Part 9

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.

I can quite understand that when you first begin painting, the novelty of the material and the difficulties of color should prevent your drawing with the same precision and firmness as you would with charcoal and chalk; but when these difficulties are overcome, you should endeavor to return to your former precision. It is very difficult, when once a slovenly habit of drawing has been contracted, to return to accuracy; but nevertheless it is possible.

The fact is, that an artist, to excel as a draughtsman, should consider himself a student all his life.

The school of painting ought to be the school of drawing in color, and no student ought to be allowed to color a badly drawn figure or head. This was always the rule, not only in Delaroche’s School, but in all the _ateliers_ of his contemporaries; and as more than half the present members of the Institute were students in these schools, the system cannot have been a bad one.

It may surprise some of you to hear the time that was spent in drawing the figure before beginning to paint.

The model used to sit for six consecutive days: from seven to twelve in summer, and from eight to one in winter, and an hour was allowed every day for intervals of rest.

During the whole first day’s sitting, nothing but drawing was done. Sometimes the shades of the figure were rubbed in with bitumen or some transparent brown, but no color was ever used. The master would come early on the Tuesday, and until he had passed, as it were, every student’s drawing, no one who studied seriously would think of laying on color. Six hours, therefore, out of the twenty-four were spent before the actual painting began; but, at any rate, good solid foundations had been laid: well-proportioned and carefully drawn figures were the rule and not the exception, and if the student had not time to finish his work by the end of the week, he would have at any rate a large portion of the figure carefully studied.

When a figure is well drawn, the master will take a pleasure in giving the student some hints about the color, and will perhaps take the palette himself; but to give instruction in color when there is no drawing, is like furnishing a house before the walls are built.

I have noticed that some of you in the life school attach too much importance to the mere outline, and neglect the structure and internal markings of your figures. Now the bones and principal markings of a figure are of infinitely more consequence than the outline; it is _they_ which give the action and proportion, and in every stage of figure-drawing they should be accurately and clearly defined, to serve as landmarks from which the outline may be mapped out. If you were drawing a head, you would not trace a sharp outline of the hair, ears, and cheeks, without having first indicated the position of the eyes, nose, and mouth. Why then should you proceed on a different principle in drawing a figure?

There is another bad habit of drawing which has of late become too common in the schools, and which I, as visitor, have often protested against; and that is the practice of blackening the figure all over, with the intention of working out the details with breadcrumb or the eraser. It maybe that this is the most expeditious way of producing a smoothly-finished drawing, but I am sure it is not the most artistic way.