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.]
[Footnote 5: Mr. Story may perhaps be considered an exception;
but even the "Cleopatra," and "Sibyl" were produced under the
influence of Rome.]
LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE FIFTY YEARS AGO.
It has often been said that the Turk never changes, that he is now
just what he was when he first appeared in Asia Minor. There is very
little truth in this observation, for in fact he is like other men,
and his character has been modified by the circumstances in which
he has been placed, as well as by constant intermarriage with other
races. He has changed in some respects for the better, and in others
for the worse. There is probably no important city in the world,
unless it be Cairo, which has been so radically changed during the
last fifty years as the capital of the Turkish Empire. The dress, the
customs, the people, the Government, have all been transformed under
the influence of European civilization; and these changes have exerted
more or less influence in all parts of the Empire.
In this impatient age, when men will hardly give a moment to the
consideration of anything but the future, and are always anxiously
waiting for to-morrow's telegrams, it is easy to forget that we cannot
understand either the present or the future without constant reference
to the past. No one can fairly judge the Turks or the Christians of
this Empire, or form any idea of their probable destiny, who is not
acquainted with their condition fifty years ago, in the time of the
last of the Ottoman Sultans; and a brief sketch of Constantinople
as it was at that time cannot fail to suggest some interesting
considerations to those who are watching the course of events in the
East. As contemporary records are even more valuable than personal
reminiscences, I shall quote freely from the private journal of a late
English resident, who was a member of the Levant Company, and,
after its dissolution, for many years the leading English banker in
Constantinople, with a world-wide reputation for integrity, and
in every way a perfect specimen of an English gentleman of the
old school. He came to Constantinople in 1823, and his journal was
continued till 1827. It has never been published.
The reigning Sultan was Mahmoud II., the Reformer, who came to the
throne in 1808, after the murder of Sultan Selim and the execution of
his brother Moustapha, and after narrowly escaping death himself. The
insurrection in Moldavia and Wallachia had been put down in 1821, and
Ali Pacha, the famous Albanian chief of Janina, had been treacherously
put to death in 1822; but the war of the Greek Revolution was still
in progress, and the battle of Navarino was not fought until 1827.
War was declared against Russia the same year. Halet Pacha had been
strangled in 1822, and Mohammed Selim Pacha was Grand Vizier. Lord
Strangford and Mr. Stratford Canning (Lord Stratford) represented
England at the Sublime Porte during this period. The relation of
the European Powers to the Sultan at this time cannot be better
illustrated than by the following account of the reception of Mr.
Stratford Canning in April, 1826. The ceremony was not so humiliating
as it was in 1621, when Sir Thomas Rowe made such vigorous but
unavailing attempts to have it modified; when the Ambassador was
forced down upon his knees, and compelled to kiss the earth at the
feet of the Sultan; when he was often beaten by the Janissaries on
leaving the palace; or, as in the case of the Ambassador of Louis
XIV., struck in the face by a soldier in the presence of the Grand
Vizier; but although there had been some ameliorations in the
ceremony, its significance was exactly the same in 1826 as in 1621,
and the same religious scruples were advanced as a reason why they
could not be modified in favour of Giaours by the Caliph of Islam.
They were all the more humiliating for those who submitted to them,
from the fact that there was one Power in Europe which had never
recognized them. Even as early as 1499 the Russian Ambassador refused
to submit to any such degradation. In 1514 a new Ambassador was
specially instructed "on no account to compromise his dignity, or
prostrate himself before the Sultan; to deliver his letters and
presents with his own hands, and not to inquire after his health
unless he first inquired after that of the Czar." The Turks seem to
have had an instinctive fear of Russia even at that early day, when
they were strong and Russia was weak. But could Sultan Mahmoud have
looked forward twenty-five years, he would no doubt have treated Lord
Stratford with more respect and consideration. In 1826, however, the
haughty pride of the Caliph was unbroken, and he little thought that
his descendants would reign only by the favour of Europe.