Manchester and Liverpool are rival cities. They have matched
themselves one against the other, and the prize they are striving for
is--Which shall be the great art-centre of the North of England. The
artistic rivalry of the two cities has become obvious of late years.
Manchester bids against Liverpool, Liverpool bids against Manchester;
the results of the bidding are discussed, and so an interest in art is
created. It was Manchester that first threw her strength into this
artistic rivalry. It began with the decorations which Manchester
commissioned Mr. Madox Brown to paint for the town hall. Manchester's
choice of an artist was an excellent and an original one. Mr. Madox
Brown was not an Academician; he was not known to the general public;
he merely commanded the respect of his brother-artists.
The painting of these pictures was the work of years; the placing of
every one was duly chronicled in the press, and it was understood in
London that Manchester was entirely satisfied. But lo! on the placing
in position of the last picture but one of the series an unseemly
dispute was raised by some members of the Corporation, and it was
seriously debated in committee whether the best course to pursue would
not be to pass a coat of whitewash over the offending picture. It is
impossible to comment adequately on such barbarous conduct; perhaps at
no distant date it will be proposed to burn some part of Mrs. Ryland's
perfect gift--the Althorp Library. There may be some books in that
library which do not meet with some councillor's entire approval.
Barbarism on one side, and princely generosity on the other, combined
to fix attention upon Manchester, and, in common with a hundred
others, I found myself thinking on the relation of Manchester and
Liverpool to art, and speculating on the direction that these new
influences were taking.
There are two exhibitions now open in Manchester and Liverpool--the
permanent and the annual. The permanent collections must first occupy
our attention, for it is through them that we shall learn what sort
and kind of artistic taste obtains in the North. At first sight these
collections present no trace of any distinct influence. They seem to
be simply miscellaneous purchases, made from every artist whose name
happens to be the fashion; and considered as permanent illustrations
of the various fashions that have prevailed in Bond Street during the
last ten years, these collections are curious and perhaps valuable
documents in the history of art. But is there any real analogy between
a dressmaker's shop and a picture gallery? Plumes are bought because
they are "very much worn just now", but then plumes are not so
expensive as pictures, and it seems to be hardly worth while to buy
pictures for the sake of the momentary fashion in painting which they
represent.
Manchester and Liverpool have not, however, grasped the essential fact
that it is impossible to form an art gallery by sending to London for
the latest fashions. Now and then the advice of some gentleman knowing
more about art than his colleagues has found expression in the
purchase of a work of art; but the picture that hangs next to the
fortuitous purchase tells how the taste of the cultured individual was
overruled by the taste of the uncultured mass at the next meeting. I
could give many, but two instances must suffice to explain and to
prove my point. Two years ago Mr. Albert Moore exhibited a very
beautiful picture in the Academy--three women, one sleeping and two
sitting on a yellow couch, in front of a starlit and moonlit sea. In
the same Academy there was exhibited a picture by Mr. Bartlett--a
picture of some gondoliers rowing or punting or sculling (I am
ignorant of the aquatic habits of the Venetians) for a prize. The
Liverpool Gallery has bought and hung these pictures side by side.
Such divagations of taste make the visitor smile, and he thinks
perforce of the accounts of the stormy meetings of councillors that
find their way into the papers. Artistic appreciation of these two
pictures in the same individual is not possible. What should we think
of a man who said that he did not know which he preferred-a poem by
Tennyson, or a story out of the _London Journal_? Catholicity of taste
does not mean an absolute abandonment of all discrimination; and some
thread of intellectual kinship must run through the many various
manifestations of artistic temperament which go to form a collection
of pictures. Things may be various without being discrepant.
The Manchester Gallery has purchased Lawson's beautiful picture, "The
Deserted Garden"; likewise Mr. Fildes' picture of a group of Venetian
girls sitting on steps, the principal figure in a blue dress with an
orange handkerchief round her neck, the simple--I may say
child-like--scheme of colour beyond which Mr. Fildes never seems to
stray. The Lawson and the Fildes agree no better than do the Moore and
the Bartlett; and the only thing that occurs to me is that the cities
should toss up which should go for Fildes and Bartlett, and which for
Lawson and Moore. By such division harmony would be attained, and one
city would be going the wrong road, the other the right road; at
present both are going zigzag.
But notwithstanding the multifarious tastes displayed in these
collections, and the artistic chaos they represent, we can, when we
examine them closely, detect an influence which abides though it
fluctuates, and this influence is that of our discredited Academy. The
Manchester and Liverpool collection are merely weak reflections of the
Chantrey Fund collection. Now, if the object of these cities be to
adopt the standard of taste that obtains in Burlington House, to
abdicate their own taste--if they have any--and to fortify themselves
against all chance of acquiring a taste in art, it would clearly be
better for the two corporations to hand over the task of acquiring
pictures to the Academicians. The responsibility will be gladly
accepted, and the trust will be administered with the same honesty and
straightforwardness as has been displayed in the administration of the
moneys which the unfortunate Chantrey entrusted to the care of the
Academicians.
The sowing of evil seed is an irreparable evil; none can tell where
the wind will carry it, and unexpected crops are found far and wide. I
had thought that the harm occasioned to art by the Academy and its
corollary, the Chantrey Fund, began and ended in London. But in
Manchester and Liverpool I was speedily convinced of my mistake. Art
in the provinces is little more than a reflection of the Academy. The
majority of the pictures represent the taste of men who have no
knowledge of art, and who, to disguise their ignorance, follow the
advice which the Academy gives to provincial England in the pictures
it purchases under the terms--or, rather, under its own reading of the
terms--of the Chantrey Bequest Fund. One of the first things I heard
in Manchester was that the committee had been fortunate enough to
secure the nude figure which Mr. Hacker exhibited this year in the
Academy. And on my failing to express unbounded admiration for the
purchase, I was asked if I was aware that the Academy had purchased
"The Annunciation" for the Chantrey Bequest Fund. "Surely," said a
member of the committee, "you agree that our picture is the better of
the two." I answered: "Poor Mr. Chantrey's money always goes to buy
the worst, or as nearly as possible the worst, picture the artist ever
painted--the picture for which the artist would never be likely to
find a purchaser."
Last month the Liverpool County Council assembled to discuss the
purchase of two pictures recommended by the art committee--"Summer",
by Mr. Hornel; and "The Higher Alps", by Mr. Stott, of Oldham. The
discussion that ensued is described by the _Liverpool Daily Post_ as
"amusing". It was ludicrous, and those who do not care a snap of the
fingers about art might think it amusing. The joke was started by Mr.
Lynskey, who declared that the two pictures in question were mere
daubs. Mr. Lynskey did not think that the Glasgow school of painting
had yet been recognised by the public, and until it had he did not see
why the corporation should pay £500 for these two productions, merely
for the sake of experimenting. Thereby we are to understand that in
forming a collection of pictures it is the taste of the public that
must be considered. "Of course," cry the aldermen; "we are here to
supply the public with what it wants." I repeat, the corporations of
Manchester and Liverpool do not seem to have yet grasped the fact that
there is no real analogy between a picture gallery and a dressmaker's
shop.
The next speaker was Mr. Burgess. He could not imagine how any one
could recommend the purchase of such pictures. The Mr. Burgesses of
twenty-five years ago could not understand how any one could buy
Corots. Mr. Smith asked if it were really a fact that the committee
had bought the pictures. He was assured that they would be bought only
if the council approved of them; whereupon Alderman Samuelson declared
that if that were so they would not be bought. Dr. Cummins compared
the pictures to cattle in the parish pound, and it is reported that
the remark caused much laughter. Then some one said--I think it was
Mr. Smith--that the pictures had horrified him; whereupon there was
more laughter. Then a member proposed that they should have the
pictures brought in, to which proposition a member objected, amid much
laughter. Then Mr. Daughan suggested that the chairman and
vice-chairman should explain the meaning of the pictures to the
council. More laughter and more County Council humour. The meeting was
a typical meeting, and it furnishes us with the typical councillor.
In the report of the meeting before me a certain alderman seems to
have been as garrulous as he was irrepressible. He not only spoke at
greater length than the rest of the councillors put together, but did
not hesitate to frequently interrupt the members of the committee with
remarks. Speaking of pictures by Millais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti,
he said:--"We have had exhibitions, and the works of these great
artists were at various times closely scrutinised, and they had borne
the most careful scrutiny that could be directed to them. Now I defy
you to take a number of pictures such as those in dispute, and do the
same with them." No one could have spoken the words I have quoted who
was not absolutely ignorant of the art of painting. Imagine the poor
alderman going round, magnifying-glass in hand, subjecting Millais and
Holman Hunt to the closest scrutiny. And how easy it is to determine
what was passing in his mind during the examination of the Glasgow
school! "I can't see where this foot finishes; the painter was not
able to draw it, so he covered it up with a shadow. In the pictures of
that fellow Guthrie the grass is merely a tint of green, whereas in
the 'Shadow of the Cross' I can count all the shavings."
But we will not seek to penetrate further into this very alderman-like
mind. He declared that the Glasgow school of painting was "no more in
comparison to what they recognised as a school of painting than a
charity school was to the University of Oxford." I am sorry our
alderman did not say what was the school of painting that he and his
fellow-aldermen admired. In the absence of any precise information on
the point I will venture to suggest that the school they recognise is
the school of Bartlett and Solomon. The gallery possesses two large
works by these masters--the Gondoliers, and the great picture of
Samson, which fills an entire end of one room. But what would be of
still greater interest would be to hear our alderman explain what he
meant by this astonishing sentence:--"The only motive of Mr. Hornel's
picture is a mode of art or rather artifice, in introducing a number
of colours with the idea of making them harmonise; and this could be
done, and had been done, by means of the palette-knife."
I have not the least idea what this means, but I am none the less
interested. For, although void of sense, the alderman's words allow me
to look down a long line of illustrious ancestry--Prud'homme,
Chadband, Stiggins, Phillion, the apothecary Homais in "Madame
Bovary". After passing through numerous transformations, an eternal
idea at last incarnates itself in a final form. How splendid our
alderman is! Never did a corporation produce so fine a flower. He is
sententious, he is artistic. And how he lets fall from his thick lips
those scraps of art-jargon which he picked up in the studio where he
sat for his portrait! He is moral; he thinks that nude figures should
not be sanctioned by the corporation; he believes in the Bank, and
proposes the Queen's health as if he were fulfilling an important
duty; he goes to the Academy, and dictates the aestheticism of his
native town. There he is, his hand in his white waistcoat, in the pose
chosen for the presentation portrait, at the moment when he delivered
himself of his famous apophthegm, "When the nude comes into art, art
flies out of the window."
The alderman is the reef which for the last five-and-twenty years has
done so much to ruin and to wreck every artistic movement which the
enthusiasm and intelligence of individuals have set on foot. The mere
checking of the obstruction of the individual will not suffice; other
aldermen will arise--equally ignorant, equally talkative, equally
obstructive. And until the race is relegated to its proper function,
bimetallism and sewage, the incidents I have described will happen
again and again.
* * * * *
A marvellous accident that it should have come to be believed that a
corporation could edit a picture gallery! Whence did the belief
originate? whence did it spring? and in what fancied substance of fact
did it catch root? A tapeworm-like notion--come we know not whence,
nor how. And it has thriven unobserved, though signs of its presence
stare plainly enough in the pallid face of the wretched gallery.
Curious it is that it should have remained undetected so long;
curious, indeed, it is that straying thought should have led no one to
remember that every great art collection of the world has grown out of
an individual intelligence. Collections have been worthily continued,
but each successive growth has risen in obedience to the will of one
supreme authority; and that it should have ever come to be believed
that twenty aldermen, whose lives are mainly spent in considering
bank-rates, bimetallism, and sewage, could collect pictures of
permanent value is on the face of it as wild a folly as ever tried the
strength of the strait waistcoats of Hanwell or Bedlam. But as
Manchester and Liverpool enjoy as fair a measure of sanity as the rest
of the kingdom, we perforce must admit the theory of unconscious
acceptation of a chance idea.
But I take it that what is essential in my argument is not to prove
that aldermen know little about art, but that twenty men, wise or
foolish, ignorant or learned, cannot edit a picture gallery. Proving
the obvious is not an amusing task, but it is sometimes a necessary
task. It may be thought, too, that I might be more brief; the elderly
maxim about brevity being the soul of wit may be flung in my teeth.
But lengthy discourse gives time for reflection, and I am seriously
anxious that my readers should consider the question which these
articles introduce. I believe it to be one of vital interest, reaching
down a long range of consequences; and should these articles induce
Manchester and Liverpool to place their galleries in the care of
competent art-directors, I shall have rendered an incalculable service
to English art. I say "competent art-directors", and I mean by
"competent art-directors" men who will deem their mission to be a
repudiation of the Anglo-French art fostered by the Academy--a return
to a truer English tradition, and the giving to Manchester and
Liverpool individual artistic aspiration and tendency.
Is the ambition of Manchester and Liverpool limited to paltry
imitations of the Chantrey Fund collection? If they desire no more, it
would serve no purpose to disturb the corporations in their management
of the galleries. The corporations can do this better than any
director. But if Manchester and Liverpool desire individual artistic
life, if they wish to collect art that will attract visitors and
contribute to their renown, they can only do this by the appointment
of competent directors. For assurance on this point we have only to
think what Sir Frederick Burton has done for the National Gallery, or
what the late Mr. Doyle did for Dublin on the meagre grant of one
thousand a year. It is the man and not the amount of money spent that
counts. A born collector like the late Mr. Doyle can do more with a
thousand a year than a corporation could do with a hundred thousand a
year.
Nothing is of worth except individual passion; it is the one thing
that achieves. And I know of no more intense passion--and, I will add,
no more beautiful passion--than the passion for collecting works of
art. Of all passions it is the purest. It matters little to the man
possessed of it whether he collects for the State or for himself. The
gallery is his child, and all his time and energy are given to the
enrichment and service of _his_ gallery. The gallery is his one
thought. He will lie awake at night to better think out his plans for
the capture of some treasure on which he has set his heart. He will
get up in the middle of the night, and walk about the gallery,
considering some project for improved arrangements. To realise the
meaning of the passion for collecting, it is necessary to have known a
real collector, and intimately, for collectors do not wear their
hearts on their sleeve. With the indifferent they are indifferent; but
they are quick to detect the one man or woman who sympathises, who
understands; and they select with eagerness this one from the crowd.
But perhaps the collector never really reveals himself except to a
fellow-collector, and to appreciate the strength and humanity of the
passion it is necessary to have seen Duret and Goncourt explaining a
new Japanesery which one of them has just acquired.
The partial love which a corporation may feel for its collection is
very different from the undivided strength of the collector's love of
his gallery. And even if we were to admit the possibility of an ideal
corporation consisting of men perfectly conversant with art, and
animated with passion equal to the collector's passion, the history of
its labour would still be written in the words "vexatious discussion
and lost chances". The rule that no picture is to be purchased until
it has been seen and approved of by the corporation forbids all
extraordinary chances, and the unique and only moment is lost in
foolish formulae. The machinery is too cumbersome; and chances of
sale-rooms cannot be seized; it is instinct and not reason that
decides the collector, and no dozen or twenty men can ever be got to
immediately agree.
Not long after my article on Manet was published in the columns of the
_Speaker_, a member of the Manchester art committee wrote asking where
could the pictures be seen, and if the owners would lend them for
exhibition in the annual exhibition soon to open. If they did, perhaps
the corporation might be induced to buy them for the permanent
collection. Now I will ask my readers to imagine my bringing the
pictures "Le Linge" and "L'Enfant à l'Êpée" over from France, and
submitting them to the judgment of the Manchester Corporation. As well
might I submit to them a Velasquez or a Gainsborough signed Smith and
Jones! It is the authority of the signature that induces acquiescence
in the beauty of a portrait by Gainsborough or Velasquez; without the
signature the ordinary or drawing-room lady would prefer a portrait by
Mr. Shannon. Mr. Shannon is the fashion, and the fashion, being the
essence and soul of the crowd, is naturally popular with the crowd.
In my article on Manet I referred to a beautiful picture of
his--"Boulogne Pier". It was then on exhibition in Bond Street. I
asked a friend to buy it. "You will not like the picture now," I said;
"but if you have any latent aesthetic feeling in you it will bring it
out, and you will like it in six months' time." My friend would not
buy the picture, and the reason he gave was that he did not like it.
It did not seem to occur to him that his taste might advance, and that
the picture he was ignorant enough to like to-day he might be wise
enough to loathe six years hence.
An early customer of Sir John Millais said, "Millais, I'll give you
five hundred pounds to paint me a picture, and you shall paint me the
picture you are minded to paint." Sir John painted him one of the most
beautiful pictures of modern times, "St. Agnes' Eve". But the wisdom
of the purchaser was only temporary. When the picture came home he did
not like it, his wife did not like it; there was no colour in it; it
was all blue and green. Briefly, it was not a pleasant picture to live
with; and after trying the experiment for a few months this excellent
gentleman decided to exchange the picture for a picture by--by
whom?--by Mr. Sidney Cooper. I wonder what he thinks of himself
to-day. And his fate is the fate of the aldermen who buy pictures
because they like them.
The administration of art, as it was pointed out in the _Manchester
Guardian_, is one of extreme difficulty, and it is not easy to find a
competent director; but it seems to me to be easy to name many men who
would do better in art-management than a corporation, and
embarrassingly difficult to name one who would do worse. Any one man
can thread a needle better than twenty men. Should the needle prove
brittle and the thread rotten, the threader must resign. Though a task
may be accomplished only by one man, and though all differ as to how
it should be accomplished, yet, when the task is well accomplished, an
appreciative unanimity seems to prevail regarding the result. We all
agree in praising Sir Frederick Burton's administration; and yet how
easy it would be to cavil! Why has he not bought an Ingres, a Corot, a
Courbet, a Troyon? Why has he showed such excessive partiality for
squint-eyed Italian saints? Sir Frederick Burton would answer: "In
collecting, like in everything else, you must choose a line. I chose
to consider the National Gallery as a museum. The question is whether
I have collected well or badly from this point of view." But a
corporation cannot choose a line on which to collect; it can do no
more than indulge in miscellaneous purchases.