the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an
artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the
artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on
canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day;
to paint the man, in short, as well as his features; in arrangement of
colours to treat a flower as his key, not as his model.
This is now understood indifferently well--at least by dressmakers. In
every costume you see attention is paid to the key-note of colour
which runs through the composition, as the chant of the Anabaptists
through the _Prophète_, or the Huguenots' hymn in the opera of that
name.
[Illustration]
_A Rebuke_
[Sidenote: _The World_, Dec. 9, 1885.]
No Birmingham election, no Chamberlain speech, no _Reynolds_ or
_Dispatch_ article, could bring the aristocracy more strongly into
ridicule and contempt than does the coarsely coloured cartoon of
"Newmarket" accompanying the winter number of _Vanity Fair_. From it
one learns that the Dukes, Duchesses, and turf persons generally,
frequenting the Heath, are a set of blob-headed stumpy dwarfs....
ATLAS.
_"Les points sur les i"_
[Sidenote: _The World_, Dec. 16, 1885.]
I agree with you, O Atlas of ages, that completeness is a reason for
ceasing to exist; but even indignation might be less vague than is
your righteous anger at _Vanity's_ Christmas cartoon. Surely you might
have helped the people, who scarcely distinguish between the original
and impudent imitation, to know that this faded leaf is not from the
book of Carlo Pellegrini, the master who has taught them all--that
they can never learn?
[Illustration]
_MR. WHISTLER'S_
"_TEN O'CLOCK_"
[Illustration]
_London_, 1888
[Illustration]
_Delivered in London_
Feb. 20, 1885
_At Cambridge_
March 24
_At Oxford_
April 30
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:
It is with great hesitation and much misgiving that I appear before
you, in the character of The Preacher.
If timidity be at all allied to the virtue modesty, and can find
favour in your eyes, I pray you, for the sake of that virtue, accord
me your utmost indulgence.
I would plead for my want of habit, did it not seem preposterous,
judging from precedent, that aught save the most efficient effrontery
could be ever expected in connection with my subject--for I will not
conceal from you that I mean to talk about Art. Yes, Art--that has of
late become, as far as much discussion and writing can make it, a sort
of common topic for the tea-table.
Art is upon the Town!--to be chucked under the chin by the passing
gallant--to be enticed within the gates of the householder--to be
coaxed into company, as a proof of culture and refinement.
If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Art--or what is
currently taken for it--has been brought to its lowest stage of
intimacy.
The people have been harassed with Art in every guise, and vexed with
many methods as to its endurance. They have been told how they shall
love Art, and live with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls
covered with paper, their very dress taken to task--until, roused at
last, bewildered and filled with the doubts and discomforts of
senseless suggestion, they resent such intrusion, and cast forth the
false prophets, who have brought the very name of the beautiful into
disrepute, and derision upon themselves.
Alas! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned. She has naught in
common with such practices. She is a goddess of dainty thought--reticent
of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better
others.
She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection
only--having no desire to teach--seeking and finding the beautiful in
all conditions and in all times, as did her high priest Rembrandt,
when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews'
quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not
Greeks.
As did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, among the Venetians, while not
halting to change the brocaded silks for the classic draperies of
Athens.
As did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez, whose Infantas, clad in
inæsthetic hoops, are, as works of Art, of the same quality as the
Elgin marbles.
No reformers were these great men--no improvers of the way of others!
Their productions alone were their occupation, and, filled with the
poetry of their science, they required not to alter their
surroundings--for, as the laws of their Art were revealed to them they
saw, in the development of their work, that real beauty which, to
them, was as much a matter of certainty and triumph as is to the
astronomer the verification of the result, foreseen with the light
given to him alone. In all this, their world was completely severed
from that of their fellow-creatures with whom sentiment is mistaken
for poetry; and for whom there is no perfect work that shall not be
explained by the benefit conferred upon themselves.
Humanity takes the place of Art, and God's creations are excused by
their usefulness. Beauty is confounded with virtue, and, before a work
of Art, it is asked: "What good shall it do?"
Hence it is that nobility of action, in this life, is hopelessly
linked with the merit of the work that portrays it; and thus the
people have acquired the habit of looking, as who should say, not
_at_ a picture, but _through_ it, at some human fact, that shall, or
shall not, from a social point of view, better their mental or moral
state. So we have come to hear of the painting that elevates, and of
the duty of the painter--of the picture that is full of thought, and
of the panel that merely decorates.
* * * * *
A favourite faith, dear to those who teach, is that certain periods
were especially artistic, and that nations, readily named, were
notably lovers of Art.
So we are told that the Greeks were, as a people, worshippers of the
beautiful, and that in the fifteenth century Art was engrained in the
multitude.
That the great masters lived in common understanding with their
patrons--that the early Italians were artists--all--and that the
demand for the lovely thing produced it.
That we, of to-day, in gross contrast to this Arcadian purity, call
for the ungainly, and obtain the ugly.
That, could we but change our habits and climate--were we willing to
wander in groves--could we be roasted out of broadcloth--were we
to do without haste, and journey without speed, we should again
_require_ the spoon of Queen Anne, and pick at our peas with the fork
of two prongs. And so, for the flock, little hamlets grow near
Hammersmith, and the steam horse is scorned.
Useless! quite hopeless and false is the effort!--built upon fable,
and all because "a wise man has uttered a vain thing and filled his
belly with the East wind."
Listen! There never was an artistic period.
There never was an Art-loving nation.
In the beginning, man went forth each day--some to do battle, some to
the chase; others, again, to dig and to delve in the field--all that
they might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among
them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not,
and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange
devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd.
This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren--who cared not
for conquest, and fretted in the field--this designer of quaint
patterns--this deviser of the beautiful--who perceived in Nature about
him curious curvings, as faces are seen in the fire--this dreamer
apart, was the first artist.
And when, from the field and from afar, there came back the
people, they took the gourd--and drank from out of it.
And presently there came to this man another--and, in time, others--of
like nature, chosen by the Gods--and so they worked together; and soon
they fashioned, from the moistened earth, forms resembling the gourd.
And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently
they went beyond the slovenly suggestion of Nature, and the first vase
was born, in beautiful proportion.
And the toilers tilled, and were athirst; and the heroes returned from
fresh victories, to rejoice and to feast; and all drank alike from the
artists' goblets, fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the
craftsman's pride, and understanding not his glory in his work;
drinking at the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that it
was beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was none other!
And time, with more state, brought more capacity for luxury, and it
became well that men should dwell in large houses, and rest upon
couches, and eat at tables; whereupon the artist, with his artificers,
built palaces, and filled them with furniture, beautiful in proportion
and lovely to look upon.
And the people lived in marvels of art--and ate and drank out of
masterpieces--for there was nothing else to eat and to drink out of,
and no bad building to live in; no article of daily life, of luxury,
or of necessity, that had not been handed down from the design of the
master, and made by his workmen.
And the people questioned not, _and had nothing to say in the matter_.
So Greece was in its splendour, and Art reigned supreme--by force of
fact, not by election--and there was no meddling from the outsider.
The mighty warrior would no more have ventured to offer a design for
the temple of Pallas Athene than would the sacred poet have proffered
a plan for constructing the catapult.
And the Amateur was unknown--and the Dilettante undreamed of!
And history wrote on, and conquest accompanied civilisation, and Art
spread, or rather its products were carried by the victors among the
vanquished from one country to another. And the customs of cultivation
covered the face of the earth, so that all peoples continued to use
what _the artist alone produced_.
And centuries passed in this using, and the world was flooded with all
that was beautiful, until there arose a new class, who discovered
the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of the sham.
Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the gewgaw.
The taste of the tradesman supplanted the science of the artist, and
what was born of the million went back to them, and charmed them, for
it was after their own heart; and the great and the small, the
statesman and the slave, took to themselves the abomination that was
tendered, and preferred it--and have lived with it ever since!
And the artist's occupation was gone, and the manufacturer and the
huckster took his place.
And now the heroes filled from the jugs and drank from the bowls--with
understanding--noting the glare of their new bravery, and taking pride
in its worth.
And the people--this time--had much to say in the matter--and all were
satisfied. And Birmingham and Manchester arose in their might--and Art
was relegated to the curiosity shop.
* * * * *
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as
the keyboard contains the notes of all music.
But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with
science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful--as the
musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth
from chaos glorious harmony.
To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say
to the player, that he may sit on the piano.
That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue,
as it is one whose truth is universally taken for granted. Nature is
very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be
said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of
things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a
picture is rare, and not common at all.
This would seem, to even the most intelligent, a doctrine almost
blasphemous. So incorporated with our education has the supposed
aphorism become, that its belief is held to be part of our moral
being, and the words themselves have, in our ear, the ring of
religion. Still, seldom does Nature succeed in producing a picture.
The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, the sky is bereft of
cloud, and without, all is of iron. The windows of the Crystal Palace
are seen from all points of London. The holiday-maker rejoices
in the glorious day, and the painter turns aside to shut his eyes.
How little this is understood, and how dutifully the casual in Nature
is accepted as sublime, may be gathered from the unlimited admiration
daily produced by a very foolish sunset.
The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but
the joy of the tourist is to recognise the traveller on the top. The
desire to see, for the sake of seeing, is, with the mass, alone the
one to be gratified, hence the delight in detail.
And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a
veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the
tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the
night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is
before us--then the wayfarer hastens home; the working man and the
cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to
understand, as they have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, has
sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son
and her master--her son in that he loves her, her master in that he
knows her.
To him her secrets are unfolded, to him her lessons have become
gradually clear. He looks at her flower, not with the enlarging lens,
that he may gather facts for the botanist, but with the light of the
one who sees in her choice selection of brilliant tones and delicate
tints, suggestions of future harmonies.
He does not confine himself to purposeless copying, without thought,
each blade of grass, as commended by the inconsequent, but, in the
long curve of the narrow leaf, corrected by the straight tall stem, he
learns how grace is wedded to dignity, how strength enhances
sweetness, that elegance shall be the result.
In the citron wing of the pale butterfly, with its dainty spots of
orange, he sees before him the stately halls of fair gold, with their
slender saffron pillars, and is taught how the delicate drawing high
upon the walls shall be traced in tender tones of orpiment, and
repeated by the base in notes of graver hue.
In all that is dainty and lovable he finds hints for his own
combinations, and thus is Nature ever his resource and always at his
service, and to him is naught refused.
Through his brain, as through the last alembic, is distilled the
refined essence of that thought which began with the Gods, and which
they left him to carry out.
Set apart by them to complete their works, he produces that
wondrous thing called the masterpiece, which surpasses in perfection
all that they have contrived in what is called Nature; and the Gods
stand by and marvel, and perceive how far away more beautiful is the
Venus of Melos than was their own Eve.
* * * * *
For some time past, the unattached writer has become the middleman in
this matter of Art, and his influence, while it has widened the gulf
between the people and the painter, has brought about the most
complete misunderstanding as to the aim of the picture.
For him a picture is more or less a hieroglyph or symbol of
story. Apart from a few technical terms, for the display of which
he finds an occasion, the work is considered absolutely from a
literary point of view; indeed, from what other can he consider
it? And in his essays he deals with it as with a novel--a
history--or an anecdote. He fails entirely and most naturally to
see its excellences, or demerits--artistic--and so degrades Art,
by supposing it a method of bringing about a literary climax.
It thus, in his hands, becomes merely a means of perpetrating
something further, and its mission is made a secondary one, even as a
means is second to an end.
The thoughts emphasised, noble or other, are inevitably attached to
the incident, and become more or less noble, according to the
eloquence or mental quality of the writer, who looks the while, with
disdain, upon what he holds as "mere execution"--a matter belonging,
he believes, to the training of the schools, and the reward of
assiduity. So that, as he goes on with his translation from canvas to
paper, the work becomes his own. He finds poetry where he would feel
it were he himself transcribing the event, invention in the intricacy
of the _mise en scène_, and noble philosophy in some detail of
philanthropy, courage, modesty, or virtue, suggested to him by the
occurrence.
All this might be brought before him, and his imagination be appealed
to, by a very poor picture--indeed, I might safely say that it
generally is.
Meanwhile, the _painter's_ poetry is quite lost to him--the amazing
invention that shall have put form and colour into such perfect
harmony, that exquisiteness is the result, he is without
understanding--the nobility of thought, that shall have given the
artist's dignity to the whole, says to him absolutely nothing.
So that his praises are published, for virtues we would blush to
possess--while the great qualities, that distinguish the one work from
the thousand, that make of the masterpiece the thing of beauty that it
is--have never been seen at all.
That this is so, we can make sure of, by looking back at old reviews
upon past exhibitions, and reading the flatteries lavished upon men
who have since been forgotten altogether--but, upon whose works, the
language has been exhausted, in rhapsodies--that left nothing for the
National Gallery.
* * * * *
A curious matter, in its effect upon the judgment of these gentlemen,
is the accepted vocabulary of poetic symbolism, that helps them, by
habit, in dealing with Nature: a mountain, to them, is synonymous with
height--a lake, with depth--the ocean, with vastness--the sun, with
glory.
So that a picture with a mountain, a lake, and an ocean--however poor
in paint--is inevitably "lofty," "vast," "infinite," and
"glorious"--on paper.
* * * * *
There are those also, sombre of mien, and wise with the
wisdom of books, who frequent museums and burrow in crypts;
collecting--comparing--compiling--classifying--contradicting.
Experts these--for whom a date is an accomplishment--a hall mark,
success!
Careful in scrutiny are they, and conscientious of
judgment--establishing, with due weight, unimportant
reputations--discovering the picture, by the stain on the
back--testing the torso, by the leg that is missing--filling folios
with doubts on the way of that limb--disputatious and dictatorial,
concerning the birthplace of inferior persons--speculating, in much
writing, upon the great worth of bad work.
True clerks of the collection, they mix memoranda with ambition, and,
reducing Art to statistics, they "file" the fifteenth century, and
"pigeon-hole" the antique!
* * * * *
Then the Preacher "appointed"!
He stands in high places--harangues and holds forth.
Sage of the Universities--learned in many matters, and of much
experience in all, save his subject.
Exhorting--denouncing--directing.
Filled with wrath and earnestness.
Bringing powers of persuasion, and polish of language, to
prove--nothing.
Torn with much teaching--having naught to impart.
Impressive--important--shallow.
Defiant--distressed--desperate.
Crying out, and cutting himself--while the gods hear not.
Gentle priest of the Philistine withal, again he ambles pleasantly
from all point, and through many volumes, escaping scientific
assertion--"babbles of green fields."
* * * * *
So Art has become foolishly confounded with education--that all should
be equally qualified.
Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and breeding, are in no
way arguments for artistic result, it is also no reproach to the most
finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land that he be
absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music--that in his
heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's
needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's "C minor Symphony."
Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the admission a proof
of inferiority.
Art happens--no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it,
the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts
to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce.
This is as it should be--and all attempts to make it otherwise are due
to the eloquence of the ignorant, the zeal of the conceited.
The boundary line is clear. Far from me to propose to bridge it
over--that the pestered people be pushed across. No! I would save them
from further fatigue. I would come to their relief, and would lift
from their shoulders this incubus of Art.
Why, after centuries of freedom from it, and indifference to it,
should it now be thrust upon them by the blind--until wearied and
puzzled, they know no longer how they shall eat or drink--how they
shall sit or stand--or wherewithal they shall clothe themselves--without
afflicting Art.
But, lo! there is much talk without!
Triumphantly they cry, "Beware! This matter does indeed concern us. We
also have our part in all true Art!--for, remember the 'one touch of
Nature' that 'makes the whole world kin.'"
True, indeed. But let not the unwary jauntily suppose that Shakespeare
herewith hands him his passport to Paradise, and thus permits him speech
among the chosen. Rather, learn that, in this very sentence, he
is condemned to remain without--to continue with the common.
This one chord that vibrates with all--this "one touch of Nature" that
calls aloud to the response of each--that explains the popularity of
the "Bull" of Paul Potter--that excuses the price of Murillo's
"Conception"--this one unspoken sympathy that pervades humanity,
is--Vulgarity!
Vulgarity--under whose fascinating influence "the many" have elbowed
"the few," and the gentle circle of Art swarms with the intoxicated
mob of mediocrity, whose leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud,
where the Gods once spoke in whisper!
And now from their midst the Dilettante stalks abroad. The amateur is
loosed. The voice of the æsthete is heard in the land, and catastrophe
is upon us.
The meddler beckons the vengeance of the Gods, and ridicule threatens
the fair daughters of the land.
And there are curious converts to a weird _culte_, in which all
instinct for attractiveness--all freshness and sparkle--all woman's
winsomeness--is to give way to a strange vocation for the
unlovely--and this desecration in the name of the Graces!
Shall this gaunt, ill-at-ease, distressed, abashed mixture of
_mauvaise honte_ and desperate assertion call itself artistic, and
claim cousinship with the artist--who delights in the dainty, the
sharp, bright gaiety of beauty?
No!--a thousand times no! Here are no connections of ours.
We will have nothing to do with them.
Forced to seriousness, that emptiness may be hidden, they dare not
smile--
While the artist, in fulness of heart and head, is glad, and laughs
aloud, and is happy in his strength, and is merry at the pompous
pretension--the solemn silliness that surrounds him.
For Art and Joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and
ready hand--fearing naught, and dreading no exposure.
Know, then, all beautiful women, that we are with you. Pay no heed, we
pray you, to this outcry of the unbecoming--this last plea for the
plain.
It concerns you not.
Your own instinct is near the truth--your own wit far surer guide than
the untaught ventures of thick heeled Apollos.
What! will you up and follow the first piper that leads you down
Petticoat Lane, there, on a Sabbath, to gather, for the week, from the
dull rags of ages wherewith to bedeck yourselves? that, beneath
your travestied awkwardness, we have trouble to find your own dainty
selves? Oh, fie! Is the world, then, exhausted? and must we go back
because the thumb of the mountebank jerks the other way?
Costume is not dress.
And the wearers of wardrobes may not be doctors of taste!
For by what authority shall these be pretty masters? Look well, and
nothing have they invented--nothing put together for comeliness' sake.