LECTURE III.

A most munificent bequest has enabled this College to found a School of Fine Art. Under the name of Slade Professors, Lecturers on the Fine Arts have been appointed at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the endowments in both cases being derived from bequests by the late Mr. Felix Slade. To the liberality of the same gentleman is owed the foundation of this school.

The bequest to this College is however on a somewhat different footing from those to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, inasmuch as, by the terms of the Will, a sum of 10,000/. was bequeathed for the institution of six scholarships, of 50/. a year each, to*' be awarded to students in the College under the age of nineteen years, for proficiency in the Fine Arts; and in addition, a certain sum was to be devoted to the endowment of a Professorship. The Council of the College felt in consequence that the views of the testator would be better carried out byestablishing a practical School of Fine Arts, than by merely appointing a lecturing Professor, as at the other Universities; and to the furtherance of this object the Executors of Mr. Felix Slade generously devoted an additional sum of 5,000/. for the purpose of erecting a suitable building. In the consideration of these matters much, if not most, of what has been done, especially with regard to the building of these schools, is due to the untiring, the inexhaustible energy of the late Mr. Edwin Field, Member of the Council of this College, and of the Committee formed to carry out the intentions of Mr. Slade's bequest. It will now be the duty of the Slade Professor to take care that the utmost that is possible be done in return for the efforts made by the Slade Executors and Committee, in their liberal desire to found an important School of Art in this College.

Except at the Royal Academy there is no school of any importance in London for the study of high art. In the various branches of the Government Schools, the primary object is confessedly the study of ornamental design, as applied to the industrial arts, and attention is only paid to high art in so far as the study of the figure is necessary for some particular branch of ornamental manufacture. There are no doubt in London private schools where the study of the figure, from nature or the antique, is made the principal object, but these are chiefly used by students as preparatory for admission to the Royal Academy, where, as the schools are open to the public without payment, it is necessary to impose a certain test of proficiency before admission.

There are also in London various clubs or societies, where artists subscribe and meet together for study from the living model. These are not generally of much advantage to the students. There is always a danger of their being made use of by the members merely for the purpose of making small sketches or studies for the market, rather than for the purpose of real study for improvement; and as such are decidedly to be avoided by the student. Considering therefore the large number of students of art to be found in London, and the fact that there are no schools of importance for the study of the figure, except those of the Royal Academy, where the space is necessarily limited, it is to be presumed that there is room for a School of Fine Art, where the study of high art may be encouraged to the extent of its being the only object of the institution. Nor can this school ever be considered to come into competition with that of the Royal Academy, since there is no fee required for admission to the latter, which has also the privilege of being richly endowed not only with the accumulation of advantages which an institution acquires in the course of a century, but with the talents of those whose reputation in art stands highest in the country, and who are required to give part of their time to the instruction of the students. Here on the contrary a charge is made for the instruction given, and in the uncertainty as to success, it has been necessary to make the fee a moderately high one. Before however I proceed to dwell upon the objects which we have to keep in view with regard to this school, and the scheme which I shall try to carry out, I will devote a short time to the consideration of the foreign system, which I wish to take to a certain extent as my guide in these matters.

In France a very different order of things prevails to that which is to be found in England. Besides the "École des Beaux- Arts" which answers to our free Royal Academy Schools, many of the principal French artists have private ateliers, separate from their own studios, which are largely attended by art students, to the instruction of whom (with a generous devotion to the cause of art to which we have not been able to arrive in this commercial country) they give up weekly a portion of time sufficient for the purpose. These schools are not only used in preparation for the École des Beaux-Arts (for which there is an admission test as at the Royal Academy), but are frequented by the students after their admission there; indeed young artists, who have passed their studentship, frequently continue to work under their master long after they have painted and exhibited pictures. Some of these ateliers have acquired a name for their admirable system of instruction, only second to that of the famous art schools of ancient Italy; the schools of David, of Ingres, of Delaroche, and others have an European reputation.

The Italian schools of the Middle Ages, and of the Renaissance, were established on a somewhat different principle. The students in these appear to have been apprenticed to the masters, to have paid down a sum for admission, and to have assisted them in the execution of their great works; in return for which they received all the instruction which the master was capable of giving them; it being obviously to his interest to teach them to the best of his power. Michelangelo, it is true, received payment from Ghirlandajo, when he was received as his apprentice, but this is considered as an exception to the rule, and on account of the extraordinary gifts of the young student; and there is not the slightest doubt that the practice he acquired in painting, while assisting his master on the frescoes in Sta. Maria Novella, was of the greatest use to him when, although by profession a sculptor, he was required to undertake in after years the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in fresco.

This system of having apprentices, or articled pupils, is practised by architects in this country, who are in the habit of receiving students for a fee; the pupils being instructed by the architect, and occasionally giving him assistance in the simpler parts of his work, thus acquiring at the same time the theory and practice of their profession. It is a custom however utterly unknown, or at all events unused, among artists, possibly because works executed on a large scale are not enough in number for artists to require that kind of assistance; but it is undoubtedly the best form of instruction that can be given, and one which I have hopes of seeing established to a certain extent in this school at some future time. It would be of the greatest advantage to the students if such of them as were competent and desired it, were employed from time to time on the professor's own works. In an essay on the genius of Beethoven, Ferdinand Hiller, speaking of the advantage Beethoven derived from serving as violinist in the orchestra of the theatre, makes the following just remarks: — "It was invaluable for the future commander of the instrumental tone-world to have served in the line. In fact, every striving young composer ought, as a matter of duty, to act for at least one year as member of an orchestra, were it only at the great drum."

The squaring out of an artist's small designs to the full size of the canvas, the enlarging of studies, the underpainting of unimportant details of architecture or background in a picture, are to the carrying out of a complete work what the big drum is to the ensemble of an orchestra; they familiarise the student with the simplest elements of a work of art, so that he is never at a loss how to use them later in life. This method of instruction, however, I have no idea of including in my system at present. It is extremely likely to be misunderstood by the public and the parents of the students, under the idea that the professor would be employing the powers of his pupil for his own advantage; and any attempt must be made by degrees, and be at first of the most experimental kind. I should, however, be very glad if at some future date it could be combined with the course of instruction which I propose for this school, a course which will be modelled chiefly on the system of the French ateliers, of which I have considerable experience.

I think there can be no question of the great advantage the French, and other foreign artists, have over us in the knowledge of all the technical and practical details of their profession. Most French students have what is called their metier, that is the knowledge of their craft, at their fingers' ends before they begin to paint pictures. One seldom sees in their works the helpless errors in drawing, the obvious difficulties and struggles in dealing with the material, that characterise the works of young artists which we find in our exhibitions. The superiority of foreign artists in these matters is undoubtedly due to a habit in their schools of thoroughly following out a course of study from the living model, before beginning to paint pictures for exhibition — a practice which our students are frequently either too indifferent or too conceited to follow; but it is also due in part to the system of instruction, which allows no waste of time on useless or unimportant subjects of study.

Here in our schools of art, every kind of difficulty would seem to be put in the way of study from the life. It would appear to be considered a dangerous practice to begin studies from nature, until a long time has been passed in drawing from the antique, or from what are called drawing-models, or again, from ornamental designs. I have mentioned in the prospectus of this school what I consider the evils of this system. In the first place, it reverses the natural order of things; for until the student knows something of the construction of the human body from the living model, it is impossible he can understand the generalised and idealised forms in Greek sculpture. In the second place, the habit acquired in drawing for a long time, sometimes through a course of two or more years, from casts from the antique, which are by their nature motionless, and can always be kept in the same relations of light and shade, renders the student helpless when he comes to work from the living model, who can never remain quite still or take two days running exactly the same position. Thirdly, the desire of English students to paint, exhibit, and sell pictures, makes them so impatient of instruction, that it is difficult to get them to follow out any course to the end. Hence, one result of a long course from the antique is, that they frequently begin to paint for exhibition, without having thoroughly acquired the habit of working from nature; and thus, finding themselves helpless before the model, they trust to their own facility for working, as far as possible, without nature, with the aid only of the small amount of probably erroneous knowledge gained in making elaborate studies from casts; and this habit, once formed, is never shaken off, nor is further knowledge ever acquired. Possibly, moreover, the student, feeling the system to be a wrong one, imbibes a profound distrust of any course of instruction whatever; works from nature without guidance, and at his own discretion; and finds his powers crippled for life for want of that knowledge which a good system of study in his youth would have given him.

It is difficult to imagine how the system I refer to grew to be so universal as it was in our schools when I was a student. It was then necessary to work for some two or three years in a private studio, with a view to making preparation for admission to the Royal Academy, an admission obtained, as you are doubtless aware, by submitting a drawing of an antique figure; and although studies from nature might no doubt be pursued at the same time, it is clear that the desire of the student would be not so much to obtain a thorough knowledge of the human figure, as to be able to produce a drawing in chalk, which should attain to a certain standard of proficiency. To this end much time was wasted by the students in making elaborately finished chalk studies; a trivial minuteness of execution very generally being considered of more importance than a sound and thorough grounding in the knowledge of form. Suppose him to have been successful in entering the Academy, instead of the preparatory stage being ended at this point, more studies from the antique were necessary for the student to pass his probationership, in order to be admitted a full student. This point gained, there followed more highly-finished and stippled studies in the antique school, and courses of lectures on perspective, anatomy, &c, all of which occupied frequently more than a twelvemonth of most precious time; the reward of success and punctual attendance in which was the permission to do what the student should have been set to do the first day he entered the school, that is to make studies from the living model.

I do not say that there are not many reasons, and some good ones, to be found for this routine, but it is difficult to understand how it arose, and grew into such a system as that of which I have just presented to you a true picture. It is true that the Academy has shown its disapprobation of this method of study by making considerable modifications of late years, but the tradition that there is something objectionable in beginning early to study from the life-model is not by any means extinct, and still lingers to a most prejudicial extent in our other art schools.

Let us look again for a while at the French Academical system. A student enters the atelier of one of the principal painters of the day. There is no division of classes; the students of eight or ten years standing work in the same room, and from the same model as the new-comer; if he has never had any instruction, he is set at first to make a few drawings from casts, to give him some idea of the use of his pencil, after which he begins at once his studies from the living model. Here he works daily, the model sitting for four hours a day for one week, so that he has no time to linger and loiter over the detailed execution of his work; — his time must be employed to the best of his ability. The master attends twice a week, once on the Tuesday, when the figure is sketched in, and again on the Saturday, when it is nearly finished, and this is amply sufficient for his instruction. Meanwhile the elder students help the younger. When he has acquired a sufficient proficiency in drawing to understand the meaning of the forms, and to reproduce them with tolerable accuracy, he begins to paint from the model, perhaps painting and drawing alternate weeks, supplementing his studies by copying portions of pictures in the Louvre, and by drawing at some subscription life-school in the evening.

His object is now to enter the École des Beaux-Arts, and he has to compete for admission. He does not however prepare for this purpose an elaborate drawing to be submitted for inspection, but he is placed with the other competitors before the living model in the life studio of the £cole. The model sits for two hours a day for a week, and he thus has twelve hours in which to do his study. He submits his drawing, and if it be up to the standard of excellence he is admitted to the privileges of the school. Nor is the competition an easy one ; for there are generally about 600 competitors, including the students who have already been admitted, and who have to make the competition again every six months, and 100 is the limit of students admitted to the school. Now for the first time he is placed before the antique. Having through a long course of study arrived at a thorough comprehension of the various aspects of nature, he is taught to improve his style by the study of the chef d’æuvres of the great artists of the past. These teach him what are the possibilities of the art he professes, and the study of them acts as a stimulus to look deeper into nature for the beauties which other men have found there. This is the real object of the study of the antique, not, as too often with us, the acquisition of an elaborate system of manipulation.

Look at the drawings sent up by the Government Schools of Art to the central competition at South Kensington; are any of them executed under six weeks of painful stippling with chalk and bread? How much knowledge of the figure is it to be supposed the student has acquired (ftn. 2) during the process? Some of these prize drawings have come under my notice, of which the elaborately stippled background alone must have occupied more than a fortnight in the execution; and in my own student days I remember constantly to have seen the same idle and wasteful method of getting through the time. Is it a wonder that, when our national prizes are given for such work as this, we are behind the rest of Europe in our knowledge of drawing; and that those who have aspirations towards a higher kind of work than the market-produce which overwhelms our exhibitions, have either to seek for a better form of study on the Continent, or to keep up a life-long struggle against difficulties, which they have never been taught to overcome, but which are the ABC of art education abroad?

I have dwelt at some length on this description of the French system of education, because I am anxious to adopt something of the same kind in this school. It is to my mind admirably logical; and whatever modification of detail I may be inclined to introduce, I shall impress but one lesson upon the students, that constant study from the life-model is the only means they have of arriving at a comprehension of the beauty in nature, and of avoiding its ugliness and deformity; which I take to be the whole aim and end of study. It is for this reason I have instituted what is called in the prospectus, the general course of instruction, in which students who are going to study art as a profession may go through a serious and regular system, with the view of making the best use of their time. All students entering the schools will be required first to do a drawing from a figure in the antique, as a test of their proficiency; if this drawing be unsatisfactory, or show them not sufficiently to have mastered the technicalities of the material to enable them to encounter the difficulties of drawing from the life, they will remain in the antique school until the middle of the term, when they will again submit a drawing as a test. Thus there will be two opportunities given during the term for students to gain admission to the life-school. This, it will be easily understood, does not involve any departure from the principle just laid down, of setting students as early as possible to work from the living model, but is merely adopted with a view to give them greater facility when they begin their work from the life. Beginners must remember that until they have acquired some kind of power of using their materials, and until their eye and hand have gained a certain degree of correctness, they will be longer in attaining the desired result from the living model than from easier subjects of study. It is not only that the living model is always more or less changing his position; but the forms are not always so clearly marked as in the antique, and are, especially in the portions of the figure most difficult to draw, obscured by accidents of colour and deformities of various kinds, which are always to be found, and are always changing. In the knee, for instance, even where well formed, the colour of the skin makes the form much more difficult to see and understand than in the antique statues, where one part is as well defined as another. In the hands and fore-arms, the veins are apt to swell and conceal or disfigure the more important anatomical and general features. The feet are always a most terrible stumbling-block to beginners (and even to the most advanced students), not only on account of deformities contracted from various causes, but of the swollen veins and the purple colour which would not be found to so great an extent in a person in motion, but which naturally result from the model being obliged to stand for hours together in one position. It is true, that as far as I am able to manage it, you will be supplied with good Italian models to work from. These are not only in general build and proportion, and in natural grace and dignity, far superior to our English models; but they have a natural beauty, especially in the extremities, which no amount of hard labour seems to spoil. Their hands, though many of them may have been field-labourers in their own country, might be envied by many of a better position amongst ourselves; while their feet, bare in infancy, are covered later in life by a natural and simple kind of sandal, which protects them without altering their shape, so that they do not run that risk of disfigurement, which is unavoidable with the hard and mis-shapen shoes and boots, in which the feet of children in this country are ruthlessly imprisoned, even before they are able to walk. In short, although you will find nothing in the antique which you cannot find in nature, there is much, even in the best models, which you will not see in the antique, and it is precisely these points which make the difficulty in drawing from nature, and which render it necessary for the student to have some acquaintance with the general character and proportions of the human figure, before attempting the study of the living model. This short preliminary practice, however, is a very different thing from the long and laborious system of working from the antique which I have already condemned.

My first wish was to include all the classes under one fee (ftn. 3), directing all the students, whether amateur or artist, to study in the classes according to their proficiency; but it was represented to me that there were many who, not desiring to make a profession of their art, would be unable to give up all their time to the study of it, and for those I have arranged that there shall be classes three times a week. But I wish it to be understood that amateurs should submit to the same thorough form of instruction they would go through if they were training for artists; if they are unable to give the time to study that would make them equally proficient, they will at all events acquire an appreciation and critical knowledge of what is noble and beautiful in the great works of the great masters, which those will never do who merely dabble with a little drawing and painting for amusement, and pursue it on no kind of system. Nothing would please me better than that the whole of the students attending these classes should be training as artists. This however is never likely to be the case, and there are, of course, a large number of the students who come here who have no intention of taking up art as a profession; and though I must not be understood to be desirous of eliminating this amateur element from the school (for I hold that the judicious training of amateur artists is of great value in raising the standard of taste in the country), yet I think it very advisable that they should be, as far as possible, compelled to look upon art in a serious light. The more I can make this understood, the better it will be for our school and for the interests of art generally.

There is unfortunately a difficulty which has always stood in the way of female students acquiring that thorough knowledge of the figure which is essential to the production of work of a high class ; and that is, of course, that they are debarred from the same complete study of the model that is open to the male students, and for the want of which no amount of study of the antique, of books, or of anatomy, will compensate; for, as I have said bofore, nothing but constant practice from the model itself will suffice. But I have always been anxious to institute a class where the half-draped model might be studied, to give those ladies who are desirous of obtaining sound instruction in drawing the figure, an opportunity of gaining the necessary knowledge. There are many prejudices to be overcome in this direction, but it may be remarked that such studies may be pursued with propriety at a public school, though in a private studio they would be nearly impossible. It is my desire that in all the classes, except of course those for the study of the nude model, the male and female students should work together; this system was tried as an experiment in the Royal Academy a few years ago, and has been found to answer admirably — and it has always been my opinion that the practice conduces to steadiness of work.

It now only remains for me to address a few remarks to those of my audience who may have the intention of entering on their course of study in this place. Let me assure them in the most emphatic terms that nothing is to be done without unremitting labour and attention. It is not the instruction you receive that will be the means of your improvement, but rather your own industry and endeavours; I can do nothing but guide your efforts in the right direction. In a word, you must not rely on me to teach you to draw and paint; my system of instruction will be directed to the end that you do not waste your energies on the study of what is useless or prejudicial. Sir Joshua Reynolds puts this as usual most concisely when he says that "no method of study will lead to excellence, yet it may preserve industry from being misapplied." Industry on your part is the point of the greatest importance to you in your career as students of art. Those even who have no intention of devoting themselves to the arts as their profession, will find it quite worth their while to give all their energies to the work in hand while they are engaged in it; their taste and love for the beautiful and noble in art cannot but be in this way improved. There is no influence in the world so ennobling as that of, the fine arts; to be able to appreciate and understand the vast conceptions of a Michelangelo or a Beethoven, is the highest pleasure we are capable of receiving.

Without understanding, genuine appreciation is impossible; without study, understanding is impossible; that is why I should wish the amateur to apply himself to his work as earnestly as if he had to make his living by the practice of art.

It will be well for the young artist also to pay attention to what I have said: that it is the love and appreciation of what is truly beautiful in nature that makes the great artist. He is not concerned only with the external beauties, which are obvious to all the world, but with those also which underlie the surface, and which only the mind of the artist, stimulated by continued study, can discover. The more you work from nature, the more astonished you will be at the beauties you will find; and it will be your pleasure as artists to point them out to others. Remember that the true object of art is to create a world: not to imitate what is constantly before our eyes. If it were possible to invent anything of sublime or beautiful beyond the realm of nature, the artist would be justified in doing it; but there is not only no possibility of this, but there is fortunately also no need of it. Nature contains greater depths of beauty than we can fathom; and although two or three men in the world's history have risen to so high a conception of beauty that their works have acquired a just right to be called "the creations" of genius, they have had no more to inspire them than what you yourselves may find by searching around you. Indeed they may be said to have had less, for you possess, as an additional property, the example of their unremitting devotion to stimulate you to labour without flagging; and the results of their genius, to goad you on to rival them on the toilsome and arduous path, which may lead you to the achievement of an equal excellence.

Footnotes:

1. Address delivered at the opening of the Slade School of Fine Art in University College, London, October 2, 1871.

2. This understates the case. When I was first appointed to South Kensington, I found students at work on drawings from the antique v hich had already occupied them a considerable portion of the previous term (five months), and were not half-finished. I discovered that they were in the habit frequently of doing only one antique drawing for their certificate.

3. This plan was ultimately adopted, and was found, as I expected, to work better in every respect.