Part 2 (2/2)

Last year he was robust, this year he is ly which he does not possess, and then he assunorance, equally unreal--a norance, which he calls _navete_ And these various execution she is never more than superficially acquainted with; he does not practise any one long enough to extract what good there may be in it

To set before the reader the full story of the French decadence, I should have to relate the story of the great schiso, when the pedants reuereau, and the experimentalists followed Meissonier to the Champs de Mars[Footnote: See ”Impressions and Opinions”]The authoritative naenius of Puvis de Chavannes, and the interest of the exhibition of Stevens' early work, sufficed for soress and the tendency of the declension of French art; and it was not until last year (1892) that it was ireat French renaissance of the beginning of the century had worn itself out, that the last leaves were falling, and that probably a long period of winter rest was preparing French art has resolved itself into pedants and experimentalists! The _Salon_ is now like to a library of Latin verses composed by the Eton and Harrow masters and their pupils; the Champs de Mars like a costuland it is customary for art to enter by a side door, and the enorton Schools would never have been voted by Parliailding It was represented that the schools were intended for so of pictures, which only rich people could buy: the schools were prin, wherein the sons and daughters of the people would be taught how to design wall-papers, patterns for lace, curtains, damask table-cloths, etc The intention, like many another, was excellent; but the fact remains that, except for exaton students is useless A design for a piece of wall-paper, for which a Kensington student is awarded a medal, is almost sure to prove abortive when put to a practical test The isolated pattern looks pretty enough on the two feet of white paper on which it is drawn; but when the pattern is ner has not taken into account the effect of the repetition That is the pitfall into which the Kensington student usually falls; he cannot e, and at Minton's factory all the designs drawn by Kensington students have to be redrawn by those who understand the practical working out of the processes of reproduction and the quality of the ton student, that to plead a Kensington education is considered to be an al for work in any of our industrial centres

Five-and-twenty years ago the schools of art at South Kensington were the most comical in the world; they were the most complete parody on the Continental school of art possible to iine They are no doubt the sao--any way, the educational result is the same The schools as I re except the instruction dispensed there There were noble staircases, the floors were covered with cocoa-nut , the rooms admirably heated with hot-water pipes, there were plaster casts and officials In the first rooraved outlines of elaborate ornaiven the the spaces carefully with compasses In about six months or a year the student had learned to use his compass correctly, and to produce a fine hard black-lead outline; the harder and finer the outline, thelooked like a problem in a book of Euclid, the better the exa was he to send the student to the roo was practised from the antique

This was the rooton attained a coet the scenes I witnessed there Having made choice of a cast, the student proceeded to measure the number of heads; he then measured the cast in every direction, and ascertained by means of a plumb-line exactly where the lines fell It was, and to accoht, working six hours a week He then placed a sheet of tissue paper upon his drawing, leaving only one s reduced his chalk pencil to the finest possible point, he proceeded to lay in a set of extremely fine lines These were crossed by a second set of lines, and the two sets of lines were elaborately stippled, every black spot being carefully picked out with bread With a patience truly sublime in its folly, he continued the process all the way down the figure, acco, if he were truly industrious, about an inch square in the course of an evening Our adenerally directed to those who had spent the longest tian to be noticed; at the end of four he becae I reme He was a sort of demiGod, and we used to watch hienius to devote still another month to it, and our enthusiasm knew no bounds e learned that, a week before the drawings had to be sent in, he had taken his drawing ho out the black spots with bread

The poor drawing had neither character nor consistency; it looked like nothing under the sun, except a drawing done at Kensington--a flat, foolish thing, but very soft and sh; it was passed by the examiners, and the student went into the Life Room to copy an Italian model as he had copied the Apollo Belvedere Once or twice a week a gentleman who painted tenth-rate pictures, which were not always hung in the Academy, came round and passed casual re There was a head-master who painted tenth-rate historical pictures, after the manner of a tenth-rate German painter in a provincial town, in a vast studio upstairs, which the State was good enough to provide hih the studios; on an average, I should say, once a anise art proceeded in France froland from a love of respectability To the ordinaryin medals, crowns, exa of the Kensington Schools we unfortunately hear notheir children's wishes to become artists The result of all these facilities for art study has been to swaenius and to produce enormous quantities of vacuous little water colours and slioing to Australia and Canada and beco theh wives and theration and extension of the race, febrile little pilgrianised to Paris and Grey, whence astonishi+ngthe conditions, under which painting alone can be accoton stipple has been crossed with square brush-work, and the mule has been bred in and in with open brush-work, and fresh strains have been sought in the execution at the angle of forty-five; art has become infinitely hybrid and definitely sterile

Must we then conclude that all education is an evil? Why exaggerate; why outstrip the plain telling of the facts? For those who are thinking of adopting art as a profession it is sufficient to know that the one irreparable evil is a bad primary education Be sure that after five years of the Beaux Arts you cannot becoreat painter

Be sure that after five years of Kensington you can never becoton nor at the Beaux Arts, where am I to obtain the education I stand in need of?” cries the embarrassed student I do not propose to answer that question directly How the masters of Holland and Flanders obtained their marvellous education is not known We neither kno they learned nor how they painted Did the earlyhas been expended in atte to solve this question Did Ruysdale paint direct fros? Unfortunately on this question history has no single word to say We know that Potter learned his trade in the fields in lonely communication with nature We know too that Cro from nature when his daily as done Nevertheless he attained as perfect a technique as any painter that ever lived Morland, too, was self-taught: he practised painting in the fields and far for board and lodging with a picture Did his art suffer from want of education? Is there any one who believes that Morland would have done better work if he had spent three or four years stippling drawings froton?

I will conclude these remarks, far too cursive and incohtful to ponder Soo, Renoir, a painter of rare talent and originality, after twenty years of struggle with hi a very distinct and personal expression of his individuality Out of a hundred influences he had succeeded in extracting an art as beautiful as it was new His as beginning to attract buyers For the first tiht he would like a holiday Long reading of novels leads the reader to suppose that he found his ruin in a period of riotous living, the reaction induced by anxiety and over-work Not at all He did what every wise friend would have advised him to do under the circunificences of this nificance; he became aware of the fact that he could not draw like Tintoretto; and when he returned to Paris he resolved to subject himself to two years of hard study in an art school For two years he laboured in the life class, working on an average from seven to ten hours a day, and in two years he had utterly destroyed every trace of the charhtful art which had taken hiic story--do you?

INGRES AND COROT

Of the thirty or inning of the century in France, five will, I think, exercise a prolonged influence on the art of the future--Ingres, Corot, Millet, Manet, and Degas

The oh Delacroix will engage the attention of artists as they walk through the Louvre, I do not think that they will turn to him for counsel in their difficulty, or that they will learn froreat elo, Veronese, Tintoretto, and Rubens--the passion and tumult of the work resides solely in the conception; the execution is always calculated, and the result is perfectly predetermined and accurately foreseen To explain myself I will tell an anecdote which is always told whenever Delacroix's nanificance of the anecdote being perceived After seeing Constable's pictures, Delacroix repainted one of his as [Footnote: See essay on Degas In ”Impressions and Opinions”]

and Manet I have spoken elsewhere Millet seems to me to be a sort of nineteenth century Greuze The subject-matter is different, but at bottoenerally supposed Neither was a painter in any true sense of the word, and if the future learns anything from Millet, it will be how to separate the scene froround, how to suggest rather than to point out, and how by a series of ellipses to lead the spectator to iine what is not there

The student may learn fro nature, so nature, that the oldnot an illusion but an impression of life

But of all nineteenth century painters Ingres and Corot seem most sure of future life; their claim upon the attention and the admiration of future artists seems the res seee antiquity

Of Michael Angelo there can never be any question; he stands alone in a solitude of greatness Phidias himself is not so much alone For the art of Apelles could not have differed fro by Apelles must have been identical with that of ”La Source” It is difficult to iine what further beauty he ht have had to say on the beauty of a virgin body

The legs alone suggest the possibility of censure Ingres repainted the legs when the picture was finished and theartists that the legs are what are least perfect in the picture In repainting the legs his object was omission of detail with a view to concentration of attention on the upper part of the figure It s are what is known a painters as empty; they have been simplified; their synthetic expression has been found; and if the teaching at the Beaux Arts forbids the present generation to understand such drawing, the fault lies with the state that perenius was not crushed by it The suggestion that Ingres spoilt the legs of ”La Source” by repainting them when the model was not before hires was not so great an artist as Raphael I as show none of the dras is so obvious that I s were done with a different intention froh me to the extre, Raphael's is another; still I would ask if any one thinks that Raphael could have carried a drawing as far as Ingres? I would ask if any of Raphael's drawings are as beautiful, as perfect, or as instructive as Ingres' Take, for exa in the Louvre, the study for the odalisque: who except a Greek could have produced so perfect a drawing? I can i like it, but no one else

When you go to the Louvre examine that line of back, return the next day and the next, and consider its infinite perfection before you conclude thatand the love that were necessary for the accomplishment of such exquisite simplifications Never did pencil follow an outline with such penetrating and unwearying passion, or clasp and enfold it with such si Nowhere can you detect a starting-point or a rown as a beautiful tendril grows, and every curve sways as mysteriously, and the perfection seems as divine Beside it Durer would seeeoue: and I hope that no critic by partial quotation will endeavour to prove reater artist than Da Vinci I have not said any such thing; I havebefore the reader sores' finest pencil drawings

Or let us choose the well-known drawing of the Italian lady sitting in the Louis XV ar in her lap and a coiffure of laces pinned doith a long jewelled hair-pin How her head-dress of large laces decorates the paper, and the elaborate working out of the pattern, is it not a miracle of handicraft? How exquisite the black curls on the forehead, and how they balance the dark eyes which are the depth and centre of the composition! The necklace, hoell the stones are heaped, hoell they lie together! Hoell their weight and beauty are expressed! And the earrings, how enticing in their intricate workmanshi+p Then the movement of the face, how full it is of the indolent south, and the oval of the face is composed to harh full of classical simplifications, tells the character with Holbein-like fidelity; it falls away into a soft, weak chin in which resides a soft sensual lassitude The black eyes are set like languid stars in the face, and the flesh rounds off softly, like a sky, modelled with a little shadow, part of the outline, and expressing its beauty And then there are the marvels of the dress to consider: the perfect and spontaneous creation of the glitter of the long silk are, and then the hardness of the bodice stitched with jewellery and set so romantically on the almost epicene bosom

It is the essentially Greek quality of perfection that brings Corot and Ingres together They are perfect, as none other since the Greek sculptors has been perfect Other painters have desired beauty at intervals as passionately as they, none save the Greeks so continuously; and the desire to be merely beautiful seemed, if possible, to absorb the art of Corot eventhe nus which he left you will find weakness, repetitions, even coly set of lines is not to be found in Corot; the rhythm may sometimes be weak, but his lines never run out of metre For the rhythm of line as well as of sound the artist must seek in his own soul; he will never find it in the inchoate and discordant jumble which we call nature

And, after all, what is art but rhythm? Corot knew that art is nature made rhythmical, and so he was never known to take out a six-foot canvas to copy nature on Being an artist, he preferred to observe nature, and he lay down and dreamed his fields and trees, and he walked about in his landscape, selecting his point of view, deter the rhythm of his lines That sense of rhythm which I have defined as art was remarkable in hielo, Ros, one lon, the other high up in the picture, the bridge between, and behind the bridge the dome of St Peter's, is as faultless a composition as his maturest work As faultless, and yet not so exquisite For it tookand pensive years to attain the more subtle and delicate rhythms of ”The Lake” in the collection of J S Forbes, Esq, or the landscape in the collection of G N

Stevens, Esq, or the ”Ravine” in the collection of Sir John Day