We see lately a most powerful impulse given to the production of
costly works of art by the various causes which promote the sudden
accumulation of wealth in the hands of private persons. We have thus a
vast and new patronage, which, in its present agency, is injurious to
our schools; but which is nevertheless in a great degree earnest and
conscientious, and far from being influenced chiefly by motives of
ostentation. Most of our rich men would be glad to promote the true
interests of art in this country; and even those who buy for vanity,
found their vanity on the possession of what they suppose to be best.
It is therefore in a great measure the fault of artists themselves if
they suffer from this partly unintelligent, but thoroughly
well-intended patronage. If they seek to attract it by eccentricity,
to deceive it by superficial qualities, or take advantage of it by
thoughtless and facile production, they necessarily degrade themselves
and it together, and have no right to complain afterwards that it will
not acknowledge better-grounded claims. But if every painter of real
power would do only what he knew to be worthy of himself, and refuse
to be involved in the contention for undeserved or accidental success,
there is indeed, whatever may have been thought or said to the
contrary, true instinct enough in the public mind to follow such firm
guidance. It is one of the facts which the experience of thirty years
enables me to assert without qualification, that a really good picture
is ultimately always approved and bought, unless it is wilfully
rendered offensive to the public by faults which the artist has been
either too proud to abandon or too weak to correct.
The development of whatever is healthful and serviceable in the two
modes of impulse which we have been considering, depends however,
ultimately, on the direction taken by the true interest in art which
has lately been aroused by the great and active genius of many of our
living, or but lately lost, painters, sculptors, and architects. It
may perhaps surprise, but I think it will please you to hear me, or
(if you will forgive me, in my own Oxford, the presumption of fancying
that some may recognize me by an old name) to hear the author of
_Modern Painters_ say, that his chief error in earlier days was not in
over-estimating, but in too slightly acknowledging the merit of living
men. The great painter whose power, while he was yet among us, I was
able to perceive,[172] was the first to reprove me for my disregard of
the skill of his fellow-artists; and, with this inauguration of the
study of the art of all time,--a study which can only by true modesty
end in wise admiration,--it is surely well that I connect the record
of these words of his, spoken then too truly to myself, and true
always more or less for all who are untrained in that toil,--"You
don't know how difficult it is."
You will not expect me, within the compass of this lecture, to give
you any analysis of the many kinds of excellent art (in all the three
great divisions) which the complex demands of modern life, and yet
more varied instincts of modern genius, have developed for pleasure or
service. It must be my endeavour, in conjunction with my colleagues in
other Universities, hereafter to enable you to appreciate these
worthily; in the hope that also the members of the Royal Academy, and
those of the Institute of British Architects, may be induced to
assist, and guide, the efforts of the Universities, by organizing such
a system of art education for their own students, as shall in future
prevent the waste of genius in any mistaken endeavours; especially
removing doubt as to the proper substance and use of materials; and
requiring compliance with certain elementary principles of right, in
every picture and design exhibited with their sanction. It is not
indeed possible for talent so varied as that of English artists to be
compelled into the formalities of a determined school; but it must
certainly be the function of every academical body to see that their
younger students are guarded from what must in every school be error;
and that they are practised in the best methods of work hitherto
known, before their ingenuity is directed to the invention of others.
I need scarcely refer, except for the sake of completeness in my
statement, to one form of demand for art which is wholly
unenlightened, and powerful only for evil;--namely, the demand of the
classes occupied solely in the pursuit of pleasure, for objects and
modes of art that can amuse indolence or excite passion. There is no
need for any discussion of these requirements, or of their forms of
influence, though they are very deadly at present in their operation
on sculpture, and on jewellers' work. They cannot be checked by blame,
nor guided by instruction; they are merely the necessary results of
whatever defects exist in the temper and principles of a luxurious
society; and it is only by moral changes, not by art-criticism, that
their action can be modified.
Lastly, there is a continually increasing demand for popular art,
multipliable by the printing-press, illustrative of daily events, of
general literature, and of natural science. Admirable skill, and some
of the best talent of modern times, are occupied in supplying this
want; and there is no limit to the good which may be effected by
rightly taking advantage of the powers we now possess of placing good
and lovely art within the reach of the poorest classes. Much has been
already accomplished; but great harm has been done also,--first, by
forms of art definitely addressed to depraved tastes; and, secondly,
in a more subtle way, by really beautiful and useful engravings which
are yet not good enough to retain their influence on the public
mind;--which weary it by redundant quantity of monotonous average
excellence, and diminish or destroy its power of accurate attention to
work of a higher order.
Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on the
schools of line engraving, which had reached in England an executive
skill of a kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much of
their more sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen plates
produced quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualities
than anything ever before attained by the burin:[173] and I have not the
slightest fear that photography, or any other adverse or competitive
operation, will in the least ultimately diminish,--I believe they will,
on the contrary, stimulate and exalt--the grand old powers of the wood
and the steel.
Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with which
we have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of this
Professorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical and
critical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that,
if they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that,
being first directed to such works of existing art as will best reward
their study, they may afterwards make their patronage of living
artists delightful to themselves in their consciousness of its
justice, and, to the utmost, beneficial to their country, by being
given only to the men who deserve it; in the early period of their
lives, when they both need it most and can be influenced by it to the
best advantage.
And especially with reference to this function of patronage, I believe
myself justified in taking into account future probabilities as to the
character and range of art in England; and I shall endeavour at once to
organize with you a system of study calculated to develope chiefly the
knowledge of those branches in which the English schools have shown,
and are likely to show, peculiar excellence.
Now, in asking your sanction both for the nature of the general plans I
wish to adopt, and for what I conceive to be necessary limitations of
them, I wish you to be fully aware of my reasons for both: and I will
therefore risk the burdening of your patience while I state the
directions of effort in which I think English artists are liable to
failure, and those also in which past experience has shown they are
secure of success.
I referred, but now, to the effort we are making to improve the designs
of our manufactures. Within certain limits I believe this improvement
may indeed take effect: so that we may no more humour momentary
fashions by ugly results of chance instead of design; and may produce
both good tissues, of harmonious colours, and good forms and substance
of pottery and glass. But we shall never excel in decorative design.
Such design is usually produced by people of great natural powers of
mind, who have no variety of subjects to employ themselves on, no
oppressive anxieties, and are in circumstances either of natural
scenery or of daily life, which cause pleasurable excitement. _We_
cannot design because we have too much to think of, and we think of it
too anxiously. It has long been observed how little real anxiety exists
in the minds of the partly savage races which excel in decorative art;
and we must not suppose that the temper of the middle ages was a
troubled one, because every day brought its dangers or its changes. The
very eventfulness of the life rendered it careless, as generally is
still the case with soldiers and sailors. Now, when there are great
powers of thought, and little to think of, all the waste energy and
fancy are thrown into the manual work, and you have as much intellect
as would direct the affairs of a large mercantile concern for a day,
spent all at once, quite unconsciously, in drawing an ingenious spiral.
Also, powers of doing fine ornamental work are only to be reached by a
perpetual discipline of the hand as well as of the fancy; discipline as
attentive and painful as that which a juggler has to put himself
through, to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession.
The execution of the best artists is always a splendid tour-de-force,
and much that in painting is supposed to be dependent on material is
indeed only a lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when powers
of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual dexterity,
descend uninterruptedly from generation to generation, you have at
last, what is not so much a trained artist as a new species of animal,
with whose instinctive gifts you have no chance of contending. And thus
all our imitations of other peoples' work are futile. We must learn
first to make honest English wares, and afterward to decorate them as
may please the then approving Graces.
Secondly--and this is an incapacity of a graver kind, yet having its
own good in it also--we shall never be successful in the highest fields
of ideal or theological art.
For there is one strange, but quite essential, character in us--ever
since the Conquest, if not earlier:--a delight in the forms of burlesque
which are connected in some degree with the foulness in evil. I think
the most perfect type of a true English mind in its best possible
temper, is that of Chaucer; and you will find that, while it is for
the most part full of thoughts of beauty, pure and wild like that of
an April morning, there are, even in the midst of this, sometimes
momentarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil--while the
power of listening to and enjoying the jesting of entirely gross
persons, whatever the feeling may be which permits it, afterwards
degenerates into forms of humour which render some of quite the
greatest, wisest, and most moral of English writers now almost useless
for our youth. And yet you will find that whenever Englishmen are
wholly without this instinct, their genius is comparatively weak and
restricted.
Now, the first necessity for the doing of any great work in ideal art,
is the looking upon all foulness with horror, as a contemptible though
dreadful enemy. You may easily understand what I mean, by comparing
the feelings with which Dante regards any form of obscenity or of base
jest, with the temper in which the same things are regarded by
Shakspere. And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it
is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders
them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature,
low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which is
properly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of
Michael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as
Milton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:[174] while in
art, every attempt in this style has hitherto been the sign either of
the presumptuous egotism of persons who had never really learned to be
workmen, or it has been connected with very tragic forms of the
contemplation of death,--it has always been partly insane, and never
once wholly successful.
But we need not feel any discomfort in these limitations of our
capacity. We can do much that others cannot, and more than we have
ever yet ourselves completely done. Our first great gift is in the
portraiture of living people--a power already so accomplished in both
Reynolds and Gainsborough, that nothing is left for future masters but
to add the calm of perfect workmanship to their vigour and felicity of
perception. And of what value a true school of portraiture may become
in the future, when worthy men will desire only to be known, and
others will not fear to know them, for what they truly were, we cannot
from any past records of art influence yet conceive. But in my next
address it will be partly my endeavour to show you how much more
useful, because more humble, the labour of great masters might have
been, had they been content to bear record of the souls that were
dwelling with them on earth, instead of striving to give a deceptive
glory to those they dreamed of in heaven.
Secondly, we have an intense power of invention and expression in
domestic drama; (King Lear and Hamlet being essentially domestic in
their strongest motives of interest). There is a tendency at this
moment towards a noble development of our art in this direction,
checked by many adverse conditions, which may be summed in one,--the
insufficiency of generous civic or patriotic passion in the heart of
the English people; a fault which makes its domestic affections
selfish, contracted, and, therefore, frivolous.
Thirdly, in connection with our simplicity and good-humour, and partly
with that very love of the grotesque which debases our ideal, we have a
sympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own; and which,
though it has already found some exquisite expression in the works of
Bewick and Landseer, is yet quite undeveloped. This sympathy, with the
aid of our now authoritative science of physiology, and in association
with our British love of adventure, will, I hope, enable us to give to
the future inhabitants of the globe an almost perfect record of the
present forms of animal life upon it, of which many are on the point of
being extinguished....
While I myself hold this professorship, I shall direct you in these
exercises very definitely to natural history, and to landscape; not
only because in these two branches I am probably able to show you
truths which might be despised by my successors; but because I think
the vital and joyful study of natural history quite the principal
element requiring introduction, not only into University, but into
national, education, from highest to lowest; and I even will risk
incurring your ridicule by confessing one of my fondest dreams, that I
may succeed in making some of you English youths like better to look at
a bird than to shoot it; and even desire to make wild creatures tame,
instead of tame creatures wild. And for the study of landscape, it is,
I think, now calculated to be of use in deeper, if not more important
modes, than that of natural science, for reasons which I will ask you
to let me state at some length.
Observe first;--no race of men which is entirety bred in wild country,
far from cities, ever enjoys landscape. They may enjoy the beauty of
animals, but scarcely even that: a true peasant cannot see the beauty
of cattle; but only the qualities expressive of their serviceableness.
I waive discussion of this to-day; permit my assertion of it, under my
confident guarantee of future proof. Landscape can only be enjoyed by
cultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature, and painting,
that cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which are thus
received are hereditary; so that the child of an educated race has an
innate instinct for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds of
years before its birth. Now farther note this, one of the loveliest
things in human nature. In the children of noble races, trained by
surrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds,
there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as
_memorial_; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable to any others;
but, in them, innate; and the seal and reward of persistence in great
national life;--the obedience and the peace of ages having extended
gradually the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestral
land; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery of the Demeter from
whose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds and
inspires, everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; the
sacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none may
pollute; while records of proud days, and of dear persons, make every
rock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely with
noble desolateness.
Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive love
of landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I will
pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and to
strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is
only worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when,
by all its acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for its
children....
But if either our work, or our inquiries, are to be indeed successful
in their own field, they must be connected with others of a sterner
character. Now listen to me, if I have in these past details lost or
burdened your attention; for this is what I have chiefly to say to you.
The art of any country _is the exponent of its social and political
virtues_. I will show you that it is so in some detail, in the second
of my subsequent course of lectures; meantime accept this as one of the
things, and the most important of all things, I can positively declare
to you. The art, or general productive and formative energy, of any
country, is an exact exponent of its ethical life. You can have noble
art only from noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their time
and circumstances. And the best skill that any teacher of art could
spend here in your help, would not end in enabling you even so much as
rightly to draw the water-lilies in the Cherwell (and though it did,
the work when done would not be worth the lilies themselves) unless
both he and you were seeking, as I trust we shall together seek, in the
laws which regulate the finest industries, the clue to the laws which
regulate all industries, and in better obedience to which we shall
actually have henceforward to live: not merely in compliance with our
own sense of what is right, but under the weight of quite literal
necessity. For the trades by which the British people has believed it
to be the highest of destinies to maintain itself, cannot now long
remain undisputed in its hands; its unemployed poor are daily becoming
more violently criminal; and a certain distress in the middle classes,
arising, _partly from their vanity in living always up to their
incomes, and partly from, their folly in imagining that they can
subsist in idleness upon usury_, will at last compel the sons and
daughters of English families to acquaint themselves with the
principles of providential economy; and to learn that food can only be
got out of the ground, and competence only secured by frugality; and
that although it is not possible for all to be occupied in the highest
arts, nor for any, guiltlessly, to pass their days in a succession of
pleasures, the most perfect mental culture possible to men is founded
on their useful energies, and their best arts and brightest happiness
are consistent, and consistent only, with their virtue.
This, I repeat, gentlemen, will soon become manifest to those among us,
and there are yet many, who are honest-hearted. And the future fate of
England depends upon the position they then take, and on their courage
in maintaining it.
There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a
nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a
race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in
temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey.
We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now
betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an
inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of
noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with
splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour,
should be the most offending souls alive.[175] Within the last few years
we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity
which has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and
communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the
habitable globe. One kingdom;--but who is to be its king? Is there to
be no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in
his own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of
Mammon and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your country
again a royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world a
source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of the
Arts;--faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent
and ephemeral visions;--faithful servant of time-tried principles,
under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and
amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in
her strange valour of goodwill toward men?[176]
"Vexilla regis prodeunt."[177] Yes, but of which king? There are the
two oriflammes; which shall we plant on the farthest islands--the one
that floats in heavenly fire, or that hangs heavy with foul tissue of
terrestrial gold? There is indeed a course of beneficent glory open to
us, such as never was yet offered to any poor group of mortal souls.
But it must be--it _is_ with us, now. "Reign or Die." And if it shall
be said of this country, "Fece per viltate, il gran rifiuto,"[178]
that refusal of the crown will be, of all yet recorded in history,
the shamefullest and most untimely.
And this is what she must either do, or perish: she must found
colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most
energetic and worthiest men;--seizing every piece of fruitful waste
ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these her
colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country,
and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by
land and sea: and that, though they live on a distant plot of ground,
they are no more to consider themselves therefore disfranchised from
their native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they
float on distant waves. So that literally, these colonies must be
fastened fleets; and every man of them must be under authority of
captains and officers, whose better command is to be over fields and
streets instead of ships of the line; and England, in these her
motionless navies (or, in the true and mightiest sense, motionless
_churches_, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake[179] of all the
world), is to "expect every man to do his duty";[180] recognizing
that duty is indeed possible no less in peace than war; and that if we
can get men, for little pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouths
for love of England, we may find men also who will plough and sow for
her, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, who will bring up
their children to love her, and who will gladden themselves in the
brightness of her glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies.
But that they may be able to do this, she must make her own majesty
stainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they can
be proud. The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot
remain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable
crowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in all
beautiful ways,--more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her
sky--polluted by no unholy clouds--she may be able to spell rightly of
every star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wide
and fair, of every herb that sips the dew;[181] and under the green
avenues of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the
Sun, she must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, of
distant nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemed
from despairing into Peace.
You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so; refuse to accept it if
you will; but see that you form your own in its stead. All that I ask
of you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and
yourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and
unselfish. I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknowledged
need; but it is the fatallest form of error in English youth to hide
their hardihood till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act in
disdain of purpose, till all purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate,
but by careless selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull
following of good, that the weight of national evil increases upon us
daily. Break through at least this pretence of existence; determine
what you will be, and what you would win. You will not decide wrongly
if you resolve to decide at all. Were even the choice between lawless
pleasure and loyal suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely.
But your trial is not so sharp. It is between drifting in confused
wreck among the castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruin
those who know not either how to resist her, or obey; between this, I
say, and the taking of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; the
resolving to share in the victory which is to the weak rather than the
strong; and the binding yourselves by that law, which, thought on
through lingering night and labouring day, makes a man's life to be as
a tree planted by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his
season;--
"ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET,
ET OMNIA, QUÆCUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR."[182]
[172] Turner.
[173] The tool of the engraver on copper.
[174] See _Paradise Lost_, 6. 207 ff., and Hesiod's _Theogony_, 676 ff.
[175] _Henry V_, 4. 3. 29.
[176] _Luke_ ii, 14.
[177] "Forward go the banners of the King," or more commonly, "The
royal banners forward go." One of the seven great hymns of the Church.
See the Episcopal Hymnal, 94.
[178] Dante, _Inferno_, 3. 60. "Who made through cowardice the great
refusal." Longfellow's tr.
[179] _Lyridas_, 109.
[180] Nelson's famous signal at Trafalgar.
[181] Milton's _Il Penseroso_, 170 ff.
[182] _Psalms_ i, 3.