ARE we not all weary of him, that venerable impostor fresh from the steps
of the Piazza di Spagna, who, in the leisure moments that he can spare
from his customary organ, makes the round of the studios and is waited
for in Holland Park? Do we not all recognize him, when, with the gay
_insouciance_ of his nation, he reappears on the walls of our summer
exhibitions as everything that he is not, and as nothing that he is,
glaring at us here as a patriarch of Canaan, here beaming as a brigand
from the Abruzzi? Popular is he, this poor peripatetic professor of
posing, with those whose joy it is to paint the posthumous portrait of
the last philanthropist who in his lifetime had neglected to be
photographed,—yet he is the sign of the decadence, the symbol of decay.
For all costumes are caricatures. The basis of Art is not the Fancy
Ball. Where there is loveliness of dress, there is no dressing up. And
so, were our national attire delightful in colour, and in construction
simple and sincere; were dress the expression of the loveliness that it
shields and of the swiftness and motion that it does not impede; did its
lines break from the shoulder instead of bulging from the waist; did the
inverted wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were these things
brought about, as brought about they will be, then would painting be no
longer an artificial reaction against the ugliness of life, but become,
as it should be, the natural expression of life’s beauty. Nor would
painting merely, but all the other arts also, be the gainers by a change
such as that which I propose; the gainers, I mean, through the increased
atmosphere of Beauty by which the artists would be surrounded and in
which they would grow up. For Art is not to be taught in Academies. It
is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist.
The real schools should be the streets. There is not, for instance, a
single delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of the
Greeks, which is not echoed exquisitely in their architecture. A nation
arrayed in stove-pipe hats and dress-improvers might have built the
Pantechnichon possibly, but the Parthenon never. And finally, there is
this to be said: Art, it is true, can never have any other claim but her
own perfection, and it may be that the artist, desiring merely to
contemplate and to create, is wise in not busying himself about change in
others: yet wisdom is not always the best; there are times when she sinks
to the level of common-sense; and from the passionate folly of those—and
there are many—who desire that Beauty shall be confined no longer to the
_bric-à-brac_ of the collector and the dust of the museum, but shall be,
as it should be, the natural and national inheritance of all,—from this
noble unwisdom, I say, who knows what new loveliness shall be given to
life, and, under these more exquisite conditions, what perfect artist
born? _Le milieu se renouvelant_, _l’art se renouvelle_.