Chapter IV: Part 4

As for Overbeck, he never could have become the founder of a durable school. Ascetic, exclusive, and narrow in his art views, the only charm of his pictures is indissolubly connected with the personal character of the painter. His admiration for Perugino and the Umbrian school was genuine and unbounded. He abhorred Titian and loathed Correggio. With such ideas on art he may justly be called an anachronism, and it will be easily understood that however leniently and even favorably we may judge the work of an enthusiast like Overbeck, we should not be disposed to extend the same leniency to his imitators.

We will now examine what influence the great classical revival, inaugurated by David, had on British art. I think it must be allowed that this influence (if it ever existed at all) was very slight. Our artists were content to tread in the path pointed out to them by Sir J. Reynolds, and to study with more or less intelligence the old masters. Their knowledge of the human form was very imperfect, and there were at that time no large ateliers where they could acquire such knowledge. The Continent was closed to them, and they were therefore debarred from seeing the works of David, Girodet, Guérin, and Gérard. It is probable, too, that even had they been able to visit the Paris galleries occasionally, they would have been greatly disgusted; for it must be confessed that the later works of David are singularly repellent to an eye educated on Titian and Rubens.

In England, particularly during the reign of George III, there was no demand for large figure subjects. The government did nothing for historical art.

The churches were ugly square boxes with whitewashed walls, sometimes be-plastered with black or white marble commemoration tablets, but in which paintings were tabooed. Private individuals could not, of course, find room in their houses for large pictures; so, as a natural consequence, the English school was forced into another direction, and we find accordingly the best and ablest artists of this period amongst the portrait and landscape painters.

A little of old David’s precision of drawing would not have hurt some of them, but landscape art depends more on color and effect than on fine perceptions of form, and careful study of the antique is obviously unnecessary to a man whose mission it is to paint mountains and trees, storm and sunshine.

Of the few artists who executed large figure pictures at this time I shall say very little, for the simple reason that there is very little to say. We all know Benjamin West’s pictures, and are fully aware of their tameness and insipidity.

I think that West is a striking example of a man who succeeded in impressing his character on his work. Highly respectable, prosaic, unimaginative, and rather goody, we find all these characteristics reproduced in his pictures, and yet many of these pictures, particularly “Death on the Pale Horse,” created a perfect furore at the time, and the prices the artist got for his works would be considered high even at the present day.

Hilton was undoubtedly the best of the very few artists who endeavored to revive large historical painting in England. He was at any rate a good draughtsman and an accomplished painter, but his too palpable imitation of the old masters will always prevent his taking rank with such men as Girodet, Géricault, or Gros.

Fuseli, with all his bombast and affectation of anatomical knowledge, showed occasionally that he possessed real genius. I know nothing finer in the whole English school than his ghost scene of “Hamlet.” The ghost is not one of those artificial bogies, so common in the works of Blake and Flaxman, but a right royal ghost, who stalks with gigantic strides across the stage. Fuseli was a very uneven painter. His pictures are generally ludicrous, but sometimes show real talent. He wanted ballast, and if West could have spared him a few tons of lead, both painters would have been greatly benefited.

My present lecture is on David and his school, and therefore I might have omitted altogether the contemporary English painters. However, as I have mentioned some, I should be sorry to omit from my very short list the name of Stothard. Of all the English figure-painters of this period, Stothard had the greatest feeling for composition. With a little more power and correctness in his drawing, he would have been an English Prudhon. Even with all his feebleness of draughtsmanship he is to me always attractive. There is so much _bonhomie_ about his work, such an absence of pretence and humbug, and so evident a desire always to do his best, that although we cannot close our eyes to his shortcomings, we may well condone them for the sake of the good honest feeling which pervades almost all his compositions.

I prefer to pass unnoticed one or two aspirants to high art, who in the first half of the present century were thought a good deal of. Some people still believe in them, but as I never did, I would, rather say nothing about them, particularly as their work is foreign to the subject of my lecture.

It is pleasant to turn from a kind of art with which I have no sympathy, to more recent efforts, and to be able to speak more favorably of English historical painting before closing my lecture.

We have had in Etty a colorist both brilliant and original; a painter who proved that it was quite possible to excel in color without imitating either the Venetians or Rubens; and in Dyce a draughtsman of the most severe and refined kind, a master of composition, and a most thorough artist.

I have often heard it remarked that Dyce’s mural paintings are very Germanic in style, but to my thinking there is but the slightest likeness to any work of the Munich or Dusseldorf masters. His figures never have the labored self-conscious action which is so characteristic of the school of Cornelius. Of course, frescoes representing King Arthur and his knights must have a sort of family resemblance to illustrations of the Niebelungen legends, but the resemblance is merely superficial. A closer comparison will prove how much more true, and therefore more dramatic, is the action in Dyce’s figures.

There is an old adage which tells us that “knowledge is power,” but in art this hardly holds good. You may have plenty of knowledge and yet not have power; though, on the other hand, you can hardly have true power without knowledge.

Dyce had both in an eminent degree, whereas Schadow, Kaulbach, Piloty, and most of the great German artists, though decidedly learned painters, had not the power of turning their learning to good account.

It is obvious that I cannot continue my remarks down to the present time, but I may be allowed to express an opinion that (in this Academy at least) feeble mysticism or blatant quackery is no longer associated with high art. We have, of course, our faults, but history-painters do not, as formerly, lag hopelessly behind their colleagues in genre, portrait, and landscape art.

This happy result is entirely due to a return to old David’s system of teaching; namely, to a diligent study of the antique, supplemented by a long course of drawing from nature. Such an excellent competition as we recently had for the gold medal would have been simply impossible fifty years ago.

I don’t want to flatter the rising generation, nor to tell them that they have twice as much talent as their fathers, and ten times as much as their grandfathers; but what I wish to point out is, that by patient study and diligent work a much higher result can be obtained than by spasmodic effort or crazy enthusiasm.

LECTURE V.

ON THE MODERN SCHOOLS OF EUROPE.

My first lecture of the present course will be devoted to a kind of review of the various painting schools of modern Europe. As one of the jurors at the Paris International Exhibition, I had a rare opportunity of comparing one school with another, and I think that a lecture embracing the conclusions I came to, may be more interesting to you, and possibly more instructive, than a discourse on the works of the old masters.

National schools of art can at this present time hardly be said to exist, at least not in the sense in which they existed 300 years ago. In those times the attributes and characteristics of each school were sharply defined. The Roman, the Venetian, the Spanish, the German, and the Flemish, were as distinct in character as it was possible to be. Now, however, the national characteristics are very slight, and in many countries there seem to me to be none. The French and the German are the two great Continental schools from which the others spring. England, Austria, Spain, and perhaps Holland, have certain features of their own; that is, speaking generally, one would know an English, Austrian, Spanish, or Dutch picture at once.

The Scandinavian and Danish schools are feeble offshoots of the German.

The Belgian is a vigorous branch of the French, and the Swiss is a less robust child of the same parent.

The Italian seems to me to be a mixture of French and Spanish, with a little of the old Italian element surviving. By the old Italian element I do not mean a reminiscence of Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, or Titian, but rather of Carlo Dolce or Sassoferrato.

Russian and especially American art are of a nondescript character, and the reasons are sufficiently obvious.

A young American or Russian artist goes to Paris or Rome, and puts himself to school under a certain master. After a time he will paint pictures more or less like his master’s; he will exhibit them, and may get rewards and medals for them; but he can hardly be called a representative of the American or Russian school. No American thinks of studying art in New York or Boston, and no Russian artist dreams of finishing his artistic education in St. Petersburg or Moscow. There can, therefore, be no American or Russian school properly so called.

I shall begin my lecture with a few words about our noble selves. I will give you rather the opinion of the best French artists than my own. As this opinion was expressed with perfect sincerity, and came from competent and independent judges, I think we may derive a lesson from it.

It has, I know, often been remarked that French artists appreciate best whatever is most unlike their own work, and it was a feeling of this kind which consoled the Belgians for the favor with which the English galleries were regarded. I confess that there is a good deal of truth in the remark.

English painting is so unlike French that there can be no direct rivalry between the two schools, whereas in Belgian work the rivalry is unpleasantly close.

I may, perhaps, be allowed to add, that for the same reason those English painters who approximate most to the French school were precisely those who were the least appreciated. Novelty has a great charm, particularly to a Frenchman. If you ask a Parisian to dinner and wish to please him, do not give him delicate little French dishes, with light claret to drink. Give him half a codfish followed by a sirloin of beef, with plenty of bitter ale to wash it down with, and he will bless you and afterward cherish the memory of these _alimens vraiment Britanniques_.

Novelty of treatment was, however, certainly not the only reason of the success of the English school.

In the first place, it was noticed that there was a certain refinement and elegance about the English galleries which was very pleasant to the jaded juror who had just been wading through long rows of coarse imitations of French art.

The English school was thought very highly of not on account of its color, still less on account of its drawing, but chiefly for the sake of the refined thought and invention shown in some of the pictures.

Then, again, in some cases, the novelty of the mode of execution, or the delicacy of the color, pleased our foreign judges; but I am quite sure that the popularity which English art has undoubtedly gained in Paris is due more to our brains than to our brushes.

The remarks and criticisms I heard in Paris all tend to confirm the opinion I have often expressed about the importance of originality in painting; of every artist, in short, thinking out his subject for himself, with nature as his only guide. Of course, novelty of treatment, unless combined with truth, is valueless. It would not be difficult to mention some novelties about which the remarks of my French friends would be the reverse of complimentary.

The first quality in the pictorial rendering of a subject must be truth, the second novelty or originality, and the third feeling or poetry. Where these three qualities are combined in a picture, it will more than hold its own in the eyes of competent judges against works far more brilliantly executed.

It must not, however, be supposed that foreign artists were delighted with _all_ they saw in the British galleries. Our old faults--namely, indifferent drawing, and feeble, scratchy execution--were often noticed, but were not nearly so prominent as twenty-three years ago. I have no doubt we have improved in these respects, but I also think that our foreign judges are apt to be much more lenient than of old as regards drawing.

Their own drawing is not what it used to be in the days of Ingres and Flandrin. They have acquired other qualities, but they seem to me to have lost the art of expressing beautiful form. Of course, in my remarks to-night I shall speak of the _general_ tendency of the schools. In every school there are exceptions to the rule, and amongst the French painters of the day there are at least one or two striking exceptions to the general decline of drawing power.

To return to the English galleries. It would be impossible to retail to you the unfavorable remarks that were made without becoming disagreeably personal. This adverse criticism of a few pictures gave perhaps more value to the verdict that, speaking generally, the English school was distinguished by its intellectual, refined, and, above all, thoroughly national character.

Let us hope that as years roll on we may gain more power in drawing and more manliness of execution, without losing any of those national qualities which have carried us so creditably through the ordeal of an International Exhibition.

We will now leave the British section, and proceed to the French galleries. French art seems to me to be in a transition state. Public taste has been unsettled by the enormous success of Fortuny, Regnault, Corot, Daubigny, and other still more eccentric painters. Eccentricity is too often mistaken for genius, and coarseness for power. The last Salon (or annual exhibition) was the worst I ever saw. Of course, the French section of the International was rich both in quantity and quality, but I did not notice a single really fine picture that had been painted within the last three years. To what are we to attribute this unsatisfactory state of things? Although it has often been said that republicanism is fatal to art, it is difficult to believe that the present French Government can have any influence either for good or evil on artists’ studios. Indeed, French sculpture, which is certainly improving, is there to negative any such theory.

The reason of the decline of the _older_ men is obvious enough. They have ceased to paint for fame; they paint for money. Country-houses, carriages, horses, and last, but perhaps not least, madame’s toilette, must be paid for, and the consequence is the production of what in a humbler sphere of art would be called pot-boilers. These inferior works are eagerly purchased at very high prices, and the artist, finding he can coin as much money as he likes, takes less and less pains, till finally decadence sets in, and the men who from their age ought to be in the zenith of their artistic power, find themselves quite incapable of rivalling the productions of their youth.

The cause for the manifest dearth of rising talent amongst the younger men must be looked for elsewhere. That this dearth really exists there can be no doubt. The French themselves allow it. Medals which used to be given at the close of the Salon for painting are now given for sculpture. There must be some reason for this marked decline. My old friends shrug their shoulders and say: “Oh, the kind of teaching which we had in our youth is now voted rococo. Sensational art” (by which they mean art that will produce a sensation) “is now the fashion.” The press has great power in France, and French critics, with few exceptions, like what is strange and eccentric. There are symptoms, however, that this quackery in art has had its day. The last two Salons have been too queer even for the new school of critics, and we may therefore hope that the sensational fit is over, and that the school may return again to the sound principles of design and drawing for which it has hitherto always been distinguished. I wish it understood that the deterioration I have been mentioning was not very noticeable on the walls of the International Exhibition. We had there the cream of all that had been painted in France for the last ten years; and although the pictures bearing the greatest names were rather disappointing, there was evidence of abundance of talent in all departments of oil-painting.

The last years of the Empire and the first years of the Republic seem to have been particularly prolific in good work. The portraits of that period, the battle episodes, the nude figures, the still-life pictures, are all characterized by a solidity and thoroughness which we rarely find now. The most unsatisfactory feature in the work of this period is, to my mind, the landscape. I confess to a want of appreciation of either Corot or Daubigny; and as almost every landscape-painter is an imitator of either one or the other, as a matter of course I cannot like their pictures.

The landscape school of which I am speaking appears to me never to get beyond a sketch, and _le culte du laid_ (the worship of ugly subjects) is carried too far.

The greatest modern landscape-painters France ever had were Marillat and Theodore Rousseau, and I think they are much better models to follow than Corot or Daubigny.

As I am criticising, I may observe that much as I admire French pictures of a few years back, I must say that I think the key in which these works are painted too low; and there is another more serious fault which I have often noticed; namely, the want of _naïveté_. The colors are simple enough, but the execution is obtrusive. In the portraits especially, one thinks more of the artist than of the sitter, whereas in certain portraits of the Belgian and German galleries at the International, the artist and his execution were completely forgotten, so life-like and natural were the heads.

In speaking of French painting it is as difficult to generalize as it would be of English. One man paints his whole picture in a low key, another paints white figures on a black background, one plasters his color on with a trowel, another models it rather thin. Still I think I may safely say that the majority of French pictures are painted with thick, opaque color and in a very low key.

Mannerism is perhaps the rock on which most rising reputations are shipwrecked, not only in France but everywhere else. A clever young artist paints a really fine picture, full of feeling, originality, and poetry, but rather low in tone. He has an immense success; a success which he too often ascribes to the wrong cause. The consequence is that his next picture will probably be less poetical, but still darker in color. His friends and admirers, instead of pulling him up sharp, are more prodigal than ever in their praise. He gets a higher price for the second picture than he did for the first. It is, therefore, not surprising that our promising artist paints lower and lower in color every year, until at last he becomes a confirmed mannerist.

The same danger exists in every department of the art. A young portrait-painter will perhaps have exhibited a full-length, distinguished by great character and breadth, but coarsely painted. The praise which he justly earns for this portrait prompts him to paint his next still more coarsely, and he too degenerates into a mannerist.

Mannerisms of various kinds are rampant in the present French school, and are in the present state of public opinion too strong for the more sober truthful work, which I am happy to say is not yet altogether extinct.

Unfortunately the encouragement given to these mannerists (or “impressionists” as they love to be called) is not wholly derived from their friends of the press; it proceeds also from artists of real talent who ought to know better.

This seems to me the gravest symptom in the present condition of the French school. It is of little importance how enthusiastic the various literary or dilettanti cliques may be about their favorites. These are mere fashions, which sooner or later die a natural death, but when artists of standing give in to the prevailing delusions, the mischief becomes serious.

I can hardly believe that these artists of talent really admire the productions of which I am speaking, but they are afraid of going against the stream of journalism, or else they wish to appear liberal in approving what is so diametrically opposed to their own practice. At any rate they acquiesce, and humbug flourishes. Before leaving the French painters, I ought, perhaps, to say something about the subjects principally affected by them.

No one can go through a French exhibition without being struck by the number of ghastly and horrible subjects which meet the eye on every side, and which seem to vie with each other in cruelty and brutality.

Death and suffering in every form have always been favorite subjects with French artists. Delaroche was continually painting murders and executions, but the comparatively mild form of horrors affected by him is not sensational enough for the modern school.

“Scene of the Inquisition--A man being Tortured to Death”; “Rizpah Driving away the Vultures from the Bodies of her Seven Sons, who are Swinging in the Wind”; “Roman Conspirators Drinking the Blood of a Slave whom they have just Murdered for this Festive Purpose”; “Nero Experimentalizing with Poison on his Slaves”; “Apollo Flaying Marsyas alive,”--are a few of the many pretty subjects which were conspicuous in the French galleries of the International Exhibition. One artist (and a very distinguished one too) has improved even upon these subjects, and delights in painting not only death but decomposition.

At the Ecole des Beaux Arts the subject given last year to the students for their diploma pictures was “Augustus Causes the Tomb of Alexander the Great to be Opened, and Places a Crown of Gold on the Head of the Corpse.”

When we reflect that Alexander had been dead some three hundred years, it will easily be understood that his body was in that half-putrid, half-mummified condition which is apparently so attractive to the artistic world in France.

Another marked characteristic of a French exhibition is the number of nude female figures. This is notoriously very objectionable to many English visitors, but for my part I would rather see a dozen nude nymphs than a decapitated figure or a putrid corpse. Many of these figures are done by young painters as a kind of supplement to their art education; and instead of being offended at their frequency, I am always glad to see so much laudable ambition. I only wish we had a few more similar efforts in our English exhibitions. The Hanging Committee would, of course, eliminate those which were objectionable either from want of technical skill or from any other cause, and the remainder might be allowed to hang on our walls and irritate Mrs. Grundy.

A third characteristic of a French exhibition is the general excellence of what are called rustic pictures. The peasants are real peasants, and not models dressed up as such.

There is almost always in this class of subjects an honest attempt to give a truthful version of nature. There is a completeness about them that is very charming.

The pictures of flowers, fruit, fish, and every thing coming under the head of _nature morte_, seem to me equally good. In fact, one hardly ever sees a bad still-life picture in a French exhibition. I suppose the jury is more strict about fruit, oysters, and copper kettles than about humanity, and particularly female humanity.

Pictures of animal life are, I think, less common than in English exhibitions. Dogs especially are seldom painted. This may be partly owing to the currish aspect of French dogs. Our bloodhounds, mastiffs, newfoundlands, deerhounds, and all the aristocracy of the canine race, are hardly ever seen in France; and it must be confessed that a stumpy-tailed mongrel or a clipped poodle is not a very tempting model. The French are not a doggy nation. A well-off Parisian will often keep a couple of ugly pointers, but it is always understood that “Stop” and “Komeer” are indispensable “pour la chasse,” and not to be regarded as pets or companions.

Finally, in every modern French exhibition the influence of Fortuny is very perceptible; I believe, however, that almost all the disciples of this school are Spaniards or Italians residing in Paris, and that the French artists who devote themselves to microscopic painting have the good taste to follow the lines of Meissonier rather than those of Fortuny.

We will now examine the Belgian pictures.

Belgian art is derived entirely from France. At the International Exhibition one passed from the French to the Belgian galleries without being aware of the change of nationality. I think, however, that the branch is at present in a healthier state than the parent stem. When I compare the recent mural paintings which have been executed in Belgium with similar work done in Paris, I am struck with the vast superiority of the Belgian. Again, in landscape the Belgians are far in advance of their neighbors. Comparisons are proverbially odious, so I will not incur odium by comparing English landscape with Belgian, but I should recommend those who think that we specially excel in this branch of the art to go and look at what the Belgians are doing. The great men of the Belgian school--the men whose names are familiar to every artistic circle in Europe--are declining in power even more rapidly than their colleagues in France, but there seems to me to be more hope about the younger men. The Belgian portrait-painters are, I think, inferior to the French as a rule, but there were one or two portraits in the Belgian galleries which attracted a great deal of attention from their unaffected simplicity, and in this respect contrasted very favorably with some more showy French work. The history pictures, again, were more careful and better drawn than analogous French work. There was less striving after effect and singularity, and much better composition. They reminded me more of what French painting used to be before the school became afflicted with what may be called “sentimental radicalism” in art.

I was glad to notice that Baron Leys, the painter of the strange mediæval pictures of the Antwerp town-hall, has not left a school of mediævalists behind him. The quaint ugliness of an old Flemish picture is interesting because it is real, but in these modern works the uncouth drawing and constrained stiff attitudes of the early Flemings are assumed, and therefore offensive. No doubt there are several excellent artists living who have studied under Leys, but they have all of them abandoned the affectation of their master.

The influence of Rubens and his school is not perceptible in modern Belgian work. This is rather curious when we consider the immense amount of Rubens-worship which is perpetually going on at Antwerp. Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and Vanderhelst have had much more influence on the Belgian school than Rubens, but the modern artists of Brussels are not a race of copyists. They evidently study nature a good deal, and this, it appears to me, is the secret of their strength. On the whole I have formed a very favorable opinion of the Belgian school, and when I recall to mind the excellent mural paintings at Ypres and Courtray, I must say that the old Parisian sneer about the “contrefaçon Belge” is quite inapplicable at the present day.

It is manifestly unfair to compare the German gallery of the Great Exhibition with the French, English, or Belgian section. The pictures sent by Germany were hastily got together at the eleventh hour, and were notoriously inadequate specimens of German art. Still they were interesting, as showing the tendency of the school.

The first impression on entering the German gallery was a favorable one. It was like entering a gallery of old masters after a surfeit of garish, crude modern pictures. A closer examination led one, however, to form a less favorable opinion of the peculiarities of German art. The imitation of the old masters is, in my opinion, carried too far. Reminiscences of Holbein and Albert Durer crop up everywhere, and many pictures which are not directly imitative of the old masters have a brown old-varnished appearance. There may not have been any thing offensively bad or ludicrously absurd in the German gallery, but on the other hand, with a few exceptions, there appeared to me to be a sad want of originality. These exceptional pictures were humble and unpretentious enough both in subject and dimensions, but full of truth and character.

The artist, Knaus, enjoys a great reputation both in Germany and Europe generally. His color, though true, is not very attractive. There is no great charm in his execution. The nature of his subjects precludes fine, classical drawing or noble composition. It may be asked, What, then, is his great merit? It is simply the intense realism of his figures. We always feel that we must have seen and known his peasants, his children, and his Jews. He has the same power of seizing types which John Leech so eminently possessed. Whether he quite deserves to be in the front rank of European painters is another question, but it is interesting to note the reputation such an artist has obtained in Germany, where art, though often learned, is seldom truthful or harmonious.

It has often been said that German art is never seen at its best in easel pictures, and that to express an opinion about it one ought to go to Germany, and study the mural paintings which abound there. It is more than twenty-five years since I visited either Munich or Berlin, and I am therefore not qualified to give an opinion about the _present_ state of art in Germany. I confess I was not favorably impressed with what I _then_ saw; and have often in the course of these lectures found fault with Kaulbach and his school for neglecting Horace’s well-known precept, “Artis est celare artem.”

The large mural works at Munich and Berlin used to be considered by Germans as the highest development of heroic painting. They asserted that their country was at the top of the ladder in high art, just as it undoubtedly was in music, and my criticisms on their great painters have always been provoked by this assertion. I have never stigmatized these decorative paintings as being absolutely bad or contemptible, but as being unworthy of the great esteem in which they were held.

I hear that at the present time other artists have in great measure superseded those of the school of Kaulbach, and that the highly artificial style of thirty years ago has been almost abandoned.

Scandinavian and Danish art are derived from Germany, as Belgian and Swiss are derived from France. In the case of Norway and Sweden, however, all the best artists emigrate to more southern regions; and small blame to them, for when daylight begins at ten and ends at two, there is not much time for painting pictures. These artists, who are mostly landscape-painters, return to their native countries in summer and make their sketches and studies; but the pictures themselves are painted either in Germany, Belgium, or France.

In Denmark the winter days are rather longer, and we find at Copenhagen a feeble attempt at a native school, bearing about the same relation to Dusseldorf or Berlin, that Birmingham or Liverpool would to London.

Leaving these humble followers of the German school, we will now enter the Austrian and Hungarian galleries.

Some French critic compared Austrian art to a noisy brass band, and the comparison is not inapt. No doubt the band is a very good one; the trumpets are loud, the trombones sonorous, and the big drum unexceptionable. Still it is not the kind of harmony which would please a musician. Austrian and Hungarian art, though apparently fascinating to the multitude, is too rich and cloying for a more fastidious taste. If you can fancy a mixture of plum-pudding and lobster-sauce, you will form a good idea of the most celebrated Austrian pictures. As the French school has a weakness for the horrible, and the English for the homely, so the Austrian delights in the showy. Pageants, royal receptions, and ceremonies of mediæval times are the subjects which the leading Austrian artists revel in; subjects in which there is not much story to tell, no human emotions to portray, nothing but silks, velvets, armor, and trappings to paint. All these accessories are marvellously well executed, a great deal too well indeed for the heads and the flesh; but it is this overpowering execution, united with a pseudo-Venetian coloring, which captivates the French bourgeois, just as it would captivate the London cockney.

I wish to observe that I am speaking of the large Austrian and Hungarian pictures which attracted so much attention at the Paris exhibition. Amongst the portraits and the smaller pictures there were some which would have done credit to any school. Vigorous in drawing and execution, full of character, and harmonious though rather dark in color, they appeared to me far superior to the kindred pictures from North Germany. I should have formed a very high estimate of the Austrian school if two or three of the principle pictures had been absent.

It may be asked why, if these large pictures were so offensively meretricious, the jury awarded them medals of honor?

I should be very sorry to have to defend all the decisions of the international jury, but in the present case I think I may say with truth that it was not admiration for this kind of art which dictated the award.

Before leaving the Austrian and Hungarian galleries, I would observe, that whatever may be thought of the pretentious richness of these large pictures, there exists at any rate an Austrian school, and that this school seems full of power and vitality. Austrians, do not, as a rule, paint their pictures in Paris or Rome. Others may, like myself, deplore the overpowering gorgeousness of a good deal of their work, but amongst the canvasses of more modest proportion there was abundant evidence of sound training and original invention.

Dutch art is very national; that is, the subjects are national. Muddy seas, flat meadows with groups of cattle, canal and street scenes--in short, the same kind of subjects which were formerly painted by Teniers, Vandevelde, De Hoogh, and Paul Potter, are still the favorites with the Dutch artists.

In the Dutch school, as seen at the Great Exhibition, there was a laudable absence of priggishness or sensationalism, but the pictures appeared to me to lack the neat precision of touch and the delicacy of color which distinguished the old Dutchmen.

Pathos will cover a multitude of sins, and in some of the best modern Dutch work this quality is not wanting; but in subjects which do not admit of pathos, such as the old familiar scenes of Teniers and Ostade, something more is wanted than indifferent execution and dull, inoffensive color. I am inclined to think that Dutch art was not only fairly, but even favorably represented at the Paris Exhibition, for in several recent visits to Holland I was always struck by the want of development of modern art. There are no great mural painters as in Belgium; the Church, being Protestant, does nothing for art. The rich Dutch citizens and merchants are equally unsympathetic; in short, there is no demand for a high class of art, so there is no supply.

I never heard of a Dutch collector who patronized modern painters. His rooms are always filled with Ostades, Wouvermans, Vanderveldes, etc., or more frequently with wretched copies of these masters; but in these private collections, which are scattered all over Holland, one never meets with a good picture by a modern artist. Under these circumstances I think it very creditable to Dutch artists that painting should not have declined more than it has in Holland.

Swiss art can only be regarded as provincial French. It is, however (like the Dutch), very national in its subjects. Glaciers, snow mountains, pine forests, and châlets were the usual subjects in the Swiss section. Even the figure-subjects were redolent of Switzerland--peasants, guides, hunters, and tourists were the principal _dramatis personæ_. If a fault is to be found with these innocent works of art, it is that they look as if they were meant for the tourist or the Alpine Club market. A traveller who is detained by rain for a week at Interlacken would be just the man to purchase a good view of the Jungfrau, or perhaps he might be tempted by a group of Bernese Oberlanders at home. The native Swiss pictures are too much like their wood carvings, not works of good art but pleasant souvenirs.

We will now cross the Alps and say a few words about Italian art.

Italy was wretchedly represented at the Great Exhibition. None of her greatest artists had contributed. The best pictures were by two or three Parisian Italians, and the worst by men whose proper abode ought to be Hanwell or Colney Hatch. It has often been remarked that modern Italians labor under the same disadvantage which afflicts a man who has had illustrious progenitors. He may not be a greater fool than other men, indeed he may be rather above the average, but he gets no credit for it. People are always contrasting him with his illustrious father or his glorious grandfather, and the poor fellow has hard work to get any justice done him. This may be true enough at Venice, Florence, or Rome, where the _chefs-d’œuvre_ of the old masters are in very close proximity. I can well understand that a stranger who has been feasting his eyes all the morning on Titians and Paul Veroneses, should find the descent very precipitous to the level of a modern Italian studio; but in Paris there were no such formidable rivals to fear, and it is much to be regretted that Italy did not put forth her whole strength. I am inclined, however, to give another reason why modern Italian art has suffered from the proximity of so many _chefs-d’œuvre_ by the old masters, and that is the temptation to become copyists. Wealthy Americans, if they cannot carry away the originals, will have copies, and the harvest to be derived from this source by a clever painter is so rich a one that he is often tempted to abandon the paths of originality and virtue, and become a copyist.

Of course the leading painters would not accept a commission for a copy of Beatrice Cenci, but there have been (and doubtless are still) artists fitted for better things, who _do_ accept these commissions and are glad of them. A friend of mine a good many years ago asked me to call and see a copy of this celebrated portrait which had just arrived from Italy. He had given the painter a commission for it two years before. I could not say much in praise of it. It was a fair average copy, but I could not help remarking that the artist had been a precious long time about it. “Oh,” says my friend, “mine was the seventh order for a Beatrice Cenci in his book, and he told me that nothing would induce him to paint more than four copies a year of this head. He had other work to attend to,” etc., etc. If a man once gets into the way of earning his living by copying, he will never get out of it (at least not in Italy).

Independently of downright copying there is the danger of imitating, and this is a danger to which Italian art has always been very much exposed. No good can ever come of imitating the old masters, but when the masters so imitated are men like Carlo Maratti or Luca Giordano, the downfall of the school is indeed precipitate.

Italian painters, like Italian sculptors are very skilful workmen, but they do not appear ever to get beyond a certain point of excellence.

The new school of Rome may be said to have been founded by Fortuny, and in this school execution is every thing. Doubtless this phase of Italian art is better than the dreary decadence of the first half of the century, but I cannot say I am a great admirer of the new style. I will speak of Fortuny and his followers presently, when I get to the Spanish school, but before leaving the Italian Court I may mention that there were some specimens of microscopic painting which were marvellous if they were really legitimate pictures and not painted photographs. Admitting, however, that they were genuine pictures, the very fact of their looking like colored photographs relegates them to an inferior style of art. They are curiosities, and not much more.

In justice to the Italian section I should mention that if the oil pictures were bad, the water-colors by Rota were excellent.

There seems to me no reason whatever why Italy, the land of art (_par excellence_), should lag behind in the international race. Italians are quick, intelligent, and imaginative. If they would steer a middle course between the tame imitations of the old masters and the sensational quackeries of contemporary art, I have no doubt they would take a high place in the European school.

The Spanish gallery was one of the most interesting in the whole exhibition. One or two of the large pictures showed great power and originality. I believe these pictures were painted by Spaniards residing in Rome. Indeed all the best Spanish pictures are painted either in Paris or Italy. There is no native school, as in the days of Velasquez and Murillo.

The most attractive wall in this gallery was that devoted to the works of Fortuny. Fortuny’s mode of painting, his delicate sense of color, and the novelty of his subjects, took the artistic world by storm some fifteen years ago. Since that time a host of imitators have arisen, mostly Spaniards or Italians, so that the modern Spanish school has come to be identified with his very peculiar kind of art.

I have no doubt that if one were to go to Spain and visit the studios of the resident artists, one would find very little of the Fortuny element. Probably the pictures would be more like Portuguese work, which of all European schools is the most backward. Setting aside, however, the question as to how far the Fortuny style can be called national, I will hazard a few remarks about its merits and faults.

In the first place, I think we ought to welcome any novelty in art, provided the novelty is not downright absurd, and a man who like Fortuny revolutionized modern art (at any rate in the south of Europe), certainly deserves consideration.

His pictures are characterized by a wonderful delicacy of execution and brilliancy of color. His drawing is firm and masterly. With all these good qualities I cannot consider him to have been a great artist. In the first place, the subjects he affected were of the most frivolous and meretricious description. Secondly, the general effect in his pictures is not sufficiently attended to. I have heard them compared to those sheets one sometimes sees composed of a jumble of small photographs. Each individual figure or gaudy bit of stuff is perfect by itself, but the whole picture is deficient in effect.

Finally, the execution wants that breadth and manliness which are so conspicuous in the best works of Meissonier. Much as I admire any man of genius who departs from the beaten track and creates a style of his own, I cannot help thinking that Fortuny has been much over-rated.

Many of his followers’ works resemble the crude wall-papers and chintzes which used to be common before South Kensington was in existence.

Pinks, light blues, and coal-tar dyes of the most violent hues (colors which would drive our æsthetic amateurs mad) here run riot. The execution is always clever, but the offence against good taste in color is not to be got over. I do not recollect any landscape work in the Spanish gallery except as backgrounds to the figure pictures. If I were a Spanish artist I should leave the fripperies of the boudoir, and turn my attention to the grand forms of rock and forest which abound in the Asturias, or to the sierras of Andalusia, with their semitropical vegetation.

Of Russia and the United States as picture-producing countries but little can be said. There are a few Russians scattered over Germany, France, and Italy, who paint and exhibit pictures which pass muster more or less creditably.

Some give a Russian flavor to their work by painting Muscovite peasants, sledges, wolves and bears, but even these national pictures might have been done by French or German artists as far as the execution goes. The eye was not impressed in the Russian gallery, as it was in the English, Austrian, or Spanish departments, by some national peculiarity.

The large picture which obtained one of the medals of honor was painted in Rome. It represented one of the most barbarous episodes of Nero’s persecution of the Christians.

I thought it clever as a decorative work, but very weak in drawing.

There were in the Russian gallery some good heads very boldly and forcibly painted. Their authors, though their names ended in “sky,” “vich,” or “koff,” were pupils of the French or German schools, and therefore these works, though painted by Russians, can hardly be considered as characteristic of the school. The Byzantine element was not in the least traceable in the Russian galleries. Probably Byzantine pictures were excluded, as coming under the head of manufactures.

Greece exhibited a few pictures of modest proportions, and still more modest merit; but even this faint commendation cannot be accorded to Portugal, whose small contribution was ludicrous for its badness.

The art of the United States is even less national than the Russian. American artists seldom give us reminiscences of their country, and the American gallery was exactly like some of the rooms in the French Salon.

From their admiration of Parisian art it is probable that the American school of the future will, like the Belgian, be a branch of the French, unless indeed some American Fortuny should be raised in the States who would give an original impulse to Transatlantic art.

French critics were rather hard on the American figure-painters for choosing such subjects as the death of Cleopatra.

What in the world, they said, had Cleopatra and the Nile to do with America? About as much, I should say, as Nero and his atrocities had to do with France. According to these gentlemen, French artists may choose their subjects from any period and from any country; the same license may be allowed to Belgium, Germany, and possibly to England; but the American is to confine himself to the short and not very picturesque history of his own country.

This seems to me very unfair, but at the same time I should have liked to have seen amongst the landscapes something more national than views of Bougival or Fontainebleau.

I have now taken you all round the picture galleries of the International Exhibition, and I may with truth say that we have no cause to be ashamed of the position we hold in the European art-world. The French were at home and able to exhibit nearly all their best works of the last ten years. We, from reasons that are very well known, were unable to do so, and yet we held a very respectable position. I am not John Bull enough to say, as some of my friends at the hotel did, that our school is the first in Europe. But what I _do_ say is that English art (speaking of course generally) is in a thoroughly healthy state; that English artists (also speaking generally) think more of their subjects and less of themselves than Frenchmen, Belgians, or Austrians do; that whilst some of the leading foreign schools are past the zenith of their power, we, on the contrary, seem to be improving steadily, and gradually getting rid of our faults. Some may be inclined to attribute this marked improvement to the extraordinary sums of money which have of late years been spent on art in this country, some to the existence amongst us of a school of high-art criticism, some to foreign influence. I attribute it to none of these causes, but solely to better training and a more scrupulous regard for nature.

It may be thought that in boasting about our better training I am blowing the academic trumpet pretty loudly, but I am not speaking so much of the training you get here and at other London art schools, as of the training which every young painter has to give himself after he has learned the A B C of his art. It is this training especially which is better than it used to be. The commonplace slap-dash way of going to work of former days is now the exception and not the rule with young painters.

One man may be careless or weak in his drawing, but he may have a keen sense for truthful atmospheric effect, and he labors away at his picture until he approximates to the out-of-door look of nature; another (a portrait-painter perhaps) wearies out his sitters in his endeavors to be truthful; a third will patiently brave the elements on a bare Scotch moor, humbly trying to imitate the fitful patches of sunshine and mist on the hillside before him.

All this is what I call good training. It is honest, conscientious work, and it is this which tells favorably on a school, rather than Manchester patronage or Oxford æsthetics.

* * * * *

I would observe, in conclusion, that in the appointment of our new President we have another cause for self-congratulation. It would be out of place here for me to dwell on all his qualifications for the important post he fills, but I should not like my first lecture under his presidency to pass without expressing my thorough satisfaction with the choice we have made. To say more would probably be unpleasant to him, to have said less would have been unpleasant to me.

I may, however, point out that the progress of the English school of art does by no means rest with the President of the Royal Academy (however excellent he may be); it depends on the individual exertion of every member of the profession, from the President down to the probationer who seeks admission to the schools. Let us all do our best to produce careful, honest, and original work, and I have no doubt of the result.

LECTURE VI

ON DRAWING.

Drawing is the backbone of all great work, and it is an art which, if neglected when you are young, does not appear ever to be acquired in after-life.

Most artists improve in color, and particularly in execution, as they get older, but in drawing they seldom acquire greater correctness. They acquire facility, but not accuracy. It is, therefore, of the highest importance that all students should carry out their studies in drawing as far as they possibly can whilst they are young. I am not speaking of their chalk studies alone, but also of their painted studies.

It often happens that as soon as a student gets a palette on his thumb, he considers himself completely emancipated from all the trammels of correct drawing, and after sketching his figure with a few hasty strokes of charcoal or red chalk, he smears on his color at once. I have known some who would not condescend to make any preliminary outline at all, but went in for drawing with the brush.