ART.
"Give honour unto Luke Evangelist:
For he it was (the aged legends say)
Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
Are symbols also in some deeper way,
She looked through these to God, and was God's priest.
"And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,
Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
Ere the night cometh and she may not work."
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
When we consider how much of the direction of life depends upon the
quality of our taste, upon right discernment in what we like and
dislike, it is evident that few things can be more important in
education than to direct this directing force, and both to learn and
teach the taste for what is best as far as possible in all things. For
in the matter of taste nothing is unimportant. Taste influences us in
every department of life, as our tastes are, so are we. The whole
quality of our inner and outer life takes its tone from the things in
which we find pleasure, from our standard of taste. If we are severe in
our requirements, hard to please, and at least honest with ourselves, it
will mean that a spur of continual dissatisfaction pricks us, in all we
do, into habitual striving for an excellence which remains beyond our
reach. But on the other hand we shall have to guard against that peevish
fastidiousness which narrows itself down until it can see nothing but
defects and faults, and loses the power of humbly and genuinely
admiring. This passive dissatisfaction which attempts nothing of its
own, and only finds fault with what is done by others, grows very fast
if it is allowed to take hold, and produces a mental habit of merely
destructive criticism or perpetual scolding. Safe in attempting nothing
itself, unassailable and self-righteous as a Pharisee, this spirit can
only pull down but not build up again. In children it is often the
outcome of a little jealousy and want of personal courage; they can be
helped to overcome it, but if it is allowed to grow up, dissatisfaction
allied to pusillanimity are very difficult to correct.
On the other hand, if we are amiably and cheerfully inclined to admire
things in general in a popular way, easily pleased and not exacting, we
shall both receive and give a great deal of pleasure, but it will be all
in a second and third and fourth-rate order of delight, and although
this comfortable turn of mind is saved from much that is painful and
jarring, it is not exempt from the danger of itself jarring continually
upon the feelings of others, of pandering to the downward tendency in
what is popular, and, in education, of debasing the standard of taste
and discrimination for children. To be swayed by popularity in matters
of taste is to accept mediocrity wholesale. We have left too far behind
the ages when the taste of the people could give sound and true judgment
in matters of art; we have left them at a distance which can be measured
by what lies between the greatest Greek tragedies and contemporary
popular plays. Consternation is frequently expressed at seeing how
theatres of every grade are crowded with children of all classes in
life, so it is from these popular plays that they must be learning the
first lessons of dramatic criticism.
There are only rare instances of taste which is instinctively true, and
the process of educational pressure tends to level down original thought
in children, as the excess of magazine and newspaper reading works in
the same direction for older minds, so that true, independent taste
becomes more rare; the result does not seem favourable to the
development of the best discernment in those who ought to sway the taste
of their generation. If taste in art is entirely guided by that of
others, and especially by fashion, it cannot attain to the possession of
an independent point of view; yet this in a modest degree every one with
some training might aspire to. But under the sway of fashion taste is
cowed; it becomes conventional, and falls under the dominion of the
current price of works of art. On the other hand it is more unfortunate
to be self-taught in matters of taste than in any other order of things.
In this point taste ranks with manners, which are, after all, a
department of the same region of right feeling and discernment. If taste
is untaught and spontaneous, it is generally unreliable and without
consistency. If self-taught it can hardly help becoming dogmatic and
oracular, as some highly gifted minds have become, making themselves the
supreme court of appeal for their own day.
But trained taste is grounded in reverence and discipleship, a lowly and
firm basis for departure, from which it may, if it has the power to do
or to discern, rise in its strength, and leave behind those who have
shown the way, or soar in great flights beyond their view. So it has
often been seen in the history of art, and such is the right order of
growth. It needs the living voice and the attentive mind, the influence
of trained and experienced judgment to guide us in the beginning, but
the guide must let us go at last and we must rely upon ourselves.
The bad effect of being either self-taught or conventional is
exclusiveness; in one case the personal bias is too marked, in the other
the temporary aspect appeals too strongly. In the education of taste it
is needful that the child should "eat butter and honey," not only so as
to refuse the evil and choose the good, but also to judge between good
and good, and to know butter from honey and honey from butter. This is
the principal end of the study of art in early education. The _doing_ is
very elementary, but the principles of discernment are something for
life, feeding the springs of choice and delight, and making sure that
they shall run clear and untroubled.
Teaching concerning art which can be given to girls has to be approached
with a sense of responsibility from conviction of the importance of its
bearing on character as a whole. Let anyone who has tried it pass in
review a number of girls as they grow up, and judge whether their
instinct in art does not give a key to their character, always supposing
that they have some inclination to reflect on matters of beauty, for
there are some who are candidly indifferent to beauty if they can have
excitement. They have probably been spoiled as children and find it hard
to recover. Excitement has worn the senses so that their report grows
dull and feeble. Imagination runs on other lines and requires
stimulants; there is no stillness of mind in which the perception of
beauty and harmony and fitness can grow up.
There are others--may they be few--in whose minds there is little room for
anything but success. Utilitarians in social life, their determination
is to get on, and this spirit pervades all they do; it has the making of
the hardest-grained worldliness: to these art has nothing to say. But
there are others to whom it has a definite message, and their response
to it corresponds to various schools or stages of art. There are some
who are daring and explicit in their taste; they resent the curb, and
rush into what is extravagant with a very feeble protest against it from
within themselves. Beside them are simpler minds, merely exuberant, for
whom there can never be enough light or colour in their picture of life.
If they are gifted with enough intelligence to steady their joyful
constitution of mind, these will often develop a taste that is fine and
true. In the background of the group are generally a few silent members
of sensitive temperament and deeper intuition, who see with marvellous
quickness, but see too much to be happy and content, almost too much to
be true. They incline towards another extreme, an ideal so high-pitched
as to become unreal, and it meets with the penalty of unreality in
over-balancing itself. Children nearly always pull to one side or the
other; it is a work of long patience even to make them accept that there
should be a golden mean. Did they ever need it so much as they do now?
Probably each generation in turn, from Solomon's time onward, has asked
the same question. But in the modern world there can hardly have been a
time in which the principle of moderation needed to be more sustained,
for there has never been a time when circumstances made man more daring
in face of the forces of nature, and this same daring in other
directions, less beautiful, is apt to become defiant and unashamed of
excess. It asserts itself most loudly in modern French art, but we are
following close behind, less logical and with more remaining traditions
of correctness, but influenced beyond what we like to own.
In the education of girls, which is subject to so many limitations, very
often short in itself, always too short for what would be desirable to
attain, the best way to harmonize aesthetic teaching is not to treat it
in different departments, but to centre all round the general history of
art. This leaves in every stage the possibility of taking up particular
branches of art study, whether historical, or technical, or practical,
and these will find their right place, not dissociated from their
antecedents and causes, not paramount but subordinate, and thus rightly
proportioned and true in their relation to the whole progress of mankind
in striving after beauty and the expression of it.
The history of art in connexion with the general history of the human
race is a complement to it, ministering to the understanding of what is
most intimate, stamping the expression of the dominant emotion on the
countenance of every succeeding age. This is what its art has left to
us, a more confidential record than its annals and chronicles, and more
accessible to the young, who can often understand feelings before they
can take account of facts in their historical importance. In any case
the facts are clothed in living forms there where belief and aspiration
and feeling have expressed themselves in works of art. If we value for
children the whole impression of the centuries, especially in European
history, more than the mere record of changes, the history of art will
allow them to apprehend it almost as the biographies of great persons
who have set their signature upon the age in which they lived.
As each of the fine arts has its own history which moves along divergent
or parallel lines in different countries and periods, and as each
development or check is bound up with the history of the country or
period and bears its impress, the interpretation of one is assisted and
enriched by the other, and both are linked together to illuminate the
truth. It is only necessary to consider the position of Christian art in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the changes wrought by the
Renaissance, to estimate the value of some knowledge of it in giving to
children a right understanding of those times and of what they have left
to the world. Again, the inferences to be drawn from the varied
developments of Gothic architecture in France, Spain, and England are
roads indicated to what is possible to explore in later studies, both in
history and in art. And so the schools of painting studied in their
history make ready the way for closer study in after years. Pugin's
"Book of Contrasts" is an illustration full of suggestive power as to
the service which may be rendered in teaching by comparing the art of
one century with that of another, as expressive of the spirit of each
period, and a means of reading below the surface.
Without Pugin's bitterness the same method of contrast has been used
most effectively to put before children by means of lantern slides and
lectures the manner in which art renders truth according to the various
ideals and convictions of the artists. It is a lesson in itself, a
lesson in faith, in devotion, as well as in art and in the history of
man's mind, to show in succession, or even side by side, though the
shock is painful, works of art in which the Christian mysteries are
rendered in an age of faith or in one of unbelief. They can see in the
great works of Catholic art how faith exults in setting them forth, with
undoubting assurance, with a theological grasp of their bearings and
conclusions, with plenitude of conviction and devotion that has no
afterthoughts; and in contrasting with these the strained efforts to
represent the same subjects without the illumination of theology they
will learn to measure the distance downwards in art from faith to
unbelief.
The conclusions may carry them further, to judge from the most modern
paintings of the tone of mind of their own time, of its impatience and
restlessness and want of hope. Let them compare the patient finish, the
complete thought given to every detail in the works of the greatest
painters, the accumulated light and depth, the abounding life, with the
hasty, jagged, contemporary manner of painting, straining into harshness
from want of patience, tense and angular from want of real vitality,
exhausted from the absence of inward repose. They will comment for
themselves upon the pessimism to which so many surrender themselves,
taking with them their religious art, with its feeble Madonnas and
haggard saints, without hope or courage or help, painted out of the
abundance of their own heart's sadness. This contrast carries much
teaching to the children of to-day if they can understand it, for each
one who sets value upon faith and hope and resolution and courage in art
is a unit adding strength to the line of defence against the invasions
of sadness and dejection of spirit.
These considerations belong to the moral and spiritual value of the
study of art, in the early years of an education intended to be general.
They are of primary importance although in themselves only indirect
results of the study. As to its direct results, it may be said in
general that two things must be aimed at during the years of school
life, appreciation of the beautiful in the whole realm of art, and some
very elementary execution in one or other branch, some doing or making
according to the gift of each one.
The work on both sides is and can be only preparation, only the
establishment of principles and the laying of foundations; if anything
further is attempted during school life it is apt to throw the rest of
the education out of proportion, for in nothing whatever can a girl
leaving the school-room be looked upon as having finished. It is a great
deal if she is well-grounded and ready to begin. Even the very branches
of study to which a disproportioned space has been allowed will suffer
the penalty of it later on, for the narrow basis of incomplete
foundations tends to make an ill-balanced superstructure which cannot
bear the stress of effort required for perfection without falling into
eccentricity or wearing itself out. Both misfortunes have been seen
before now when infant prodigies have been allowed to grow on one side
only. Restraint and control and general building up tend to strengthen
even the talent which has apparently to be checked, by giving it space
and equilibrium and the power of repose. Even if art should be their
profession or their life-work in any form, the sacrifices made for
general education will be compensated in the mental and moral balance of
their work.
If general principles of art have been kept before the minds of
children, and the history of art has given them some true ideas of its
evolution, they are ready to learn the technique and practice of any
branch to which they may be attracted. But as music and painting are
more within their reach than other arts, it is reasonable that they
should be provided for in the education of every child, so that each
should have at least the offer and invitation of an entrance into those
worlds, and latent talents be given the opportunity of declaring
themselves. Poetry has its place apart, or rather it has two places, its
own in the field of literature, and another, as an inspiration pervading
all the domain of the fine arts, allied with music by a natural
affinity, connected with painting on the side of imagination, related in
one way or another to all that is expressive of the beautiful. Children
will feel its influence before they can account for it, and it is well
that they should do so--to feel it is in the direction of refusing the
evil and choosing the good.
Music is coming into a more important place among educational influences
now that the old superstition of making every child play the piano is
passing away. It was an injustice both to the right reason of a child
and to the honour of music when it was forced upon those who were
unwilling and unfit to attain any degree of excellence in it. We are
renouncing these superstitions and turning to something more widely
possible--to cultivate the audience and teach them to listen with
intelligence to that which without instruction is scarcely more than
pleasant noise, or at best the expression of emotion. The intellectual
aspect of music is beginning to be brought forward in teaching children,
and with this awakening the whole effect of music in education is
indefinitely raised. It has scarcely had time to tell yet, but as it
extends more widely and makes its way through the whole of our
educational system it may be hoped that the old complaints, too well
founded, against the indifference and carelessness of English audiences,
will be heard no more. We shall never attain to the kind of religious
awe which falls upon a German audience, or to its moods of emotion, but
we may reach some means of expression which the national character does
not forbid, showing at least that we understand, even though we must not
admit that we feel.
It is impossible to suggest what may be attained by girls of exceptional
talent, but in practice if the average child-students, with fair musical
ability, can at the end of their school course read and sing at sight
fairly easy music, and have a good beginning of intelligent playing on
one or two instruments, they will have brought their foundations in
musical practice up to the level of their general education. If with
some help they can understand the structure of a great musical work, and
perhaps by themselves analyse an easy sonata, they will be in a position
to appreciate the best of what they will hear afterwards, and if they
have learnt something of the history of music and of the works of the
great composers, their musical education will have gone as far as
proportion allows before they are grown up. Some notions of harmony,
enough to harmonize by the most elementary methods a simple melody, will
be of the greatest service to those whose music has any future in it.
Catholic girls have a right and even a duty to learn something of the
Church's own music; and in this also there are two things to be
learnt--appreciation and execution. And amongst the practical
applications of the art of music to life there is nothing more
honourable than the acquired knowledge of ecclesiastical music to be
used in the service of the Church. When the love and understanding of
its spirit are acquired the diffusion of a right tone in Church music is
a means of doing good, as true and as much within the reach of many
girls as the spread of good literature; and in a small and indirect way
it allows them the privilege of ministering to the beauty of Catholic
worship and devotion.
The scope of drawing and painting in early education has been most ably
treated of in many general and special works, and does not concern us
here except in so far as it is connected with the training of taste in
art which is of more importance to Catholics than to others, as has been
considered above, in its relation to the springs of spiritual life, to
faith and devotion, and also in so far as taste in art serves to
strengthen or to undermine the principles on which conduct is based. We
have to brace our children's wills to face restraint, to know that they
cannot cast themselves at random and adrift in the pursuit of art, that
their ideals must be more severe than those of others, and that they
have less excuse than others if they allow these ideals to be debased.
They ought to learn to be proud of this restraint, not to believe
themselves thwarted or feel themselves galled by it, but to understand
that it stands for a higher freedom by the side of which ease and
unrestraint are more like servitude than liberty; it stands for the
power to refuse the evil and choose the good; it stands for intellectual
and moral freedom of choice, holding in check the impulse and
inclination that are prompted from within and invited from without to
escape from control.
The best teaching in this is to show what is best, and to give the
principles by which it is to be judged. To talk of what is bad, or less
good, even by way of warning, is less persuasive and calculated even to
do harm to girls whose temper of mind is often "quite contrary."
Warnings are wearisome to them, and when they refer to remote dangers,
partly guessed at, mostly unknown, they even excite the spirit of
adventure to go and find out for themselves, just as in childhood
repeated warnings and threats of the nursery-maids and maiden aunts are
the very things which set the spirit of enterprise off on the voyage of
discovery, a fact which the head nurse and the mother have found out
long ago, and so have learnt to refrain from these attractive
advertisements of danger. So it is with teachers. We learn by experience
that a trumpet blast of warning wakes the echoes at first and rouses all
that is to be roused, but also that if it is often repeated it dulls the
ear and calls forth no response at all. Quiet positive teaching
convinces children; to show them the best things attracts them, and once
their true allegiance is given to the best, they have more security
within themselves than in many danger signals set up for their safety.
What is most persuasive of all is a whole-hearted love for real truth
and beauty in those who teach them. Their own glow of enthusiasm is
caught, light from light, and taste from taste, and ideal from ideal;
warning may be lost sight of, but this is living spirit and will last.
What children can accomplish by the excellent methods of teaching
drawing and painting which are coming into use now, it is difficult to
say. Talent as well as circumstances and conditions of education differ
very widely in this. But as preparation for intelligent appreciation
they should acquire some elementary principles of criticism, and some
knowledge of the history and of the different schools of painting,
indications of what to look for here and there in Europe and likewise of
how to look at it; this is what they can take with them as a foundation,
and in some degree all can acquire enough to continue their own
education according to their opportunities. Matter-of-fact minds can
learn enough not to be intolerable, the average enough to guide and
safeguard their taste. They are important, for they will be in general
the multitude, the public, whose judgment is of consequence by its
weight of numbers; they will by their demand make art go upwards or
downwards according to their pleasure. For the few, the precious few who
are chosen and gifted to have a more definite influence, all the love
they can acquire in their early years for the best in art will attach
them for life to what is sane and true and lovely and of good fame.
The foundations of all this lie very deep in human nature, and taste
will be consistent with itself throughout the whole of life. It
manifests itself in early sensitiveness and responsiveness to artistic
beauty. It determines the choice in what to love as well as what to
like. It will assert itself in friendship, and estrangement in matters
of taste is often the first indication of a divergence in ideals which
continues and grows more marked until at some crossroads one takes the
higher path and the other the lower and their ways never meet again.
That higher path, the disinterested love of beauty, calls for much
sacrifice; it must seek its pleasure on ly in the highest, and not look
for a first taste of delight, but a second, when the power of criticism
has been schooled by a kind of asceticism to detect the choice from the
vulgar and the true from the insincere. This spirit of sacrifice must
enter into every form of training for life, but above all into the
training of the Catholic mind. It has a wide range and asks much of its
disciples, a certain renunciation and self-restraint in all things which
never completely lets itself go. Catholic art bears witness to this:
"Where a man seeks himself there he falls from love," says a Kempis, and
this is proved not only in the love of God, but in what makes the glory
of Christian art, the love of beauty and truth in the service of faith.