(like the Dutch), very national in its subjects. Glaciers, snow
mountains, pine forests, and châlets were the usual subjects in the
Swiss section. Even the figure-subjects were redolent of
Switzerland--peasants, guides, hunters, and tourists were the principal
_dramatis personæ_. If a fault is to be found with these innocent works
of art, it is that they look as if they were meant for the tourist or
the Alpine Club market. A traveller who is detained by rain for a week
at Interlacken would be just the man to purchase a good view of the
Jungfrau, or perhaps he might be tempted by a group of Bernese
Oberlanders at home. The native Swiss pictures are too much like their
wood carvings, not works of good art but pleasant souvenirs.
We will now cross the Alps and say a few words about Italian art.
Italy was wretchedly represented at the Great Exhibition. None of her
greatest artists had contributed. The best pictures were by two or three
Parisian Italians, and the worst by men whose proper abode ought to be
Hanwell or Colney Hatch. It has often been remarked that modern Italians
labor under the same disadvantage which afflicts a man who has had
illustrious progenitors. He may not be a greater fool than other men,
indeed he may be rather above the average, but he gets no credit for it.
People are always contrasting him with his illustrious father or his
glorious grandfather, and the poor fellow has hard work to get any
justice done him. This may be true enough at Venice, Florence, or Rome,
where the _chefs-d’œuvre_ of the old masters are in very close
proximity. I can well understand that a stranger who has been feasting
his eyes all the morning on Titians and Paul Veroneses, should find the
descent very precipitous to the level of a modern Italian studio; but in
Paris there were no such formidable rivals to fear, and it is much to be
regretted that Italy did not put forth her whole strength. I am
inclined, however, to give another reason why modern Italian art has
suffered from the proximity of so many _chefs-d’œuvre_ by the old
masters, and that is the temptation to become copyists. Wealthy
Americans, if they cannot carry away the originals, will have copies,
and the harvest to be derived from this source by a clever painter is so
rich a one that he is often tempted to abandon the paths of originality
and virtue, and become a copyist.
Of course the leading painters would not accept a commission for a copy
of Beatrice Cenci, but there have been (and doubtless are still)
artists fitted for better things, who _do_ accept these commissions and
are glad of them. A friend of mine a good many years ago asked me to
call and see a copy of this celebrated portrait which had just arrived
from Italy. He had given the painter a commission for it two years
before. I could not say much in praise of it. It was a fair average
copy, but I could not help remarking that the artist had been a precious
long time about it. “Oh,” says my friend, “mine was the seventh order
for a Beatrice Cenci in his book, and he told me that nothing would
induce him to paint more than four copies a year of this head. He had
other work to attend to,” etc., etc. If a man once gets into the way of
earning his living by copying, he will never get out of it (at least not
in Italy).
Independently of downright copying there is the danger of imitating, and
this is a danger to which Italian art has always been very much exposed.
No good can ever come of imitating the old masters, but when the masters
so imitated are men like Carlo Maratti or Luca Giordano, the downfall of
the school is indeed precipitate.
Italian painters, like Italian sculptors are very skilful workmen, but
they do not appear ever to get beyond a certain point of excellence.
The new school of Rome may be said to have been founded by Fortuny, and
in this school execution is every thing. Doubtless this phase of
Italian art is better than the dreary decadence of the first half of the
century, but I cannot say I am a great admirer of the new style. I will
speak of Fortuny and his followers presently, when I get to the Spanish
school, but before leaving the Italian Court I may mention that there
were some specimens of microscopic painting which were marvellous if
they were really legitimate pictures and not painted photographs.
Admitting, however, that they were genuine pictures, the very fact of
their looking like colored photographs relegates them to an inferior
style of art. They are curiosities, and not much more.
In justice to the Italian section I should mention that if the oil
pictures were bad, the water-colors by Rota were excellent.
There seems to me no reason whatever why Italy, the land of art (_par
excellence_), should lag behind in the international race. Italians are
quick, intelligent, and imaginative. If they would steer a middle course
between the tame imitations of the old masters and the sensational
quackeries of contemporary art, I have no doubt they would take a high
place in the European school.
The Spanish gallery was one of the most interesting in the whole
exhibition. One or two of the large pictures showed great power and
originality. I believe these pictures were painted by Spaniards
residing in Rome. Indeed all the best Spanish pictures are painted
either in Paris or Italy. There is no native school, as in the days of
Velasquez and Murillo.
The most attractive wall in this gallery was that devoted to the works
of Fortuny. Fortuny’s mode of painting, his delicate sense of color, and
the novelty of his subjects, took the artistic world by storm some
fifteen years ago. Since that time a host of imitators have arisen,
mostly Spaniards or Italians, so that the modern Spanish school has come
to be identified with his very peculiar kind of art.
I have no doubt that if one were to go to Spain and visit the studios of
the resident artists, one would find very little of the Fortuny element.
Probably the pictures would be more like Portuguese work, which of all
European schools is the most backward. Setting aside, however, the
question as to how far the Fortuny style can be called national, I will
hazard a few remarks about its merits and faults.
In the first place, I think we ought to welcome any novelty in art,
provided the novelty is not downright absurd, and a man who like Fortuny
revolutionized modern art (at any rate in the south of Europe),
certainly deserves consideration.
His pictures are characterized by a wonderful delicacy of execution and
brilliancy of color. His drawing is firm and masterly. With all these
good qualities I cannot consider him to have been a great artist. In
the first place, the subjects he affected were of the most frivolous and
meretricious description. Secondly, the general effect in his pictures
is not sufficiently attended to. I have heard them compared to those
sheets one sometimes sees composed of a jumble of small photographs.
Each individual figure or gaudy bit of stuff is perfect by itself, but
the whole picture is deficient in effect.
Finally, the execution wants that breadth and manliness which are so
conspicuous in the best works of Meissonier. Much as I admire any man of
genius who departs from the beaten track and creates a style of his own,
I cannot help thinking that Fortuny has been much over-rated.
Many of his followers’ works resemble the crude wall-papers and chintzes
which used to be common before South Kensington was in existence.
Pinks, light blues, and coal-tar dyes of the most violent hues (colors
which would drive our æsthetic amateurs mad) here run riot. The
execution is always clever, but the offence against good taste in color
is not to be got over. I do not recollect any landscape work in the
Spanish gallery except as backgrounds to the figure pictures. If I were
a Spanish artist I should leave the fripperies of the boudoir, and turn
my attention to the grand forms of rock and forest which abound in the
Asturias, or to the sierras of Andalusia, with their semitropical
vegetation.
Of Russia and the United States as picture-producing countries but
little can be said. There are a few Russians scattered over Germany,
France, and Italy, who paint and exhibit pictures which pass muster more
or less creditably.
Some give a Russian flavor to their work by painting Muscovite peasants,
sledges, wolves and bears, but even these national pictures might have
been done by French or German artists as far as the execution goes. The
eye was not impressed in the Russian gallery, as it was in the English,
Austrian, or Spanish departments, by some national peculiarity.
The large picture which obtained one of the medals of honor was painted
in Rome. It represented one of the most barbarous episodes of Nero’s
persecution of the Christians.
I thought it clever as a decorative work, but very weak in drawing.
There were in the Russian gallery some good heads very boldly and
forcibly painted. Their authors, though their names ended in “sky,”
“vich,” or “koff,” were pupils of the French or German schools, and
therefore these works, though painted by Russians, can hardly be
considered as characteristic of the school. The Byzantine element was
not in the least traceable in the Russian galleries. Probably Byzantine
pictures were excluded, as coming under the head of manufactures.
Greece exhibited a few pictures of modest proportions, and still more
modest merit; but even this faint commendation cannot be accorded to
Portugal, whose small contribution was ludicrous for its badness.
The art of the United States is even less national than the Russian.
American artists seldom give us reminiscences of their country, and the
American gallery was exactly like some of the rooms in the French Salon.
From their admiration of Parisian art it is probable that the American
school of the future will, like the Belgian, be a branch of the French,
unless indeed some American Fortuny should be raised in the States who
would give an original impulse to Transatlantic art.
French critics were rather hard on the American figure-painters for
choosing such subjects as the death of Cleopatra.
What in the world, they said, had Cleopatra and the Nile to do with
America? About as much, I should say, as Nero and his atrocities had to
do with France. According to these gentlemen, French artists may choose
their subjects from any period and from any country; the same license
may be allowed to Belgium, Germany, and possibly to England; but the
American is to confine himself to the short and not very picturesque
history of his own country.
This seems to me very unfair, but at the same time I should have liked
to have seen amongst the landscapes something more national than views
of Bougival or Fontainebleau.
I have now taken you all round the picture galleries of the
International Exhibition, and I may with truth say that we have no cause
to be ashamed of the position we hold in the European art-world. The
French were at home and able to exhibit nearly all their best works of
the last ten years. We, from reasons that are very well known, were
unable to do so, and yet we held a very respectable position. I am not
John Bull enough to say, as some of my friends at the hotel did, that
our school is the first in Europe. But what I _do_ say is that English
art (speaking of course generally) is in a thoroughly healthy state;
that English artists (also speaking generally) think more of their
subjects and less of themselves than Frenchmen, Belgians, or Austrians
do; that whilst some of the leading foreign schools are past the zenith
of their power, we, on the contrary, seem to be improving steadily, and
gradually getting rid of our faults. Some may be inclined to attribute
this marked improvement to the extraordinary sums of money which have of
late years been spent on art in this country, some to the existence
amongst us of a school of high-art criticism, some to foreign influence.
I attribute it to none of these causes, but solely to better training
and a more scrupulous regard for nature.
It may be thought that in boasting about our better training I am
blowing the academic trumpet pretty loudly, but I am not speaking so
much of the training you get here and at other London art schools, as of
the training which every young painter has to give himself after he has
learned the A B C of his art. It is this training especially which is
better than it used to be. The commonplace slap-dash way of going to
work of former days is now the exception and not the rule with young
painters.
One man may be careless or weak in his drawing, but he may have a keen
sense for truthful atmospheric effect, and he labors away at his picture
until he approximates to the out-of-door look of nature; another (a
portrait-painter perhaps) wearies out his sitters in his endeavors to be
truthful; a third will patiently brave the elements on a bare Scotch
moor, humbly trying to imitate the fitful patches of sunshine and mist
on the hillside before him.
All this is what I call good training. It is honest, conscientious work,
and it is this which tells favorably on a school, rather than Manchester
patronage or Oxford æsthetics.
* * * * *
I would observe, in conclusion, that in the appointment of our new
President we have another cause for self-congratulation. It would be out
of place here for me to dwell on all his qualifications for the
important post he fills, but I should not like my first lecture under
his presidency to pass without expressing my thorough satisfaction with
the choice we have made. To say more would probably be unpleasant to
him, to have said less would have been unpleasant to me.
I may, however, point out that the progress of the English school of art
does by no means rest with the President of the Royal Academy (however
excellent he may be); it depends on the individual exertion of every
member of the profession, from the President down to the probationer who
seeks admission to the schools. Let us all do our best to produce
careful, honest, and original work, and I have no doubt of the result.
LECTURE VI
ON DRAWING.
Drawing is the backbone of all great work, and it is an art which, if
neglected when you are young, does not appear ever to be acquired in
after-life.
Most artists improve in color, and particularly in execution, as they
get older, but in drawing they seldom acquire greater correctness. They
acquire facility, but not accuracy. It is, therefore, of the highest
importance that all students should carry out their studies in drawing
as far as they possibly can whilst they are young. I am not speaking of
their chalk studies alone, but also of their painted studies.
It often happens that as soon as a student gets a palette on his thumb,
he considers himself completely emancipated from all the trammels of
correct drawing, and after sketching his figure with a few hasty strokes
of charcoal or red chalk, he smears on his color at once. I have known
some who would not condescend to make any preliminary outline at all,
but went in for drawing with the brush.
I can quite understand that when you first begin painting, the novelty
of the material and the difficulties of color should prevent your
drawing with the same precision and firmness as you would with charcoal
and chalk; but when these difficulties are overcome, you should endeavor
to return to your former precision. It is very difficult, when once a
slovenly habit of drawing has been contracted, to return to accuracy;
but nevertheless it is possible.
The fact is, that an artist, to excel as a draughtsman, should consider
himself a student all his life.
The school of painting ought to be the school of drawing in color, and
no student ought to be allowed to color a badly drawn figure or head.
This was always the rule, not only in Delaroche’s School, but in all the
_ateliers_ of his contemporaries; and as more than half the present
members of the Institute were students in these schools, the system
cannot have been a bad one.
It may surprise some of you to hear the time that was spent in drawing
the figure before beginning to paint.
The model used to sit for six consecutive days: from seven to twelve in
summer, and from eight to one in winter, and an hour was allowed every
day for intervals of rest.
During the whole first day’s sitting, nothing but drawing was done.
Sometimes the shades of the figure were rubbed in with bitumen or some
transparent brown, but no color was ever used. The master would come
early on the Tuesday, and until he had passed, as it were, every
student’s drawing, no one who studied seriously would think of laying
on color. Six hours, therefore, out of the twenty-four were spent before
the actual painting began; but, at any rate, good solid foundations had
been laid: well-proportioned and carefully drawn figures were the rule
and not the exception, and if the student had not time to finish his
work by the end of the week, he would have at any rate a large portion
of the figure carefully studied.
When a figure is well drawn, the master will take a pleasure in giving
the student some hints about the color, and will perhaps take the
palette himself; but to give instruction in color when there is no
drawing, is like furnishing a house before the walls are built.
I have noticed that some of you in the life school attach too much
importance to the mere outline, and neglect the structure and internal
markings of your figures. Now the bones and principal markings of a
figure are of infinitely more consequence than the outline; it is _they_
which give the action and proportion, and in every stage of
figure-drawing they should be accurately and clearly defined, to serve
as landmarks from which the outline may be mapped out. If you were
drawing a head, you would not trace a sharp outline of the hair, ears,
and cheeks, without having first indicated the position of the eyes,
nose, and mouth. Why then should you proceed on a different principle in
drawing a figure?
There is another bad habit of drawing which has of late become too
common in the schools, and which I, as visitor, have often protested
against; and that is the practice of blackening the figure all over,
with the intention of working out the details with breadcrumb or the
eraser. It maybe that this is the most expeditious way of producing a
smoothly-finished drawing, but I am sure it is not the most artistic
way.
An Academy figure should be drawn on the same principle that a ship is
built. If you visit a ship-builder’s yard you will see vessels in all
stages of progress, but the future character and destination of each are
discernible almost from the first laying down of the keel. You can tell
at a glance whether the future vessel is to be a clipper yacht, a
collier brig, or a barge. If you revisit the yard a month or two
afterward, you will find great progress. The builder has got the
planking on, but the vessels have retained their original form. In
another month, perhaps, they will be found decked, caulked, coppered,
and ready for launching; but they have never lost the original lines
given them.
So it should be with your Academy figures. They will, of course, be less
complete on the third and fourth days than on the ninth or tenth; but in
no stage of their progress should they present the formless, hopeless
appearance they too often do.
Let me hasten to add that this inartistic way of drawing (though too
common here) is not universal, and that those who have chosen the better
path will find the benefit of it hereafter.
I will now proceed to give you a few words of advice about
figure-drawing after you have left the schools and are painting pictures
of your own.
It will seldom happen that when you have to introduce a nude or
semi-nude figure into your picture, you can copy the model exactly as
you would in the Academy schools. _There_ all you have to do is to copy
what you see, but if you have to represent a Moses, a Prometheus, or an
Andromeda, and your model has short legs and deformed feet, it will not
do to be too literal in your copy of him.
Artists often say on these occasions that the model puts them out, and
that they can get on better without nature. Of course, if they copy all
the defects of their model they may, to a certain extent, be right in
saying that they do better without nature; but even in this case I doubt
it. Nature, though cramped and vulgarized, is better than feeble
reminiscences of Michael Angelo or Carracci. An accomplished draughtsman
will constantly refer to nature without servilely copying her. It is not
possible that the great sculptors of antiquity found (even in Greece)
such matchless specimens of humanity as the Theseus, the fighting
gladiator, or the Milo Venus. It is still more incredible that they
evolved these perfect forms out of their inner consciousness. No; they
idealized and improved what they found, not so much by taking the head
of one model and putting it on the shoulders of another, adding the arms
of a third, as by the much more subtle process of keen and artistic
observation of various types of beauty.
To descend from the time of Phidias to our own days, you must (if you
wish to excel) pursue the same method. Do not copy all the defects of
your model, but, on the other hand, do not fancy you can draw without a
constant reference to nature. It is far from my intention to deprecate
the study of anatomy, and particularly that kind of artistic anatomy
which our Professor so ably teaches, but I am sure he would agree with
me in saying that anatomy _alone_ would only enable you to build up a
coldly correct form of the human figure without either beauty or
individuality.
Anatomy, and, I may add, academic studies generally, must be looked upon
as the grammar of figure-painting, and we all know that however
necessary it may be for a writer to be grammatical, grammar alone will
not give him an elegant or even a clear style.
So it is in drawing and painting. The knowledge of anatomy and drawing
which you acquire here is not the end of art, but only the beginning.
It would be out of place in this lecture to give you rules of proportion
for the human figure. These rules you can learn (if you care about
learning them) elsewhere, but it may be well for me to give you a few
hints as to when and where it is right to depart from them. First, as to
the size of the head. You probably all know that the head measures from
one seventh to one eighth of the height of the figure. Seven and a half
heads to the figure is a good average proportion. If, however, you have
to draw figures of heroic size, you will have to make the head barely
one eighth, and the larger the size of your figures the smaller ought to
be the relative size of the head. Michael Angelo exceeded even these
limits, and some of his imitators, who have always copied his defects
rather than his good qualities, have caricatured him by giving their
figures a height of ten or eleven heads. There is a point beyond which
the sublime becomes the ridiculous.
[Illustration]
Whilst on this subject, I would observe that these proportions can only
be depended on when the head is neither inclined up nor down. An
upturned head measured from the chin to the top of the head is always
much shorter than one whose facial angle is vertical, and a head
inclined downward and measured in the same way is considerably longer.
In colossal figures, the hands and feet should be in proportion to the
head, and therefore rather small for the body and limbs.
It is generally advisable to make the leg, from the patella downward,
somewhat longer than it is in nature. Length of leg gives style and
elegance to a figure.
In many of the antique statues (the Apollo and the Venus de Medici, for
instance) this method of improving nature seems carried to excess, and I
should recommend a middle path between the extreme length of the antique
tibiæ and the short Dachshund-like legs of our models.