“WE have not talked much about politics, eh? And a good thing, too.
One only got really well into the atmosphere of political life at
Washington; and then, after all, one heard more about literary
copyright than anything else. I find I have made a note of a letter I
read somewhere recently from an American painter, in support of taxing
importations of fine art, more particularly pictures. It seems to
me this is a grave mistake. I had no idea that protection, as it is
called, existed so generally in America.”
“You have here,” I said, “the extreme of protective duties, as we in
England have the other extreme of an unreciprocal free trade.”
“I can understand a reasonable protective tariff for a commercial
industry; but art should surely go free. For a country that as yet
possesses no great school of painting nor sculpture of her own, to
obstruct, nay, almost prohibit, the entry of foreign work, must be to
handicap her own rising genius. The examples of the famous masters of
Greece and Rome, of France, and Holland, and England, are necessary for
the American student, and free traffic in the works of great modern
artists would have an elevating tendency on public taste.”
“As a rule American artists are favorable to the free importation
of foreign pictures. They favor it from your own stand-point, the
educational point of view,” I said.
“Moreover, I can quite imagine American artists who are permitted all
the privileges of the art schools and galleries of Europe, and who sell
their pictures in the Old World without let or hindrance, being annoyed
at the inhospitality of their own country in this respect,” he replied;
“Boughton, Bierstadt, Whistler, and other well-known American painters,
for example.”
“And so they are, no doubt.”
“As a matter of fact public opinion in the United States, if it could
be tested, would, I imagine, be on the side of admitting pictures,
_bric-à-brac_, and books without duty; though the progress of what is
called the modern free-trade movement is likely rather to retard than
advance the interests of a free importation of fine-art productions.”
“In what way?” he asked. “The leading idea of a great reduction of
tariffs is in the direction of abolition for protective purposes, a
tariff for revenue only. In that case luxuries only would be heavily
taxed, and the so-called free-traders, who support this view, would
probably count in pictures and _bric-à-brac_ with luxuries.”
“I should call them necessities,” Irving replied; “for the mind and
the imagination require feeding just as much as the body. Besides, how
are the Americans going to judge of the work of their own painters
without comparison, and current daily comparison too, with foreign
artists? The stage is as much of a luxury as paintings. Why let the
English actor and his artistic baggage and belongings come in? It is a
pleasant thing to remember that, under all circumstances, whatever the
troubles between the two countries, America has always welcomed English
players, and that has given her some of the best theatrical families
she has,—the Booths, Jeffersons, Wallacks, and others. If the same
enlightened policy in regard to painting, pottery, and _bric-à-brac_
had been carried out in the matter of the stage, we should have seen
just as fine an art appreciation applied to pictures as to plays and
players. I am sure of it. If the musician and his works, if the opera,
had been handicapped as art in other directions is, would America hold
her high place in respect of choral societies, orchestral bands? And
would she enjoy, as she does, the grand operas that are now produced in
all her great cities? No. While, as you know, I claim no other credit
for my method of presenting Shakespeare and the legitimate drama upon
the stage than a performance of managerial duty, I am quite sure that,
had European stage-art and artists been hampered for twenty years by
restrictive taxes and other fiscal obstructions, the Lyceum Company and
work would not have been welcomed as they have been, wherever we have
pitched our tent. The same freedom for paintings would have made Watts,
Millais, Tadema, Leighton, Pettie, Leader, Cole, Long, not to mention
the works of earlier masters, as familiar here as at home, and would
have crowded American homes with examples, original and copies, of the
best schools of Europe. Would not that have helped American painters?
Of course it would.”