The subject is full of suggestion, and though any adequate examination
of it would lead me beyond the limits of this paper, I think I may
venture to lift its fringe. To do so, we must glance at its historic
side. We know the interest that Julius the Second took in the art of
Michael Angelo and Raphael: had it not been for the Popes, St. Peter's
would not have been built, nor would "The Last Judgment" have been
painted. We know, too, of Philip the Fourth's great love of the art of
Velasquez. The Court of Frederick the Great was a republic of art and
letters; and is it not indirectly to a Bavarian monarch that we owe
Wagner's immortal _chefs-d'oeuvre_, and hence the musical evolution of
the century? With these facts before us it would be puerile to deny
that in the past Royalty has lent invaluable assistance in the
protection and development of art. Even if we turn to our own country
we find at least one monarch who could distinguish a painter when he
met one. Charles the Second did not hesitate in the patronage he
extended to Vandyke, and it is--as I have frequently pointed out--to
the influence of Vandyke that we owe all that is worthiest and
valuable in English art. Bearing these facts in mind--and it is
impossible not to bear them in mind--it is difficult to go to the
Victorian Exhibition and not ask: Does the present Royal Family
exercise any influence on English art? This is the question that the
Victorian Exhibition puts to us. After fifty years of reign, the Queen
throws down the gauntlet; and speaking through the medium of the
Victorian Exhibition, she says: "This is how I have understood art;
this is what I have done for art; I countenance, I court, I challenge
inquiry."
Yes, truly the Victorian Exhibition is an object-lesson in Royalty. If
all other records were destroyed, the historian, five hundred years
hence, could reconstitute the psychological characteristics, the
mentality, of the present reigning family from the pictures on
exhibition there. For in the art that it has chosen to patronise (a
more united family on the subject of art it would be hard to
imagine--nowhere can we detect the slightest difference of opinion),
the Queen, her spouse, and her children appear to be singularly
_bourgeois_: a staid German family congenially and stupidly
commonplace, accepting a little too seriously its mission of crowns
and sceptres, and accomplishing its duties, grown out of date,
somewhat witlessly, but with heavy dignity and forbearance. Waiving
all racial characteristics, the German _bourgeois_ family mind appears
plainly enough in all these family groups; no other mind could have
permitted the perpetration of so much stolid family placidity, of so
much "_frauism_". "Exhibit us in our family circle, in our coronation
robes, in our wedding dresses, let the likeness be correct and the
colours bright--we leave the rest to you." Such seems to have been the
Royal artistic edict issued in the beginning of the present reign. In
no instance has the choice fallen on a painter of talent; but the
middling from every country in Europe seems to have found a ready
welcome at the Court of Queen Victoria. We find there middling
Germans, middling Italians, middling Frenchmen--and all receiving
money and honour from our Queen.
The Queen and the Prince Consort do not seem to have been indifferent
to art, but to have deliberately, and with rare instinct, always
picked out what was most worthless; and regarded in the light of
documents, these pictures are valuable; for they tell plainly the real
mind of the Royal Family. We see at once that the family mind is
wholly devoid of humour; the very faintest sense of humour would have
saved them from exhibiting themselves in so ridiculous a light. The
large picture of the Queen and the Prince Consort surrounded with
their children, the Prince Consort in knee-breeches, showing a
finely-turned calf, is sufficient to occasion the overthrow of a
dynasty if humour were the prerogative of the many instead of being
that of the few. This masterpiece is signed, "By G. Belli, after F.
Winterhalter"; and in this picture we get the mediocrity of Italy and
Germany in quintessential strength. These pictures also help us to
realise the private life of our Royal Family. It must have spent a
great deal of time in being painted. The family pictures are
numberless, and the family taste is visible upon them all. And there
must be some strange magnetism in the family to be able to transfuse
so much of itself into the minds of so many painters. So like is one
picture to another, that the Exhibition seems to reveal the secret
that for the last fifty years the family has done nothing but paint
itself. And in these days, when every one does a little painting, it
is easy to imagine the family at work from morn to eve. Immediately
after breakfast the easels are set up, the Queen paints the Princess
Louise, the Duke of Edinburgh paints Princess Beatrice, the Princess
Alice paints the Prince of Wales, etc. The easels are removed for
lunch, and the moment the meal is over work is resumed.
After having seen the Victorian Exhibition, I cannot imagine the Royal
Family in any other way; I am convinced that is how they must have
passed their lives for the last quarter of a century. The names of G.
Belli and F. Winterhalter are no more than flimsy make-believes. And
are there not excellent reasons for holding to this opinion? Has not
the Queen published, or rather surreptitiously issued, certain little
collections of drawings? Has not the Princess Louise, the artist of
the family, publicly exhibited sculpture? The Princess Beatrice, has
she not done something in the way of designing? The Duke of Edinburgh,
he is a musician. And it is in these little excursions into art that
the family most truly manifests its _bourgeois_ nature. The sincerest
_bourgeois_ are those who scribble little poems and smudge little
canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a
dinner-party. The amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to
ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. A
staid German family dabbling in art in its leisure hours--the most
inartistic, the most Philistine of all Royal families--this is the
lesson that the Victorian Exhibition impresses upon us.
But why should not the Royal Family decorate its palaces with bad art?
Why should it not choose the most worthless portrait-painters of all
countries? Dynasties have never been overthrown for failure in
artistic taste. I am aware how insignificant the matter must seem to
the majority of readers, and should not have raised the question, but
since the question has been raised, and by her Majesty, I am well
within my right in attempting a reply. The Victorian Exhibition is a
flagrant representation of a _bourgeois_, though a royal, family. From
the beginning to the end the Exhibition is this and nothing but this.
In the Entrance Hall, at the doorway, we are confronted with the
Queen's chief artistic sin--Sir Edgar Boehm.
Thirty years ago this mediocre German sculptor came to England. The
Queen discovered him at once, as if by instinct, and she employed him
on work that an artist would have shrunk from--namely, statuettes in
Highland costume. The German sculptor turned out this odious and
ridiculous costume as fast as any Scotch tailor. He was then employed
on busts, and he did the entire Royal Family in marble. Again, it
would be hard to give a reason why Royalty should not be allowed to
possess bad sculpture. The pity is that the private taste of Royalty
creates the public taste of the nation, and the public result of the
gracious interest that the Queen was pleased to take in Mr. Edgar
Boehm, is the disfigurement of London by several of the worst statues
it is possible to conceive. It is bad enough that we should have
German princes foisted upon us, but German statues are worse. The
ancient site of Temple Bar has been disfigured by Boehm with statues
of the Queen and the Prince of Wales, so stupidly conceived and so
stupidly modelled that they look like figures out of a Noah's Ark. The
finest site in London, Hyde Park Corner, has been disfigured by Boehm
with a statue of the Duke of Wellington so bad, so paltry, so
characteristically the work of a German mechanic, that it is
impossible to drive down the beautiful road without experiencing a
sensation of discomfort and annoyance. The original statue that was
pulled down in the interests of Boehm was, it is true, bad English,
but bad English suits the landscape better than cheap German. And this
disgraceful thing will remain, disfiguring the finest site in London,
until, perhaps, some dynamiter blows the thing up, ostensibly to serve
the cause of Ireland, but really in the interests of art. At the other
end of the park we have the Albert Memorial. We sympathise with the
Queen in her grief for the Prince Consort, but we cannot help wishing
that her grief were expressed more artistically.
A city so naturally beautiful as London can do without statues; the
question is not so much how to get good statues, but how to protect
London against bad statues. If for the next twenty-five years we might
celebrate the memory of each great man by the destruction of a statue
we might undo a great part of the mischief for which Royalty is mainly
responsible. I do not speak of Boehm's Jubilee coinage--the
melting-pot will put that right one of these days--but his statues,
beyond some slight hope from the dynamiters, will be always with us.
Had he lived, London would have disappeared under his statues; at the
time of his death they were popping up by twos and threes all over the
town. Our lovely city is our inheritance; London should be to the
Londoner what Athens is to the Athenian. What would the Athenians have
thought of Pericles if he had proposed the ornamentation of the city
with Persian sculpture? Boehm is dead, but another German will be with
us before long, and, under Royal patronage, will continue the odious
disfigurement of our city. If our Royal Family possessed any slight
aesthetic sense its influence might be turned to the service of art;
but as it has none, it would be well for Royalty to refrain. Art can
take care of itself if left to the genius of the nation, and freed
from foreign control. The Prince of Wales has never affected any
artistic sympathies. For this we are thankful: we have nothing to
reproach him with except the unfortunate "Roll-call" incident. Royalty
is to-day but a social figment--it has long ago ceased to control our
politics. Would that Royalty would take another step and abandon its
influence in art.