few and far between, mostly isolated units, and their work was often
absorbed by various manufacturing firms. About that time, in response
to a feeling for more fellowship and opportunity for interchange of
ideas on the various branches of their own craft, a few workers in
decorative design were gathered together under the roof of the late
Mr. Lewis F. Day on a certain January evening known as hurricane
Tuesday and a small society was formed for the discussion of various
problems in decorative design and kindred topics; meeting in rotation
at the houses or studios of the members. The society had a happy if
obscure life for several years, and was ultimately absorbed into a
larger society of designers, architects, and craftsmen called "The
Art Workers' Guild," which met once a month with much the same
objects--fellowship and interchange of ideas and papers and
demonstrations in various arts and crafts. In fact, since artists more
or less concerned with decoration had increased, owing to the revived
activity and demand arising for design of all kinds, the feeling grew
stronger among men of very different proclivities for some common
ground of meeting. A desire among artists of different crafts to know
something of the technicalities of other crafts made itself felt, and
the result has been the rapid and continual growth of the Guild which
now includes, beside the principal designers in decoration, painters,
architects, sculptors, wood-carvers, metal-workers, engravers, and
representatives of various other crafts.
A junior Art Workers' Guild has also been established in connection
with the older body, and there are besides two Societies of Designers
in London, while in the provinces there is the Northern Art Workers'
Guild at Manchester and various local Arts and Crafts societies all
over the country.
We have, of course, our Royal Academy, or as it ought to be called,
Royal Guild of Painters in Oil, always with us; but its use of the
term "Arts" applies only (and almost exclusively so) to painting,
sculpture, architecture, and engraving, and while absorbing gifted
artists from time to time, often after they have done their best work,
it has never, as a body, shown any wide or comprehensive conception
of art, although it has done a certain amount of educational work,
chiefly through its valuable exhibitions of old masters and its
lectures and teaching in the schools, which are free, and where famous
artists act as visitors. Its influence in the main it is to be feared
has been to encourage an enormous overproduction of pictures every
year, and to foster in the popular mind the impression that there
was no art in England before Sir Joshua Reynolds, and none of any
consequence since, outside the easel picture.
The magnificently arranged and deeply interesting "Town-planning
Exhibition," held last year in connection with the International
Congress on that subject, however, was a new departure and most
welcome as an example of what might be done by the Royal Academy under
the influence of wider conceptions of art.
Nevertheless, the work of such fine decorative artists as Albert
Moore, Alfred Gilbert, Harry Bates has been introduced to the public
through the Royal Academy, these two last-named being members; and
once upon a time even a picture by Sir E. Burne-Jones appeared there.
Many gifted artists have strengthened the institution since these
passed away. The names of Watts and Leighton will always shed lustre
and distinction upon it, but of course the Academy necessarily
depends for its continued vitality upon new blood. The advantages of
membership are generally too strong a temptation to our rising artists
to encourage the formation of anything like an English "secession,"
though according to our British ideas of the wholesomeness of
competition or, let us say _emulation_, a strong body of independent
artists might have a good effect all round.
I have often wondered that no attempt has been made by the Royal
Academy to give a lead in the arrangement and hanging of an
exhibition. With the fine rooms at their disposal it would be possible
to make their great annual show of pictures far more striking and
attractive by some kind of classification or sympathetic grouping.
The best system, of course, would be to group the works of each artist
together. This, however, would take up more wall space and lead to
more exclusions than at present; but, still the plan might be tried
of placing all the portraits together, and, say, the subject pictures
according to scale, and the landscapes, arranging them in separate
rooms. Sculpture and architecture, and water colours and engravings
are already given separate rooms, so that it would only be extending a
principle already adopted. The effect of the whole exhibition would
be much finer, I venture to think, and also less fatiguing, and there
would probably be less chance of pictures being falsified or injured
by juxtaposition with unsympathetic neighbours. Surely some advance
is possible on eighteenth-century ideas of hanging, or the old days of
Somerset House? I respectfully commend the above suggestion to their
consideration.
While mentioning names we must not forget (although I have hitherto
dwelt rather on the Gothic side of the English revival) such
distinguished designers as the late Alfred Stevens and his able
followers Godfrey Sykes and Moody. These artists drew their
inspiration largely from the work of the Italian Renascence, and it
is a testimony to their remarkable powers--especially of the
first-named--that they should have achieved such distinction on the
lines of so marked a style, and one which, as it appears to me, had
already reached its maturity in the country of its birth, unlike
Gothic design, which might almost be said to have been arrested in its
development by the advent of the Renascence.
Another influence upon modern decorative art cannot be left out
of account, and that is the Japanese influence. The extraordinary
decorative daring, and intimate naturalism; the frank or delicate
colouration, the freshness, as of newly gathered flowers of many of
their inventions and combinations: the wonderful vivacity and truth of
the designs of such a master as Hokusai, for instance--these and the
whole disclosure of the history of their art (which, however, was
entirely derived from and inspired by the still finer art of the
Chinese), from the early, highly wrought, religious and symbolic
designs, up to the vigorous freedom and naturalism of the later time,
together with their extraordinary precision of technique, inevitably
took the artistic world by storm. Its immediate effects, much as we
may be indebted to such a source, cannot be set down altogether to
the good so far as we can trace them in contemporary European art;
but perhaps on the whole there is no more definitely marked streak of
influence than this of the Japanese. In French art it was at one time
more palpable still. In fact it might almost be said to have taken
entire possession of French decorative art, or a large part of it; or
rather, it is Japanese translated into French with that ease and chic
for which our lively neighbours are remarkable.
Whistler, by the way, who must be numbered with the decorators, showed
unmistakably in his work the results of a close study of Japanese
art. His methods of composition, his arrangements of tones of colour
declare how he had absorbed it, and applied it to different methods
and subjects, in fact, his work shows most of the qualities of much
Japanese art, except precision of drawing, although his earlier
etchings have this quality.
In modern decoration, the most obvious and superficial qualities of
Japanese art have generally been seized upon, and its general effect
has been to loosen the restraining and architectonic sense of balance
and fitness, and a definite ordered plan of construction, which are
essential in the finest types of design. On the whole, the effects
of the discovery of Japanese art on the modern artistic mind, may
be likened to a sudden and unexpected access of fortune to an
impoverished man. It is certain to disorganize if not demoralize him.
The sudden contact with a fresh and vigorous art, alive with potent
tradition, yet intimate with the subtler forms and changes of nature,
and in the full possession and mastery of its own technique--the
sudden contact of such an art with the highly artificial and eclectic
art of a complex and effete civilization must be more or less of the
nature of a shock. Shocks are said to be good for sound constitutions,
but their effect on the unsound are as likely as not to be fatal.
While fully acknowledging the brilliancy of Japanese art, however, one
feels how enormously they were indebted to the art of China, and the
greater dignity and impressiveness of the latter becomes more and more
apparent on comparison. Both in graphic characterization of birds
and animals and flowers and splendour of ornament, the Chinese both
preceded and excelled the Japanese. There were recently some striking
demonstrations of this at the British Museum, when Mr. Laurence Binyon
arranged a series of most remarkable ancient Chinese paintings on silk
side by side with Japanese work.
The opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, owing to the enterprise
of Sir Coutts Lindsay, was the means of bringing the decorative school
in English painting to the front, and did much towards directing
public attention in that direction.
What was known as "aestheticism" has, of course, been freely satirized
both by press and stage, which latter, however, was not slow to
avail itself of some of its results in the increased variety and
picturesqueness of its interior scenes, and the charm of delicate
harmonies of colour in draperies and costume. The movement was seized
upon by the commercial instinct, which always hastens to make hay
while the sun shines, and the aesthetic sun shone very gaily for
a time, in the society sense. It was somewhat amusing to see the
travesties of ideas which had been current in artistic circles for
long before, now proclaimed as the new gospel of aesthetic salvation.
But in spite of all the clamour, fashionable extravagance, and
ridicule, which obscured the real meaning of the movement, so far as
it was a sincere search after more beauty in daily life, its influence
is just as strong as ever, and is likely to increase with the growth
and spread of greater refinement, and the desire for more harmonious
social conditions.
Organizations continued to increase and multiply, having for their
object, in one way or another, the "encouragement" of the arts and
crafts of design, and whether for good or for evil, it cannot be
denied that their number and activity were, and are, remarkable signs
of the times--of an awakening interest in decorative art and a general
impulse towards ornamental expression. It is true in some instances
this impulse runs rather wild, and to some of its ruder results we
might even apply the words of the poet Cowper describing the gambols
of the kine at high noon:
Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth
Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent,
To give act and utt'rance as they may
To ecstasy, too big to be suppress'd.
It would be difficult to enumerate all the different associations
having for their object the teaching, or the spread of a knowledge
or love of decorative art and handicraft, outside the big trade
organizations and decorating firms, but among those who contributed
from various sides to the main stream mention may be made of "The
Century Guild," identified chiefly with the publication of its "Hobby
Horse," with its careful attention to the printer's art under the fine
taste in type and book ornaments of Mr. Herbert P. Horne. "The Home
Arts and Industries Association," which has started village classes in
various handicrafts all over the kingdom, has held annual exhibitions
at the Albert Hall, The Royal School of Art Needlework, now in noble
premises in Imperial Institute Road, The School of Art Woodcarving in
Pelham Place; while design on the strictly industrial and technical
side is cared for by the City and Guilds of London Institute under Sir
Philip Magnus.
Since these and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society were
established, the London County Council came into being and founded
its schools of Art and Craft all over London with the assistance of
members of that Society; it has now become the central authority in
technical education, and extends a helping hand (with a grant in aid)
to some of the schools above named.
All these institutions, and many more, invoke the name of art, and
desire to unite good design and workmanship, and also to find a market
for it. (Some of our large decorating firms would claim to have the
same objects perhaps.) Their great difficulty is how to produce good
designing ability out of nothing, as it were. All the crafts which
they specially address themselves to teach and cultivate are, after
all, entirely dependent for their interest and value upon vigour of
design and vital expression, and this cannot suddenly be forced into
existence by artificial heat. It is a power of slow development and
is nourished from all sorts of sources, and is as many sided as life
itself, being in fact only another form of life. You can lead a horse
to the water but you cannot make him drink. You can provide any number
of words but you cannot make people think, and the possession
of rhyming dictionaries will never make a poet, neither will the
possession of tools and a method make artists. This is, of course,
obvious enough. At the same time it may fairly be urged on the other
side that no one can learn to swim without entering the water, and it
is only by repeated experiments and years of patient labour that we
arrive at good results.
Genius is always rare, but efficiency is what keeps the world going,
and it must be said that admirable work in various crafts has been
produced in the London County Council Technical Schools. Their system
of scholarships gives opportunities to young people of promise to
carry on their studies, and pupils and apprentices in various trades
are enabled to gain a more complete knowledge of their craft and its
various branches than is possible in any ordinary workshop, as well as
tasteful ideas in design generally.
In the summer of 1886 the smouldering discontent which always exists
among artists in regard to the Royal Academy, although very often
only the result of personal disappointment, threatened to burst into
something like a flame. A letter appeared in the leading dailies
proposing the establishment of a really National Exhibition of
the Arts, which should include not only painting, sculpture, and
architecture, but also the arts of design generally. This letter was
signed by George Clausen, W. Holman Hunt, and the present writer. The
stronghold of the movement at first was among the group of painters,
distinguished as the Anglo-French school, whose headquarters were at
Chelsea, and who were the founders of the New English Art Club. The
idea of such a comprehensive exhibition was an exciting one, and
large and enthusiastic meetings of artists were held. It was however
discovered before long that the mass of the painters attracted by the
movement intended no more than to press a measure of reform on the
Royal Academy--to induce them to take, in fact, a leaf out of the book
of the French Salon as regards the mode of election of the hanging
committees of each year.
The decorative designers, however, perceiving their vision of a really
representative exhibition of contemporary works in all the arts fading
away, and the whole force of the movement being wasted in the forlorn
hope of forcing reforms upon the Academy, left the agitators in a
body, and proceeded to take counsel together as to the best means of
furthering their aims, and the immediate result was the founding of
the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society which, after many difficulties
opened its first exhibition at the New Gallery in the autumn of 1888.
The members of the Society, who were also most of them members of the
Art Workers' Guild aforementioned, were well aware of the difficulties
they would have to face in the endeavour to realize their aims,
and carry out their principles. Their main object, however, was to
demonstrate by means of a representative public exhibition the actual
state of decorative art in all its kinds as far as possible. They
desired to assert the claims of the decorative designer and craftsman
to the position of artist, and give every one responsible in any way
for the artistic character of a work full individual credit, by giving
his name in the catalogue, whether the work was exhibited by a firm or
not.
In spite of all drawbacks the richness and artistic interest of the
Exhibition was generally acknowledged, and the novelty of the idea
attracted the public.
An exhibition of designs and cartoons for decoration had been held by
the directors of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881, but it was limited
to that class of work, so that this Arts and Crafts Exhibition may
be said to have been really the first which attempted anything like a
representative and comprehensive display of not only designs for work
but the actual work itself, for its artistic and decorative quality
alone. It comprised designs and cartoons, modelled work, woodcarving,
furniture, tapestry and embroidery and printed cottons, pottery,
tiles, and glass-metal work, jewellery, printed books, binding,
calligraphy and illuminations, and undoubtedly included some of the
best contemporary work which had been produced in England up to that
time. The Exhibition was repeated at the same place the following
year, at the same time, and also the year after. Since then, however,
the exhibitions of the Society have been held triennially, the latest
in January 1910 being the ninth.
It is obvious that exhibitions of this kind involve many more
difficulties of organization and management than ordinary picture
shows. The very fact of having to deal with such a variety of work as
was submitted, and the conditions under which work in decoration
is generally done (making it difficult for the artist to retain
possession of his work for exhibition purposes) make the formation of
such an exhibition at all no easy matter. Then there were two open and
palpable dangers to be encountered. The danger of being swamped by a
great influx of amateur work, as it is generally understood, on the
one hand, and the danger of merely commercial work getting the upper
hand on the other. To keep
Along the narrow strip of herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown
was a delicate matter, and it was easy to wander off into the regions
on either hand. For in spite of the immense activity and industry,
the independent artists in design and handicraft were but few, and
although many inventive brains and skilled hands might be disguised
as "---- and Company," they had to be discovered; the bushel had to
be taken away and the light put upon the candlestick of publicity,
and this appeared to be a trial to some. It might be thought to be
of small importance, this matter of assigning artistic authorship or
credit for any part of the work, where it was due; and it may be quite
true that when men have reached the point when artistic tradition and
social condition both favour a fraternal co-operation in production,
they can afford to sink the individual claim to distinction in the
collective pride of saying, "This is _our_ work." But we have
not reached that stage yet, and it seems only common fairness, if
individual and artistic responsibility is attached to a work, the
credit should go with these, and be assigned in the proper quarter. In
these days of commercial competition, and sculptor's "ghosts," it is
perhaps hardly surprising that the assertion of such a principle
might produce a little consternation, and also in cases of a great
multiplicity of cooks it might easily be understood to be embarrassing
to distribute properly the individual responsibility for spoiling the
broth, and therefore not wonderful that it should in some instances
have been shirked altogether.
As another indication of the way the wind was blowing, an Association
was formed this same year (1888) for the Advancement of Art in
Association with Industry--a somewhat large order. Almost everything
and everybody had had their congresses and why not Art? So an Art
Congress was arranged to take place at Liverpool in December of
that year. It was properly divided into sections for the separate
discussion of painting, architecture, sculpture, and decorative or
applied art, as the phrase goes. It may be mentioned here that the
Society of Arts had before this formed a special committee to arrange
for lectures and discussions on "The Applied Arts," and had also
offered prizes to art-workmen for excellence in various departments
of handicraft, and had held a small exhibition of such works in their
rooms in the Adelphi. Well, the Congress at Liverpool duly met, and
every one having a particular axe to grind brought it to the common
grindstone of public discussion. It was a fairly representative
parliament. The royal academician sat down with the socialist; the
scientific colour theorist fed with the practical decorator; the
industrial villager faced the manufacturer; the art critic and the
painter mingled their tears, and all were led to the pasture by a
gentle Fine Art professor. Some home truths were spoken and there were
many interesting papers and discussions, but whether we were really
nearer solving the problem how to bring about the marriage of Art and
Industry is doubtful, though the Association had another campaign at
Edinburgh the following year and one since at Birmingham. Association
and discussion among people of common interests is of course good, but
Art is a subject by its very nature difficult to deal with in words,
although perhaps more is said about it in these days than almost any
other subject--and here am I still adding to the sum!
A hair perhaps divides the false and true.
We have no word-symbols for defining those delicate shades of
difference so important to the artist, and to be perpetually
qualifying is fatiguing. It is useful to consider art in its relation
to life; to consider how it is affected by economic conditions, to
study its history and influence, and the lives of its workers. One can
even proceed a certain distance with general principles, but finally
we must get down to the solid ground of practice to solve its real
problems.
All these movements may be but fluttering leaves in the wind, but
at least they serve to show its direction. The colours of spring
sometimes resemble those of autumn; but the former are distinguished
by a certain daintiness and delicacy: a soft bloom of silver and
russet comes over the woods before the cloud-like green drapes them
for the coming summer. When we see delicate and harmonious dyes and
patterns in the fabrics of the windows of commerce, when we see dainty
gowns in the street, expressing the fair forms of their wearers with
the grace of flowers; when we see a certain sense of relation and
harmony of tint in the most ordinary arrangements of paint and paper
in the interiors of our houses: when our chairs and couches not
unfrequently show lines of good breeding; when we find books on the
table which have been considered by their printers and designers
as works of art as well as of literature, and thus give a double
pleasure, since they satisfy more than one of the senses--well, we
begin to think that something has happened to us; some new spirit has
breathed upon the land, that such refinements should be possible to
the moderate citizen, remembering that such things but a few years ago
could not be had for love or money. We might still be happy were it
not for the whirlwind of trade, and the whirligig of fashion which
occasionally seem to coquette with art, as a child plays with a toy,
but soon turn away to continue their mad chase after a supposititious
"novelty." Happily they leave some quiet corners unswept, as they
have always done, or we could never have known what the homes of our
ancestors were like. But how many still does England hold of those
delightful places full of the pathos of old time, where each dumb
thing of wood or iron, or copper, each fragment of faded tapestry
seems to have the speech of romance.
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.