The Magician in “Aladdin” may possibly have neglected the study of men,
for the study of alchemical books; but it is certain that in spite of
his profession he was no conjuror. He knew nothing of human nature, or
the everlasting set of the current of human affairs. If, when he
fraudulently sought to obtain possession of the wonderful Lamp, and went
up and down, disguised, before the flying-palace, crying New Lamps for
Old ones, he had reversed his cry, and made it Old Lamps for New ones,
he would have been so far before his time as to have projected himself
into the nineteenth century of our Christian Era.
This age is so perverse, and is so very short of faith—in consequence,
as some suppose, of there having been a run on that bank for a few
generations—that a parallel and beautiful idea, generally known among
the ignorant as the Young England hallucination, unhappily expired
before it could run alone, to the great grief of a small but a very
select circle of mourners. There is something so fascinating, to a mind
capable of any serious reflection, in the notion of ignoring all that
has been done for the happiness and elevation of mankind during three or
four centuries of slow and dearly-bought amelioration, that we have
always thought it would tend soundly to the improvement of the general
public, if any tangible symbol, any outward and visible sign, expressive
of that admirable conception, could be held up before them. We are happy
to have found such a sign at last; and although it would make a very
indifferent sign, indeed, in the Licensed Victualling sense of the word,
and would probably be rejected with contempt and horror by any Christian
publican, it has our warmest philosophical appreciation.
In the fifteenth century, a certain feeble lamp of art arose in the
Italian town of Urbino. This poor light, Raphael Sanzio by name, better
known to a few miserably mistaken wretches in these later days, as
Raphael (another burned at the same time, called Titian), was fed with a
preposterous idea of Beauty—with a ridiculous power of etherealising,
and exalting to the very Heaven of Heavens, what was most sublime and
lovely in the expression of the human face divine on Earth—with the
truly contemptible conceit of finding in poor humanity the fallen
likeness of the angels of God, and raising it up again to their pure
spiritual condition. This very fantastic whim effected a low revolution
in Art, in this wise, that Beauty came to be regarded as one of its
indispensable elements. In this very poor delusion, Artists have
continued until this present nineteenth century, when it was reserved
for some bold aspirants to “put it down.”
The Pre-Raphael Brotherhood, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the dread Tribunal
which is to set this matter right. Walk up, walk up; and here,
conspicuous on the wall of the Royal Academy of Art in England, in the
eighty-second year of their annual exhibition, you shall see what this
new Holy Brotherhood, this terrible Police that is to disperse all
Post-Raphael offenders, has “been and done!”
You come—in this Royal Academy Exhibition, which is familiar with the
works of WILKIE, COLLINS, ETTY, EASTLAKE, MULREADY, LESLIE, MACLISE,
TURNER, STANFIELD, LANDSEER, ROBERTS, DANBY, CRESWICK, LEE, WEBSTER,
HERBERT, DYCE, COPE, and others who would have been renowned as great
masters in any age or country—you come, in this place, to the
contemplation of a Holy Family. You will have the goodness to discharge
from your minds all Post-Raphael ideas, all religious aspirations, all
elevating thoughts; all tender, awful, sorrowful, ennobling, sacred,
graceful, or beautiful associations; and to prepare yourselves, as
befits such a subject—Pre-Raphaelly considered—for the lowest depths of
what is mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting.
You behold the interior of a carpenter’s shop. In the foreground of that
carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy,
in a bed-gown; who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the
stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent
gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling
woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for
any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat)
she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the
vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England. Two almost
naked carpenters, master and journeyman, worthy companions of this
agreeable female, are working at their trade; a boy, with some small
flavor of humanity in him, is entering with a vessel of water; and
nobody is paying any attention to a snuffy old woman who seems to have
mistaken that shop for the tobacconist’s next door, and to be hopelessly
waiting at the counter to be served with half an ounce of her favourite
mixture. Wherever it is possible to express ugliness of feature, limb,
or attitude, you have it expressed. Such men as the carpenters might be
undressed in any hospital where dirty drunkards, in a high state of
varicose veins, are received. Their very toes have walked out of Saint
Giles’s.
This, in the nineteenth century, and in the eighty-second year of the
annual exhibition of the National Academy of Art, is the Pre-Raphael
representation to us, Ladies and Gentlemen, of the most solemn passage
which our minds can ever approach. This, in the nineteenth century, and
in the eighty-second year of the annual exhibition of the National
Academy of Art, is what Pre-Raphael Art can do to render reverence and
homage to the faith in which we live and die! Consider this picture
well. Consider the pleasure we should have in a similar Pre-Raphael
rendering of a favourite horse, or dog, or cat; and, coming fresh from a
pretty considerable turmoil about “desecration” in connexion with the
National Post Office, let us extol this great achievement, and commend
the National Academy!
In further considering this symbol of the great retrogressive principle,
it is particularly gratifying to observe that such objects as the
shavings which are strewn on the carpenter’s floor are admirably
painted; and that the Pre-Raphael Brother is indisputably accomplished
in the manipulation of his art. It is gratifying to observe this,
because the fact involves no low effort at notoriety; everybody knowing
that it is by no means easier to call attention to a very indifferent
pig with five legs, than to a symmetrical pig with four. Also, because
it is good to know that the National Academy thoroughly feels and
comprehends the high range and exalted purposes of Art; distinctly
perceives that Art includes something more than the faithful portraiture
of shavings, or the skilful colouring of drapery—imperatively requires,
in short, that it shall be informed with mind and sentiment; will on no
account reduce it to a narrow question of trade-juggling with a palette,
palette-knife, and paint-box. It is likewise pleasing to reflect that
the great educational establishment foresees the difficulty into which
it would be led, by attaching greater weight to mere handicraft, than to
any other consideration—even to considerations of common reverence or
decency; which absurd principle, in the event of a skilful painter of
the figure becoming a very little more perverted in his taste, than
certain skilful painters are just now, might place Her Gracious Majesty
in a very painful position, one of these fine Private View Days.
Would it were in our power to congratulate our readers on the hopeful
prospects of the great retrogressive principle, of which this thoughtful
picture is the sign and emblem! Would that we could give our readers
encouraging assurance of a healthy demand for Old Lamps in exchange for
New ones, and a steady improvement in the Old Lamp Market! The
perversity of mankind is such, and the untoward arrangements of
Providence are such, that we cannot lay that flattering unction to their
souls. We can only report what Brotherhoods, stimulated by this sign,
are forming; and what opportunities will be presented to the people, if
the people will but accept them.
In the first place, the Pre-Perspective Brotherhood will be presently
incorporated, for the subversion of all known rules and principles of
perspective. It is intended to swear every P. P. B. to a solemn
renunciation of the art of perspective on a soup-plate of the willow
pattern; and we may expect, on the occasion of the eighty-third Annual
Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in England, to see some pictures
by this pious Brotherhood, realising HOGARTH’S idea of a man on a
mountain several miles off, lighting his pipe at the upper window of a
house in the foreground. But we are informed that every brick in the
house will be a portrait; that the man’s boots will be copied with the
utmost fidelity from a pair of Bluchers, sent up out of Northamptonshire
for the purpose; and that the texture of his hands (including four
chilblains, a whitlow, and ten dirty nails) will be a triumph of the
Painter’s art.
A Society, to be called the Pre-Newtonian Brotherhood, was lately
projected by a young gentleman, under articles to a Civil Engineer, who
objected to being considered bound to conduct himself according to the
laws of gravitation. But this young gentleman, being reproached by some
aspiring companions with the timidity of his conception, has abrogated
that idea in favour of a Pre-Galileo Brotherhood now flourishing, who
distinctly refuse to perform any annual revolution round the Sun, and
have arranged that the world shall not do so any more. The course to be
taken by the Royal Academy of Art in reference to this Brotherhood is
not yet decided upon; but it is whispered that some other large
Educational Institutions in the neighbourhood of Oxford are nearly ready
to pronounce in favour of it.
Several promising Students connected with the Royal College of Surgeons
have held a meeting, to protest against the circulation of the blood,
and to pledge themselves to treat all the patients they can get, on
principles condemnatory of that innovation. A Pre-Harvey-Brotherhood is
the result, from which a great deal may be expected—by the undertakers.
In literature, a very spirited effort has been made, which is no less
than the formation of a P. G. A. P. C. B., or Pre-Gower and
Pre-Chaucer-Brotherhood, for the restoration of the ancient English
style of spelling, and the weeding out from all libraries, public and
private, of those and all later pretenders, particularly a person of
loose character named SHAKESPEARE. It having been suggested, however,
that this happy idea could scarcely be considered complete while the art
of printing was permitted to remain unmolested, another society, under
the name of the Pre-Laurentius Brotherhood, has been established in
connexion with it, for the abolition of all but manuscript books. These
MR. PUGIN has engaged to supply, in characters that nobody on earth
shall be able to read. And it is confidently expected by those who have
seen the House of Lords, that he will faithfully redeem his pledge.
In Music, a retrogressive step, in which there is much hope, has been
taken. The P. A. B., or Pre-Agincourt Brotherhood has arisen, nobly
devoted to consign to oblivion Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and every
other such ridiculous reputation, and to fix its Millennium (as its name
implies) before the date of the first regular musical composition known
to have been achieved in England. As this Institution has not yet
commenced active operations, it remains to be seen whether the Royal
Academy of Music will be a worthy sister of the Royal Academy of Art,
and admit this enterprising body to its orchestra. We have it on the
best authority, that its compositions will be quite as rough and
discordant as the real old original—that it will be, in a word, exactly
suited to the pictorial Art we have endeavoured to describe. We have
strong hopes, therefore, that the Royal Academy of Music, not wanting an
example, may not want courage.
The regulation of social matters, as separated from the Fine Arts, has
been undertaken by the Pre-Henry-the-Seventh Brotherhood, who date from
the same period as the Pre-Raphael Brotherhood. This society, as
cancelling all the advances of nearly four hundred years, and reverting
to one of the most disagreeable periods of English History, when the
Nation was yet very slowly emerging from barbarism, and when gentle
female foreigners, come over to be the wives of Scottish Kings, wept
bitterly (as well they might) at being left alone among the savage
Court, must be regarded with peculiar favour. As the time of ugly
religious caricatures (called mysteries), it is thoroughly Pre-Raphael
in its spirit; and may be deemed the twin brother to that great society.
We should be certain of the Plague among many other advantages, if this
Brotherhood were properly encouraged.
All these Brotherhoods, and any other society of the like kind, now in
being or yet to be, have at once a guiding star, and a reduction of
their great ideas to something palpable and obvious to the senses, in
the sign to which we take the liberty of directing their attention. We
understand that it is in the contemplation of each Society to become
possessed, with all convenient speed, of a collection of such pictures;
and that once, every year, to wit upon the first of April, the whole
intend to amalgamate in a high festival, to be called the Convocation of
Eternal Boobies.