92. In pursuing the question put at the close of the last paper, it must
be observed that there are essentially two conditions under which we
have to examine the difference between the effects of public and private
Art on national prosperity. The first in immediate influence is their
Economical function, the second their Ethical. We have first to consider
what class of persons they in each case support; and, secondly, what
classes they teach or please.
Looking over the list of the gift-books of this year, perhaps the first
circumstance which would naturally strike us would be the number of
persons living by this industry; and, in any consideration of the
probable effects of a transference of the public attention to other
kinds of work, we ought first to contemplate the result on the interests
of the workman. The guinea spent on one of our ordinary illustrated
gift-books is divided among--
1. A number of second-rate or third-rate artists, producing
designs as fast as they can, and realizing them up to
the standard required by the public of that year. Men
of consummate power may sometimes put their hands
to the business; but exceptionally.
2. Engravers, trained to mechanical imitation of this
second or third-rate work; of these engravers the inferior
classes are usually much overworked.
3. Printers, paper-makers, ornamental binders, and other
craftsmen.
4. Publishers and booksellers.
93. Let us suppose the book can be remuneratively produced if there is
a sale of five thousand copies. Then L5000, contributed for it by the
public, are divided among the different workers; it does not matter what
actual rate of division we assume, for the mere object of comparison
with other modes of employing the money; but let us say these L5000 are
divided among five hundred persons, giving on an average L10 to each.
And let us suppose these L10 to be a fortnight's maintenance to each.
Then, to maintain them through the year, twenty-five such books must be
published; or to keep certainly within the mark of the probable cost of
our autumnal gift-books, suppose L100,000 are spent by the public, with
resultant supply of 100,000 households with one illustrated book, of
second or third-rate quality each (there being twenty different books
thus supplied), and resultant maintenance of five hundred persons for
the year, at severe work of a second or third-rate order, mostly
mechanical.
94. Now, if the mind of the nation, instead of private, be set on public
work, there is of course no expense incurred for multiplication, or
mechanical copying of any kind, or for retail dealing. The L5000,
instead of being given for five thousand _copies_ of the work, and
divided among five hundred persons, are given for one original work, and
given to one person. This one person will of course employ assistants;
but these will be chosen by himself, and will form a superior class of
men, out of whom the future leading artists of the time will rise in
succession. The broad difference will therefore be, that, in the one
case, L5000 are divided among five hundred persons of different classes,
doing second-rate or wholly mechanical work; and in the other case, the
same sum is divided among a few chosen persons of the best material of
mind producible by the state at the given epoch. It may seem an unfair
assumption that work for the public will be more honestly and earnestly
done than that for private possession. But every motive that can touch
either conscience or ambition is brought to bear upon the artist who is
employed on a public service, and only a few such motives in other modes
of occupation. The greater permanence, scale, dignity of office, and
fuller display of Art in a National building, combine to call forth the
energies of the artist; and if a man will not do his best under such
circumstances, there is no "best" in him.
95. It might also at first seem an unwarrantable assumption that fewer
persons would be employed in the private than in the national work,
since, at least in architecture, quite as many subordinate craftsmen are
employed as in the production of a book. It is, however, necessary, for
the purpose of clearly seeing the effect of the two forms of occupation,
that we should oppose them where their contrast is most complete; and
that we should compare, not merely bookbinding with bricklaying, but the
presentation of Art in books, necessarily involving much subordinate
employment, with its presentation in statues or wall-pictures, involving
only the labor of the artist and of his immediate assistants. In the one
case, then, I repeat, the sum set aside by the public for Art-purposes
is divided among many persons, very indiscriminately chosen; in the
other among few carefully chosen. But it does not, for that reason,
support fewer persons. The few artists live on their larger incomes,[80]
by expenditure among various tradesmen, who in no wise produce Art, but
the means of pleasant life; so that the real economical question is, not
how many men shall we maintain, but at what work shall they be
kept?--shall they every one be set to produce Art for us, in which case
they must all live poorly, and produce bad Art; or out of the whole
number shall ten be chosen who can and will produce noble Art; and shall
the others be employed in providing the means of pleasant life for these
chosen ten? Will you have, that is to say, four hundred and ninety
tradesmen, butchers, carpet-weavers, carpenters, and the like, and ten
fine artists, or will you, under the vain hope of finding, for each of
them within your realm, "five hundred good as he," have your full
complement of bad draughtsmen, and retail distributors of their bad
work?
96. It will be seen in a moment that this is no question of economy
merely; but, as all economical questions become, when set on their true
foundation, a dilemma relating to modes of discipline and education. It
is only one instance of the perpetually recurring offer to our
choice--shall we have one man educated perfectly, and others trained
only to serve him, or shall we have all educated equally ill?--Which,
when the outcries of mere tyranny and pride-defiant on one side, and of
mere envy and pride-concupiscent on the other, excited by the peril and
promise of a changeful time, shall be a little abated, will be found to
be, in brief terms, the one social question of the day.
Without attempting an answer which would lead us far from the business
in hand, I pass to the Ethical part of the inquiry; to examine, namely,
the effect of this cheaply diffused Art on the public mind.
97. The first great principle we have to hold by in dealing with the
matter is, that the end of Art is NOT to _amuse_; and that all Art which
proposes amusement as its end, or which is sought for that end, must be
of an inferior, and is probably of a harmful, class.
The end of Art is as serious as that of all other beautiful things--of
the blue sky and the green grass, and the clouds and the dew. They are
either useless, or they are of much deeper function than giving
amusement. Whatever delight we take in them, be it less or more, is not
the delight we take in play, or receive from momentary surprise. It
might be a matter of some metaphysical difficulty to define the two
kinds of pleasure, but it is perfectly easy for any of us to feel that
there _is_ generic difference between the delight we have in seeing a
comedy and in watching a sunrise. Not but that there is a kind of Divina
Commedia,--a dramatic change and power,--in all beautiful things: the
joy of surprise and incident mingles in music, painting, architecture,
and natural beauty itself, in an ennobled and enduring manner, with the
perfectness of eternal hue and form. But whenever the desire of change
becomes principal; whenever we care only for new tunes, and new
pictures, and new scenes, all power of enjoying Nature or Art is so far
perished from us: and a child's love of toys has taken its place. The
continual advertisement of new music (as if novelty were its virtue)
signifies, in the inner fact of it, that no one now cares for music. The
continual desire for new exhibitions means that we do not care for
pictures; the continual demand for new books means that nobody cares to
read.
98. Not that it would necessarily, and at all times, mean this; for in a
living school of Art there will always be an exceeding thirst for, and
eager watching of freshly-developed thought. But it specially and
sternly means this, when the interest is merely in the novelty; and
great work in our possession is forgotten, while mean work, because
strange and of some personal interest, is annually made the subject of
eager observation and discussion. As long as (for one of many instances
of such neglect) two great pictures of Tintoret's lie rolled up in an
outhouse at Venice, all the exhibitions and schools in Europe mean
nothing but promotion of costly commerce. Through that, we might indeed
arrive at better things; but there is no proof, in the eager talk of the
public about Art, that we _are_ arriving at them. Portraiture of the
said public's many faces, and tickling of its twice as many eyes, by
changeful phantasm, are all that the patron-multitudes of the present
day in reality seek; and this may be supplied to them in multiplying
excess forever, yet no steps made to the formation of a school of Art
now, or to the understanding of any that have hitherto existed.
99. It is the carrying of this annual Exhibition into the recesses of
home which is especially to be dreaded in the multiplication of inferior
Art for private possession. Public amusement or excitement may often be
quite wholesomely sought, in gay spectacles, or enthusiastic festivals;
but we must be careful to the uttermost how we allow the desire for any
kind of excitement to mingle among the peaceful continuities of home
happiness. The one stern condition of that happiness is that our
possessions should be no more than we can thoroughly use; and that to
this use they should be practically and continually put. Calculate the
hours which, during the possible duration of life, can, under the most
favorable circumstances, be employed in reading, and the number of books
which it is possible to read in that utmost space of time;--it will be
soon seen what a limited library is all that we need, and how careful we
ought to be in choosing its volumes. Similarly, the time which most
people have at their command for any observation of Art is not more than
would be required for the just understanding of the works of one great
master. How are we to estimate the futility of wasting this fragment of
time on works from which nothing can be learned? For the only real
pleasure, and the richest of all amusements, to be derived from either
reading or looking, are in the steady progress of the mind and heart,
which day by day are more deeply satisfied, and yet more divinely
athirst.
100. As far as I know the homes of England of the present day, they show
a grievous tendency to fall, in these important respects, into the two
great classes of over-furnished and unfurnished:--of those in which the
Greek marble in its niche, and the precious shelf-loads of the luxurious
library, leave the inmates nevertheless dependent for all their true
pastime on horse, gun, and croquet-ground;--and those in which Art,
honored only by the presence of a couple of engravings from Landseer,
and literature, represented by a few magazines and annuals arranged in a
star on the drawing-room table, are felt to be entirely foreign to the
daily business of life, and entirely unnecessary to its domestic
pleasures.
101. The introduction of furniture of Art into households of this latter
class is now taking place rapidly; and, of course, by the usual system
of the ingenious English practical mind, will take place under the
general law of supply and demand; that is to say, that whatever a class
of consumers, entirely unacquainted with the different qualities of the
article they are buying, choose to ask for, will be duly supplied to
them by the trade. I observe that this beautiful system is gradually
extending lower and lower in education; and that children, like grown-up
persons, are more and more able to obtain their toys without any
reference to what is useful or useless, or right or wrong; but on the
great horseleech's law of "demand and supply." And, indeed, I write
these papers, knowing well how effectless all speculations on abstract
proprieties or possibilities must be in the present ravening state of
national desire for excitement; but the tracing of moral or of
mathematical law brings its own quiet reward; though it may be, for the
time, impossible to apply either to use.
The power of the new influences which have been brought to bear on the
middle-class mind, with respect to Art, may be sufficiently seen in the
great rise in the price of pictures which has taken place (principally
during the last twenty years) owing to the interest occasioned by
national exhibitions, coupled with facilities of carriage, stimulating
the activity of dealers, and the collateral discovery by mercantile men
that pictures are not a bad investment.
102. The following copy of a document in my own possession will give us
a sufficiently accurate standard of Art-price at the date of it:--
"London, June 11th, 1814.
"Received of Mr. Cooke the sum of twenty-two pounds ten shillings
for three drawings, viz., Lyme, Land's End, and Poole.
"L22, 10s.
"J. M. W. TURNER."
It would be a very pleasant surprise to me if any _one_ of these three
(southern coast) drawings, for which the artist received seven guineas
each (the odd nine shillings being, I suppose, for the great resource of
tale-tellers about Turner--"coach-hire") were now offered to me by any
dealer for a hundred. The rise is somewhat greater in the instance of
Turner than of any other unpopular[81] artist; but it is at least three
hundred per cent. on all work by artists of established reputation,
whether the public can themselves see anything in it, or not. A certain
quantity of intelligent interest mixes, of course, with the mere fever
of desire for novelty; and the excellent book illustrations, which are
the special subjects of our inquiry, are peculiarly adapted to meet
this; for there are at least twenty people who know a good engraving or
wood-cut, for one who knows a good picture. The best book illustrations
fall into three main classes: fine line engravings (always grave in
purpose), typically represented by Goodall's illustrations to Rogers's
poems;--fine wood-cuts, or etchings, grave in purpose, such as those by
Dalziel, from Thomson and Gilbert;--and fine wood-cuts, or etchings, for
purpose of caricature, such as Leech's and Tenniel's in _Punch_. Each of
these have a possibly instructive power special to them, which we will
endeavor severally to examine in the next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[79] _Art Journal_, vol. v., pp. 33-4. February 1866,--ED.
[80] It may be, they would not ask larger incomes in a time of highest
national life; and that then the noble art would be far cheaper to the
nation than the ignoble. But I speak of existing circumstances.
[81] I have never found more than two people (students excepted) in the
room occupied by Turner's drawings at Kensington, and one of the two, if
there _are_ two, always looks as if he had got in by mistake.