Part 2

At this particular point in history--a fact that should give us to think--the peoples of all the world are very far from clamouring to see their ideals given form through art. That many of them have ideals and can formulate their desires this generation has had ample proof; as for instance it had of the English--in the war. But the English have given innumerable proofs, too, that the desire of the mass of this people does not tend towards the arts--for however many great painters the English have produced the fact remains that our only national art--except perhaps the school of Reynolds and a tradition of landscape painting--is, still, _literature_; as it always has been. It is nothing to us that a national memorial is not conceived on nearly such large or costly lines as are our drapery stores. This causes us no concern whatever; we get what we want--economy of public money; and what we deserve--unworthy memorials. To the present-day public the function of the artist is of small importance--his work is there to amuse us, to flatter our vanity, to decorate our hideous houses (with which we are well content) and, when he is dead, to afford us the mild excitement of a little speculative buying. With such a point of view we can produce no great school in art. Nothing can change us except we change ourselves. Gallant attempts to change us have been made by individuals: Ruskin, in proclaiming one of the world’s great painters, sought to instil some fire of art into our flaccid hearts--and what happened? We pretended to desire great things; we became sentimental about the “beauties of nature” and our insincere desires produced a school of hucksters--who profaned the work of their master and sullied the beauties of nature.

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Where a country has no national art the message of its great men, when they come, has to be completed just so far as they can take it in their own lifetime; for it is carried no further by those who follow them; whereas, when art is national, all its forms “interact. From the building of a great temple to the outline of a bowl which the potter turns upon his wheel, _all effort is transfused with a single style_,” and the message of a great man may take centuries to achieve its completion and fullness in a progressive unfoldment in evolution.

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So many of the greatest drawings of the old masters were done in chalk that it is sometimes difficult to find examples executed in pen or pencil that will bring their work within the scope of this book; but in the _Family of Thomas More_ we have an example of Holbein’s pen drawing which could not be better for our purpose. It is obviously _the carefully thought out design for a painting of considerable size_ and, like all Holbein’s portraits, is a most intimate and searching study of psychology. Composition drawings (and this one is a good example) are among the most valuable to us of all works of art. Valuable because the composition sketches of a great man are generally pure inspiration throughout. In them he has worked too rapidly to be conscious of his method--he has been as unconscious as a writer is of his hand-writing. Napoleon said:

“Inspiration is the instantaneous solution of a long meditated problem”; what more perfect description could one have of a composition sketch, for the artist does, as a rule, meditate a problem for a long time but the moment he finds the solution he sets down his idea with the greatest zest seizing the first thing to hand--generally a pen or a pencil. Moreover, in the first rapid sketch that records his inspiration his mental vision is clear; the interruptions--inevitable in the slow process of painting a picture--having not yet occurred.

This book abounds with examples of sketches done in this way. They may have been done thus, only as a means to an end, but that end is often more nearly reached in the “instantaneous solution” than in the finished picture that follows--though we may prize this for many other qualities.

[Sidenote: _Rembrandt_]

Rembrandt above all others delighted in setting down his ideas in this way; and there are still in existence nearly nine hundred of these vital drawings of his. I think I shall not be contradicted when I say that the method by which these Rembrandt sketches were produced defies analysis: they are not outline drawings, nor are they drawings of light (like Daumier’s sketches), they are a kind of pictorial calligraphy--as Sir Charles Holmes once pointed out--closely allied to the Japanese method of brush drawing, though they are infinitely more varied and are not a set of symbols constantly rearranged and adjusted for each new problem; as is often the case in Japanese drawings; and also in the case of our modern illustrators--who serve up again and again a few threadbare receipts for hats, boots, facial expressions and so forth. With these draughtsmen the line has all the hardness that one would expect from the use of a metal point; the quill pen is incomparably a more sympathetic instrument than the metal pen, and it is to be hoped that, as methods of reproduction improve (and they are improving) draughtsmen will again take to using the quill.

Rembrandt has shown us that the quill or reed pen can give a more flexible line than any other instrument or medium (except perhaps a brush) that the artist has at his disposal. Even chalk has not quite the same possibilities in this particular respect, because the point is continually crumbling as it is worn away, and the pencil--so suitable for crisp or delicate work--cannot be used for emphatic statement without the risk of happening upon that heavy quality that is so unpleasant.

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It is at about this stage that I feel some sort of an essay on drawings and drawing in general is expected of me. However, as I do not expect it of myself it is not likely to happen; and he who does must, I fear, be disappointed. I hold the opinion, as I have already said, that a drawing is a thing to be looked at and not written about and I therefore content myself with the simple statement that _a drawing is a symbolic arrangement of marks made by an intelligent person with a pointed instrument on a more or less plain surface_. Now, though these three essentials--the symbology, the arrangement and the intelligence of the person--may all be excellent, the question of whether he may claim to be really a draughtsman or why and when he may not be allowed any such claim will ultimately always be decided by _the quality of the marks_; in a drawing these are more usually curved lines; but to decide whether they have the right quality or the wrong quality is a matter most subtle, eclectic and erudite.

[Sidenote: _Hans Holbein the Younger_]

In Manchester, and the north of England generally, business men call an artist’s personal style in drawing and design “his handwriting.” And indeed the phrase has a nice aptness, for the quality of a man’s line in pen or pencil work is as personal to himself and as unlike another’s as is his calligraphy--and, like it, may charm or offend us. However--no one ever has had any doubt about the charm and rightness of the quality of Holbein’s lines.... “These are no imitations of classic suggestion _but a new creation on parallel lines_ ... there are men who can create with the same _naïveté_ and beauty as the Ionians. And let it be noted, too, that these curves ... are the farthest removed in all art from the insipidity of the Renaissance flourishes, which we sometimes teach as a poisonous miasma in our art schools. These are curves of extreme tension, as of substances pulled out lengthwise with force that has found its utmost resistance, lines of strain, long _cool_ curves of vital springing, that bear the strength of their intrinsic unity in their rhythms.” So wrote Ernest Fenollosa--one of the few great writers on art. He was not writing about Holbein, but how well he might have been! What an admirable commentary it makes on the drawings of this master draughtsman--“curves of extreme tension ... _cool_ curves of vital springing.” ... Look at the drawings of the _Duchess of Suffolk_; _Thomas Watt_; _Bishop Fisher_ or the _Family of Thomas More_ (reproduced here, p. 29) or any other portrait drawing by Holbein and I think it cannot but be agreed that it is a perfect description of that most difficult thing to describe--Holbein’s line. It must be admitted that Holbein as a decorator seems to have been a different being--“Renaissance flourishes” were then his stock in trade; they sprout from every available excrescence. But most fortunately, in his portraits, he had no use for the flourish; and here we are only concerned with his portrait drawings.

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[Sidenote: _Michelangelo_]

One cannot study Michelangelo without realizing or at any rate suspecting that _all presentment of psychology essentially depends upon proportions, subtly observed_; and though one cannot expect a master in an art school to allow his pupils to draw the model in inaccurate proportions as a general rule he might, one thinks, occasionally with advantage--say one day a week--order them to decide in their minds first what type, psychologically, they most wish to suggest by the human figure and to think out, then, _what proportions_ would best convey the idea of it--deliberately falsifying, where necessary, the proportions of the model to achieve their purpose. The proportions in a Michelangelo drawing are _not_, accurately, those in a human figure. But, by a general concensus of opinion, they are accepted as suggesting a psychology more divine than human. This then must have been Michelangelo’s intention. How did he do it. If we cannot learn the secret by studying his drawings we have little else to help us except the following cryptic receipt, that legend tells us came from him, and which has still remained undeciphered--“a figure should be pyramidal, serpentine, and _multiplied by one two and three_.” Is there any connection between it and the occultists’ formula--“the one becomes two, the two three, and the three seven,” and their axiom that “Seven is the perfect Number”?

The principle of selecting deliberately where the proportions shall be inaccurate to observed fact, for the purpose of suggesting a desired type, is not unlike the principle that Rodin used to convey the idea of action in a figure:--he taught that movement could best be suggested by including in the pose at least two more or less instantaneous positions or movements which _could_ not, accurately, occur _simultaneously_ in a human figure.

That standard of excellence in art--that a picture or statue should “be true to life”--has befogged too many of us. Art is in its essence and in its finality--_artificial_. And proficiency is nothing if the obvious, the non-essential and the trivial have been relied on to convey the artist’s idea.

Reproductions of Michelangelo’s and Holbein’s finest drawings are usually hung in most art schools--as examples of how to draw I suppose. But, with curious inconsistency, the masters teach their students to do it by a system of straight-line-scaffolding known as _blocking in_; a method that has never been used by any of the greater draughtsmen, but which was, I believe, imported from Paris in the ’seventies or ’eighties; as an antidote, no doubt, to the “poisonous miasma” that Fenollosa condemns! However, competent draughtsmen are, of course, produced by art schools here, as in other countries in considerable numbers, but it is scarcely a debatable point that what modern art most lacks is _tradition_. Present day conditions make the old system of apprenticeship almost impossible--students are too numerous and the artists too varied and contradictory in their opinions for any workable system of apprenticeship to continue. The few attempts that are made in this direction usually come to an unsatisfactory end. And so tradition is dead or lost. The system as it was practised in the days of the Renaissance--in conserving tradition--was of immense value to the continuous progress of art; but in these days the student is thrust from the art school into the world to make his way--as innocent of traditions as a newly-hatched sparrow is of feathers. He is equipped with the experience and opinions of his fellow students and the maxims that are the stock in trade of the professional art-master; who--though he is sometimes a real teacher and even an inspired and inspiring teacher--is far more often merely an artist earning his living by instructing his pupils in a system that he has himself evolved, and which he is quite unable to demonstrate has ever been used by any great draughtsman or painter.

To quote an example--no doubt an extreme case but a fairly typical one--the student will be shown, as I have already said, a fine Holbein drawing, and urged to emulate and study it with the closest attention; but to do so he is given a blunt stick of charcoal and a piece of white machine-made paper and initiated into a system of indicating measurements and directions with heavy black lines. It is implied that all the great masters began their careers by working in this way though, for obvious reasons, no proof of this can ever be produced. It is further implied that if he will apply himself to the art-master’s method with real zeal he will in time be able to produce drawings like Holbein, Ingres or Leonardo. If the student is a natural draughtsman he invariably breaks away from the art school’s set of rules; and the master generally has wit enough to let him go his own way. But the others--well the others generally learn later in life with some bitterness how they have been duped; unless they have had the good fortune to be the pupils of Mr. Walter Sickert or Professor Tonks--who both really have traditions from the old masters.

It would be wiser and better that the proprietors and governors of most of our art schools should say frankly--“we cannot teach drawing as the great draughtsmen were taught, we teach a fairly serviceable method of drawing which it must be clearly understood is intended to be painted over.” However--their system of teaching drawing seems to be much sounder than their system of teaching painting.

At this point I want to say too, that though the word “rhythm” is often uttered in the schools very little that is useful or illuminating is taught there about this most subtle and essential quality in art. Essential in drawing, in line, in spacing, in chiaroscuro and in composition. It is always present in the work of the greater masters. Curiously enough, too, it is often the one quality that causes a lesser man to hold rank among them. A drawing can hardly be stated by one line, usually it needs many, and rhythm is the principle whereby the draughtsman can make a number of complex statements in a drawing synthetically an harmonious whole. It is by rhythm that every line is related to every other line: they have the same relation to each other on the paper as dancers have one to another in a ballet. When a ballet--such as _The Humorous Ladies_--has been danced to its conclusion, though there may have been many movements, each and all were in sympathy with each other and with the main theme.

Rhythm is, I think, the secret of the charm or power in the work of artists as widely different as M. Leon Bakst, Lovat Fraser and Claude Shepperson.

The modern art school seems to be a sort of clearing house for the elimination of the student who thinks the life of an artist more attractive than--say--life in an office. This type predominates in practically all art schools. He (or she) is intensely serious about being an artist, but is not seriously interested in art. After a period more or less prolonged, this kind of neophyte discovers that the work of an artist is not materially assisted by sombrero hats, flowing ties, bobbed hair, corduroy trousers, fancy-dress dances, views about free love, all night discussions about ethics--and so on, one need not continue the familiar list. Having, I say, discovered that the most assiduous cultivation of these exciting manners and customs does not constitute the life of an artist this neophyte drops out of the race, as far as the art world is concerned, and disappears. Years of hard work and perhaps actual privation were not in his contract with the Muse, at least--he did not notice the clause! If that hard-work business was the game then no candle was worth it! Is there any harm done. As far as the unserious student is concerned, I suppose there may have been some good, but his effect on the art school is wholly bad. It makes anything approaching to the old system of apprenticeship impossible; and we have any number of proofs that this old system was the right one.

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Whether art is national or personal in its message there is no doubt that its artists are a peculiar people; they consist of two kinds (but many sects): one--the craftsman--has a mission to create exquisite things and the other has a mission to see exquisitely and to teach others to see exquisitely too. It is not possible to predict what new thing the craftsman will next make beautiful or what new thing the artist will next interpret as beautiful. They are inspired by a spirit that bloweth where it listeth. How great the power of this spirit in us still is is proved by the astonishing number of unlovely things that have been lately revealed to the world as beautiful, through the mysterious alchemic process of this spirit of vision working in the artist. But the spirit of inspiration did not always work thus. Some centuries ago--when we had not so long emerged from Greek thought and the influence of Plato--the process was almost the reverse. It required that the artist should first see beautifully on the plane of ideas some mental conception and then give it birth in a material form. In those days the æsthetic sense was the guiding intelligence that moulded man’s civilization and environment. In other words art produced the environment that produced the artist. Communing with the spirit, the artist, looking inward and not out, sought his subject in his own mind or soul; and only through his art did it become an objective reality for others. But now, to-day, the æsthetic principle no longer moulds our civilization; has but a negligible influence even on our thought and no effect upon the practical affairs of life. We train our workers to live and labour without a knowledge even that such principles exist or that in past ages such ideas _controlled the growth of nations_.

That era is now closed, for “no phase or school of art in human society, however beautiful, but contains within itself the germs of its own destruction.” From the beauty of the past comes the grim battle-field of to-day--where we wage our keen struggle for existence. Governments cannot be taking architecture seriously when they are too out-at-elbows to find housing accommodation for their populations--even in thea meanest huts. And so it follows that their smaller buildings--such as their post-offices, labour exchange bureaus, etcetera--are quite unashamedly practical; in the most commonplace sense. Meanly designed and economically executed to the lowest contractor’s tender, ignoring even the simple, strong beauty that can be achieved merely by mechanical efficiency (except recently in a few local housing schemes) they hedge us about on all sides against the old æsthetic sense. Dimly we are aware that we have lost that guiding intelligence--the spirit of art--that lighted the path for our forefathers; and shamelessly we ignore all the wealth of tradition we inherited from the preceding eras of their greatness.

And the artist--has lost his inner vision. And in his place a new one has been evolved; one who is equal to the task that we have set him: he paints--not ideas but--life as he finds it; he paints experiences; he records emotions; if he receives a visual shock--he cannot make enough haste to do a picture recording it; for to him it is a psychological experience and therefore supremely worth recording. We here set him about with evils and surround him with the sordid and ostentatious; the spirit working in him by a new alchemy has called evil good; what will happen to the world if he should forget and call good evil! Let us hope rather that the spirit of vision--guiding him now to look outward on the visible world for his subject--will inspire him to penetrate the darkness of the æsthetic desert we have set about him; and that--again communing with the spirit--he will give us--not, as before, ideals from his own mental psychology but--see for us and reveal to us finely the mass-psychology of mankind. But it is not possible to prophesy what the art of the future may be that mankind of the future will approve.

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France has now no national art--save her sense of humour (and we all know to what she turns infallibly for stimulation in that!) but she does know a great man when she produces one; nor does she confound him with a lesser artist, however much excitement she may indulge in in making a passing fashion of the latter: her pride in Puvis de Chavannes does not waver. She has recently had some men of genius, and they are typically French, but can we accept them as having founded a national art in France? No--for we experience the fact that the truths that Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin came to teach are no truer for restatement by their disciples, nor have they been further illuminated for us by the endless repetitions of their personal conventions. But the astonishing fact is now being daily insisted upon by some among us that the art of these Frenchmen _is_ national to England!

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England once came near to having a national art--in the school of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney and Lawrence. At any rate their work, reproduced in coloured-engravings by men almost their equal, did reach the people in response to their demand for it and so became at least a _national tradition_; brilliant but all short-lived.

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[Sidenote: _Joseph Crawhall_]

Ultimately it is the love of the people that alike crowns the king or acclaims the artist, and until this happens no artist can be sure of a prominent rank among the great; however much seeming popularity he may enjoy in his lifetime. But there are reasons why an artist is sometimes not given the rank he deserves until long after he should be--apart from those supplied by the uncatholic point of view engendered in the people by lack of education and the jealousy engendered in his contemporary artists by their struggle for recognition. For instance--he may complete very little work; or else his work may not be seen or known except to a few private collectors and dealers, who are wisely but selfishly exploiting it commercially; thus the recognition of his work by the public may be retarded, for the simple fact that it does not know of its existence: as in the case of Joseph Crawhall, who, when his work is known, will undoubtedly be given the high rank he deserves and become as famous to the public as he is now to the collector. I do not hesitate to prophesy this in spite of the fact that I once heard one of our best known critics state with considerable fervour that he wished Crawhall had destroyed _all_ he had ever done instead of only what he did destroy (probably nearly or quite half his work).