indeed conceive of no writing more calculated to elevate our moral and intellectual nature than the chapters in which Mr. Ruskin treats of the different forms of beauty as types of the Divine attributes; for not only those chapters, but the whole of his works from beginning to end, set before us more exalted conceptions of the beauty and sublimity of Nature than has ever been presented to us in words, amounting, as I have said, almost to the setting forth of a new religion of the purest and noblest type. But to me it is impossible not to feel throughout that the typical qualities are not really inherent in forms of beauty, but exist in the mind of the spectator, which may be excited with equal readiness to their contemplation, by every form of art which professes to represent them. For, be it observed, if the aesthetic nature of these impressions be denied, the seeing power of the artist, which is distinctly his aesthetic faculty — distinguishing him from those who cannot receive impressions of beauty — is left out. of the account also; in which case the earnest intention of the painter, his intense love of Nature, his profound veneration and affection for the moral beauties to be found in the most trivial of God's works, may easily lead him to the belief that, as long as he devotes himself to the imitation of these works, he is setting forth the glory of the Creator in a better way than if he used his powers for the purpose of selection and combination. "Let the young artist beware of the spirit of Choice; it is an insolent spirit at the best," says Mr. Ruskin, as a sequel to saying that "if we can only admire this thing or that, we may be sure that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature." (ftn. 5) He must pardon me if I think that not only here but throughout his works he has not sufficiently separated two ideas. He confuses the faculty by which we may all derive a moral benefit from a humble contemplation of the infinite beauties and wonders of creation, with that artistic faculty which frames for us and forces upon us the perception and appreciation of those generic beauties which are not obvious to the unexercised or unperceiving mind. It is no doubt true that we receive a more elevated understanding of the import of this world and of this life the more we have illustrated to us the nature of God, and in this way these impressions of beauty may have an ennobling effect on our whole moral nature; but this is really beside the question. When we are considering them in relation not to our own minds, but to their capacity for representation in art, we have to decide not what excites in us the highest religious or moral emotions, but how far art is capable of conveying these emotions to the mind. Otherwise, if we insist too much upon the moral character of the impressions of beauty, we should have to admit that the man in whom they excite the most rapturous moral enthusiasm is of necessity the greatest artist, rather than he who is distinguished by his perceptive and discriminating gift.

An artist indeed may possess his enthusiasm for beauty in this "theoretic" form, but how is he to explain in his work that this is the case? It is doubtless easy to answer that the artist who enjoys this high moral perception of beauty must show it in his work if his art is good; but it is quite open to the spectator to deny that he finds any trace of this emotion in the work, and so to condemn it; in which case we are led back to the original proposition, that the moral qualities of beauty exist only in the mind of the beholder, who can supply them to any work of art which he considers to set forth these beauties most clearly.

If the views contained in the preceding remarks have been stated with sufficient clearness, it will now be perceived how these ideas may lead to that kind of art which I have explained as being rather of a recording and imitative, than of a creative character. The beauty of nature is very much more obvious in certain of its aspects and forms than in others. For one man who has the æsthetic faculty of being pleasurably affected by the beautiful forms and proportions of the "Venus of Melos," or Michelangelo's "Slave" — that is, by the subtle distinctions of. line which in Nature go to make the difference between a form of high beauty, and one that is of a mean or vulgar kind — there are a hundred who can feel the glory of a sunset or the exquisite tints of an anemone. Since therefore the moral qualities of typical beauty are set forth to the mind which can see them, as gloriously in these last as in the first, and may even be set up on a higher pinnacle, as exemplifying types of purity and humility in contrast to mere sensual, and therefore (by a verbal quibble) degraded, love of form for its own sake; it is not difficult for an artist to persuade himself that he is doing the most earnest and right-minded work in endeavouring humbly and patiently to imitate those beauties to the utmost of his power, and so convey to others the emotion that he feels.

Nay more, he may go further; he may persuade himself that there is nothing else worth doing, and that this work alone is of a pure and spiritual nature, all other being sensual, and therefore demoralising; so that, as with the ascetics of old, there is no kind of work too humble for him to devote himself to it. Or what is worse than this (for work done really in earnest and with a spirit of patience has always in it something of value, and I may add that no good work can ever be done without this spirit), the spectator may well imagine that the mind of the painter who laboriously produces for us again and again bunches of primroses and violets, is actuated by some exalted, earnest feeling, and in possession of some high theoretic faculty, while in truth he has only been exerting a mere imitative and technical skill and what amount of æsthetic faculty he may possess, and moreover only exercising just so much of his faculties as will enable him to make money in the quickest and readiest way. Thus it is quite possible for such a theorist, if himself destitute of the æsthetic perception, to exalt bad and fantastic work over good, if he imagines it to give a higher expression to the typical nature of beauty; so that the critic who is not offended by the crude and discordant yellow and blue of one of Turner's later sunset pictures, may believe that he finds in it a deeper perception of the infinity and purity of the evening sky than in his earlier work, and may thus be led to ascribe to it an artistic value which it does not possess. In the same way too he might exalt the birds'-nests of William Hunt over the mighty conceptions of Michelangelo and Phidias, if he imagines he perceives this earnest faculty in the one and not in the others.

As a proof that this is possible, we have only to look at the amount of artistic talent that is spent on painting little groups of fruit and flowers, or small landscape studies, when it might be developed into something better if the artist did not stop short with the idea suggested by this train of thought, that he is in this way doing the only right work. It is not altogether Mr. Ruskin's fault that a noble theory has led to such poor results, for it is the misfortune of all great ideas that they degenerate most easily into cant; in illustration of which point I may relate an instance, which has come under my own notice, of a person who visited an artist's studio, and after having been shown pictures and designs of no mean order of beauty, begged to be allowed to see some of his "earnest work, his study of leaves and flowers."

If then I have made my meaning clear, I shall be understood to have said that the idea must be expressed in a work of art, and not merely exist in the mind of the artist, or be supplied by that of the beholder; that the moral nature of beauty is of a kind that cannot be expressed in painting or sculpture; that therefore, as far as art is concerned, ideas of beauty are and must be purely aesthetic, and that the contrary theory is not only calculated to lead criticism astray where the æsthetic faculty is wanting, but may even induce an indifference on the part of the artist to any higher forms of beauty than those which are at once obvious to the uneducated mind.

I will not now stop to discuss another point in Mr. Ruskin's writings which appears at first sight to bear on this subject; I mean the idea which runs throughout his works of the necessity for a right state of moral feeling, not only in producers but in nations and epochs, as essential to the appreciation and production of a noble and beautiful art. I may remark, however, that even if it can be shown that the best art has always arisen out of a pure state of national faith and domestic virtue, it does not follow that those conditions will always produce good art. If the æsthetic qualities be absent they certainly never will; and I can imagine no condition of national virtue which could cram ideas of beauty into the head of an average Englishman or Scotchman; but as far as regards the artist himself, it appears to be unquestionable that the aesthetic faculties being in two instances equal, there will be no comparison between the art of a man of a pure and noble mind and one of a mean and sordid nature. Indeed the very highest artistic gifts seem to imply also a noble and healthy moral condition. Michelangelo was himself one of the most simple and high-minded of men, incapable of any act of meanness; and we should find, I think, on examination that all the truly great artists and poets have been of the same nature. But I have been led much further into the question of the moral nature of beauty than I at first intended. It is a question which when once taken up is not to be lightly dismissed, and having given much serious thought to the matter, I can only hope that I have not in any way misunderstood Mr. Ruskin's meaning; still more do I hope that I have not wrongly represented it (which indeed I could only do under a misunderstanding). Here then I must leave this difficult and interesting subject, to touch upon the second cause of the poverty-stricken nature of our modern art as compared with the old. This second cause I asserted to be of an ignoble kind, and I cannot but feel a slight sense of degradation that it is necessary to express an opinion on this matter at all; I shall accordingly dismiss this part of the subject as briefly as possible.

I have spoken of this second cause as arising from the fact that artists, from motives of indolence or interest, have allowed themselves to be led by the public instead of, as of old, taking the lead in forming the public taste. To this is to be added what I have already touched upon as another reason for the production of the amount of imitative work which we see in our exhibitions, namely, the obvious nature of the beauty of certain forms of creation. It is this which brings into the field a number of workers, having in some cases a considerable amount of technical skill, who would in ancient Greece or in Italy have taken the place of workmen under some artist of genius, but who now, yielding to a false taste on the part of the public, keep it supplied with the kind of art which it is best able to appreciate. And here I may quote an apposite saying of Sir J. Reynolds: "It is certain that the lowest style will be the most popular, as it comes within the compass of ignorance itself, and the vulgar will always be pleased with what is natural in the confined and misunderstood sense of the word." And again: "In the inferior parts of the art the learned and the ignorant are nearly on a level." With this authority I feel in a position to repeat my original assertion, that modern art has struck out for itself a path which the ancients disdained to follow, and has developed itself in the direction which no genuine artist or man of taste would ever wish to see it pursue, having lowered itself to the appreciation of a class of patrons and admirers unknown to the older artists. We find this sort of work, it is true, among the Dutch painters as far back as the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century, but they were men who (always excepting Rembrandt, one of the greatest geniuses of the world) hardly rose to the appreciation of anything beyond mere technical skill, and were wholly destitute of imagination. We never find it, however, among the Spanish painters, truly realistic as they are in the highest sense in their portraiture, and capable through their realism of giving a terrible truth to their representations of the great tragedies of Scripture; and though we find what are called flower-pieces among the Italian painters of the seventeenth century, they are always more or less decoratively arranged. They are, in fact, a development of the decorative school of Raphael; a backward development it is true, indicating the decay of a high artistic spirit, but one which still retains something of the old idea that the beauty of nature must be brought in subjection to the mind of the artist, and used for some better purpose than merely showing that he loves it and is capable of producing a skilful facsimile. I must mention that under this head of imitation I include, besides still-life and the lower form of landscape, all that kind of figure-painting which, while it professes to illustrate a subject, is animated by no love of beauty or sentiment of a noble kind, but contents itself with copying vulgar models dressed in some well-known and favourite costume.

It is not to be supposed that in old times the world at large was better informed on matters of art, or of better judgment, than our modern English public; but up to this date it has always been considered right that in these matters artists should have the privilege of teaching the public to discriminate between bad and good taste in art. The people of Greece and Italy were content to accept what artists gave them, only occasionally, with the popular voice of ridicule, condemning any flagrant piece of bad work presented to them. But it is now so much the fashion for artists to bow to the opinion of the public on these matters, that I doubt if it is possible for the most independent to be entirely careless about the criticisms that are passed upon his work. I do not refer to those special criticisms that for some reasons best known to themselves all newspaper editors feel bound to put forth whenever an exhibition is opened or a gallery of pictures sold; in these cases where one critic praises another condemns, so that no harm is done after all; but what I mean is, that it is almost impossible for the best artist in these days to free himself from the feeling that his work is in some way put forward for criticism, and until he can do this there is not much chance of the attainment of a better style, for such criticism is almost always sure to be wrong, and is far worse for the artist when it praises than when it blames. Baron Leys is reported to have said, that whenever any one specially praised a portion of his picture he painted it out as soon as he was left alone. It is not all of us who have the moral courage to do this, but the principle probably is the right one.

But it may be said, and indeed this is the great argument of those who talk of the encouragement of a modern art, that the taste of the day has altered, and we no longer desire that style which appeals only to the cultivated few, but one which suits the taste of the whole public. In answer to that I would say, in the first place, with Reynolds: “We will not allow a man who shall prefer the inferior style to say it is his taste: taste here has nothing, or ought to have nothing, to do with the question; he wants, not taste, but sense, and soundness of judgment;" and, in the second place, that it ought to be clear to every one that the only way in which artists should appeal to the public is by giving it the best they can produce, and so raising the standard of taste to their own level. I have on another occasion said what I have to say concerning that class of artists, be they painters, sculptors, architects, or decorative furniture makers, who produce only for the market. Words are wasted on and against them. Nothing that I can say will avail where the dignified remonstrances, which Mr. Ruskin continually addresses to those whom in one most eloquent appeal he calls worshippers of the "Slave of Slaves," are of no effect. "You cannot serve two masters; — you must serve the one or the other. If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is your master, and the Lord of work, which is God. But if your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your master, and the Lord of fee, who is the Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of these — 'the least erected fiend that fell.'" He is not, it is true, speaking specially to artists in this exhortation, but to all workers alike; but if it is true for the labourer, it is more true for the artist, who has a higher mission to fulfil than most men have. I have no desire to moralise unnecessarily, or to give myself any airs of superiority on this point; in doing our best work, which we cannot but do if our love for the work be genuine and "above the fee," we have an undoubted right to demand from the rich, who make a luxury of possessing our work, the price that they are willing to pay for it. So I say no more on this point. I had far better leave the treatment of it to that eloquent writer whose name has been so frequently mentioned in the course of this lecture, who has shown in his life and acts, in his noble and single-minded devotion to the cause he has taken up — the cause of art and the well-being of his fellow-workmen — and in his courageous bearing against more laughter and opposition than has fallen to the lot of most men, no less than in his writings, an example of what every worker should be. He tells us that he is surprised that he is unable to force his ideas into his readers' heads. When the world is animated by as pure and high-minded a spirit as his own, he may find reason for surprise, but not till then.

If then we are to look forward to the more general production of a class of art of that high creative kind which I have dwelt on, and which is at present decidedly in the background in this land — although I must confess that I think there is now a decided move in the right direction and a desire for something more serious — we must, I think, in the first place rely on the cultivation of our perceptive faculties to show us the high beauties that lie beneath the surface of nature. We shall then get rid of the notion that little pictures of fruit and flowers and landscape are anything more than studies to help us in the execution of better work, or to be done from time to time as mementos of some specially delightful aspect of nature. Above all, moreover, we must study the works of the great masters of antiquity. "Study the great works of the great masters," says Reynolds, "for ever. Study nature attentively, but always with those masters in your company; consider them as models which you are to imitate, and at the same time as rivals with whom you are to contend." We must also, if we can, and on this point I feel the less hopeful — though every artist can if he pleases assist in the work — eliminate the mercantile spirit. It is well known that what some suppose to be an increasing love of art in this country, as shown by the high prices given for paintings, is now nothing more than a speculation in pictures; that the majority of buyers will not purchase unless they can "buy safe," as the saying is; which means that they do not buy pictures for the enjoyment to be derived from, them, but in order to sell them again. If a certain pleasure in their acquisition enters into their calculations, it is just as likely to be a spirit of emulation in outdoing some other buyer, as real pleasure derived from art; and even in this case they will not buy till they feel sure that they will not ultimately lose. This may not be — is not — true of all, but it is certainly true of a large class. I never in my life remember to have experienced a feeling of deeper shame (shared by others of the artists present), than on the occasion of a late Academy banquet, when one guest after another rose to congratulate us on the enormous sums that had been given for the pictures disposed of at the late Mr. Gillot's sale. Mr. Gladstone was no exception to the number, though he finally qualified his observations with some remarks in which he showed his better nature, and with which I cannot do better than conclude, as they sum up in a few lucid and eloquent phrases all that 1 have been endeavouring to express. "Do not," he said, "allow it to be supposed that the mere patronage of fashion, the mere reward offered by high price, is sufficient to secure true excellence; and remember that it is the intelligent worship of beauty, and the effort to produce it, which constitute the basis of all excellence in art; and that ages which have been poor, and which have been in some respects comparatively barbarous, have notwithstanding provided for us the models and patterns to which the most highly developed civilisations can but attempt to aspire."

Footnotes:

1. This Lecture was given at the Royal Institution, May 1872.

2. I have endeavoured to show in the previous lecture, that idealism is only the highest form of realism.

3. The knowledge and experience which efface prejudice again lead me, if not to modify the severity of this paragraph, to add that the disgust excited by Jan Steen's usual subjects and his gross treatment of them, is considerably qualified when one knows and can appreciate his inimitable power of expression and masterly execution. His touch combines a certainty and a finish which in his best works are quite exquisite.

4. Modern Painters, vol. ii. chap. ii. § I.

5. Modern Painters, vol. ii. chap. iii. § § II, 12.