Part 2 (1/2)

Science had not then relegated ned triu, if at all, only as a kind of aureole The Egyptian, the Greek, and the Ro, except randeur was their whole desire, whether they carved or painted their intention, and Iof Apelles could not have differed fro was not then separated froes there was but one art; even in Michael Angelo's tiht as to be hardly worth considering Is it possible to regard the ”Last Judg else but a coloured bas-relief, elo's artistic outlook was the sament” and the other ”Olympus”, but both subjects were looked at from the same point of view In each instance the question asked hat opportunity do they afford for the display of elo carved the ”Moses” and painted the ”St

Jerome” he was as deaf and blind as any Greek to all other consideration save the opulence and the ic of drapery, the vehemence and the splendour of one by and the artistic outlook had not changed at all; three hundred years have passed since Michael Angelo, and inthose three hundred years what revolution has not been effected? How different our estheticism, our aims, our objects, our desires, our aspiration, and how different our art!

After Michael Angelo painting and sculpture became separate arts: sculpture declined, and colour filled the whole artistic horizon But this change was the only change; the necessities of the new medium had to be considered; but the Italian and Venetian painters continued to view life and art froelo chose his subjects merely because of the opportunities they offered for the delineation of form, titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese chose theirs merely for the opportunities they offered for the display of colour A new medium of expression had been discovered, that was all The themes of their pictures were taken from the Bible, if you will, but the scenes they represented with so h the ain sublimated by naive belief and primitive aspiration

The stories of the Old and New Testanorance had raised them above the anecdote, and they had becoious belief--as in the case of the iven sublianism was not yet dead in the world to witness Leonardo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto To these painters Biblical subjects were aman in all his attributes; and when the same subjects were treated by the Venetians, they were transformed in a pomp of colour, and by an absence of all _true_ colour and by contey became epical and fantastical It is only necessary to exareat Venetians to see that they bestowed hardly a thought on the subject of their pictures When titian painted the ”Entombment of Christ”, what did he see? A contrast--a white body, livid and dead, carried by full-blooded, red-haired Italians, ept, and whose sorrow only served to make them more beautiful That is how he understood a subject The desire to be truthful was not very great, nor was the desire to be new much more marked; to be beautiful was the first and last letter of a creed of which we know very little to-day

Art died in Italy, and the subject had not yet appeared; and at the end of the sixteenth century the first painters of the great Dutch school were born, and before 1650 a new school, entirely original, having nothing in coone before, had formulated its aestheticism and produced masterpieces In these ht be called a subject; the absence of subject is even more conspicuous in the Dutchmen than in the Italians In the Italian painters the subject passed unperceived in a poan apotheosis of huether No longer do we read of miracles or martyrdoms, but of theover the first catalogue to hand of Dutch pictures, I read: ”View of a Plain, with shepherd, cows, and sheep in the foreground”; ”The White Horse in the Riding School”; ”A Lady Playing the Virginal”; ”Peasants Drinking Outside a Tavern”; ”Peasants Drinking in a Tavern”; ”Peasants Ga in a Landscape”; ”The Wind- Home the Hay” And so on, and so on If we meet with a military skirmish, we are not told where the skirmish took place, nor what troops took part in the skirmish ”A Skirmish in a Rocky Pass” is all the information that is vouchsafed to us Italian art is invention frohtest trace of invention is to be found; one art is purely iinative, the other is plainly realistic; and yet, at an essential point, the two arts coincide; in neither does the subject prevail; and if Dutch art is inative, stay-at-hon travel, and whose only resource was, therefore, to reproduce the life around them, and into that no element of curiosity could come For their whole country was known to them; even when they left their native town they still continued to paint what they had seen since they were little children

And, like Italian, Dutch art died before the subject had appeared It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the subject really began to ht or phylloxera, it soon became clear that it had come to stay I think Greuze was the first to conceive a picture after the fashi+on of a scene in a play--I mean those domestic dramas which he invented, and in which the interest of the subject so clearly predoal Son”, for instance In this picture we have the doer would set it forth The indignant father, rising from table, prepares to anathematise the repentant son, who stands on the threshold, the weeping irl advances shyly, the younger children play with their toys, and the serving-girl drops the plate ofin And ever since the subject has taken first place in the art of France, England, and Germany, and in like measure as the subject made itself felt, so did art decline

For the last hundred years painters seem to have lived in libraries rather than in studios All literatures and all the sciences have been pressed into the service of painting, and an Acadeue is in itself a liberal education In it you can read choice extracts from the Bible, from Shakespeare, from Goethe, from Dante You can dip into Greek and Latin literature, history--ancient and an, Christian, and Hindoo; if your taste lies in the direction of Icelandic legends, you will not be disappointed in your sixpennyworth For the last hundred years the painter see except to learn how to paint

Forhas been in service She has acted as a sort of hand to make clear to the casual and the unlettered what the lettered had already understood and enjoyed in a more subtle and more erudite form But to pass froards subject, toquite clear to every one, I cannot do better than to ask my readers to recall Mr Luke Fildes' picture of ”The Doctor” No better example could be selected of a picture in which the subject is the supreme interest True that Mr Fildes has not taken his subject from novel or poem; in this picture he may have been said to have been his own librettist, and perhaps for that very reason the subject is the one preponderating interest in the picture

He who doubts if this be so has only to ask hi to any special passage of colour in this picture, of calling attention to the quality of theNo; what attracted attention was the story Would the child live or die? Did that dear, good doctor entertain any hopes of the poor little thing's recovery? And the poor parents, how grieved they seemed! Perhaps it is their only child The picture is typical of contemporary art, which is nearly all conceived in the sa value And if by chance the English artist does occasionally escape from the vice of subject for subject's sake, he almost invariably slips into what I may called the derivative vices--exactness of costume, truth of effect and local colour To explain myself on this point, I will ask the reader to recall any one of Mr Alma Tadema's pictures; it matters not a jot which is chosen

That one, for instance, where, in a circular recess of whiteto Sappho and her ical According to the very latest researches, the ornament which Greek women wore in their hair was of such a shape, and Mr

Tadema has reproduced the shape in his picture Further researches are made, and it is discovered that that ornament was not worn until a hundred years later The picture is therefore deprived of some of its interest, and the researches of the next ten years may make it appear as old-fashi+oned as the Greek pictures of the last two generations appear in our eyes to-day Until then it is as interesting as a page of Smith's _Classical Dictionary_ We look at it and we say, ”How curious! And that was how the Greeks washed and dressed themselves!”

When Mr Hol His livelihood by the sweat of His brow, it seeo to Jerusalem There he copied a carpenter's shop from nature, and he filled it with Arab tools and i changed but little in the East, it was to be surmised that such tools and ihteen centuries ago To dress the Virgin in su robes, as Raphael did, was clearly incorrect; the Virgin was a poor woararment she wore probably resembled the dress of the Arab woh the e see the very landscape that Christ looked upon Froraph_ nothing could be better; the various sites and prospects are explained and coland beats in sy save two geora barren of artistic interest, his attention is caught by the Virgin's costuue informs him that Mr Hunt's model was an Arab woman in Jerusalein wore two thousand years ago The carpenter's shop he is assured is most probably an exact counterpart of the carpenter's shop in which Christ worked How very curious! how very curious!

Curiosity in art has always been a corruptive influence, and the art of our century is literally putrid with curiosity Perhaps the desire of home was never so fixed and so real in any race as some would have us believe At all times there have been men whose feet itched for travel; even in Holland, the country above all others which gave currency to the belief in the stay-at-home instinct, there were always adventurous spirits who yearned for strange skies and lands It was this desire of travel that destroyed the art of Holland in the seventeenth century I can hardly iine an article that would beprecisely with those Dutcheneral artistic culture, for travel has often had an injurious effect on art

I do not say foreign travel, I say any travel The length of the journey counts for nothing, once the painter's inspiration springs from the novelty of the colour, or the character of the landscape, or the interest that a strange costuests There are painters who have never been further than Maidenhead, and who bring back what I should call _notes de voyage_; there are others who have travelled round the world and have produced general aspects bearing neither stae--in other words, pictures There are, therefore, two men who must not be confused one with the other, the traveller that paints and the painter that travels

Every day we hear of a painter who has been to Norway, or to Brittany, or to Wales, or to Algeria, and has come back with sixty-five sketches, which are now on view, let us say, at Messrs Doell's Galleries, in New Bond Street, the home of all such exhibitions The painter has been iery of fiords, by the prettiness of blouses and sabots, by the blue round, by the narrow shade of the street, and the sole in the wind The painter brings back these sights and scenes as a child brings back shells froe and curious, and, therefore, like the child, he brought back, not the things thes, the most faithful sketches he could make of them To understand how in country, we have only to i up his easel in, let us say, Algeria There he finds hi is different: the costue, the rhythm of the lines is different, the effects are harsh and unknown to hieria the everlasting blue must be darker than the white earth, and the key of colour widely different fro he has seen before Selection is iuish between the i strikes hi of this country, so clear, so precise, so characteristic, is to soften; to alleviate what is too rude, is to weaken; to generalise, is to disfigure So the artist is obliged to take Algiers in the lump; in spite of himself he will find hi must be passed over, and so his pictures are at best only the truth, photographic truth and the naturalness of a fac-sis which the painter will bring back and will exhibit in Messrs Doell's will be docueria--of all that s by which those who have been there know it, of the things which will make it known to those who have not been there, the exact type of the inhabitants, their costu Once the painter accepts truth for aim and end, it becoations We shall learn how this people dress, ride, and hunt; we shall learn what arms they use--the painter will describe them as well as a pencil may describe--the harness of the horses hewith sopainter to becoorical And as the attraction of the unknown corresponds in most people to the immoral instinct of curiosity, the painter will find himself forced to attempt to do with paint and canvas what he could do much better in a written account His public will demand pictures composed after the raphy will end by being confused with the sentist this collection of _documents_ which causes the Gallery to resound with foolish and vapid chatter there are two small pictures

Every one has passed by the thes in the exhibition that interest him One is entitled ”Sunset on the Nile”, an i; the other is entitled ”Pilgri up a sandy tract, an impression of hot desert solitudes

And noill conclude with an anecdote taken fro on the banks of the Seine Suddenly a shepherd passed driving before hi with supple rey sky at the end of April The shepherd had his scrip on his back, he wore the great felt hat and the gaiters of the herdss, picturesque in for in excellent order ”Do you know,” cried one painter to the other, ”that nothing isto paint than a shepherd on the banks of _a river_?” He did not say the Seine--he said a river

ARTISTIC EDUCATION IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND

Is the introduction of the subject into art the one and only cause for the defeat of the brilliant genius which the Revolution and the victories of Napoleoncalled into existence? Are there not other uish the nineteenth century French schools from all the schools that preceded it? I think there are

Throwing ourselves back in our chairs, let us think of this French school in its _ensemble_ What extraordinary variety! What an absence of fixed principle! curiosity, fever, i on hysteria An enormous expenditure of force, but spent in so many different and contrary directions, that the sum-total of the result see ourselves back in our chairs, and closing our eyes a second tilish school Is it not like passing fro of the street into a quiet, grave assembly of well-bred men, who are not afraid to let each other speak, and kno to ; men who choose their words so well that they afford to speak without eisances, nor calculated brutalities, nor affected ignorance, nor any faintest trace of pedantry? What these , but they address us in the sah we hang a pig-stye by Morland next to a duchess by Gainsborough, we are surprised by a pleasant air of family likeness in the execution

We feel, however differently these men see and think, that they are content to express thee Their work may be compared to various pieces of music played on an instrument which was common property; they were satisfied with the instrument, and preferred to compose new music for it than to experiued that in the lapse of a hundred years the numerous differences ofwill disappear, and that it will seem as unifor of the eighteenth century seems in our eyes to-day I do not think this will be so And in proof of this opinion I will refer again to the differences of opinion regarding the first principles of painting and drahich divided Ingres and Gericault Differences regarding first principles never existed between the leaders of any other artistic elo and Raphael, not between Veronese, Tintoretto, titian, and Rubens; not between Hals or any other Dutchman, except Rembrandt, born between 1600 and 1640; or between Van Dyck and Reynolds and Gainsborough Nor must the difference between the methods of Giotto and titian cause any one to ht into art was a gradual change, corresponding exactly to the ideas which the painter wished to express; each method was sufficient to explain the ideas current at the time it was invented for that purpose; it served that purpose and no n travel, international exhibitions, and cosmopolitanism have helped to keep artists of all countries in a fer even the first principles of their art But this is not all; education has proved a vigorous and rapid solvent, and has cooes to the Beaux Arts; he is taught how to measure the model with his pencil, and how to deterht how to draw by the es of this teaching perent fellow, to produce at the end of two years' hard labour a , a sort of inferior photograph

He is then set to painting, and the instruction he receives amounts to this--that he must not rub the paint about with his brush as he rubbed the chalk with his paper stu methodical study of thetone; no e square brush is filled full of sticky, clogging pigment it is drawn half an inch down and then half an inch across the canvas, and the painter , for this systes It is practised in all the French studios, where it is known as _la peinture au pre man, a man of talent, labours at art in the ht to ten hours a day, and at the end of six or seven years his education is coe he has heard, ”first learn your trade, and then do what you like” The time has arrived for him to do what he likes He already suspects that thehim neither fame nor money; he soon finds that is so, and it beco vistas of possibilities open out before hi in splints--they are frozen; and he at length understands the old and terrible truth: as the twig is bent so will it grow The skin he would slough will not be sloughed; he tries all the methods--robust executions, lymphatic executions, senti executions, cursive and ih all these the Beaux Arts student, if he is intelligent enough to perceive the falseness and worthlessness of his primary education, sloorks his way He is like a vessel without ballast; he is like a blindfolded man who has missed his pavement; he is blown from wave to wave; he is confused with contradictory cries