Part 4

Of course the whole scheme of the schools of design was based upon the idea of improvement _downwards_, and like many modern improvements, or reforms, its contrivers sought to make the tree of art flourish and put forth new leaves without attending to the nourishment of the roots or touching the soil. But the drawing-board and the workshop-bench are after all two very different things, and it is by no means certain that proficiency at one would necessarily produce a corresponding improvement at the other, except indeed, it be on the principle that if a man acquires one language it will be easier for him to learn others. But at this point another consideration comes in. You get your student seated at his drawing-board, you set him to represent at the point of his pencil or chalk certain objects, casts, for instance, and encourage him to portray their appearance with all relief of light and shade, dwelling solely on the necessity of his attaining a certain degree of purely pictorial skill, which in itself is really of no practical use to a designer of ornament intended to be worked out in some other material such as a textile, wood, or metal. In fact, the development of pictorial skill has a strong tendency to lead the student to devote himself entirely to pictorial work, and hitherto there have been plenty of other inducements, such as the chance of larger monetary reward and social position. If he is not ultimately drawn into the already overcrowded ranks of the picture producers, he is too likely to carry back into his own particular craft a certain love of pictorial treatment and effect which may really be injurious to his sense of fitness in adapting design and material. This indeed is what evidently has happened as the result of much so-called art-education, and we are only now slowly awakening to the conception that art is not necessarily the painting of pictures, but that the most refined artistic feeling may be put into every work of man's hand, and that each after its kind gives more delight and becomes more and more beautiful in proportion as it follows the laws of its own existence--when a design is in perfect harmony with its material, and one does not feel one would want it reproduced in any other way.

It is next to impossible to get this unity of design and material unless the craftsman fashions the thing he designs, or unless the designer thoroughly understands the conditions and allows them to determine the character of his design, which he can hardly do unless he is in close and constant touch with the craftsman. Now the industrial conditions under which the great mass of things are produced, which have gradually been developed in the interests of trade rather than of art have tended to separate the designer and craftsman more and more and to subdivide their functions. Our enterprising manufacturers are quick enough to adopt or adapt an idea, and some will pay liberally for it, but they do not always realize that it does not follow because _one_ good thing is produced in a limited quantity that therefore it must be much better if a cheap imitation of it can be produced by the thousand--but then we no longer produce for _use_ but for _profit_. Demand and supply--"thou shalt have no other gods but these," says the trader in effect; although the demand in these days may be as artificial as the supply.

The Nemesis of trade pursues the invention of the artist, as the steamers on the river on boat-race day pursue, almost as if they would run down, the slender craft of the oarsmen straining every nerve for victory. It is a suggestive spectacle. Someone's brain and hand must set to work--must give the initiative before the steam-engine can be set going. But how many brains and hands, nay lives, has it devoured since our industrial epoch began?

Up to about 1880 artists working independently in decoration were few and far between, mostly isolated units, and their work was often absorbed by various manufacturing firms. About that time, in response to a feeling for more fellowship and opportunity for interchange of ideas on the various branches of their own craft, a few workers in decorative design were gathered together under the roof of the late Mr. Lewis F. Day on a certain January evening known as hurricane Tuesday and a small society was formed for the discussion of various problems in decorative design and kindred topics; meeting in rotation at the houses or studios of the members. The society had a happy if obscure life for several years, and was ultimately absorbed into a larger society of designers, architects, and craftsmen called "The Art Workers' Guild," which met once a month with much the same objects--fellowship and interchange of ideas and papers and demonstrations in various arts and crafts. In fact, since artists more or less concerned with decoration had increased, owing to the revived activity and demand arising for design of all kinds, the feeling grew stronger among men of very different proclivities for some common ground of meeting. A desire among artists of different crafts to know something of the technicalities of other crafts made itself felt, and the result has been the rapid and continual growth of the Guild which now includes, beside the principal designers in decoration, painters, architects, sculptors, wood-carvers, metal-workers, engravers, and representatives of various other crafts.

A junior Art Workers' Guild has also been established in connection with the older body, and there are besides two Societies of Designers in London, while in the provinces there is the Northern Art Workers' Guild at Manchester and various local Arts and Crafts societies all over the country.

We have, of course, our Royal Academy, or as it ought to be called, Royal Guild of Painters in Oil, always with us; but its use of the term "Arts" applies only (and almost exclusively so) to painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving, and while absorbing gifted artists from time to time, often after they have done their best work, it has never, as a body, shown any wide or comprehensive conception of art, although it has done a certain amount of educational work, chiefly through its valuable exhibitions of old masters and its lectures and teaching in the schools, which are free, and where famous artists act as visitors. Its influence in the main it is to be feared has been to encourage an enormous overproduction of pictures every year, and to foster in the popular mind the impression that there was no art in England before Sir Joshua Reynolds, and none of any consequence since, outside the easel picture.

The magnificently arranged and deeply interesting "Town-planning Exhibition," held last year in connection with the International Congress on that subject, however, was a new departure and most welcome as an example of what might be done by the Royal Academy under the influence of wider conceptions of art.

Nevertheless, the work of such fine decorative artists as Albert Moore, Alfred Gilbert, Harry Bates has been introduced to the public through the Royal Academy, these two last-named being members; and once upon a time even a picture by Sir E. Burne-Jones appeared there.

Many gifted artists have strengthened the institution since these passed away. The names of Watts and Leighton will always shed lustre and distinction upon it, but of course the Academy necessarily depends for its continued vitality upon new blood. The advantages of membership are generally too strong a temptation to our rising artists to encourage the formation of anything like an English "secession," though according to our British ideas of the wholesomeness of competition or, let us say _emulation_, a strong body of independent artists might have a good effect all round.

I have often wondered that no attempt has been made by the Royal Academy to give a lead in the arrangement and hanging of an exhibition. With the fine rooms at their disposal it would be possible to make their great annual show of pictures far more striking and attractive by some kind of classification or sympathetic grouping. The best system, of course, would be to group the works of each artist together. This, however, would take up more wall space and lead to more exclusions than at present; but, still the plan might be tried of placing all the portraits together, and, say, the subject pictures according to scale, and the landscapes, arranging them in separate rooms. Sculpture and architecture, and water colours and engravings are already given separate rooms, so that it would only be extending a principle already adopted. The effect of the whole exhibition would be much finer, I venture to think, and also less fatiguing, and there would probably be less chance of pictures being falsified or injured by juxtaposition with unsympathetic neighbours. Surely some advance is possible on eighteenth-century ideas of hanging, or the old days of Somerset House? I respectfully commend the above suggestion to their consideration.

While mentioning names we must not forget (although I have hitherto dwelt rather on the Gothic side of the English revival) such distinguished designers as the late Alfred Stevens and his able followers Godfrey Sykes and Moody. These artists drew their inspiration largely from the work of the Italian Renascence, and it is a testimony to their remarkable powers--especially of the first-named--that they should have achieved such distinction on the lines of so marked a style, and one which, as it appears to me, had already reached its maturity in the country of its birth, unlike Gothic design, which might almost be said to have been arrested in its development by the advent of the Renascence.

Another influence upon modern decorative art cannot be left out of account, and that is the Japanese influence. The extraordinary decorative daring, and intimate naturalism; the frank or delicate colouration, the freshness, as of newly gathered flowers of many of their inventions and combinations: the wonderful vivacity and truth of the designs of such a master as Hokusai, for instance--these and the whole disclosure of the history of their art (which, however, was entirely derived from and inspired by the still finer art of the Chinese), from the early, highly wrought, religious and symbolic designs, up to the vigorous freedom and naturalism of the later time, together with their extraordinary precision of technique, inevitably took the artistic world by storm. Its immediate effects, much as we may be indebted to such a source, cannot be set down altogether to the good so far as we can trace them in contemporary European art; but perhaps on the whole there is no more definitely marked streak of influence than this of the Japanese. In French art it was at one time more palpable still. In fact it might almost be said to have taken entire possession of French decorative art, or a large part of it; or rather, it is Japanese translated into French with that ease and chic for which our lively neighbours are remarkable.

Whistler, by the way, who must be numbered with the decorators, showed unmistakably in his work the results of a close study of Japanese art. His methods of composition, his arrangements of tones of colour declare how he had absorbed it, and applied it to different methods and subjects, in fact, his work shows most of the qualities of much Japanese art, except precision of drawing, although his earlier etchings have this quality.

In modern decoration, the most obvious and superficial qualities of Japanese art have generally been seized upon, and its general effect has been to loosen the restraining and architectonic sense of balance and fitness, and a definite ordered plan of construction, which are essential in the finest types of design. On the whole, the effects of the discovery of Japanese art on the modern artistic mind, may be likened to a sudden and unexpected access of fortune to an impoverished man. It is certain to disorganize if not demoralize him. The sudden contact with a fresh and vigorous art, alive with potent tradition, yet intimate with the subtler forms and changes of nature, and in the full possession and mastery of its own technique--the sudden contact of such an art with the highly artificial and eclectic art of a complex and effete civilization must be more or less of the nature of a shock. Shocks are said to be good for sound constitutions, but their effect on the unsound are as likely as not to be fatal.

While fully acknowledging the brilliancy of Japanese art, however, one feels how enormously they were indebted to the art of China, and the greater dignity and impressiveness of the latter becomes more and more apparent on comparison. Both in graphic characterization of birds and animals and flowers and splendour of ornament, the Chinese both preceded and excelled the Japanese. There were recently some striking demonstrations of this at the British Museum, when Mr. Laurence Binyon arranged a series of most remarkable ancient Chinese paintings on silk side by side with Japanese work.

The opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, owing to the enterprise of Sir Coutts Lindsay, was the means of bringing the decorative school in English painting to the front, and did much towards directing public attention in that direction.

What was known as "aestheticism" has, of course, been freely satirized both by press and stage, which latter, however, was not slow to avail itself of some of its results in the increased variety and picturesqueness of its interior scenes, and the charm of delicate harmonies of colour in draperies and costume. The movement was seized upon by the commercial instinct, which always hastens to make hay while the sun shines, and the aesthetic sun shone very gaily for a time, in the society sense. It was somewhat amusing to see the travesties of ideas which had been current in artistic circles for long before, now proclaimed as the new gospel of aesthetic salvation. But in spite of all the clamour, fashionable extravagance, and ridicule, which obscured the real meaning of the movement, so far as it was a sincere search after more beauty in daily life, its influence is just as strong as ever, and is likely to increase with the growth and spread of greater refinement, and the desire for more harmonious social conditions.

Organizations continued to increase and multiply, having for their object, in one way or another, the "encouragement" of the arts and crafts of design, and whether for good or for evil, it cannot be denied that their number and activity were, and are, remarkable signs of the times--of an awakening interest in decorative art and a general impulse towards ornamental expression. It is true in some instances this impulse runs rather wild, and to some of its ruder results we might even apply the words of the poet Cowper describing the gambols of the kine at high noon:

Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent, To give act and utt'rance as they may To ecstasy, too big to be suppress'd.

It would be difficult to enumerate all the different associations having for their object the teaching, or the spread of a knowledge or love of decorative art and handicraft, outside the big trade organizations and decorating firms, but among those who contributed from various sides to the main stream mention may be made of "The Century Guild," identified chiefly with the publication of its "Hobby Horse," with its careful attention to the printer's art under the fine taste in type and book ornaments of Mr. Herbert P. Horne. "The Home Arts and Industries Association," which has started village classes in various handicrafts all over the kingdom, has held annual exhibitions at the Albert Hall, The Royal School of Art Needlework, now in noble premises in Imperial Institute Road, The School of Art Woodcarving in Pelham Place; while design on the strictly industrial and technical side is cared for by the City and Guilds of London Institute under Sir Philip Magnus.

Since these and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society were established, the London County Council came into being and founded its schools of Art and Craft all over London with the assistance of members of that Society; it has now become the central authority in technical education, and extends a helping hand (with a grant in aid) to some of the schools above named.

All these institutions, and many more, invoke the name of art, and desire to unite good design and workmanship, and also to find a market for it. (Some of our large decorating firms would claim to have the same objects perhaps.) Their great difficulty is how to produce good designing ability out of nothing, as it were. All the crafts which they specially address themselves to teach and cultivate are, after all, entirely dependent for their interest and value upon vigour of design and vital expression, and this cannot suddenly be forced into existence by artificial heat. It is a power of slow development and is nourished from all sorts of sources, and is as many sided as life itself, being in fact only another form of life. You can lead a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink. You can provide any number of words but you cannot make people think, and the possession of rhyming dictionaries will never make a poet, neither will the possession of tools and a method make artists. This is, of course, obvious enough. At the same time it may fairly be urged on the other side that no one can learn to swim without entering the water, and it is only by repeated experiments and years of patient labour that we arrive at good results.

Genius is always rare, but efficiency is what keeps the world going, and it must be said that admirable work in various crafts has been produced in the London County Council Technical Schools. Their system of scholarships gives opportunities to young people of promise to carry on their studies, and pupils and apprentices in various trades are enabled to gain a more complete knowledge of their craft and its various branches than is possible in any ordinary workshop, as well as tasteful ideas in design generally.

In the summer of 1886 the smouldering discontent which always exists among artists in regard to the Royal Academy, although very often only the result of personal disappointment, threatened to burst into something like a flame. A letter appeared in the leading dailies proposing the establishment of a really National Exhibition of the Arts, which should include not only painting, sculpture, and architecture, but also the arts of design generally. This letter was signed by George Clausen, W. Holman Hunt, and the present writer. The stronghold of the movement at first was among the group of painters, distinguished as the Anglo-French school, whose headquarters were at Chelsea, and who were the founders of the New English Art Club. The idea of such a comprehensive exhibition was an exciting one, and large and enthusiastic meetings of artists were held. It was however discovered before long that the mass of the painters attracted by the movement intended no more than to press a measure of reform on the Royal Academy--to induce them to take, in fact, a leaf out of the book of the French Salon as regards the mode of election of the hanging committees of each year.

The decorative designers, however, perceiving their vision of a really representative exhibition of contemporary works in all the arts fading away, and the whole force of the movement being wasted in the forlorn hope of forcing reforms upon the Academy, left the agitators in a body, and proceeded to take counsel together as to the best means of furthering their aims, and the immediate result was the founding of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society which, after many difficulties opened its first exhibition at the New Gallery in the autumn of 1888.

The members of the Society, who were also most of them members of the Art Workers' Guild aforementioned, were well aware of the difficulties they would have to face in the endeavour to realize their aims, and carry out their principles. Their main object, however, was to demonstrate by means of a representative public exhibition the actual state of decorative art in all its kinds as far as possible. They desired to assert the claims of the decorative designer and craftsman to the position of artist, and give every one responsible in any way for the artistic character of a work full individual credit, by giving his name in the catalogue, whether the work was exhibited by a firm or not.

In spite of all drawbacks the richness and artistic interest of the Exhibition was generally acknowledged, and the novelty of the idea attracted the public.

An exhibition of designs and cartoons for decoration had been held by the directors of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881, but it was limited to that class of work, so that this Arts and Crafts Exhibition may be said to have been really the first which attempted anything like a representative and comprehensive display of not only designs for work but the actual work itself, for its artistic and decorative quality alone. It comprised designs and cartoons, modelled work, woodcarving, furniture, tapestry and embroidery and printed cottons, pottery, tiles, and glass-metal work, jewellery, printed books, binding, calligraphy and illuminations, and undoubtedly included some of the best contemporary work which had been produced in England up to that time. The Exhibition was repeated at the same place the following year, at the same time, and also the year after. Since then, however, the exhibitions of the Society have been held triennially, the latest in January 1910 being the ninth.

It is obvious that exhibitions of this kind involve many more difficulties of organization and management than ordinary picture shows. The very fact of having to deal with such a variety of work as was submitted, and the conditions under which work in decoration is generally done (making it difficult for the artist to retain possession of his work for exhibition purposes) make the formation of such an exhibition at all no easy matter. Then there were two open and palpable dangers to be encountered. The danger of being swamped by a great influx of amateur work, as it is generally understood, on the one hand, and the danger of merely commercial work getting the upper hand on the other. To keep

Along the narrow strip of herbage strown That just divides the desert from the sown