Part 8

Even a little art education would show us that this is not "restoration;" it may be a much finer and smarter kind of work, as many people seem to consider it; but the cutting down an inch of the splendid carved stone porches at Chartres to a new surface is not "restoring" that which was there before--the face of the fifteenth-century lady cannot be "restored" without a portrait which no longer exists--the new tower may be very "pretty," but it is certainly no longer a specimen of rare old Early English work. Like the monks of old carefully scratching their invaluable parchment manuscripts, to put in their own words and notes, we have at one fell swoop scratched the history of English ecclesiastical art off the land, and archæologists are inquiring sadly for instances of unrestored churches, which, alas! now are scarcely to be found.

What may be the reason why architecture, sculpture, painting, and even poetry--_i.e._, the combination of stone, brick, marble, metal, colours, and, lastly, of metrical forms of words--should all suffer by the advance of our (so-called) civilization and education, is still a mystery; but few will be found to doubt the fact in detail, though they may deny the general formula.

Perhaps our self-consciousness as to our great virtues, our "progress," our knowledge, the learning of the reason of our work, the introversion of our present moods of thought, check the development of an idea, even if we may be fortunate enough to get hold of one. Self-consciousness is fatal to art; there is a certain spontaneity of utterance--singing, as the birds sing, because they cannot help it--"composing," almost as the mountains and clouds "compose," by reason of their existence itself, not because they want to make a picture,--which produces natural work, grown out of the man and the requirements of his nature, to which it seems, with very rare exceptions, that we cannot now attain.

In sculpture, a modern R.A. has acquired ten times as much anatomy as Phidias: dissection was unknown, and not permitted, by the Greeks. Chemistry has produced for the painter colours which Raphael (luckily for us) never dreamed of. Yet one cannot help wondering at the strange daring which permits the honourable society at Burlington House to hang yearly the works of the ancient masters of the craft on the same walls where their own productions are to figure a few weeks later, as if to inform the world most impressively and depressingly from how far we have fallen in pictorial art; to string up our taste, as it were, to concert pitch--to give the key-note of true excellence, in order to mark the depth to which we have sunk.

We now teach drawing diligently in all European countries, and are surprised that we get no Michelangelos. Did Masaccio go to a school of design, or Giotto learn "free-hand" manipulation? Education, as it is generally defined--meaning thereby a knowledge of the accumulation of facts discovered by other people--is good for the general public, for ordinary humanity, but not for original minds, except so far as it saves them time and trouble by preventing them from reinventing what has been already done by others. True, there can be but few "inventors" (in the old Italian sense of creators) in the world at any one moment, and training must, it will be said, be carried on for the use of the many; but one might still plead for a certain elasticity in our teaching, a margin left for free-will among the few who will ever be able to use it. And, meantime, it is allowable to lament over the number of arts we have lost, or are in danger of losing, which can only be practised by the few--whose number seems ever to be diminishing, under our generalizing processes of turning out as many minds of the same pattern as if we wanted nail-heads or patent screws by the million.

This is not education in its true and highest sense--_i.e._, the bringing forth the best that is in a man; not simply putting knowledge into him, but using the variety of gifts, which even the poorest in endowment possess, to the best possible end. And this seems more and more difficult as the stereotyped pattern is more and more enforced in board-schools, endowed schools, public schools, universities; and each bit of plastic material, while young, is forced as much as possible into the same shape, the only contention being who shall have the construction of the die which all alike are eager to apply to every individual of the nation.

Of all races which have yet existed there can be no doubt that the Greek was the one most highly endowed with artistic powers of all kinds; yet the Greek was certainly not, in our sense of the term, an educated man at all; his powers of every kind, however, were cultivated indirectly by the very atmosphere he lived in. His sensitive artistic nature found food in the forms and colours of the mountains and the islands, the sea and the sky, by which he was surrounded; by the human nature about him in its most perfect development; by every building--his temples, his tombs, his theatres--every pot and pan he used, every seat he sat upon; whereas no man's eye can be other than degraded by the unspeakable ugliness of an English manufacturing town, or, what is almost worse, by the sham art where decoration of any kind is invented or attempted by the richer middle class.

The theory that soil and climate and food produce instincts of beauty, as well as varieties of beasts and plants, is, however, evidently at fault in these questions; for if this were the case at one time in the world's history, why not at another? and the present inhabitants of Greece are as inapt as their neighbours in sculpture, painting, and architecture. Nothing, even out of the workshops of Birmingham, can exceed the ugliness of their present productions--_e.g._, a Minerva's head without a forehead, done in bead-work on canvas, fastened on to a piece of white marble, which was given as a precious parting gift from the goddess's own city to a valued friend. There seems now a headlong competition in every country after bad art. If we ask for lace and embroidery in the Greek islands, or silver fillagree in Norway,--if we inquire for wood-carving from Burmah, or the old shawls and pottery from Persia and the East,--the answer is always the same: we are told that there is "none such made at present." It is only what remains of the old handmade work that is to be obtained; the present inhabitants "care for none of these things." Sham jewellery from the "Palais Royal," Manchester goods, stamped leather, and the like, are what the natives are seeking for themselves, while they get rid of "all those ugly old things" to the first possible buyer for any price which they can fetch.

Manufacturing an article, (whatever be the real derivation of the word, but) meaning the use of machinery for the multiplication of the greatest number of articles at the least cost, however admirable for the comfort of the million, is evidently fatal to art. When each bit of ironwork, every hinge, every lock scutcheon, was hammered out with care and consideration by the individual blacksmith, even if he were but an indifferent performer, it bore the stamp of the thought of a man's mind directing his hand; now there is only the stamp of a machine running the metal into a mould. When every bit of decorative wood-work was "all made out of the carver's brain,"--when the embroidery of the holiday shirt of a boatman of "Chios' rocky isle" took half a lifetime to devise and stitch, and was intended to last for generations of wearers, art found a way, however humble, through nimble fingers interpreting the fancies of the individual brain. "Fancy work," as an old Hampshire woman called her stitching of the fronts and backs of the old-fashioned smock-frocks, each one differing from the one she made before, as her "fancy" led. It was always interesting, and almost always beautiful.

Now the hinges are cast by the ton, all of one pattern; fortunate, indeed, if the original be a good one (a very hopeful supposition!). The sewing-machine repeats its monotonous curves of embroidery; the wood-carving is the result of skilfully-arranged knives and wheels worked by steam, which only execute forms adapted for them. The initial thought of their designer must be, not what is in itself desirable, but that which the machine can best produce. What is right in a particular place, is the natural object of the workman artist; how to use what has been already cast or stamped, is the object of the present ordinary builder; and what he calls "symmetry"--_i.e._, monotony, every line repeated _ad nauseam_--is the result his education aims at. Symmetry, in the sense of the repetition of the infinite variety of exquisitely modulated curves in the two outlines of the human body, is beautiful and harmonious; but there is neither beauty nor harmony in the repetition of the self-same horizontal and perpendicular lines of windows and doors in a London street. A feeling of what in music are called "contrary motion," "oblique motion," is all required in the impression produced by really fine architecture. Yet, if the ordinary builder is asked to vary his hideous row of houses by an additional window or a higher chimney, he exclaims with horror at such a violation of "symmetry," his sole rule of beauty being that all should look alike.

The effect, indeed, of machine-made work is to impress upon the tradesman mind the belief that perfection consists wholly in exact and correct repetition of a pattern, which may be said to be true in his craft; whereas constant variation and development is the law of healthy art, the need being expressed by the design. To save the expense and trouble of fresh drawings, also, as soon as a pattern becomes popular in one material, it is immediately repeated _ad nauseam_ in every other, however incongruous. A bunch of fuchsias has been supposed to look well in a lace curtain; it is then cast in brass for the end of a curtain-rod; is used for wall-papers and stone-carving alike. Whereas if a Japanese artist has designed a flight of cranes on his screen or his paper, it is impossible to get another exactly the same; to reproduce a sketch exactly being, generally, as every artist can tell, more laborious than to make a new one, where the brain assists the fingers in their work.

There is another result of our present shallow "general" education which has a most depressing effect upon art. Every one now can read and write, and it would be considered an infringement of the right of private judgment to doubt the ability of every writer or reader to criticize any work of art whatsoever. In the case of buying a kitchen range or a carriage we should not trust to our own knowledge, but should apply to the experienced expert; but "every one can tell whether he likes a picture or not!"

Now, good criticism in art demands at least as long and severe an apprenticeship as that in ironmongery--the training of the eye by long experience, reading, historical, scientific, mechanical--real study of all the various subjects connected with it; and this can be acquired only by few. It has been said, with perfect truth, that it will not do to depend on the fiat of artists themselves for the value of a picture, statue, or building. With some, the admiration of the technical part of art is too great; the passionate likes and dislikes for particular styles or particular men warp the judgments of others; and this is, perhaps, inherent in the artist nature. But this is only saying that we must not go to the ironfounder for the character of his kitchen range; there are other skilled opinions to be had besides those of the authors of a work.

At the present time, the art of criticism has got so far beyond our powers of creation that it becomes more and more difficult to bring forth a great work of art. The hatching of eggs requires a certain genial warmth to bring them to perfection; creation is a vital act, but the reception which any new-fledged production is likely to meet with is either the scorching fire of fault-finding or the freezing cold of indifference.

It was not thus that great works of old were produced; Cimabue's picture of the Virgin was carried in a triumphal procession through Florence, from the artist's studio to the church which was to be honoured by its possession. It was a worthy religious offering to the goddess Mary, a subject of rejoicing to the whole city, and the quarter of the town where it was first seen, amid cries of delight, was called the "Borgo Allegri," a name which it has kept six hundred years. And the sympathy of the people reacted on the artist, and helped him to carry out his great conceptions. They were proud of him, and he worked at his picture as a labour of love to do his nation honour.

Now, when a man has spent perhaps years over a religious picture, working with all his heart and soul and strength, instead of its being taken into a church, and seen only with the associations for which it is adapted, it is hung up between a smirking lady, clad in the last abominations of the fashion, on one side, and a "horse and dog, the property of Blank, Esq.," on the other; while the artist is fortunate if the best of the critics, who has just glanced at it as he passes by, does not entirely ignore his meaning and mistake the expression of his idea, only discovering that "the drawing of the toe of the left foot is decidedly awkward." So it may be, and there are probably faults in it still more considerable; yet the picture, with all these faults, may be one of great merit.

Is it possible to conceive the Madonna di San Sisto painted under such conditions? The cold chill of the indifferent public would have reacted on the artist, and quenched the fire of his inspiration. The picture was intended to be the incarnation of the religious feeling of the whole Christian world, in the divine expression of the infant Christ gazing into futurity, with those rapt, far-seeing eyes,--in the holy mother, who carries him so reverently, yet with such power and purity in her look and bearing. It was honoured sympathetically by all who had the joy of seeing it borne as a banner through a great city as an act of the highest worship; not cut up into little morsels and set on a fork by every man who can write smart articles for a penny paper, bestowing a little supercilious praise and much wholesome advice on Holman Hunt and Tennyson, on Stevens[2] and Street alike.

But the result is that the world is poorer by the want of the work which only a sense of sympathy between the artist and his public inspires. "Action and reaction are equal," we are told, in science, and the artist cannot produce the best that is in him alone, any more than the most finished musician can play on a dumb piano. The receivers must do their share in the partnership. Mrs. Siddons once said that she lost all her power when annihilated by the coldness of the cream of the cream society of a _salon_, and preferred any marks of emotion of an unsophisticated if intelligent audience, to the chill of fashionable indifference; and when we complain of the poorness of our art, we must remember for how large a share of this we, the present public, are responsible. It may be all very well for the skylark to "pour his strains of unpremeditated art" for his own pleasure and that of the little skylarks; but Shelley must have had the hope that "the world will listen then, as I am listening now."

The poet and the painter require intelligent cordial belief and sympathy, which is just what we have not to give, and therefore the reign of the highest art is probably at an end: no Phidias or Michelangelo, no Homer or Shakspeare, are likely again to arise. This is pre-eminently a scientific age--a time for the collection and co-ordination of facts; and what imagination we possess we use in the discovery of the laws by which Nature works, and in the application of our knowledge to the ordinary wants and comforts and pleasures of the human race. Electric telegraphs, phonographs, photographs abound; every possible adaptation of steam in majestic engines (almost, it seems, as intelligent as man), to promote our means of communication and locomotion over the surface of the earth, and of production in every conceivable form; great ships and engines of destruction in war, and (curious antithesis) ingenious contrivances for the saving of pain in disease--everything, in short, connected with the comprehension and subjugation of the material world, is more and more carried to perfection. Yet in spite of these marvellous achievements, unless we can manage to secure a supply of good art, there can be no doubt that there will "have passed away a glory from the earth" which we can ill afford to lose.

There is no use in preaching what is called the common sense of the matter, and telling Keats (though he may have died of consumption, and not of the _Edinburgh Review_) that the critique on his poems was flippant and unintelligent; or one artist that the account of his picture was written by a man who did not understand painting, and the next by a writer who had no notion of the requisites of true poetry. The artist is by necessity of his nature a thin-skinned, impressionable being, with sensitive nerves and perceptions, without which the power of creation does not exist. He writes and paints and acts and sculpts--in short, composes, invents, creates--to make the world feel as he is feeling. Fame is a vulgar word for the sentiment which inspires him; the longing after sympathy is a much truer expression of what the true artist desires. That of his own family and friends is not sufficient; he wants the world at large to hear and understand and join in what he has to say, whether it be in marble or on canvas, in music or in words. To grow such a creature to perfection is very rare in the history of mankind, and when our aloe does flower, we should make the most of it, and feed it with food convenient. Our blame depresses him, even stupid,[3] unintelligent blame, more than our praise elevates him; "he is absurdly sensitive," says the hard-headed man of the world; but that is the very condition of the problem with which we have to deal; if he were not so, we should not have great works of art from him. He is an idealist by nature. If we declare that it is very absurd of our vines to require so much care and kindness, and that a little roughing and neglect will do them a great deal of good, we shall not get many grapes; and, after all, what we want is grapes--results, great artistic works.

It is almost pathetic to see the nation doing the best it knows, offering its patronage and its public buildings, its monuments of great men and its money, and then to mark the results. It is fortunate that most of the frescoes are scaling off the walls of the Houses of Parliament. It is fortunate that Nelson and the Duke of York are hoisted up so high that they cannot be scrutinized at all; it is fortunate that most of the public statues are generally so begrimed with dirt and soot that few can make out their intention. But it is we who are responsible for half at least of their failures.[4] We have, as a nation, neither the artistic feeling which delights in the beautiful with a sort of worship, nor the sensuous religious instincts which require an outward and visible sign of our inward faith. Therefore our best chance of great work seems to be when the common-sense necessity is so large in its demands, that carrying it out even on merely utilitarian principles may give a grand result by the force of circumstances, almost without our will,--the very fulfilment of the working conditions on an enormous scale forcing a certain grandeur on the work. As, for instance, when a viaduct is carried over a deep valley and river, upon a lofty series of arches, as in many Welsh railways and at Newcastle, there are elements of strength, durability, might, and therefore majesty, which the barest execution of the requirements cannot take away. The Suspension Bridge hung high in the air above the ships in the Menai Straits, and that over the narrow hollow of the Avon, have a beauty of lightness and grace all their own--Waterloo Bridge, which Canova declared to be worth coming to England to see--are all specimens of a kind of work which we may hope to see multiplied, and even improved upon, as the adaptation of art to the common necessities of our civilization becomes more common, and is taken in hand by a higher and more educated class of men.

Nothing, however, can well be more depressing than the experience of the United States in respect to this question of art and education. Here is a country (in their own magniloquent hyperbole) "bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, and on the west by the setting sun," &c., &c., whose proud boast it is that every man, woman, and child (born on its soil) can read, write, and something more,--which has just celebrated its centenary of independent existence, and is in the very spring-time of its national life when the "sap is rising,"--a season which among other nations is that of their greatest artistic vigour, yet which has never produced a poet, painter, sculptor,[5] or architect above mediocrity. Strangely as it would seem at first sight, it is originality which is chiefly wanting in their art; it is all an echo of European models; they have no independent action of thought or interpretation of Nature. Here, again, it is probably the want of culture of the public which is to blame. Evidence is difficult to obtain on such a vast subject as the use made of the reading and writing so freely imparted at the schools in the United States, but there is very good testimony showing that, with the exception of great centres of civilization, like Boston, the nation, as a nation, reads little but newspapers and story-books; and these clearly would produce a soil utterly unfit for the growth of real art.

Lastly, let us not forget Mr. Mill's warning how much the nation, as well as the individual, must suffer by the stifling of original thought in the rigid conformity to system which our present mechanism of Government regulations, of centralized hard-and-fast rules, is bringing about in education.

The State has a right to exact a certain amount of training in the individuals who compose it, but has no right whatever to interfere as to how that result is obtained. Every encouragement should be held out to original action of all kinds, tending to develop the faculties--artistic, scientific, as well as practical--which remain to be utilized among the millions who are now coming under an influence hitherto painfully narrow, rigid, and shallow in its operations, in spite of its magnificent promises and high-sounding notes of self-satisfaction.

F. P. VERNEY.

[Footnote 1: Now, alas! under sentence of "restoration;" the age of creation in Italy appears to be over, and that of destruction to have begun.]

[Footnote 2: The monument to the Duke of Wellington has never received its due meed of praise. With all his faults, poor Stevens was a man of true genius.]

[Footnote 3: "Quoique les applaudissemens que j'ai reçus m'aient beaucoup flatté, la moindre critique, quelque mauvaise qu'elle eût été, m'a toujours causé plus de chagrin que toutes les louanges ne m'aient fait de plaisir," writes Racine to his son. He was silent for twelve years after the "insuccès de Phêdre." "Quoique le 'Mercure Gallant' était au dessous de rien, les blessures qu'il fait n'en sont pas moins cruelles à la sensibilité d'un poëte," adds the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.]

[Footnote 4: The group of "Asia," by Foley, in Prince Albert's Memorial, is one of the few exceptions to the indifferent character of out-door statues in London.]