•"^t- ••*>-»•• 
 
 '
 
 XSI 
 
 • V - -. ' -- 

 
 7-i ?8 £«- 
 
 ^rsa 
 
 
 f 
 
 « M 
 
 IP 
 
 
 I '< ' 
 
 4 liwi 
 
 ft ir 
 
 m L i • / W / /'* V A/S
 
 TEN LECTURES ON ART,
 
 . . ■ , ■ • > 1 
 
 TEN 
 LECTURES ON ART 
 
 EY 
 
 EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A. 
 
 DIRECTOR FOR ART, SCIENCE AND ART. DEPARTMENT 
 LATE SLADE TKOFESSOK, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 ^Tonboit 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited, 193, Piccadilly 
 
 1880 
 
 \_All rights reserved] 
 
 • ■ • » ■ » 
 
 • • •■»»» 
 
 • ..... 
 
 . ... 
 
 . > 
 
 . . 
 
 1 .
 
 AND TAY 
 
 BLK ..ILL.
 
 I 
 
 |\J ARTS 
 
 PS ? 7* 
 
 /££0 
 
 gsbkaicb 
 
 K 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 TO 
 
 SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A 
 
 V 
 
 5*fc 
 
 *t
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It is rather through the accident of my having been 
 offered the Slade Professorship at University College 
 than through any conviction on my part that I had a 
 call to instruct the public by my pen, that the ten lectures 
 which compose this book came to be written. The first 
 of the series, it is true, was delivered at the college before 
 my appointment there was talked of, but I was much 
 pressed to do it, and I undertook it with much misgiving. 
 My position as Professor seemed to require a certain 
 number of formal lectures, although practical instruction 
 in art was the main object of my appointment ; and these 
 led to others being given outside for the benefit of a public 
 which lies in wait for any one they can catch for an even- 
 ing's instruction. As regards the lectures, they speak for 
 themselves. In spite of difficulties attending the subject, 
 I have come to the conclusion that it is much easier to write
 
 via 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 about art than to practise it ; and am led to the further 
 conclusion that, as example is always better than precept, 
 the more time I devote to painting in future and the less 
 to public lecturing, the better it will be for my art and 
 for those who are interested in it. The progress that has 
 been made in art during the last ten years has been so 
 rapid, that much of what I said in my first lecture has 
 become obsolete ; the remarks I there made on the English 
 school of painting especially, though true enough then, are 
 now, through the rise of a younger school of artists, and 
 the influence they have had upon older men, less applic- 
 able. I come to-day from the "varnishing day" of the 
 Royal Academy Exhibition with a pleasant conviction that 
 there is on all sides a more decided tendency towards a 
 higher standard in art, both as regards treatment of subject 
 and execution, than I have ever before noticed; and I 
 have no hesitation in attributing this sudden improvement 
 in the main to the stimulus given to us all by the election 
 of our new President, and to the influence of the energy, 
 thoroughness, and nobility of aim which he displays in 
 everything he undertakes. I was probably the first, when 
 we were both young and in Rome together, to whom he 
 had the opportunity of showing the disinterested kindness
 
 PREFACE. « 
 
 which he has invariably extended to beginners whom he 
 sees to be interested in their work; and to him, as the 
 friend and master who first directed my ambition, and 
 whose precepts I never fail to recall when at work (as 
 many another will recall them), I venture to dedicate this 
 book with affection and respect. 
 
 Edward J. Poynter. 
 April 24//:, 1S79.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 DECORATIVE ART . I 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 OLD AND NEW ART . . . . 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 •uJ SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION . 
 
 62 
 
 94 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE 115 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Tilt: TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS '35
 
 *» CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VI, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF NATURE 165 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 VALUE OF PRIZES 1"2 } 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY jSi} 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN OX MICHELANGELO . . 21J 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE .... 2J2
 
 I > 
 . . > I • > 
 
 
 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 
 
 This lecture was written first in 1869 for University 
 College, before my appointment there as Slade Professor. 
 It was afterwards considerably augmented and read at 
 Birmingham, and again, with alterations, at Manchester. 
 As first written it was intended to draw attention to 
 the great " realistic " powers of Michelangelo, the appre- 
 ciation of which had been forced upon me by a recent 
 visit to Rome, and again by Braun's photographs of the 
 Sistine Chapel, which had just been published. It may 
 be said that, until these were done, there were portions 
 of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel which were completely 
 unknown to all who had not had the rare fortune of 
 seeing the originals from a scaffolding. There is much 
 
 6
 
 2 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 in this lecture which has now become commonplace ; but 
 at the time it was written the ideas it expresses were not 
 so widely diffused ; I publish it almost as it was written, 
 omitting only some too dangerous generalizations. 
 
 The qualities of mind required to produce a work of 
 art are two — the power of design, and the power of 
 imitation. 
 
 The power of design, again, is of two kinds — con- 
 structive and ornamental. 
 
 The first of these, or constructive design, has its simplest 
 expression in the form which a savage gives to the ordinary 
 objects of his daily use ; in the shape which he gives to 
 his hatchet, or to the rude vessels in which he cooks his 
 food. 
 
 The second, or ornamental design, in the patterns which 
 he cuts on the prow of his boat, or traces with a stick 
 on his pottery, or the mud walls of his hut. 
 
 The power of imitation shows itself in its simplest form 
 in his wretched attempts to represent animal forms when 
 he introduces them into his decorative efforts, and is 
 therefore necessarily a part of ornamental design. 
 
 Thus we may have — first, constructive design pure and 
 simple. Then, ornamental design as applied to construc- 
 tive work, either purely composed of patterns without
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 3 
 
 reference to natural forms, or including the imitation of 
 objects, and thirdly, we may have a kind of ornamental, 
 design of which the imitation or realization of nature is the 
 principal and most important aim. It is obvious that 
 these three divisions include the whole world of art. It 
 is impossible that I can touch in the space of one lecture 
 on anything approaching to all the various branches of 
 constructive and decorative art, but I will attempt to 
 define the form of truth which I think to be the basis of 
 beauty in all these classes of work. 
 
 Among uncivilised peoples the art of design, both orna- 
 mental and constructive, is generally far in advance of 
 that of imitation, for whereas their attempts in the latter 
 direction are mostly of a very feeble kind, or so hideous 
 as to be positively alarming, very frequently the forms 
 of their pottery and the patterns with which they decorate 
 it and other things are of a beauty which the most edu- 
 cated artist of taste could not surpass. The art of design, 
 is, or I should say, has been till within the last fifty or 
 sixty years, employed in every work which men's hands 
 produce ; for I think I am right in saying that until the 
 progress of civilisation developed the principle that beauty 
 is not essential to our happiness, nothing that man did 
 with his hands was wrought without a desire, however 
 slight, of making it pleasant to look at, at least from his 
 own point of view. It is only since the enormous advance 
 
 l; 2
 
 4 LECTURES ON ART. . 
 
 made in the science of engineering that the necessity of 
 beauty has been completely ignored : but it has now got to 
 this point, that men take a pride in showing how deficient 
 in interest a structure can be made ; for they reckon it not 
 only useless, but a waste of time, which we all know means 
 money, to give a single thought to their work which should 
 redeem it from utter hideousness, and help to make it 
 agreeable to the eye ; their practical minds revolt from 
 so foolish an idea. I do not wish to discuss now the 
 question of the utility of beauty ; I cannot but believe that 
 the beauty of things is of use as far as our happiness in 
 this world is concerned, that some connection between 
 beauty and usefulness there must be, and that that state 
 of things must be wrong, where, in the name of utility and 
 progress we have to suffer from such oppressive nightmares 
 of engineering work as in the last twenty years have grown 
 up in our great cities. The worst and most tasteless efforts 
 in architecture that our great towns afford — and there is 
 no lack of them — are better than the outrages that our 
 men of science inflict on us in their railway bridges and 
 other works ; for the former may afford a trifling pleasure, 
 even if of an unreasonable kind, to people ignorant of 
 art, while the latter are only regarded even by the most 
 uncultivated as at best an unavoidable necessity in the 
 progress of things. I do not even believe that the hideous- 
 ness of these things is a necessity of their construction ;
 
 DECORATIVE ART. S 
 
 they are clone out of a kind of brag to show what a triumph 
 of cheapness engineering can achieve. Besides, I refuse 
 to believe in the necessity for construction of that kind 
 being done entirely from the point of view of cheapness 
 as long as money is wasted in the reckless way that is 
 common in railway affairs, and as long as enormous fortunes 
 are made out of them. But this is a digression from the 
 main subject of my lecture; nor, I think, would any 
 amount of protest, supported by the best arguments in the 
 world, be of any avail against what is considered so 
 necessary by the scientific and practical men who are the 
 pride of our age and of our country. 
 
 I will return then to the point I was considering. If 
 we examine the elements of beauty in constructive design 
 we shall find that two things are essential. First, fitness 
 for the purpose which the object made is intended to fulfil; 
 and second, good workmanship in making it. 
 
 In those objects which are made simply for use without 
 afterthought of beauty, fitness for the purpose for which 
 they are designed is evidently an essential. Whatever 
 beauty is to be found in this class of objects is inherent, 
 so to speak, in their nature, or rather, 1 should say, arises 
 from the necessity of their construction. Art, or the artistic 
 sense, has nothing to do with determining their forms, 
 which are entirely suggested by perfect adaptation to their 
 purpose, and vary but little in any country or at any
 
 6 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 period of the world's history. Among them I may take as 
 examples the more ordinary implements of agriculture, 
 carpentry, &c; the form of a spade, or a rake, or a hatchet, 
 or an oar is determined entirely by its appropriateness to 
 the purpose for which it is intended. All this kind of 
 objects has a certain beauty of its own which you will 
 recognize when 1 speak of them as picturesque, the word 
 usually applied to the beauty of a homely object, but 
 which is none the less a beauty of a very important kind, 
 and is the basis of the beauty of all works of constructive 
 design. Sometimes we find this beauty to be of a very 
 high order, as in the case of the plough, the beautiful lines 
 of which have always been the admiration of artists, and 
 which no alterations of detail can spoil ; all kinds of 
 sailing craft, too, will occur to you as possessing beauty 
 of a special kind, which arises entirely from the necessities 
 of their construction, and in nowise because there has 
 been a desire to make a beautiful object, and I could 
 mention many other things of the kind. We have then 
 here what I may term the beauty of fitness, which is really 
 nothing but a form of truth or realism. When a manu- 
 factured object is so made as to be perfectly fitted for 
 the purpose for which it is designed, when, as in the case 
 of simple objects of universal use the form has been so 
 modified by continual and gradual improvements (without 
 ulterior intention of making it more beautiful) as to
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 7 
 
 have all that is requisite and nothing that is superfluous, 
 and when in addition it is constructed in the manner best 
 calculated to make it strong and durable, it has this beauty, 
 which I call the beauty of fitness. Now these are the 
 characteristics of all that kind of work of which the rules 
 are handed down from father to son, or from master to 
 apprentice, and which is called therefore traditional work ; 
 consequently, we always find that traditional work has some 
 elements of beauty in it ; and this is why artists and people 
 of artistic tastes admire and frequently collect ordinary 
 and perhaps trifling objects of traditional workmanship ; 
 things which are often a cause of wonder and sometimes 
 of ridicule to those who ha^e not considered the matter 
 from this point of view, and so cannot see any beauty in 
 common things ; but it is the inherent beauty of truth in 
 them which makes them interesting to the collectors. 
 
 Such things as these, however, cannot be said to be 
 works of high artistic order ; for that a second element of 
 beauty is required, namely, beauty of workmanship. By 
 this I understand that, in addition to a knowledge of a 
 strong and durable method of construction, the workman 
 should have an eye capable of appreciating nice delicacies 
 of proportion, and a trained and skilful hand which shall 
 enable him to execute them with perfect neatness and 
 precision of finish ; he must have the power of carrying out 
 to perfection the idea of the design. Good workmanship
 
 8 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 is but rarely to be met with at the present time; the 
 workman has got such a habit of doing bad and cheap 
 work, that he cannot (or will not) copy what any skilled 
 workman could have done sixty years ago. A skilled work- 
 man now, with rare exceptions, is nothing but a machine, 
 or rather part of the machinery which he serves, repeating 
 from morning to night the same action with the monotonous 
 and perfect regularity of a machine, and utterly incapable 
 of doing anything else, or he is a workman skilled only 
 in concealing the badness of the work he produces. Up 
 to the beginning of this century good work was common ; 
 the tradition of it was universal ; indeed, it is almost im- 
 possible to find any sort of old work which is not con- 
 structed on good principles and well executed. But with 
 the rapid increase of trade, consequent on the introduction 
 of steam and steam-machinery, came the desire of rapidly 
 making money, and people soon found out that substitut- 
 ing bad work for good was the best way of doing this, 
 so that the tradition of good workmanship soon began to 
 die out, and has now for some time been extinct, and has 
 to be created again. 
 
 Now this beauty of fitness, which is nothing more or 
 less than truth or reality of construction, and which I 
 have spoken of as the first essential, depends on much 
 more than the mere fact that the object is useful for 
 tne purpose for which it was intended. It means that
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 9 
 
 every point should be attended to which is advantageous 
 for that purpose — that every portion of the fabric should 
 have something to do with the construction, and not be 
 introduced falsely for the sake of ornament, or as fre- 
 quently happens for no purpose at all ; also that every 
 portion of the work should be what it appears to be, 
 and do the work which it appears to do. It is not by 
 any means sufficient that a chair should be comfortable 
 and firm to make it a well-designed chair ; it must be 
 designed in the best way to produce these and other 
 results. So that a chair made of common materials, 
 and even roughly made (roughly, that is, as regards the 
 finish of its appearance, but finished as regards the per- 
 fect fitting and fitness of its parts), may be an object of 
 more intrinsic beauty than the performance of a fashion- 
 able upholsterer; and if to this beauty of construction 
 be added beauty of workmanship, it is capable of be- 
 coming a true work of art without addition of decoration 
 or ornament of any kind. In nothing more than in our 
 dwelling-houses and furniture is this truth of construction 
 necessary; with the exception of isolated works of good 
 architects and artists, there is nothing in which it is 
 more ignored. And here I must pause to interpolate 
 a vehement protest against the usual application of the 
 words ugly and handsome or beautiful. The very 
 general idea is that plainness is ugliness in these matters
 
 io LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 (is not indeed the word plain a synonym for ugly?). 
 I mean that furniture is considered ugly unless it be 
 decorated with scrolls or inlaying or gilding, and has 
 useless and unnecessary curved lines about it. For a 
 thing to be called handsome, the word so commonly 
 applied to houses and furniture, it must have cost a 
 good deal of money; it must be well overlaid with orna- 
 ment, no matter how debased, inappropriate, or badly 
 done ; and it must cost, or appear to have cost, a good 
 deal of money. A house is not considered handsome 
 unless it is covered with stucco or artificial stone orna- 
 ments. The architect who in the present day builds 
 for a man of wealth a plain brick-house, whose beauty 
 consists in its proportions, and in the good execution 
 of whatever detail of ornament there may be — such 
 houses as were built by thousands in the last century — 
 is a daring man, and is rarely to be found, for his com- 
 missions will be few. Let him run up a shoddy-house, 
 with staring plate-glass windows which let in twice as much 
 light as is wanted, and make one feel as if one were 
 sitting in the chilly open air ; let the structure be bad 
 in its proportions, and the rooms, staircases, and passages 
 ugly in shape, and very possibly ill-contrived for com- 
 fort, then let him cover it inside and out with mean- 
 ingless and tasteless ornament, as badly executed as it 
 is designed — above all, let it look as if it cost a great
 
 DECORATIVE ART. n 
 
 deal of money — let him, I say, build a thousand such, 
 and he will find a thousand wealthy men to occupy 
 them. If we examine into the cause of this state of 
 things, we shall find it to consist in more than a mere 
 change of fashion. Changes of fashion up to this pre- 
 sent century have always been from one kind of good 
 work to another. A Queen Anne house is different 
 from an Elizabethan house, but both are equally strongly 
 and well built, and both have elements of beauty in 
 them from their perfect construction and finish of detail ; 
 but the change of style in the present day is quite a 
 different matter; it is a change from a reality to a 
 sham. Is it worth while to consider wherein lies the 
 root of this evil ? I think it is ; and at the risk of 
 fatiguing you with what may appear to be somewhat 
 too much in the nature of a sermon, I will do so. It 
 is indeed the dread of appearing not to be able to 
 afford handsome things which is at the bottom of the 
 general decline of good work, which we find surrounding 
 us on all sides ; it is, combined with the other evil I 
 have spoken of, viz., the desire of rapidly making for- 
 tunes, the root of all that is bad and sham in art about 
 us. We English are not naturally an artistic people. 
 Do not let me be misunderstood. I do not mean to 
 say that there are not genuine artists of as high talent 
 in England as elsewhere, and that there are not
 
 12 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 connoisseurs of art as distinguished here as elsewhere, but 
 the class of each is a small one compared to the great 
 number of artists whose interest is more in the gain re- 
 sulting from their labours than in the labour itself, or to 
 the number of those who wish to gain the reputation of 
 connoisseurs without any very genuine love of art to 
 begin with ; and it is nothing more or less than the 
 desire of a people, not by nature artistically gifted, to 
 appear endowed with a taste for the beautiful, which 
 they do not and cannot possess, which causes the vast 
 multiplication of tasteless objects of art and art-manu- 
 facture with which we are inundated. Up to the end 
 of the last century, those people who had good taste, 
 and the means of cultivating it, did so with great suc- 
 cess, and by their patronage of good art at home and 
 the beautiful works they introduced from other more 
 favoured countries, enriched England with many most 
 valuable treasures of art. But, at the same time, those 
 who did not care for art, or who had no means to 
 patronise it, were content to live in a homely way, and 
 desired nothing beyond the rather homely, but always 
 well-contrived and well-executed things which supplied 
 their wants in the way of furniture and house-decora- 
 tion. Now, however, that a large proportion of people 
 with much money and little taste consider it necessary 
 to fill their houses with what are called handsome
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 13 
 
 things, those things are supplied to any extent — to such 
 an extent that it would be impossible for all the skilled 
 workmen in the kingdom to supply good work at the 
 rate at which it is wanted — so in its place is supplied 
 an enormous amount of meaningless and characterless 
 ornamental work, created for this class of people, who 
 think they have satisfied all the demands of good taste 
 by having the latest novelty ; the latest novelty generally 
 being something not new in form or design (or if new, 
 only because it has not been done before for very 
 shame), but done by the last new mechanical invention 
 for cheapening labour, or the last new invention for 
 making a flimsy sham take the place of good work not 
 understood or appreciated ; and thus the habit of doing 
 nothing but bad work is formed, and ignorance accepts 
 it all through the country. This is, I am afraid, a result 
 of our civilisation, and is as much a part of it, as it is 
 a part of it that the misery of one class of our popula- 
 tion is always increasing in proportion to the wealth 
 of another ; and just as no amount of charity, however 
 lavishly bestowed in almsgiving, will ever alleviate the 
 miserable condition of our poorer classes, so no amount 
 of what I may call almsgiving to art in the form of 
 buying pictures (no matter how high the prices given) 
 will ever change the poverty-stricken condition in which the 
 larger portion of our community finds itself with regard to
 
 i 4 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 art. This is a theme which it would not be difficult to en- 
 large upon to a wearisome extent, for the system of making 
 expensive shams take the place and assume the name of 
 beautiful work is so universal at this time and in this 
 country, is so part and parcel of the spirit of the age, that 
 people have really come to believe that progress means 
 this and nothing more. It is thought to be the greatest 
 advance in art and manufacture that this century has 
 made over all that have preceded it, that bad con- 
 struction and bad workmanship can be so concealed 
 by bad ornament as to be made to pass for a thing of 
 value. This would be distressing enough if we were 
 not proud of it ; but we are, and it is this which makes 
 one feel the hopelessness of any serious effort in the 
 cause of truth and beauty. But I have said enough on 
 this point for the present at all events, though the 
 causes I speak of are so real, that I shall have occasion 
 to allude to them and to their effects once or twice 
 again in the course of my lecture. 
 
 I will proceed with the consideration of the necessary 
 elements of beauty in constructive design. If I dwell 
 mostly on the beauty of well-constructed furniture, it is 
 not only because it is one of the chief necessities of 
 our lives, but because it serves best as an illustration 
 of all the points I am touching upon, not only in the 
 matter of truth of construction and good workmanship,
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 15 
 
 but in its capabilities for the application of the second 
 kind of design I spoke of, namely, ornamental design. 
 Also because there has really been a great move made 
 lately by certain architects and artists to furnish and 
 decorate our houses with something better than what 
 upholsterers supply us with so freely; moreover, there 
 are schools of design all over the kingdom for the pur- 
 pose of educating workmen, where all sorts of devices 
 are tried to supply them with the taste which has been 
 denied them by nature, and of which they have lost 
 the tradition. Now with regard to the cottage-chair I 
 introduced before my last long digression, do not imagine 
 that I mean that it is necessary to have such chairs in 
 our drawing-rooms — beautiful carving and beautiful in- 
 laying are most important additions to the beauty of 
 furniture — but I do assert that an old-fashioned cottage 
 arm-chair, constructed as it is for purely useful purposes, 
 constructed for strength combined with lightness, con- 
 structed for durability, constructed for comfort, and above 
 all, constructed by artificers who, knowing that they have 
 no decorative gift beyond a kind of modest and homely 
 taste arising partly from their purely traditional teaching, 
 have not attempted to add decoration which they do 
 not understand, — I say that chairs of this kind might 
 well take the place of most of what we hear called the 
 elegant chairs in our houses. Such furniture as this
 
 16 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 chair, which has served me for an illustration, is made 
 with few variations of form from tradition, and being 
 used for the commonest purposes, it has never been 
 thought worth while to art-educate the workman who 
 makes it; and while the furniture remains in its simple, 
 useful, and picturesque form, the workman has not ac- 
 quired that kind of half-knowledge which is so charac- 
 teristic of most of the art-workmen who have studied in 
 our schools of design, who have a peculiar knack (I am 
 speaking from experience, as having assisted for two 
 years in inspecting the designs and awarding the medals 
 at the annual national competition of the schools at 
 South Kensington), who have a peculiar gift for seizing 
 upon the half of an idea in a piece of good work or 
 ornament, and that always the wrong half. This is 
 plain-speaking ; but if the evil is to be remedied, and 
 we are all interested in the matter that much, it is only 
 by plain-speaking that it can be done. I believe one of 
 the great difficulties in finding good art-workmen to 
 arise from the fact that more money is to be made in 
 other branches of art than in designing or executing the 
 more useful kinds of decorative work. Any man gifted 
 with exceptional facility of design, immediately sets 
 himself to making water-colour drawings or painting 
 pictures, for he finds it a much more rapid means of 
 making money; and this is one of the results of the
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 17 
 
 notion so deeply ingrained in us — that art consists only 
 in painting pictures. But this whole matter of the Avorking 
 of our Schools of Design and of the condition of our 
 art-workmen is a separate branch of the subject of de- 
 corative work, and cannot be dismissed in a few words ; 
 to consider the matter properly, and the remedies that 
 might be applied, would require a separate lecture. 
 "We have therefore but two kinds of good work in furni- 
 ture (and other kinds of art-manufacture) possible. One 
 is this almost extinct traditional work I have spoken 
 of. and which remains only in the construction of the 
 most homely objects; and the other is the work of 
 highly-gifted and original minds, which has an indepen- 
 dent and higher quality of beauty than the other. Such 
 work as this, I need not say, is very rare, but we fortu- 
 nately have men among us capable of originating it, 
 and if it is rightly understood and followed, it is 
 capable of producing a school doing work scarcely 
 inferior to the original. Rightly understood, I say, for 
 it is only if rightly understood that it is possible for a 
 good tradition of work to arise out of it. I will not 
 dwell on the failures consequent on the efforts such 
 men have made ; it is sufficient to say that upholsterers 
 and house-decorators, unless their productions have been 
 under the immediate and careful control of architects 
 or artists of talent, have been just as successful in 
 
 c
 
 l8 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 seizing the wrong end of every idea which has been 
 given them, as they are in producing the meaningless 
 imitations of the more debased sort of last-century 
 tables and chairs, which constitute most of our drawing- 
 room furniture. I hope I have now said enough to 
 explain my meaning, when I say that Truth is the real 
 basis of Beauty in constructive design ; that without 
 reality of construction and good workmanship no object 
 of art-manufacture can have any claim to be considered 
 a work of art. 
 
 I will now pass to the consideration of ornamental 
 design. And first I will treat of it briefly in reference 
 to its application to constructive design, reserving for 
 the second part of my lecture that third class of work 
 which I spoke of where the rendering of nature is the 
 principal object of the artist. 
 
 I have spoken much about excellence of workmanship 
 being a necessary condition for a manufactured object 
 to be a good work of art. Indeed this is essential to 
 all artistic work, and is quite as important in all branches 
 of ornamental design as in construction. But there is 
 another form of Truth which is quite as needful, and 
 that is, that for decoration applied to construction to be 
 beautiful it must first of all be appropriate. Inappropriate 
 decoration will spoil the best designed and best 
 executed construction. I dwelt at length on this point
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 19 
 
 in my lecture at Birmingham, giving several illustrations 
 of what I considered bad decoration, but I will not do 
 so here as my lecture as delivered there was too long, 
 and would be longer still now with the additions that 
 I have since made in re-writing it. I will, however, 
 put into shorter form what I said there, merely saying 
 that the general principles I lay down will apply just 
 as well to one form of art-manufacture as another. I 
 have been asked to make some remarks specially ap- 
 plicable to the staple manufacture of this city and its 
 neighbourhood, but the fact is I have absolutely no special 
 knowledge concerning Calico-printing and hardly know 
 the condition that the industry is in at present. I do 
 not remember that this particular branch was repre- 
 sented to any extent at the Annual Competition for the 
 National Medals at South Kensington. I remember 
 the designs for printing muslins for dresses, and that 
 they showed particularly well, but I cannot remember 
 whether they came from this immediate neighbourhood or 
 not. However, as I have said, whatever general remarks 
 I make concerning appropriate decoration will apply 
 equally well to Calico-printing as to other branches of 
 art-manufacture. Certain remarks that I will make here 
 in regard to colour will be applicable. There is this 
 obvious difficulty in speaking both of patterns pure 
 and simple, and of colour, that there is absolutely no 
 
 c 2
 
 20 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 criterion by which we can judge of the beauty of a 
 pattern or of beauty of colour. Both these things de- 
 pend so entirely upon the capacity that the eye has for 
 judging of proportion or of harmony that there is nothing 
 to be said on the matter. If I say that mauve, magenta, 
 and all the new aniline dyes are offensive colours with 
 a harsh metallic tint which renders them utterly unfit 
 to be used, and impossible to harmonize in any kind 
 of ornamental work, whether in the dyeing of silks, the 
 printing of chintzes, muslins, or wall-paper, I only state 
 my own conviction, with which those will not agree 
 whose eyes are not offended with these colours. The 
 same thing happens with regard to patterns ; if I say that 
 a pattern is ugly, vulgar, and badly designed, I can 
 bring forward no argument in favour of my assertion, 
 for the thing admits of no proof. But if an imitation of 
 nature is introduced, I have some foundation for an 
 argument on the matter. I can say, for instance, that 
 the animals introduced into the ornament on the beauti- 
 ful bronze bowls of Assyrian workmanship in the British 
 Museum are perfect for decorative work of the kind, 
 for though done in the simplest possible manner, merely 
 engraved in outline without attempt at detail or relief, 
 they so thoroughly breathe the spirit of the creatures 
 represented and seize upon all the salient and most 
 important points of character that the most finished
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 21 
 
 sculpture or painting could not surpass them. Also I 
 can explain by examples what I mean by inappropriate 
 decoration, confining myself at present to certain objec- 
 tionable forms of decoration for furniture, condensing on 
 this point what I said at Birmingham. The illustration 
 that I first take I choose because the particular article 
 of furniture is so common in our drawing-rooms, and 
 because it happens to point the moral of my lecture 
 in many ways; because, besides showing what is bad, 
 I can also explain what I think might be good and appro- 
 priate. I should say that a bunch of roses or a lap- 
 dog, painted in a slovenly way on the black japan of a 
 coal-scuttle is as inappropriate a piece of decoration as 
 ever was devised, and would spoil instead of improving 
 the best contrived coal-scuttle. 1 Yet it is undoubtedly 
 one of the most successful ideas in the whole range of 
 our art-manufactures, for there is hardly a drawing-room 
 in the kingdom where there is not some such elegant work 
 of art to be seen. It is not difficult to trace the source 
 of this particular form of bad decoration ; it arises entirely 
 from a somewhat vulgar feeling, hidden in the depths of 
 our hearts, that there is something rather common-looking 
 in a coal-scuttle which makes it suitable enough for a 
 
 1 The reader will see by the date of this lecture that this passage 
 was written some years before Mr. Mark Tattison's use of this 
 illustration.
 
 22 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 kitchen, but out of place in a drawing-room ; hence the 
 introduction of the roses and the lap-dog (varied occa- 
 sionally by a picture of a church by moonlight) was 
 considered to give great elegance to what would other- 
 wise be rather an objectionable piece of furniture. Now 
 as a good fire is one of the glories of our rooms, I 
 cannot see that a coal-box is much out of place in them 
 even if we are obliged to have a black and unsightly 
 object ; nor do I see that when left in its simple un- 
 decorated condition it is necessarily so unsightly ; it is 
 a piece of furniture like another, and has its own in- 
 conspicuous place in the chimney-corner; and if it is not 
 an object we should single out for our admiration, it at 
 all events does not obtrude itself on our gaze. But 
 when it comes to be decorated with bad painting and 
 tawdry gilding it forces itself upon our notice as though 
 it were some kind of elegant vase for holding pot-pourri. 
 Fortunately, however, for those who like and can afford 
 handsome furniture there is a most simple way of making 
 a coal-scuttle a really decorative object in a most appro- 
 priate manner, and that is by making it of copper or 
 brass and keeping it polished ; moreover an admirably 
 appropriate form of decoration might be applied (the 
 idea is not my own, for I have seen it done once in 
 imitation of an old brass pail), by embossing the metal 
 of which they are made with a kind of repousse work ;
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 23 
 
 this might be very effective, but it requires a real artist 
 to do it well, and those are not easily to be found who 
 will devote their energies to the beautifying of so humble 
 an object. This instance of a painted coal-scuttle may 
 for all I know be trite enough with writers on the re- 
 vival of good art ; but I have chosen it for the reasons 
 I gave above, that is, on account of its being an extreme 
 case of inappropriate decoration, and also because it is 
 a very obvious one on account of the utter want of any 
 connecting idea between roses and coals. I will there- 
 fore continue to use it as an illustration to my arguments, 
 as one instance will serve to illustrate the matter as 
 well as a dozen. The incongruity which I have dwelt 
 upon, this disconnection of ideas between coals and 
 roses or churches by moonlight, is not the only cause 
 of inappropriateness of that form of decoration as applied 
 to objects of such ordinary use in our houses. We will 
 suppose some suitable subject to be chosen for its em- 
 bellishment ; let us say a landscape, representing the 
 mouth of a coal-pit. If this landscape were well painted 
 by a good artist every one, I think, would agree that it 
 was quite out of place on anything so subject to rough 
 usage as our coal-box ; a fortiori, if it is badly done it is 
 still more out of place, for bad work has no business to 
 be done at all ; so that even if the roses and lap-dog were 
 appropriate in one sense they would not be in another;
 
 24 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 they have no place on a coal-scuttle if well done, still 
 less if they are ill done. I can indeed imagine a kind 
 of painting which would be suitable where the things re- 
 presented would be so simply and conventionally treated 
 as to require only a skilful and intelligent workman to do 
 the painting, a man not necessarily fitted for a higher kind 
 of decorative art, such painting as we see in Oriental 
 lacquer-work; indeed this simple form of decorative 
 painting is the origin of all our modern japan-work 
 (witness the name) ; but the treatment of it has by this 
 time become entirely debased; the incessant craving for 
 novelty has led our workmen far away from the original 
 idea, so that they imagine a bad imitation of a water- 
 colour drawing or a chromo-lithograph to be better than 
 the broad and simple effects to be got with sober colour 
 and subdued gilding : nothing but the name of this kind 
 of work remains, and we must go back to the fountain- 
 head if we wish to recover the spirit of the original. I 
 must omit much that I should wish to say concerning 
 the very bad condition of the decorative arts in the 
 matter of plate and jewellery; merely saying that there 
 is a reason for its very bad state in the fact that it is a 
 kind of work which is of no value unless the very 
 highest sort of artistic design and the best and most 
 refined workmanship is expended upon it, and that we 
 have not the workmen to do this. The love of display
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 25 
 
 is at the root of this more than of any kind of bad art. 
 A mans show of plate now is reckoned of value ac- 
 cording to its quantity and weight ; ignorance of and 
 indifference to the quality of the workmanship as com- 
 pared to the massiveness of the vessel, and what is 
 called the richness of the ornamentation, is the cause of 
 a more complete decay of art in these things than in 
 any other. But I must quote a passage from Dickens 
 bearing on this point, in which with that clearsighted 
 intuition which enables him always to seize on the pre- 
 cise points he requires to illustrate his subject, he has 
 with wonderful conciseness described the condition to 
 which vulgar ostentation has brought us in these matters. 
 He is describing a rich man's dinner-party — ■" Hideous 
 solidity," he says, " was the characteristic of the plate. 
 Everything was made to look as heavy as it could, and 
 to take up as much room as possible. Everything said 
 boastfully, — Here you have as much of me in my ugli- 
 ness as if I were only lead; but I am so many ounces 
 of precious metal worth so much an ounce ; wouldn't 
 you like to melt me down ? A corpulent straddling 
 c'pergne, blotched all over as if it had broken out in an 
 eruption rather than been ornamented, delivered this 
 address from an unsightly silver platform in the centre 
 of the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished 
 with four staring heads, each obtrusively carrying a big
 
 26 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 silver ring in each of its ears, conveyed the sentiment 
 up and down the table and handed it on to the pot- 
 bellied salt-cellars. All the big silver spoons and forks 
 widened the mouths of the company expressly for the 
 purpose of thrusting the sentiment down their throats 
 with every morsel they ate." I can add nothing that 
 will better express my meaning with regard to bad art 
 of this sort than this graphic description. I therefore 
 take leave of this part of my subject ; but before enter- 
 ing on the matter of Decorative Painting I wish to say 
 a few words on the question of Styles of Art, which is 
 applicable both to what I have said and to what I am 
 going to say in the second part of my lecture, and 
 about which decorative artists and art-workmen trouble 
 themselves a good deal ; much more, I think, than is 
 necessary. 
 
 If I have dwelt at some length on what I consider 
 false and bad in decorative work it is because by 
 showing you what is wrong I can best explain what I 
 think to be right. For when I wish to lay down any 
 law as to what is beautiful in ornamental design, I cannot 
 say much more than that what is appropriate and well 
 executed is good art. 
 
 Subject to the negative conditions treated of above, 
 there is nothing that may not be done in decorative 
 work. If I am asked what is a good pattern for a chintz
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 27 
 
 hanging or for a wall-paper, I can only say that any 
 well-designed and well-executed appropriate pattern is 
 good. And it is this difficulty, I think, of deciding 
 upon what ought to be after the conditions are well 
 understood of what ought not to be that has led so many 
 into the belief that there is no salvation in art out of 
 particular styles j some standing up for English Gothic, 
 others for French Gothic, others for Greek, others for 
 Moorish, and others believing that there is no safety out 
 of a particular century. The violent reaction which took 
 place against what was an obviously bad condition of 
 decorative art about fifty or sixty years ago, headed, as 
 far as my knowledge goes, by Pugin, and which is known 
 by the name of the Gothic Revival, induced men anxious 
 for a better state of things into an extreme of purism, 
 which became a sort of watchword by which the good and 
 earnest workers in the cause of art were to be known. 
 
 Now no one who has seen the painted windows in 
 St. George's Chapel, designed by Benjamin West, where 
 all the conditions of stained glass are misunderstood 
 or ignored, where an attempt was made to produce the 
 effect of the highly elaborated light and shade of the oil- 
 pictures in fashion at the time, and where no thought was 
 given to adapting the work to the exigencies of the sur- 
 rounding architecture, — no one who remembers the pseudo- 
 classical monuments of military and naval heroes rising to
 
 2S LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 a heaven of blue slate through ponderous masses of marble 
 clouds, which encumber Westminster Abbey and others of 
 our cathedrals, will suppose that this reaction came a 
 moment too soon. But it is not because these things are 
 done in what is called a Classic style, instead of what is 
 called a Gothic style, that they are bad ; it is because they 
 are in the first place genuinely bad work of their kind, 
 which would look bad wherever it was placed, and secondly 
 but less so, because classical work is out of place and 
 could with difficulty be made to look harmonious in a 
 Gothic cathedral. I say less so because the Elizabethan 
 monuments and the almost purely classic work of James 
 the First's time certainly do not look out of place in 
 the Gothic architecture of our cathedrals, and there are 
 numberless instances all through Europe of the happy 
 adaptation of one style to another. 
 
 It must be remembered too that if the decorators 
 and painters of the thirteenth century did not introduce 
 light and shades into their work it was because their 
 art was in its infancy, and that the whole of the best art 
 of Europe from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries 
 shows one continuous struggle to get nearer to the 
 realization of the splendid effects of roundness and 
 solidity of Nature ; the beauty and grandeur of the 
 work of those early masters depending on some- 
 thing quite different from the fact that their pictures
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 29 
 
 are painted with flat colours and without perspective. 
 If I dwell on this point it is because the belief in 
 the efficacy of flat tints and black outlines is still strong 
 among us, especially among architects, who in this respect 
 assumed a practice of laying down the law for the guidance 
 of artists. 
 
 Anyhow this determined insistance upon the necessity 
 of a purely flat kind of decoration has produced as a 
 result, a kind of work quite as unfortunate, if not more 
 so, than the vulgar rococo ornament which it has super- 
 seded. In the use of diapers for hangings, our school of 
 design teachers and workmen imagine they have found 
 a safe harbour of refuge from the difficulties which beset 
 them in their voyages in search of appropriate patterns. 
 They appear to be quite unaware that it is just as difficult 
 to make a good diaper as any other form of decorative 
 pattern, and they have opportunities for violent juxtaposi- 
 tion of colour which they never had before the numberless 
 new dyes now in fashion were invented, or when the 
 custom of making shaded designs of flowers and scrolls 
 obliged them, to a certain extent, to break up their tints. 
 These most excruciating contrasts of colour, that are only 
 too commonly found in houses, more especially in paper- 
 hangings, where we see the most violent blues opposed 
 to raw red and orange and magenta patterns on arsenic- 
 green grounds, are accepted by people in general as being
 
 3 o LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 in what they call the Gothic taste. Tiles in this Gothic 
 taste, too, are very common, in which magenta and green 
 are the prominent colours. Indeed, people have come to 
 this point, that they will not have harmonious colour when it 
 is to be got. It was always possible to fall back on Turkey 
 carpets if one could not find other things to one's taste, 
 with the certainty of finding them good and rich in colour ; 
 but they were evidently too harmonious for the taste of 
 the majority, so that wools dyed in England of harsh 
 bright blue, magenta, and purple colours, were sent out 
 with the idea of improving the taste of the Oriental makers, 
 and it is now almost impossible to find any Turkey carpets 
 that are not as crude and disagreeable as English ones. 1 
 The Orientals certainly manage these harsh* colours as well 
 as it is possible : but colours that are bad to begin with 
 cannot be made to look anything but disagreeable. The 
 fact is that mauve, magenta, and all the new aniline 
 dyes, are offensive colours, with a harsh metallic tint which 
 renders them utterly unfit to be used, and impossible to 
 harmonize in any kind of ornamental work, whether in 
 the dyeing of silks, or the printing of muslins, chintzes, 
 and wall-papers. But let me return to the question I 
 
 1 Lately vast quantities of carpets and rugs from Turkestan and the 
 neighbouring countries have been imported into Europe far exceeding 
 in beauty the old Turkey carpets alluded to in the text. The East 
 is now being exhausted of all its traditional manufactures, never, I 
 fear, to be restored.
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 31 
 
 was considering. There is really nothing objectionable 
 or inappropriate in the imitation of Nature in surface 
 decoration, provided it is kept in subservience to the more 
 important necessities of decorative design. When the quali- 
 ties of design, and the beauties of form, and colour, and 
 workmanship are of the highest order, as in the works 
 of the great Italian masters of the sixteenth century, the 
 imitation of relief even to the point of deception is admis- 
 sible, because it becomes subordinate to the other qualities 
 which are more difficult of attainment. The reason that 
 the flying cherubs and festoons of flowers which we so 
 constantly introduced in the debased art of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, and which are frequently so 
 skilfully done as to be absolutely deceptive, and appear 
 detached from the walls ; the reason why this is bad 
 art is because the trick of imitating relief from the surface 
 is a very easy one, and is the only power the artist has : 
 the decoration being badly designed, the figures and 
 flowers being ill-drawn, and bad in colour, the whole 
 decoration interferes with the general unity of design in 
 the architecture ; and for this reason it is bad art. 
 
 Again, the reason why the attempt to introduce the light, 
 and shade, and relief of an oil-painting in stained glass 
 is bad art, is — not because stained glass was made of 
 flat tints in the thirteenth century — but because, in the 
 first place, a window, which is meant to admit light, carries
 
 32 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 with it the idea of transparency, and therefore should not 
 be encumbered with heavy shading ; and secondly, because, 
 however well the light and shade may be imitated, the 
 presence of the lead-lines brings us back constantly to the 
 idea of a flat surface, so that the kind of painting which 
 best accords with this is the best for the purpose. The 
 reason why the imitation of relief is not admissible in 
 the more ordinary kinds of wall-decoration, is, first, that 
 the means of execution are of a very imperfect kind ; — the 
 common block-printing, used for wall-papers, cannot pro- 
 duce that subtlety of workmanship which is necessary for 
 the design to be carried out as a work of high art, whereas 
 it can be so managed as to produce a coarse kind of 
 illusion, thus elevating the lower quality above the higher ; 
 and, secondly, because supposing we could so imitate a 
 natural form, a climbing rose let us say, in a wall-paper, 
 as for a moment to deceive us into thinking it was 
 real; the continual repetition of the same form which is 
 a necessary part of any printed or stencilled decoration 
 would undeceive us in a moment. But between the limits 
 of a diaper on the one hand, and deceptive light and 
 shade on the other, there are a hundred different ways, 
 or degrees rather, of suggesting the roundness of objects 
 in this form of ornamental design, which are perfectly 
 reasonable and allowable; and here again I may refer 
 you to Oriental designs, as showing admirably how far
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 33 
 
 the imitation of natural forms, flowers, fruit, birds, &c, 
 may be carried without attempt at illusion. 
 
 And the consideration of this subject brings me natu- 
 rally to the second part of my lecture, wherein I shall 
 devote myself entirely to that kind of ornamental 
 design I mentioned at the beginning, "in which the 
 imitation or realisation of Nature is the principal and 
 most important aim of the artist." 
 
 This, of course, naturally comprehends the whole art 
 of painting, whether purely decorative, as in the great 
 works of the great Italian masters, or in the form in which 
 it is more common in the present day, that of cabinet- 
 pictures ; but do not be afraid that I am going to inflict 
 upon you a disquisition on the whole history and practice 
 of painting; I shall merely treat of it, as I have treated 
 of constructive and ornamental design, as but a part in 
 fact of the great world of art, and with reference to the 
 necessity of truth as the great essential of beauty. 
 
 In this part of my subject, although it will be impossible 
 for me to discuss the matter properly without referring to 
 much that is false and bad in the state of the art at the 
 present time, it will be my pleasure to show you, to the 
 best of my ability to what glorious heights of excellence 
 genius may arrive when it devotes itself entirely and 
 without afterthought of anything but achieving perfection 
 to the one single idea of the study of the Truth of Nature
 
 34 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 in her noblest and most beautiful forms. But as I am 
 about to make an attempt to show that an essential Element 
 of Beauty in this Art of painting is Realism, or the power 
 of realising what is beautiful in Nature, it would appear 
 necessary at first to make some definition of what this 
 Beauty of Nature really is ; but we are met at the outset 
 by the apparently insurmountable difficulty that, tastes 
 differing, as they do, so widely on matters of beauty, it 
 would seem futile to endeavour to set up a positive 
 standard of beauty to which all men might agree. Indeed, 
 to lay down a distinct law on this point, to make as it 
 were a science of aesthetics, as there is a science of mathe- 
 matics, so that we might have a distinct logical basis for 
 a decision concerning the beauty of a work of Nature, or 
 for settling the comparative beauty of two objects, so that 
 we might say, for instance, "This flower or this face is 
 more beautiful than that," not " I like this flower or this 
 face better than that," with all the ramifications of argu- 
 ment that could be brought to bear on the question, 
 would be a fitter exercise for the reasoning powers of 
 a philosopher than of an artist, whose business it is not 
 so much to argue on what is beautiful, as to take it 
 for granted that what he considers beautiful is fit for his 
 purpose. 
 
 I will state however, as briefly as I can, what I think 
 can be said as bearing upon this point. In the first
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 35 
 
 place, I am myself so distinctly conscious of the beauty of 
 certain things, that I feel there must be a reasonable ground 
 for my admiration. Here of course is no argument, for 
 another person may say the same thing, in reference to 
 certain things which I not only do not admire, but 
 positively dislike. Nevertheless there are certain extremes 
 of beauty and ugliness which all nations, raised above a 
 state of barbarism, have agreed to accept in all ages. 
 The beauty of a lily or a rose has never, that I know 
 of, been contested ; and the ugliness of a toad is pro- 
 verbial ; so it appears evident that there is some kind 
 of standard to be found. In the second place, I am 
 inclined to deny that the differences of taste and opinion, 
 which I have referred to as creating the difficulty I am 
 dealing with, indicate any allowable ground for those 
 differences, for this reason — that people are so apt to 
 mistake what they admire for what they enjoy; and that 
 it is this confusion in our minds as to what is really 
 enjoyable in outward objects that causes the difficulty 
 of setting up a standard of their beauty. There are, of 
 course, many people who have no enjoyment in the 
 works of Nature or art, and with such there is no concern 
 here. But there is another class of persons who have 
 a genuine enjoyment in beautiful things; but who, from 
 the extremely artificial state in which we live in our 
 present condition of civilisation, cannot really tell to what 
 
 D 2
 
 36 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 extent the beauties of Nature give them pleasure. They 
 frequently fancy that they admire or enjoy things, which, 
 if they could or would examine their minds, they would 
 possibly find are very wearisome to them. They admire 
 what they think it right to admire, and what they admire 
 they think they must enjoy. And this, it may be 
 remarked, may be the reason why the art of semi-civilised 
 nations is generally of uniform beauty within a certain 
 range. Having no education in art, they form no arti- 
 ficial tastes. Their enjoyment is in simple things, and 
 they are not ashamed of it, so they do not aspire to 
 express in art more than they are capable of enjoying ; 
 whereas in our high -pressure state of civilisation, there 
 is a large number of people, who, though they may have 
 small knowledge of what is beautiful and limited powers 
 of enjoyment, are not content unless they appear to take 
 pleasure in things which are really beyond their powers 
 of appreciation. Such as these draw unconsciously to 
 themselves a distinct line between what they select for 
 admiration, and what they really enjoy in their hearts ; 
 and it is among them that those differences, those 
 oppositions of taste and opinion arise that make the 
 difficulty I have been discussing; and it is for, and by, 
 these pretenders, as I may call them, that so much 
 second-rate art is produced as we see around us. But 
 I will dwell no longer on this matter; it would take too
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 37 
 
 long to discuss the point in all its bearings : nor indeed 
 am I prepared to do so, for the whole question is sur- 
 rounded with very great difficulties, and I leave it to pass 
 to the point more immediately requiring consideration. 
 
 It will hardly I think be denied that Truth to Nature 
 is the most important necessity in any kind of work 
 which professes to imitate Nature, but there is more to 
 be said on this point than would at first sight appear. 
 The art of painting is, after all, but a part of the art of 
 Ornamental Design, and the power of imitation is rarely 
 unaccompanied by some power of design. 
 
 It is pretty obvious that when a savage makes a rough 
 drawing in imitation of an animal, some feeling of design 
 must enter into his imitation, for he has to decide upon 
 the action he will represent, and the position it has to 
 occupy on the vessel or wall on which he draws it ; this 
 he will do in the way which makes it most pleasant to 
 his eyes — and the art of design is this and nothing more. 
 Michelangelo himself in painting a figure does no more 
 than make the best imitation of nature he can, and arrange 
 the figure in the form and position which best pleases 
 him. But one or other of the powers called into play 
 is pretty sure to predominate, and this creates two classes 
 of art, which, to my thinking, are more closely allied 
 than is generally supposed ; at least by far too much dis- 
 tinction is made between them, as if they were opposing 
 
 &«.>v2J Op
 
 38 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 qualities, rather than so closely connected that it is difficult 
 to draw the dividing line between them. I mean the Real 
 and the Ideal — Realism and Idealism. These are gene- 
 rally set in opposition to each other ; we hear of schools 
 of Realists and schools of Idealists ; and certainly the 
 Ideal is apt to be sneered at by so-called Realists as 
 being something which is untrue to Nature and therefore 
 beyond the scope of art ; Realism, again, is looked down 
 upon by Idealists as being unworthy the aim of men of 
 high artistic gifts ; but this denotes a confusion of ideas 
 concerning the necessities of a work of art which leads 
 on the one side to those poor substitutes for photography 
 in the shape of elaborate studies from nature which some 
 of our modern artists give us under the name of Realism — 
 poor substitutes I call them, because the subtlety with 
 which photography represents the more unimportant truths 
 of nature can never be rivalled by human handiwork ; or 
 to a still lower class of picture in which the notion of 
 Realism is achieved by the identity of some historical 
 accessory, as though one should paint the flight of 
 Napoleon from Waterloo, and make the interest of the 
 picture depend on the fact that the coach is painted from 
 the real original at Madame Tussaud's, an idea which fully 
 comes up to our modern notions of Realism. On the 
 other side, under the name of Idealism, of High Art, of 
 the Grand Style, and I know not what, we have a more
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 39 
 
 insufferable amount of bombastic work forced upon us 
 than it is conceivable men could do under the pretence 
 of representing nature. But real shades of difference there 
 are between Realism and Idealism, caused by the opera- 
 tion of one or the other tendency I have spoken of in 
 the artist's mind. To this point I shall recur further on. 
 
 Still, so far from Realism being, as some suppose, in 
 opposition to the development of Beauty in Art, I affirm 
 that the highest Beauty is attained by the highest applica- 
 tion of the realistic or imitative faculty. Truth I have 
 affirmed to be the essential of Beauty ; how is truth in 
 art to be arrived at but by the power of realising the 
 beauties of Nature to the utmost ? 
 
 Here I must pause, for I find myself in face of the 
 difficult question, How are we to decide on what is true to 
 Nature? Opinions vary on this point almost as much as 
 tastes differ with regard to what is beautiful. Among 
 those who practise art you will find some who differ at 
 every point on the relative truth of artistic productions. 
 The fact is, that those who are really capable of judging 
 of the truth of a work of art will be found to be infinitely 
 fewer in number than is supposed ; yet, I imagine, there 
 are very few who will not say, that though they know 
 nothing about beauty or art, they are at least capable of 
 judging whether a picture be true to nature or not ; indeed 
 there is no point on which people arc commonly so touchy,
 
 40 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 or which they are so tenacious in holding, as this of being 
 able to decide whether a picture is '• like " or not ; and 
 this is the reason — they mistake part of the truth for the 
 whole, or an unimportant truth for an important one. 
 The ignorant sight-seer, who stops his listless wandering 
 in the British Museum to look over the shoulder of a 
 student drawing from one of the antique statues, stands 
 amazed at what appears to him to be the truthfulness of 
 what is possibly but a very feeble copy of the original ; 
 for him it is enough that the arms and legs are represented 
 in due number, and in approximately correct positions ; 
 that the eyes are correct in being open, and the mouth in 
 being shut, that the light falls on the proper side ; he 
 makes no question but that he has the power of seeing 
 that the drawing is true to the original. Really it may 
 be so unlike that the veriest tyro in art, or the most 
 superficially-gifted amateur, can see the faults at a glance. 
 This is an extreme case of a glaring kind, and therefore 
 perhaps the better adapted for illustration, as it is on that 
 account obvious to every one. But the same kind of 
 ignorance, though of different degrees according to the 
 knowledge of the observer, is constantly shown in the 
 appreciation of pictures from Nature. Her truths are so 
 many, so subtle, and so various, that it requires that born 
 insight of an artist which is his greatest gift to discovei 
 but a part of them ; and even having the gift, his whole
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 41 
 
 life is spent in acquiring that knowledge, for not only docs 
 he day by day discover some new beauty to which he was 
 blind before, but he finds in doing so how little he really 
 knows. 
 
 This insight into the truths of nature, coming partly as 
 a gift and partly acquired by the closest and most continual 
 observation, combined with the power of expressing his 
 knowledge is what I understand the power of Realism to 
 be ; and these truths are what the uncultivated cannot 
 see — they are to be found only by those who diligently 
 seek after them. The broad external facts of Nature are 
 patent to everybody. An ignorant person discovers in a 
 landscape picture that moonlight is represented, for he 
 sees the moon in the sky, the reflection in the water, the 
 light catching the roofs of the houses and the tops of the 
 trees, and candle-light shining through the windows. The 
 picture may be the veriest daub, without a single point 
 given correctly, but this fact of the moonshine is made 
 clear, and the unpractised observer gazes with fond admi- 
 ration on what he considers a miracle of truthful painting. 
 What does he know of the relative values of tone and 
 colour, truth of perspective, aerial and linear, and other 
 matters which require a lifetime of observation to represent 
 faithfully. It seems simple pedantry to him if you tell him 
 the picture is bad because thoroughly untrue. Can he not 
 see with his own eyes? Does he not know what moon-
 
 4 2 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 light is like ? &c. &c. And so a mass of work, better no 
 doubt than the very bad I have just quoted as an example, 
 is accepted by the public as being admirably true, which 
 though rendering cleverly enough unimportant things, is 
 thoroughly false on all points where a real artistic insight 
 is necessary. And the converse of this is equally true, 
 that the noblest works of high art are completely mis- 
 understood and ignored by the general mass of people, 
 and not unfrequently by artists, because they contain 
 truths which are beyond their comprehension, or which 
 have not been sufficiently studied to take the important 
 place in their minds which they ought to hold. The artist 
 who has the profoundest insight into the noblest truths, 
 and neglects no point in his work which is calculated to 
 give them the highest expression, unquestionably produces 
 the noblest work ; and yet, in spite of this apparently 
 obvious fact, Mr. Leslie, in his Handbook for young 
 painters, has what I cannot but call the daring to assert 
 that there is no such thing as what is commonly called 
 " High Art," and declares emphatically that a picture by 
 Ostade, who aimed at nothing but the literal representation 
 of coarse and ignoble subjects, never caring to look for any 
 form of beauty in Nature, 1 is as high a work of art as a 
 
 1 This rather sweeping statement requires some modification ; I 
 meant it to apply to O.stade's treatment of figures ; in beauty of tone 
 and light and shade he is only second to Rembrandt, and his execution 
 is subtle and delicate in the highest decree.
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 43 
 
 picture by Raphael (he says, as far as I remember, " I 
 should consider a picture by Ostade on a level with one 
 by Raphael "), the whole of whose life was devoted to 
 searching through Nature for the most beautiful forms and 
 the loftiest characteristics, and who, by the acclamation 
 of the world has been recognised as not only having 
 found the highest beauty, but as having expressed it in 
 his best work in a more consummately refined and graceful 
 manner than any painter. This is the lesson Mr. Leslie 
 has given to young painters, and admirably, I may say, 
 has it been learnt. Still every truth of Nature thoroughly 
 understood and expressed has a charm in its own degree. 
 The stump of a tree and a broken-down railing is quite 
 enough to make a good picture if it is painted with due 
 understanding of the subtle relations of tone and colour 
 which pervade all Nature. But to convey the fact that 
 there is in a particular spot a certain stump of a tree of 
 which you give a portrait by the side of a certain broken 
 railing of which you give a portrait, is not painting a 
 work of art at all. 
 
 Most of our popular art depends for its success almost 
 entirely on the facts represented in the pictures and not 
 on the art which is expended in the painting of them ; 
 a certain amount of technical skill is required no doubt 
 by the more knowing of the public, but very little of it 
 will go a long way. The public generally not being very
 
 44 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 profoundly instructed on the point of art, but perfectly 
 understanding the point of a scene from Shakspere or 
 one of Scott's novels, the artist whose only desire is to 
 make a popular success, does his best to amuse the public 
 with what they can appreciate, and represents his subject 
 without regard to the more important and nobler truths 
 of Nature, which he knows would be thrown away upon 
 the ignorant, only looking for just enough of reality as is 
 sufficient to make his point obvious to them. 
 
 Hence the complete absence of what is called style in the 
 popular school of painting in England, and of the contempt 
 with which foreign schools, better educated in the practice of 
 their art and more serious in aim, look down on such work. 
 Those critics who speak of style as an academic quality to 
 be acquired as if it were something separate from truth, 
 fail to see that beauty is only to be attained in art by the 
 study of what is profoundly and not superficially true. 
 Style I understand to be that power of realising the 
 beauty of Nature which is only to be attained by study, 
 and the power of expressing this knowledge as one who 
 has had a complete education in his craft. An academic 
 style, taken in the bad sense in which critics use it, is 
 nothing but a mannerism, and is the result of the student 
 adopting, without understanding them, the peculiarities of 
 work of a certain painter or school, rather than studying the 
 truths of Nature with a view to arrive ultimately at her
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 45 
 
 highest beauties. This form of mannerism is extremely 
 common in foreign schools, where acres of canvas and 
 paper are covered with masses of theatrical and bombastic 
 figures, who neither look nor behave as any mortals could 
 look or behave under any circumstances. Every one who 
 knows anything of German art, for instance, knows well the 
 scowl and the clenched fist which does duty for the tragic 
 passions of their heroes; most of the efforts at high art 
 which have been made in this country till within the last 
 few years have included this scowl as the kind of stamp 
 which marks a work of style, or what is called historical 
 art, as distinguished from a " genre " picture. But there 
 is not much fear at present of a stilted or grandiose style 
 spreading amongst us ; the popular work of which I have 
 been speaking is far too much of a favourite among us. 
 English artists as a rule are too independent to adopt 
 a manner ; unfortunately they are frequently too inde- 
 pendent to submit to any kind of schooling. The multi- 
 plicity of picture exhibitions that we have encourages 
 young artists to exhibit pictures before they have learnt 
 anything of their craft ; and, once having gained a place 
 at an exhibition, perhaps even made a success by a display 
 of talent never to be developed, those are very few who 
 have the perseverance to school themselves further. The 
 mannerism of English artists is more often that of complete 
 ignorance, and ignorance has a manner of its own made to
 
 46 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 conceal ignorance. This mannerism is known by the name 
 of cleverness. That dexterous manipulation, those bril- 
 liant performances with transparent shadows and sparkling 
 lights, with which the walls of our exhibition-rooms are 
 yearly covered, are only displays of ignorance. They serve 
 to conceal from a public amazed at the dexterity of the 
 performance, the fact that the painter knows nothing of 
 his art. If the pictures are not on this wise, they are 
 what is called realistic, the realism consisting in the most 
 elaborate painting of trivial details while the great and 
 important truths of Nature are unknown and uncared for ; 
 so that the value of the work is reckoned according to 
 the patience of the artists in realising trifles, and the suc- 
 cess of the picture is in proportion to the time the artist 
 has taken in painting it. 
 
 This is not all the art to be found in England. We 
 have among us men of poetic minds and sincere and 
 serious aims who will never condescend to paint for 
 popularity ; and that very spirit of independence which 
 is so fatal to conceited facility, is perhaps a means of 
 securing a certain amount of originality which otherwise 
 might have been confined, at all events for a time, by the 
 trammels of academic teaching. Not that I mean to say 
 that education can ever fetter genius ; on the contrary, a 
 deficiency of early training of a good kind interposes a 
 forest of difficulties to prevent the artist of genius from
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 47 
 
 giving form to his thoughts which he never completely 
 clears to the end of his life. I am referring rather to 
 the enforced adoption of certain bad and stilted methods 
 of work which is to be found in some foreign schools, 
 and which may well shackle a man of talent, if not a man 
 of great genius. It is to these schools that we owe those 
 ludicrous exhibitions of the human form which are fondly 
 supposed to be done in obedience to the style of the great 
 Italian masters, where the beautiful and varied play of the 
 muscles under the skin is represented by something to be 
 found in a sack of potatoes rather than in a human body. 
 No one has ever been worse treated in this respect than 
 the gigantic genius to whom I have already referred, and 
 to the study of whose works I shall devote the rest of my 
 paper, as that will best explain what I mean when I speak 
 of Realism as giving the highest form of beauty. I mean 
 the great Michelangelo Buonarotti, justly styled by his 
 countrymen " The divine " — a man whom as an artist 
 I place on a level with, and in some respects above, the 
 greatest known of Greek artists. 
 
 I have referred a while back to the predominance of 
 one or other of the faculties which go to the making of high 
 artistic work ; I mean the powers of design and of imita- 
 tion: now in Greek art the love of design seems to 
 predominate over that of imitation ; in Michelangelo's 
 the two seem to hold an equal place. I do not mean
 
 4S LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 that the Greeks had less of the imitative faculty, but that 
 they kept it in subordination to that of design. Nor do 
 I say that Michelangelo in any way excelled the Greeks 
 in anything that he did in the way of study from Nature, 
 for the work of Phidias is brought to a perfection of truth 
 and beauty which Michelangelo may have striven after 
 but which he certainly never achieved, at all events in 
 his sculpture ; though I shall show you a copy of one 
 of his painted figures shortly, which to my mind equals 
 in perfection of beauty anything done by Phidias, and 
 that out of the force of his own single genius, for the 
 work of Phidias was completely unknown to him. But 
 this I say, that Michelangelo's best work is in no way 
 inferior to the very highest Greek work in point of design, 
 and that his imitative faculty not being kept in subordi- 
 nation, he was enabled to see truths that no Greek ever 
 dreamed of expressing. Above all, his vast imaginative 
 gift, the stormy poetry of his mind, the passionate Italian 
 nature that was in him, the soul of Dante living again in 
 another form, and finding its expression in another art, 
 led him to contemplate a treatment of the human form 
 which the intellectual Greek considered beyond the range 
 of his art. 
 
 The Greeks aimed at the perfection of decorative design, 
 and insomuch as the study of the human form helped 
 them to arrive at that perfection, they carried it further
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 49 
 
 and to a more consummate point than has ever been 
 done before or since. Bat they gave themselves small 
 scope for the display of human passion ; when they repre- 
 sented it, it was in a cold and dignified manner which 
 fails to awaken our sympathies. The figures of fighting 
 warriors on the pediment of the temple of ^Egina, receive 
 and inflict wounds, and meet their death, with a fixed 
 smile, which shows that the artist intended to avoid the 
 expression of pain or passion. The Greek artists have 
 the supreme right to the title of Idealists ; they are the 
 true worshippers of the ideal ; the ideal of beauty once 
 achieved, they cared not to vary it. Witness the most 
 perfect specimen of their decorative art which remains, 
 the most perfect in the whole world ; I mean the frieze 
 of the Parthenon. There is not in the hundreds of 
 figures which form the Panathenaic procession, except by 
 accidents of execution, any variation of character in the 
 beautiful ideal forms represented, whether they be of man, 
 woman, or animal ; enough remains of the faces to show 
 that they conform to two or three types throughout without 
 variety of character or expression — all is as perfect as 
 the most profound knowledge, the most skilful workman- 
 ship, and the highest sense of beauty can make it. But 
 with the great Florentine the realistic tendency is obvious 
 from the beginning, not to work up to an ideal of humanity, 
 but to study it in its countless forms of beauty and 
 
 £
 
 50 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 grandeur, and its ever-varying moods, and to represent 
 these as truthfully as the deepest contemplation of Nature 
 could enable him to do. I have not time to discuss 
 further the subject of Greek art, but what I have said 
 will show my meaning plainly enough, and I hope make 
 it clear that I have no want of appreciation of those 
 sublimely beautiful works which will be the school of art 
 for the whole world as long as the world lasts. In Michel- 
 angelo we have an instance of a mind gifted with the 
 highest imaginative faculties, and with the most profound 
 love and veneration for all that is most noble, most beau- 
 tiful, and grandest in Nature, following with the most 
 unwearying perseverance the road most calculated to 
 develop these faculties, by studying with accurate minute- 
 ness the construction of the human form, so as to be able 
 to give the highest reality to his conceptions. Luca 
 Signorelli's imaginative faculty was akin to that of Michel- 
 angelo, and some go so far as to think that this painter's 
 work had an influence on Michelangelo. This may possibly 
 be true, and no doubt Michelangelo may have admired 
 this painter's work greatly. But I do not see the necessity 
 for supposing that Michelangelo was indebted to him for 
 ideas, when we consider the vastness of his genius. The 
 difference I wish to point out between two men, alike 
 in the character of their genius is, that Michelangelo's 
 marvellous knowledge of the human form, in which he
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 51 
 
 stands alone, enabled him to give a splendid and truth- 
 ful beauty to his figures, and to dwell on subtleties of 
 modelling and of outline, which are not to be found in 
 Luca Signorelli's work. Astonishing as is the power of 
 Luca Signorelli's imagination, and admirably true as are the 
 action and expression of his figures, he fell short precisely 
 on that point of realism which makes the enormous gulf 
 between him and the greater artist. Michelangelo I con- 
 sider the greatest realist the world has ever seen ; the action, 
 expression, and drawing of his figures down to the minutest 
 folds of drapery and points of costume, down to the careful 
 finish given to the most trivial accessories (when used) 
 such as the books his figures hold, and the desks they 
 write on, are all studied from the point of view of being 
 as true to Nature as they can be made. It was not he but 
 his imitators and followers who made human bodies like 
 sacks of potatoes ; he who never made, never could make, a 
 fault of anatomy in his life, has had such followers ; and who 
 would seem, moreover, to have gloried in thinking how 
 Michelangelesque was their work. It is his followers again 
 and not he, who make their saints and prophets write with 
 pens without ink, on scrolls of paper without desks. 
 
 And here there is a very general misconception, which 
 I must dwell on for a short time, it is so very important 
 that it should be set right. I have heard it said again 
 and again, by artists (who ought to know better) and 
 
 £ 2
 
 52 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 others, that Michelangelo's works may be grand in style, 
 they may be imaginative, they may even be beautiful 
 (sometimes), but they cannot be said ^to be true to Nature 
 on account of their exaggeration. You will all recognize 
 that this is the common way in which Michelangelo's 
 works are spoken of. Now my first notion connected with 
 a lecture on Art was that of vindicating Michelangelo's 
 honour on this point. There are, I think, many reasons, 
 and perhaps some good ones, for this opinion. The best 
 and most universally known of his works is the Last 
 Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, a work executed when 
 he was sixty years old, by which time his magnificent 
 manner had possibly developed into somewhat of a man- 
 nerism 1 — that is to say, that whereas throughout his life 
 the necessities of his subjects, chosen no doubt especially 
 for the purpose, obliged him to depict the human form 
 in every beautiful variety of action and position, in his 
 later years this pleasure of exercising his ingenuity in 
 inventing and correctly representing difficulties of fore- 
 shortening seemed to grow upon him, and in some parts 
 of the Last Judgment — especially in the upper part — 
 outweighed the more simple dignity with which most of 
 it is invested. The stupendous work which to my mind 
 
 1 A lecture written later will show that further study of this cele- 
 brated fresco has considerably modified my views of it ; though there 
 is some truth in what is here written.
 
 DECORATIVE ART. S3 
 
 has done most to make his name immortal is on the ceiling 
 of the Sistine Chapel, executed twenty years before the 
 Last Judgment, which is on the end wall of the same chapel ; 
 and it is on this work that I take my stand in placing 
 Michelangelo as the chief of realistic painters; not so 
 much on the Last Judgment, tremendous as it is both in 
 conception and execution. Another, and the most im- 
 portant reason for the charge of exaggeration is, that for 
 some reason or another no great man has ever suffered 
 so much at the hands of the engravers. All with one 
 accord have taken it into their heads that Michelangelo's 
 work cannot be properly copied unless limbs and muscles 
 are exaggerated in a way which they would never dream 
 of using with another man's work ; in fact, they think it 
 necessary to import into their work every exaggerated 
 defect which they find in the works of his imitators, or 
 rather the defects of exaggeration to be found in the school 
 formed on Raphael after his death. Raphael, indeed, him- 
 self is not exempt from having made exaggerated imita- 
 tions of the great master. The Incendio del Borgo is 
 perhaps the beginning of that lumpy and inflated style, so 
 different from the simple and elegant work of Michelangelo. 
 Finding apparently that Michelangelo is not so Michel- 
 angelesque as they expected, they feel bound to improve 
 upon him ; and the greatest master of drawing the world 
 has ever seen has had the most ill-drawn travesties of
 
 54 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 his finest works passed off on those who are unable to 
 visit the originals and judge for themselves. Still those 
 who have eyes to see, can very plainly make out from 
 the wretched stuff that engravers have given us what 
 manner of man it was whose work is thus caricatured. 
 It is obvious that the mind which could conceive figures 
 so amazingly grand in intention could not be guilty of 
 altering Nature for the purpose of producing the grotesque 
 forms and faces shown us by the engravers. I fortunately 
 a little time ago had the opportunity of verifying for my- 
 self what I had surmised to be true, but much as I expected 
 in the way of beauty before entering the Sistine, I was 
 prepared rather to be overwhelmed by a magnificent 
 grandeur of imagination and design than to be charmed 
 by refined beauties of form and face ; and another element 
 of beauty I found which I had not expected, for the 
 engravings carefully avoid representing it in their copies, 
 and on a point of excellence for which the palm has 
 generally been given to another painter. I mean the 
 amazing subtlety, variety and truth of expression in the 
 faces of the Titanic beings who sit enthroned over one's 
 head in that amazing work. Raphael has been considered 
 the master of expression and beauty of face, Michelangelo 
 of grandeur of form ; I find the latter supreme in all. 
 He it was who found in Nature what beauty and what 
 grandeur lies in the most trivial actions, and first had
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 55 
 
 the power to depict them. Raphael's receptive mind 
 seized at once on the idea, adapted it to his style, and 
 followed close on the great master's steps. The possibility 
 of verifying the truth of what I say is now, fortunately, 
 within reach of all amateurs of art ; for within the last 
 eighteen months this amazing work of which I am speak- 
 ing, — in which the variety is so great that Vasari may well 
 say, " That no man who is a painter now cares to seek 
 new inventions, attitudes, draperies, originality, and force 
 of expression," — this great work has been reproduced in 
 all its details in photography ; the enterprising German 
 who has rendered this most important service, having taken 
 no less than 140 negatives, all (with the exception of 
 seven or eight from the Last Judgment) being taken 
 from the ceiling. These photographs are a revelation 
 in art ; no one until now who has not seen the original 
 fresco has had the slightest idea of what Michelangelo's 
 work is. I have made copies of two of these photographs 
 to a large scale for the purpose of giving you some idea 
 of the beauty of his stupendous style ; and, as I say, the 
 photographs are within the reach of all who care to possess 
 them, so every one who pleases may have the opportunity 
 of verifying the truth of my words. 
 
 I allude to two of the naked figures which sit in pairs 
 on the architectural projections which form the sides of the 
 prophets' thrones. Each pair of these figures holds between
 
 56 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 them a large medallion, on which, in imitation of a relief in 
 bronze and gold is painted a subject from the Book of 
 Kings, or supports a ponderous festoon of leaves and 
 acorns, which is a common feature of decoration in 
 classical architecture, but employed in a totally new 
 way by Michelangelo, which the original inventor of the 
 idea was far from dreaming of. For there are no less 
 than twenty of these figures, and Michelangelo has taken 
 advantage of their employment to represent not only almost 
 every kind of action of which the position of these figures 
 could suggest to his great genius, but for the display of 
 every variety and mood of the human mind. One of 
 these seems the very type of life and activity ; he laughs 
 as he shifts the ribbon by which he supports his medallion 
 from one shoulder to the other; he is in the act of un- 
 crossing his legs as he does it, and the great master of 
 design has arrested him in the middle of this complicated, 
 and, to any other artist, almost impossible movement. An 
 instantaneous photograph could not seize on the action 
 with more absolute accuracy, and there is that look of life 
 in his light and active limbs that you almost expect him 
 to continue his movement. More grand is the other as he 
 sits calmly reposing on his ponderous burden, profoundest 
 and most melancholy thought reflected on his God-like face. 
 Others seem to catch some faint sound of the inspiration 
 which the cherubs of God are whispering in the ear of the
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 57 
 
 prophet or sibyl below, and' start with affrighted and awe- 
 stricken looks. There is another laughing figure even more 
 beautiful than this one ; he lifts with ease his heavy weight 
 of leaves and acorns, while his fellow looks at him with an 
 angry glance as he struggles to raise his own share which 
 has slipped from his shoulder. There is a pair who con- 
 verse over their task, and another pair perform it with 
 careless indifference, as it weary and uninterested ; and all 
 these various pictures are depicted with a realism of ex- 
 pression and action, a beauty of form and face, an absolute 
 accuracy of anatomical expression, a splendour of light and 
 shade, a roundness of modelling, and minuteness of finish 
 to perfect drawing of every nail on hand or foot, and the 
 graceful turn of every lock of hair, which never flags for a 
 moment, and which is never at fault. The beauty of the 
 heads of these figures is beyond all that ever was done in 
 art ; nothing of Raphael's, to my mind, approaches them ; 
 and oh one point he differs widely from the Greeks ; while 
 he gives to many of his faces the beautiful refinement of a 
 woman's, he has never sacrificed one atom of the manliness. 
 The figure before us, with all the melancholy tenderness of 
 its face, has nothing but the character of a man, and the 
 figure is massive as rock, with all the beauty of its forms. 
 Not so the Greeks, who made their Apollos so effeminate 
 that it is difficult to tell from the head whether a man or 
 woman is represented. The beauty of the heads of these
 
 5S LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 figures is, as I say, beyond all that ever was done, but it 
 is hardly more extraordinary than the beauty of the bodies 
 and limbs. The hands and feet especially are invariably 
 perfect, and being the most difficult part of the figure 
 show in contrast to most of our modern work, for they 
 are precisely the parts that are always the most perfectly 
 done and the most finished. But more wonderful than 
 all is the harmony of design ; the figures being in pairs, 
 and facing each other, they are made to a certain extent to 
 correspond. The perfectly natural way in which this is 
 done without forcing the action of the figures into similar 
 forms is not the least astounding part of the work. One 
 pair is in action, another in repose, and yet it never occurs 
 to the spectator till he begins to examine the work as a 
 composition that this is a matter of most careful arrange- 
 ment. The lines of composition too of each figure are not 
 only most harmonious in themselves, but in perfect harmony 
 with every figure round it. But what shall I say ? In what 
 words shall I express myself when I come to speak of the 
 inspired beings — sibyls and prophets — who sit enthroned 
 below ? The realization of these sublime forms is carried 
 to the highest pitch. Nothing so true as the expression and 
 action of these figures down to the most trivial points was 
 ever done. The most magnificent of these figures to my 
 thinking is the prophet Isaiah ; he receives inspiration from a 
 cherub, who, with excited looks, is pointing behind him, his
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 59 
 
 flying drapery indicating that he has come, like the winged 
 Mercury of the Pagans, with a direct message from Heaven. 
 With all the grandeur of this figure, the movement and 
 expression are as exactly true as any painter of child-life 
 could desire. Turn to the prophet himself ; what a subtle 
 combination of expressions on his face ! His right hand 
 drawing forth the book wherein he records the inspirations 
 he receives from Heaven, he listens to the Divine message 
 with a mingled expression of attention and wonder. His 
 downcast eyes have a fixed look, as though they saw not ; 
 his brow is half raised in wonder, half frowning in deepest 
 thought, and a slight look of bewilderment plays hesitating 
 round his mouth, as with his left hand he seems to indicate 
 that he has received the message and turns with the inten- 
 tion of recording it. The massive grandeur of his features 
 is in accordance with the dignified repose of the action, and 
 over all there is the lofty look of the prophet not unaccus- 
 tomed to hold intercourse with his God. I believe this to 
 be the most triumphant realization of a complicated expres- 
 sion and action combined with the most consummate 
 grandeur of face and form that was ever achieved. The first 
 impression of the sight of this figure in its gigantic size on 
 the ceiling sixty feet above one's head is that of amazement 
 at the mighty art that produced it ; in this case Nature 
 really seems to have been surpassed, and a new creation 
 made. But the imagination of the artist, how justly called
 
 60 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 divine, rises to yet higher flights when he treats of the 
 creation of the world, and the history of our first parents 
 in the centre compartments of the ceiling. But throughout, 
 from beginning to end, through all the hundreds of groups 
 and figures which make up this triumph of the decorative 
 art, there is this one predominant feeling ; that no matter 
 how supremely difficult the position or action of the figures, 
 no matter whether he be representing prophet, cherub, or 
 ordinary mortal, or even those scenes where the Almighty 
 manifests His glory in acts of creation, the expression of face 
 and figure is realized with the utmost attention to truth. 
 The draperies take not the least important place in this 
 expression ; they clothe and express the forms of the limbs 
 without affectation, and in the most natural manner ; as the 
 figure moves so the drapery moves ; as the figure rests so 
 the drapery falls. Everything is in perfect balance ; the 
 turn of the shoulders follows the movement of the head ; 
 the limbs answer to and balance each other exactly as in 
 Nature ; and the figures have thus a more absolute vitality 
 than any other artist has ever been able to give. All other 
 artists, except perhaps Raphael, and he only when he 
 had caught the inspiration from Michelangelo is to be 
 excepted, seem to place their figures in attitudes ; it is his 
 amazing and almost incredible power of seizing the pass- 
 ing movement that makes Michelangelo's figures appear 
 positively alive ; an instant more and the position is
 
 DECORATIVE ART. 61 
 
 changed. To draw from one of his figures is like drawing- 
 from Nature itself; it was only in copying portions of these 
 figures that I appreciated how profound a Realism underlies 
 the Ideal of this greatest of artists. 
 
 These are the mighty works that, like the gorgeous 
 symphonies of Beethoven and the choruses of Handel, 
 stand out in sublime solitude above the efforts of 
 other men. It will be well for students, and indeed for 
 all artists, to remember that, if they wish to catch some 
 reflections of the beauties that appear revealed in these 
 lofty creations of genius, they will fail most egregiously if 
 they only aspire to imitate them ; whereas it is in the 
 power of each one to follow in the steps of this most 
 glorious master, by seeking in Nature as he did, for some 
 of her hidden truths, by never condescending to substitute 
 dexterity for knowledge, or to catch applause by wilfully 
 falsifying for fear that Truth should be misunderstood. In 
 this way they will find that it is not necessary to treat of 
 angels or prophets to produce a thing of beauty, for realism 
 of this noble kind can glorify the humblest subject.
 
 LECTURE II. 1 
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 
 
 I have no intention in the present discourse of passing 
 in review the whole history of Old and New Art, or of 
 drawing out at length the comparison between them. I 
 intend, on the contrary, so far from attempting to exhaust 
 the subject, to confine myself to th£,j:onsideration of a 
 few reasons only for the difference between our Modern 
 Art and that of previous ages — a difference to my mind 
 not in favour of the former — and to a brief inquiry as to 
 how far we may hope that our work will ever attain as 
 high a standard as that of the Old Masters, and what 
 direction it should take to arrive at this result. 
 
 I have been led to the discussion of this subject, because 
 it is not uncommonly believed and asserted, that the Art 
 of our day may be shown to be in advance of that of the 
 past ; or rather, that, if not equal to it in some so-called 
 
 1 This Lecture was given at the Royal Institution, May 1872.
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 63 
 
 technical or academical qualities, it is acquiring so many 
 important " new lights " from the general progress of know- 
 ledge, that its development into an Art taking its stand- 
 point on a higher ground than that which we have been 
 accustomed to call High Art, is only a question of time, 
 of the spread of a more general art-education, and, more 
 especially, of certain ideas. 
 
 We are all familiar with the argument, which, while it 
 admits that the great artists of history, whether Greek or 
 Italian, may have conceived and realized an ideal of the 
 human form which in these days we cannot pretend to 
 rival, yet insist that ideas on this subject are, to use a 
 modern vulgarism, " played out; " that we want our art to 
 be more in accordance with the spirit of the age, which 
 is an age of realities and progress ; that our art must be 
 above all realistic, and show us Nature as we see her 
 around us, and that it must also progress and keep 
 pace with the advancement of science and education, so 
 as to give us something new. As science is perpetually 
 startling us with new discoveries, so art must also break 
 new ground and strike out a fresh path. I do not say 
 that the argument, 'put into this broad and coarse form, 
 exactly expresses the opinion of any really thoughtful 
 persons ; but it is at the root of much that is written and 
 said on the subject, and that by persons in a position to 
 influence public taste, and who at all events imagine they
 
 64 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 have well considered the subject; and it is so plausible 
 as to require refutation. 
 
 It is apparently not obvious to every one at first sight 
 wherein lies the great distinction between science and 
 art, which restrains the latter within certain impassable 
 boundaries, while there is apparently no possible limit to 
 the discoveries and novelties of which the former is 
 capable. Persons who argue in the way just noticed do not 
 see how it is the very essence of an art to have a certain 
 ideal or standard, which is understood to be a limit, though 
 it may never be actually attained ; while in the case of 
 science the field of operation is ever widening ; that as 
 art can only appeal to our minds or hearts through our 
 senses, unless it does so on some principle of choice or 
 selection, we gain no more from it than we gain from the 
 observation of Nature itself. Now since the human form 
 and face, containing as they do the highest qualities of 
 beauty which Nature presents for our admiration, form 
 the highest study to which an artist can devote himself, 
 and since the aspects not only of human but of all natural 
 beauty are the same in all ages, it follows that there is 
 no new discovery to be made in the matter, and that 
 the only possible development is in the power of expres- 
 sion. Not seeing, or even caring to see this, our modern 
 critics are not in a position to judge how near to perfection 
 in the attainment of this ideal the art of the past arrived,
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 65 
 
 or how nearly it reached the limits beyond which art is 
 incapable of further progress. What then they really desire 
 in the present day, is a kind of art which shall appeal 
 more directly to minds incapable of appreciating its more 
 elevated characteristics. This they persuade themselves 
 would be a higher development, because appealing to a 
 wider range. But here we must pause. A wider range — 
 of what ? Of sympathies ? No ; but of minds incapable 
 of large sympathies. The argument that the progress of 
 knowledge has given us new and more varied themes for 
 expression, and therefore tends to produce a further de- 
 velopment of art, must fall to the ground, unless it can 
 be shown that these themes are of a kind that lend 
 themselves specially to artistic treatment. 
 
 The truth is, that any attempt to rival or surpass 
 the chef d'ceuvres of the past must be made on the 
 same conditions and in the same spirit that animated 
 the producers of those great works. Were science to 
 discover for us the cause of every natural phenomenon 
 that exists — nay, were it to reach the inmost sources of 
 life or light — the glow of the evening sky would be none 
 the more or less beautiful, nor the grace of a child's move- 
 ments one whit diminished or increased. These indeed 
 are eternal and unchangeable beauties, and it is with 
 these that the artist has to do ; and though he may never 
 be able to attain to the complete expression of them, the 
 
 F
 
 66 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 end of them has always been and ever will be within 
 the range of his conceptions, since they live for ever for 
 his continual contemplation. I have therefore no hesita- 
 tion in saying that art has lost more than it has gained 
 by our modern modes of thought and feeling, and that 
 if it be asked why we cannot put away the traditions of 
 the past, and work in the modern spirit, the answer is, 
 that the modern spirit is becoming daily more opposed 
 to the artistic spirit, and is precisely what hampers its 
 expression ; that what is good in the art of to-day, is good 
 in the same way, and for the same reasons, as the old ; 
 that we have no lights on the subject which were not 
 also clear to the old masters ; and that where we seem 
 to have struck out a new path, we have only chosen one 
 which they purposely and rightly rejected; while where 
 we seem to have discovered a new truth, it proves to be 
 one beside the question. 
 
 Now there are, I think, two causes to be found for the 
 immense difference in the aim and results of our modern 
 work as compared with that of the ancients. One of 
 these is a noble cause ; and is due to the spread of a 
 philosophy, I might almost call it a religion, which insists 
 that there are certain qualities, moral or divine, inherent 
 in ideas or impressions of beauty, which the artist must 
 recognise in order to produce a high form of art. The 
 second is an ignoble cause, and may be broadly stated
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 67 
 
 as due to the fact that artists, from motives of indolence 
 or interest, have allowed themselves to be led by the 
 opinion of the public, instead of being, as of old, in- 
 different to it, or themselves leading the way to a better 
 appreciation on the part of the public of the capabilities 
 of art. Now both these causes have, curiously enough, 
 led to the same result ; I mean they have both been 
 instrumental in leading to a prevalent belief that the 
 imitation of Nature, or perhaps I should say the record 
 of impressions of Nature, is the aim and purpose of the 
 artist. It will be necessary then, before going further, 
 that we should inquire in what way and how far a mere 
 imitation of Nature may result in a work of art. And in 
 speaking of imitation, I must be understood to use the 
 word in the sense of copying. Fuseli indeed marks a 
 difference between copying and imitation, and defines it 
 in this way : " Precision of eye and obedience of hand 
 are the requisites of the former, without the least pretence 
 to choice, what to select, what to reject ; whilst choice, 
 directed by judgment or taste, constitutes the essence of 
 imitation, and alone can raise the most dexterous copyist to 
 the noble rank of an artist." It seems to me, however, that 
 it is impossible for an artist not to choose what he is going 
 to paint ; he may choose stupidly, but a choice of some 
 kind he must make ; so, with this slight difference, I apply 
 Fuseli' s definition of copying to what I mean by imitation. 
 
 f 2
 
 68 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 When I say that the belief of which I am speaking 
 is a very prevalent one, I judge not only by what is 
 said and written on the matter, but by the large quantity 
 of merely imitative work which is to be met with in our 
 numerous art-exhibitions, and the amount of success such 
 work meets with. Now it is quite true that an imitation 
 of Nature may be a work of art ; when at its best, it calls 
 forth all the highest technical qualities of the painter, the 
 qualities that distinguish him as a painter from the poet, 
 who presents to us Nature in another way. These technical 
 qualities, this "precision of eye and obedience of hand" 
 requisite for the rendering of colour and form, include the 
 whole art of painting, and are found in perfection only 
 in the work of the most highly-gifted artists ; but they 
 distinctly belong only to the painter as such, and are inde- 
 pendent of the higher mental faculties. On the other hand, 
 being the qualities which are necessary to his existence 
 as a painter, those without which he is nothing, they take 
 the lowest place among the artistic faculties. The fact 
 however remains, that a mere imitation of Nature, what is 
 called realistic painting (though I should be inclined to 
 call it materialistic, a true realism being of the highest 
 forms of art l ) — the fact remains that this imitative painting 
 may be so admirably done as to become of a high order 
 
 1 I have endeavoured to show in the previous lecture, that idealism 
 is only the highest form of realism.
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 69 
 
 of merit. It is the essence of portrait-painting, though 
 for a good portrait other qualities are doubtless required. 
 It is the essence also of landscape-painting, though for 
 good landscapes other qualities are required, and it is 
 all that is necessary for still-life painting. Nevertheless it 
 is only the groundwork of ideal art, and is like the language 
 in which the poet expresses his thoughts. It is indeed 
 the language of art, and may be used by the artist for 
 three purposes. It may be used by the mere imitator to 
 present the ordinary aspects of Nature ; it may be used 
 by an artist of taste to express, through a knowledge of 
 these aspects, his selection of what he considers best worth 
 portraying ; and thirdly, by the gifted man of genius to 
 give form to his imagination, which, rising above mere 
 " choice directed by judgment and taste," directs itself 
 to the higher flights of creative powers. This imaginative 
 power of the artist is the result of the selection and com- 
 bination of the impressions received during a long and 
 intimate acquaintance with Nature ; depending, according 
 to Mr. Darwin, on the strength and variety of our im- 
 pressions, on the rapidity with which they are conveyed 
 to our mind, and our power of retaining and combining 
 them. Mr. Ruskin also explains the imagination to be 
 a certain mode of regarding or combining the ideas which 
 . the mind has received from external Nature, the impressions 
 being thus obviously the groundwork for the imagination,
 
 7° LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 and the highest art that which gives form to the imagina- 
 tion of the artist, not that -which records impressions 
 received immediately from Nature herself. And this imagi- 
 native faculty in the hands of men of great genius is of 
 a truly creative kind; for is not the result of their com- 
 binations akin to the creation of a new world for the 
 enjoyment, intellectual and moral, of those who can 
 understand it? Has not Michelangelo created for us a 
 new and superior order of beings? whose grandeur may 
 indeed be felt but not defined ; so that writers have 
 exhausted language in the attempt to give utterance to 
 the emotion called up by his power. As when Reynolds 
 impressively says, " I feel a self-congratulation in knowing 
 myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite ;" 
 and Fuseli, "His women are moulds of generation, his 
 infants teem with the man, his men are a race of giants ; " 
 and Ruskin, " His inexplicable power proceeds from an 
 imaginative perception almost superhuman, which goes 
 whither we cannot follow, and is where we cannot come; 
 throwing naked the final, deepest root of the being of 
 man, whereby he grows out of the invisible, and holds on 
 his God home ; " and again, when he speaks of " the troops 
 of terror torn up from the earth by the four-quartered 
 winds of the Judgment " . . . . making " the hair stand 
 up and the words be few ; " — language which bears witness * 
 to faculties of a truly creative nature, for of none other
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 71 
 
 could it be used. So then the aim of all high art is — the 
 aim of all art (except that which professes to be portrai- 
 ture) — should be to create a world in which our imagina- 
 tions should be excited to the contemplation of noble 
 and beautiful ideas ; and in proportion as it fails to do 
 this, so does it differ from the great art of the old 
 masters, who, intentionally or instinctively, ever had this 
 aim in view. 
 
 It is not difficult then to see the reason why landscape- 
 painting is necessarily put in the second rank of art ; for 
 even if the impressions recorded be of the highest beauty, 
 still it is but a record and an imitation, though still an 
 imitation which may come under the head of Fuseli's 
 second definition as being "directed by judgment and 
 taste ; " and it is one most difficult of accomplishment, 
 requiring artistic skill of the highest order, on account 
 of the subtle and fleeting effects which it is the delight 
 and glory of the landscape-painter to recall. And of the 
 same nature as this highest form of landscape is the 
 more elevated form of portrait-painting, which aims at 
 recording not only the features and costume, but all the 
 nobler characteristics of the subject, taking, however, a 
 second place, as being a recording and not a creative 
 art. Lower than this must be placed what is called still- 
 life painting, and that kind of landscape which is of the 
 matter-of-fact portrait kind. However beautiful the subject
 
 72 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 chosen for imitation may be, these only appeal to us in 
 so far as the subject in Nature itself appeals to us, or 
 please us according to the amount of technical skill dis- 
 played. Still lower again is that kind of realistic portrait- 
 painting which we find in the modem French school, 
 which presents a specious appearance of originality by 
 ignoring the necessity for presenting the subject to us 
 under an agreeable form, and so repels us in spite of an 
 undoubted technical skilfulness. To this kind of realism 
 I am not sure that I do not prefer our own fashionable 
 school of portraiture, as showing the faint tradition of 
 a desire to ennoble the subject by the treatment. The 
 basest degradation of the art is, however, revealed in that 
 brutal rendering of noble subjects, in which the French 
 realistic painters take especial delight ; where with insolent 
 bravado everything is done with a direct intention of dis- 
 gusting us, and of showing how an ignoble and ferocious 
 mood may triumph over the purity and dignity with which 
 such themes have been hitherto invested. Of this kind 
 is the " Salome" of Regnault, which it is worth while to 
 compare with the graceful treatment of the same figure 
 by the early Italian painters. 
 
 Nearly on the same level, but not always so low, are 
 the Dutch painters, who treat us to gross representations 
 of drunken scenes ; they are not so low, because the plea- 
 sure they take in these things is merely stupid, and not
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 73 
 
 cynical. With the Dutch painters indeed, as in the case of 
 Ostade (who does not always descend to these subjects, but 
 as often paints for us the homely pleasures of a contented 
 if somewhat degraded peasantry), there is constantly a 
 perception of the poetical beauty of glowing light and 
 softened and mysterious shade, and a delicate skill in 
 rendering them, which makes us forget the poverty and 
 grossness of the idea. There is no such redeeming feature, 
 however, in the same scenes when painted by Jan Steen, 
 whose remarkable power of rendering expression only 
 adds, as one may say, to his disgrace, so that the better the 
 art displayed in the imitation the more base is the result. 1 
 
 Now if we reflect a moment on the various styles of 
 painting I have thus briefly noticed, we shall find that they 
 are all, with the exception of the higher kind of portraiture, 
 of comparatively modern invention ; they have all come 
 into practice since the end of the sixteenth century, up 
 to which period art rested on that high level of which I 
 have spoken, being of a purely creative and ideal nature. 
 We may call them, if we please, developments of that 
 
 1 The knowledge and experience which efface prejudice again lead 
 me, if not to modify the severity of this paragraph, to add that the 
 disgust excited by Jan Steen's usual subjects and his gross treatment of 
 them, is considerably qualified when one knows and can appreciate his 
 inimitable power of expression and masterly execution. His touch 
 combines a certainty and a finish which in his best works are quite 
 exquisite.
 
 74 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 high school, but the development is from a creative to 
 an imitative art. Now the creative necessarily includes 
 the imitative ; that is to say, a knowledge of natural forms 
 and a fully-trained power of imitating them is what the 
 creative artist starts from — they are the indispensable in- 
 struments of his genius; to descend again to the level 
 of mere imitation, and to remain there as if there were 
 nothing higher, is therefore to take up a distinctly lower 
 position. Nor can we consider the position thus assumed 
 to be a new one, for it is not to be supposed that the 
 Florentine and Venetian painters, who painted the land- 
 scape of their backgrounds with such exquisite perception 
 of the very essence of its beauty, never painted landscape 
 pure and simple for want of appreciation ; it was because 
 they felt it but an imperfect form of art which should rely 
 simply on its power of recalling impressions. Titian indeed 
 has left us pictures of almost pure landscape, but they 
 are rather in the nature of a diversion from his other and 
 more serious work, being painted but occasionally out of 
 the fulness of his delight in the beauty of his native 
 mountain scenery. 
 
 And so of fruit and flower-painting. There was no 
 painter up to the end of the sixteenth century who would 
 not have scorned to sit down to make a picture of a 
 bunch of roses or a plate of peaches. In their beautiful 
 ideal representations of the Infant Christ and His Virgin
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 75 
 
 Mother, these men could indeed conceive no more de- 
 lightful manner of enriching their pictures with forms of 
 beauty than by decorating them with garlands of fruit and 
 flowers, and we may be sure they took as keen a pleasure 
 in painting these innocent beauties of nature as any still- 
 life painter of the Dutch, French, or English schools. 
 Herein, however, lies the difference between the old and 
 the new feeling in such matters. A work of pure imitation 
 per se was a thing unknown up to the end of the sixteenth 
 century, not because it did not occur to the sculptors 
 and painters of those times to produce such work, but 
 because they rejected it as not worthy of consideration, 
 knowing well that true art is a different thing. Modern 
 art, on the other hand — I mean that part of it which is 
 modern in spirit — aims at nothing more than recalling the 
 impressions which all of us, who have a few shreds of 
 poetic sensibility, receive from the more obvious beauties 
 of Nature, and in this way makes an appeal to a wide 
 circle of sympathies, though, as I have already noticed, 
 those sympathies may be of the shallowest kind. In 
 rendering what is purely beautiful, it finds its expression 
 in that school of landscape-painting which has reached 
 perhaps its highest point in some of Turner's best work ; 
 its lowest in the mass of still-life flower and fruit-painting, 
 of which I suppose William Hunt is the most refined 
 and skilful exponent. With that other phase of modern
 
 76 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 art which deals not with the beauty of Nature but its 
 grossness or inanity, I have for the present nothing to do. 
 
 For the difference above noticed I have said that there 
 are two causes, one noble and one ignoble. To begin 
 with the first : it seems rather startling to say that a noble 
 idea may also be a misleading one ; but it is rather in the 
 application of the idea to art, not in other considerations 
 to which it gives rise, that the idea appears to me fallacious. 
 Now when I speak of a noble philosophy of art, amounting 
 almost to a religion, it is obvious whom I have in my 
 mind as the exponent of this philosophy or the prophet 
 of this religion — the name of Mr. Ruskin cannot fail at 
 once to present itself. It is with no small amount of 
 diffidence, and with some misgiving, that I venture to differ 
 from so gifted a writer, especially on a point which he 
 would, and indeed in all his teaching does insist on as 
 a vital one. With diffidence, for it is quite possible that 
 I have missed, either altogether or in part, his meaning, 
 or do not see deeply enough into it ; with misgiving, for 
 he has the world enough against him already, and it may 
 be (if indeed he is ever aware of the fact) a natural source 
 of vexation to him to find that I, occupying a post analogous 
 to his own, and holding a responsibility for art-teaching 
 which must make my views in some sense of importance 
 for right or wrong, should hold on a point of vital interest 
 in art-teaching an opinion different from his own. But
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 77 
 
 I feel that this idea of his which I am about to challenge 
 leads to so much that is false in the art of this country, 
 and to the production of so much of this merely recording 
 work, under the notion that such is the true aim of the 
 painter, that I boldly run whatever risk may befall me in 
 endeavouring to point out its error. 
 
 I quote Mr. Ruskin's own words from the second volume 
 of Modern Painters, where he enunciates his whole theory 
 of art. They are as follows : — " I wholly deny that the 
 impressions of beauty are in any way sensual ; they are 
 neither sensual nor intellectual, but moral ; " x and again 
 in a later work, the Crown of Wild Olive :— " No state- 
 ment of mine has been more earnestly and oftener 
 contradicted than that good taste is essentially a moral 
 quality." I can hardly therefore be mistaken as to the 
 assertion, though, as I say, I may have failed to grasp 
 the whole of the meaning. With regard to the sense of 
 the word " sensual," he explains it in the sentence before 
 the one first quoted as equivalent to " aesthetic ;" "the 
 term ' eesthesis,' " he writes, " properly signifies mere 
 sensual perception of the outward qualities and necessary 
 effects of bodies." This, although true, slightly degrades 
 the meaning of the word aesthetic, which may surely be 
 applied to our mental as well as our sensual perceptions. 
 The word sensual too has come to be used in a lower 
 1 Modern Painters, vol. ii. chap. ii. § I.
 
 78 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 meaning than sesthetic (as when we speak of "sensual" 
 pleasures, meaning the pleasures by which we gratify our 
 lower appetites), so I prefer, for fear of misapprehension, 
 the word " aesthetic." 
 
 Now in insisting that our ideas and impressions of 
 beauty are in reality what Mr. Ruskin denies them to 
 be, sesthetic, I labour under the disadvantage of appearing 
 to abstract from them that elevated character which Mr. 
 Ruskin has ascribed to them in his chapters on typical 
 beauty. But observe, I do not in any way deny the truth, 
 the philosophical truth, of this view of ideas of beauty; 
 I only say it is beside the question, and may easily lead 
 to false conclusions with regard to art. It is not that I 
 hold the error to lie in the assertion of the moral quality 
 in impressions of beauty, but in the inference that the 
 perception of this quality is essential to the production 
 of a true work of art, and that it is under the influence 
 of such perception that all good art has been produced. 
 I can indeed conceive of no writing more calculated to 
 elevate our moral and intellectual nature than the chapters 
 in which Mr. Ruskin treats of the different forms of beauty 
 as types of the Divine attributes; for not only those 
 chapters, but the whole of his works from beginning to 
 end, set before us more exalted conceptions of the beauty 
 and sublimity of Nature than has ever been presented to 
 us in words, amounting, as I have said, almost to the
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 79 
 
 setting forth of a new religion of the purest and noblest 
 type. But to me it is impossible not to feel throughout 
 that the typical qualities are not really inherent in forms 
 of beauty, but exist in the mind of the spectator, which 
 may be excited with equal readiness to their contemplation, 
 by every form of art which professes to represent them. 
 For, be it observed, if the aesthetic nature of these im- 
 pressions be denied, the seeing power of the artist, which 
 is distinctly his aesthetic faculty — distinguishing him from 
 those who cannot receive impressions of beauty — is left 
 out. of the account also ; in which case the earnest intention 
 of the painter, his intense love of Nature, his profound 
 veneration and affection for the moral beauties to be found 
 in the most trivial of God's works, may easily lead him to 
 the belief that, as long as he devotes himself to the imita- 
 tion of these works, he is setting forth the glory of the 
 Creator in a better way than if he used his powers for 
 the purpose of selection and combination. " Let the 
 young artist beware of the spirit of Choice ; it is an inso- 
 lent spirit at the best," says Mr. Ruskin, as a sequel to 
 saying that "if we can only admire this thing or that, we 
 may be sure that our cause for liking is of a finite and 
 false nature." 1 He must pardon me if I think that not 
 only here but throughout his works he has not sufficiently 
 separated two ideas. He confuses the faculty by which 
 1 Modern Painters, vol. ii. chap. iii. § § II, 12.
 
 80 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 we may all derive a moral benefit from a humble con- 
 templation of the infinite beauties and wonders of creation, 
 with that artistic faculty which frames for us and forces 
 upon us the perception and appreciation of those generic 
 beauties which are not obvious to the unexercised or 
 unperceiving mind. It is no doubt true that we receive 
 a more elevated understanding of the import of this world 
 and of this life the more we have illustrated to us the 
 nature of God, and in this way these impressions of beauty 
 may have an ennobling effect on our whole moral nature ; 
 but this is really beside the question. When we are con- 
 sidering them in relation not to our own minds, but to 
 their capacity for representation in art, we have to decide 
 not what excites in us the highest religious or moral 
 emotions, but how far art is capable of conveying these 
 emotions to the mind. Otherwise, if we insist too much 
 upon the moral character of the impressions of beauty, 
 we should have to admit that the man in whom they 
 excite the most rapturous moral enthusiasm is of necessity 
 the greatest artist, rather than he who is distinguished by 
 his perceptive and discriminating gift. 
 
 An artist indeed may possess his enthusiasm for beauty 
 in this " theoretic " form, but how is he to explain in his 
 work that this is the case ? It is doubtless easy to answer 
 that the artist who enjoys this high moral perception of 
 beauty must show it in his work if his art is good; but
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. Si 
 
 it is quite open to the spectator to deny that he finds any 
 trace of this emotion in the work, and so to condemn it ; 
 in which case we are led back to the original proposition, 
 that the moral qualities of beauty exist only in the mind 
 of the beholder, who can supply them to any work of art 
 which he considers to set forth these beauties most clearly. 
 
 If the views contained in the preceding remarks have 
 been stated with sufficient clearness, it will now be per- 
 ceived how these ideas may lead to that kind of art 
 which I have explained as being rather of a recording 
 and imitative, than of a creative character. The beauty 
 of nature is very much more obvious in certain of its 
 aspects and forms than in others. For one man who has 
 the aesthetic faculty of being pleasurably affected by the 
 beautiful forms and proportions of the " Venus of Melos," 
 or Michelangelo's " Slave" — that is, by the subtle distinc- 
 tions of. line which in Nature go to make the difference 
 between a form of high beauty, and one that is of a mean 
 or vulgar kind — there are a hundred who can feel the 
 glory of a sunset or the exquisite tints of an anemone. 
 Since therefore the moral qualities of typical beauty are 
 set forth to the mind which can see them, as gloriously 
 in these last as in the first, and may even be set up on 
 a higher pinnacle, as exemplifying types of purity and 
 humility in contrast to mere sensual, and therefore (by a 
 verbal quibble) degraded, love of form for its own sake ;
 
 82 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 it is not difficult for an artist to persuade himself that he 
 is doing the most earnest and right-minded work in endea- 
 vouring humbly and patiently to imitate those beauties 
 to the utmost of his power, and so convey to others the 
 emotion that he feels. 
 
 Nay more, he may go further ; he may persuade himself 
 that there is nothing else worth doing, and that this work 
 alone is of a pure and spiritual nature, all other being 
 sensual, and therefore demoralising ; so that, as with the 
 ascetics of old, there is no kind of work too humble for 
 him to devote himself to it. Or what is worse than this 
 (for work done really in earnest and with a spirit of 
 patience has always in it something of value, and I may 
 add that no good work can ever be done without this 
 spirit), the spectator may well imagine that the mind of 
 the painter who laboriously produces for us again and 
 again bunches of primroses and violets, is actuated by 
 some exalted, earnest feeling, and in possession of some 
 high theoretic faculty, while in truth he has only been 
 exerting a mere imitative and technical skill and what 
 amount of aesthetic faculty he may possess, and moreover 
 only exercising just so much of his faculties as will enable 
 him to make money in the quickest and readiest way. 
 Thus it is quite possible for such a theorist, if himself 
 destitute of the aesthetic perception, to exalt bad and 
 fantastic work over good, if he imagines it to give a
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 83 
 
 higher expression to the typical nature of beauty ; so that 
 ■the critic who is not offended by the crude and discordant 
 yellow and blue of one of Turner's later sunset pictures, 
 may believe that he finds in it a deeper perception of the 
 infinity and purity of the evening sky than in his earlier 
 work, and may thus be led to ascribe to it an artistic 
 value which it does not possess. In the same way too 
 he might exalt the birds'-nests of William Hunt over the 
 mighty conceptions of Michelangelo and Phidias, if he 
 imagines he perceives this earnest faculty in the one and 
 not in the others. 
 
 As a proof that this is possible, we have only to look 
 at the amount of artistic talent that is spent on painting 
 little groups of fruit and flowers, or small landscape studies, 
 when it might be developed into something better if the 
 artist did not stop short with the idea suggested by this 
 train of thought, that he is in this way doing the only 
 right work. It is not altogether Mr. Ruskin's fault that a 
 noble theory has led to such poor results, for it is the 
 misfortune of all great ideas that they degenerate most 
 easily into cant ; in illustration of which point I may 
 relate an instance, which has come under my own notice, 
 of a person who visited an artist's studio, and after having 
 been shown pictures and designs of no mean order of 
 beauty, begged to be allowed to see some of his " earnest 
 work, his study of leaves and flowers." 
 
 G 2
 
 S 4 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 If then I have made my meaning clear, I shall be under- 
 stood to have said that the idea must be expressed in a 
 work of art, and not merely exist in the mind of the artist, 
 or be supplied by that of the beholder ; that the moral 
 nature of beauty is of a kind that cannot be expressed 
 in painting or sculpture ; that therefore, as far as art is 
 concerned, ideas of beauty are and must be purely aesthetic, 
 and that the contrary theory is not only calculated to lead 
 criticism astray where the aesthetic faculty is wanting, but 
 may even induce an indifference on the part of the artist 
 to any higher forms of beauty than those which are at 
 once obvious to the uneducated mind. 
 
 I will not now stop to discuss another point in Mr. 
 Ruskin's writings which appears at first sight to bear on 
 this subject ; I mean the idea which runs throughout his 
 works of the necessity for a right state of moral feeling, 
 not only in producers but in nations and epochs, as 
 essential to the appreciation and production of a noble 
 and beautiful art. I may remark, however, that even if it 
 can be shown that the best art has always arisen out of 
 a pure state of national faith and domestic virtue, it does 
 not follow that those conditions will always produce good 
 art. If the aesthetic qualities be absent they certainly 
 never will ; and I can imagine no condition of national 
 virtue which could cram ideas of beauty into the head 
 of an average Englishman or Scotchman • but as far as
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 85 
 
 regards the artist himself, it appears to be unquestionable 
 that the aesthetic faculties being in two instances equal, 
 there will be no comparison between the art of a man of 
 a pure and noble mind and one of a mean and sordid 
 nature. Indeed the very highest artistic gifts seem to imply 
 also a noble and healthy moral condition. Michelangelo 
 was himself one of the most simple and high-minded of 
 men, incapable of any act of meanness ; and we should 
 find, I think, on examination that all the truly great artists 
 and poets have been of the same nature. But I have been 
 led much further into the question of the moral nature of 
 beauty than I at first intended. It is a question which 
 when once taken up is not to be lightly dismissed, and 
 having given much serious thought to the matter, I can 
 only hope that I have not in any way misunderstood Mr. 
 Ruskin's meaning ; still more do I hope that I have not 
 wrongly represented it (which indeed I could only do 
 under a misunderstanding). Here then I must leave this 
 difficult and interesting subject, to touch upon the second 
 cause of the poverty-stricken nature of our modern art as 
 compared with the old. This second cause I asserted to 
 be of an ignoble kind, and I cannot but feel a slight sense 
 of degradation that it is necessary to express an opinion 
 on this matter at all ; I shall accordingly dismiss this part 
 of the subject as briefly as possible. 
 
 I have spoken of this second cause as arising from the
 
 86 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 fact that artists, from motives of indolence or interest, 
 have allowed themselves to be led by the public instead 
 of, as of old, taking the lead in forming the public taste. 
 To this is to be added what I have already touched upon 
 as another reason for the production of the amount of 
 imitative work which we see in our exhibitions, namely, 
 the obvious nature of the beauty of certain forms of crea- 
 tion. It is this which brings into the field a number of 
 workers, having in some cases a considerable amount 
 of technical skill, who would in ancient Greece or in 
 Italy have taken the place of workmen under some artist 
 of genius, but who now, yielding to a false taste on the 
 part of the public, keep it supplied with the kind of art 
 which it is best able to appreciate. And here I may quote 
 an apposite saying of Sir J. Reynolds : " It is certain 
 that the lowest style will be the most popular, as it comes 
 within the compass of ignorance itself, and the vulgar will 
 always be pleased with what is natural in the confined 
 and misunderstood sense of the word." And again : " In 
 the inferior parts of the art the learned and the ignorant 
 are nearly on a level." With this authority I feel in a 
 position to repeat my original assertion, that modern art 
 has struck out for itself a path which the ancients disdained 
 to follow, and has developed itself in the direction which 
 no genuine artist or man of taste would ever wish to see 
 it pursue, having lowered itself to the appreciation of a
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 87 
 
 class of patrons and admirers unknown to the older artists. 
 We find this sort of work, it is true, among the Dutch 
 painters as far back as the end of the seventeenth or 
 beginning of the eighteenth century, but they were men 
 who (always excepting Rembrandt, one of the greatest 
 geniuses of the world) hardly rose to the appreciation of 
 anything beyond mere technical skill, and were wholly 
 destitute of imagination. We never find it, however, 
 among the Spanish painters, truly realistic as they are in 
 the highest sense in their portraiture, and capable through 
 their realism of giving a terrible truth to their representa- 
 tions of the great tragedies of Scripture ; and though we 
 find what are called flower-pieces among the Italian 
 painters of the seventeenth century, they are always more 
 or less decoratively arranged. They are, in fact, a de- 
 velopment of the decorative school of Raphael ; a back- 
 ward development it is true, indicating the decay of a 
 high artistic spirit, but one which still retains something 
 of the old idea that the beauty of nature must be brought 
 in subjection to the mind of the artist, and used for some 
 better purpose than merely showing that he loves it and 
 is capable of producing a skilful facsimile. I must men- 
 tion that under this head of imitation I include, besides 
 still-life and the lower form of landscape, all that kind 
 of figure-painting which, while it professes to illustrate a 
 subject, is animated by no love of beauty or sentiment
 
 S3 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 of a noble kind, but contents itself with copying vulgar 
 models dressed in some well-known and favourite costume. 
 It is not to be supposed that in old times the world 
 at large was better informed on matters of art, or of 
 better judgment, than our modern English public ; but 
 up to this date it has always been considered right that 
 in these matters artists should have the privilege of 
 teaching the public to discriminate between bad and good 
 taste in art. The people of Greece and Italy were con- 
 tent to accept what artists gave them, only occasionally, 
 with the popular voice of ridicule, condemning any flagrant 
 piece of bad work presented to them. But it is now so 
 much the fashion for artists to bow to the opinion of 
 the public on these matters, that I doubt if it is possible 
 for the most independent to be entirely careless about 
 the criticisms that are passed upon his work. I do not 
 refer to those special criticisms that for some reasons best 
 known to themselves all newspaper editors feel bound to 
 put forth whenever an exhibition is opened or a gallery 
 of pictures sold ; in these cases where one critic praises 
 another condemns, so that no harm is done after all ; 
 but what I mean is, that it is almost impossible for the 
 best artist in these days to free himself from the feeling 
 that his work is in some way put forward for criticism, and 
 until he can do this there is not much chance of the attain- 
 ment of a better style, for such criticism is almost always
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 89 
 
 sure to be wrong, and is far worse for the artist when it 
 praises than when it blames. Baron Leys is reported to 
 have said, that whenever any one specially praised a 
 portion of his picture he painted it out as soon as he was 
 left alone. It is not all of us who have the moral courage 
 to do this, but the principle probably is the right one. 
 
 But it may be said, and indeed this is the great argument 
 of those who talk of the encouragement of a modern art, 
 that the taste of the day has altered, and we no longer 
 desire that style which appeals only to the cultivated few, 
 but one which suits the taste of the whole public. In 
 answer to that I would say, in the first place, with 
 Reynolds : u We will not allow a man who shall prefer 
 the inferior style to say it is his taste : taste here has 
 nothing, or ought to have nothing, to do with the ques- 
 tion; he wants, not taste, but sense, and soundness of 
 judgment ; " and, in the second place, that it ought to 
 be clear to every one that the only way in which artists 
 should appeal to the public is by giving it the best they 
 can produce, and so raising the standard of taste to their 
 own level. I have on another occasion said what I have 
 to say concerning that class of artists, be they painters, 
 sculptors, architects, or decorative furniture makers, who 
 produce only for the market. Words are wasted on 
 and against them. Nothing that I can say will avail 
 where the dignified remonstrances, which Mr. Ruskin
 
 90 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 continually addresses to those whom in one most eloquent 
 appeal he calls worshippers of the "Slave of Slaves," 
 are of no effect. " You cannot serve two masters ; 
 — you must serve the one or the other. If your work 
 is first with you, and your fee second, work is your 
 master, and the Lord of work, which is God. But if 
 your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee 
 is your master, and the Lord of fee, who is the Devil ; 
 and not only the Devil, but the lowest of these — 'the 
 least erected fiend that fell.' " He is not, it is true, 
 speaking specially to artists in this exhortation, but to 
 all workers alike ; but if it is true for the labourer, it is 
 more true for the artist, who has a higher mission to 
 fulfil than most men have. I have no desire to moralise 
 unnecessarily, or to give myself any airs of superiority on 
 this point ; in doing our best work, which we cannot but 
 do if our love for the work be genuine and "above the 
 fee," we have an undoubted right to demand from the 
 rich, who make a luxury of possessing our work, the price 
 that they are willing to pay for it. So I say no more 
 on this point. I had far better leave the treatment of 
 it to that eloquent writer whose name has been so fre- 
 quently mentioned in the course of this lecture, who has 
 shown in his life and acts, in his noble and single-minded 
 devotion to the cause he has taken up — the cause of art 
 and the well-being of his fellow-workmen — and in his
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 91 
 
 courageous bearing against more laughter and opposition 
 than has fallen to the lot of most men, no less than in 
 his writings, an example of what every worker should be. 
 He tells us that he is surprised that he is unable to force 
 his ideas into his readers' heads. When the world is 
 animated by as pure and high-minded a spirit as his own, 
 he may find reason for surprise, but not till then. 
 
 If then we are to look forward to the more general 
 production of a class of art of that high creative kind 
 which I have dwelt on, and which is at present decidedly 
 in the background in this land — although I must confess 
 that I think there is now a decided move in the right 
 direction and a desire for something more serious — we 
 must, I think, in the first place rely on the cultivation of 
 our perceptive faculties to show us the high beauties that 
 lie beneath the surface of nature. We shall then get rid 
 of the notion that little pictures of fruit and flowers and 
 landscape are anything more than studies to help us in 
 the execution of better work, or to be done from time 
 to time as mementos of some specially delightful aspect 
 of nature. Above all, moreover, we must study the works 
 of the great masters of antiquity. " Study the great works 
 of the great masters," says Reynolds, "for ever. Study 
 nature attentively, but always with those masters in your 
 company ; consider them as models which you are to 
 imitate, and at the same time as rivals with whom you
 
 92 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 are to contend." We must also, if we can, and on this 
 point I feel the less hopeful — though every artist can if 
 he pleases assist in the work — eliminate the mercantile 
 spirit. It is well known that what some suppose to be 
 an increasing love of art in this country, as shown by 
 the high prices given for paintings, is now nothing more 
 than a speculation in pictures ; that the majority of buyers 
 will not purchase unless they can " buy safe," as the saying 
 is ; which means that they do not buy pictures for the 
 enjoyment to be derived from, them, but in order to sell 
 them again. If a certain pleasure in their acquisition 
 enters into their calculations, it is just as likely to be a 
 spirit of emulation in outdoing some other buyer, as real 
 pleasure derived from art ; and even in this case they 
 will not buy till they feel sure that they will not ultimately 
 lose. This may not be — is not — true of all, but it is 
 certainly true of a large class. I never in my life re- 
 member to have experienced a feeling of deeper shame 
 (shared by others of the artists present), than on the occa- 
 sion of a late Academy banquet, when one guest after 
 another rose to congratulate us on the enormous sums 
 that had been given for the pictures disposed of at the 
 late Mr. Gillot's sale. Mr. Gladstone was no exception 
 to the number, though he finally qualified his observations 
 with some remarks in which he showed his better nature, 
 and with which I cannot do better than conclude, as they
 
 OLD AND NEW ART. 93 
 
 sum up in a few lucid and eloquent phrases all that 1 
 have been endeavouring to express. " Do not," he said, 
 " allow it to be supposed that the mere patronage of 
 fashion, the mere reward offered by high price, is sufficient 
 to secure true excellence ; and remember that it is the 
 intelligent worship of beauty, and the effort to produce 
 it, which constitute the basis of all excellence in art ; and 
 that ages which have been poor, and which have been 
 in some respects comparatively barbarous, have notwith- 
 standing provided for us the models and patterns to which 
 the most highly developed civilisations can but attempt 
 to aspire."
 
 LECTURE III. 1 
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 
 
 A most munificent bequest has enabled this College 
 to found a School of Fine Art. Under the name of 
 Slade Professors, Lecturers on the Fine Arts have been 
 appointed at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the 
 endowments in both cases being derived from bequests by 
 the late Mr. Felix Slade. To the liberality of the same 
 gentleman is owed the foundation of this school. 
 
 The bequest to this College is however on a somewhat 
 different footing from those to the Universities of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, inasmuch as, by the terms of the Will, a 
 sum of 10,000/. was bequeathed for the institution of six 
 scholarships, of 50/. a year each, to*' be awarded to students 
 in the College under the age of nineteen years, for pro- 
 ficiency in the Fine Arts ; and in addition, a certain sum 
 
 1 Address delivered at the opening of the Slade School of Fine 
 Art in University College, London, October 2, 1871.
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 95 
 
 was to be devoted to the endowment of a Professorship. 
 The Council of the College felt in consequence that 
 the views of the testator would be better carried out by- 
 establishing a practical School of Fine Arts, than by merely 
 appointing a lecturing Professor, as at the other Univer- 
 sities ; and to the furtherance of this object the Executors 
 of Mr. Felix Slade generously devoted an additional sum 
 of 5,000/. for the purpose of erecting a suitable building. 
 In the consideration of these matters much, if not most, 
 of what has been done, especially with regard to the 
 building of these schools, is due to the untiring, the in- 
 exhaustible energy of the late Mr. Edwin Field, Member 
 of the Council of this College, and of the Committee 
 formed to carry out the intentions of Mr. Slade's bequest. 
 It will now be the duty of the Slade Professor to take 
 care that the utmost that is possible be done in return 
 for the efforts made by the Slade Executors and Com- 
 mittee, in their liberal desire to found an important School 
 of Art in this College. 
 
 Except at the Royal Academy there is no school of 
 any importance in London for the study of high art. In 
 the various branches of the Government Schools, the 
 primary object is confessedly the study of ornamental 
 design, as applied to the industrial arts, and attention is 
 only paid to high art in so far as the study of the figure 
 is necessary for some particular branch of ornamental
 
 96 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 manufacture. There are no doubt in London private 
 schools where the study of the figure, from nature or the 
 antique, is made the principal object, but these are chiefly 
 used by students as preparatory for admission to the 
 Royal Academy, where, as the schools are open to the 
 public without payment, it is necessary to impose a certain 
 test of proficiency before admission. 
 
 There are also in London various clubs or societies, 
 where artists subscribe and meet together for study from 
 the living model. These are not generally of much 
 advantage to the students. There is always a danger of 
 their being made use of by the members merely for the 
 purpose of making small sketches or studies for the market, 
 rather than for the purpose of real study for improve- 
 ment; and as such are decidedly to be avoided by the 
 student. Considering therefore the large number of stu- 
 dents of art to be found in London, and the fact that 
 there are no schools of importance for the study of the 
 figure, except those of the Royal Academy, where the 
 space is necessarily limited, it is to be presumed that 
 there is room for a School of Fine Art, where the study of 
 high art may be encouraged to the extent of its being 
 the only object of the institution. Nor can this school 
 ever be considered to come into competition with that 
 of the Royal Academy, since there is no fee required for 
 admission to the latter, which has also the privilege of
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 97 
 
 being richly endowed not only with the accumulation of 
 advantages which an institution acquires in the course 
 of a century, but with the talents of those whose reputa- 
 tion in art stands highest in the country, and who are 
 required to give part of their time to the instruction of 
 the students. Here on the contrary a charge is made 
 for the instruction given, and in the uncertainty as to 
 success, it has been necessary to make the fee a moder- 
 ately high one. Before however I proceed to dwell upon 
 the objects which we have to keep in view with regard 
 to this school, and the scheme which I shall try to 
 carry out, I will devote a short time to the consideration 
 of the foreign system, which I wish to take to a certain 
 extent as my guide in these matters. 
 
 In France a very different order of things prevails to 
 that which is to be found in England. Besides the 
 " Ecole des Beaux- Arts " which answers to our free Royal 
 Academy Schools, many of the principal French artists 
 have private ateliers, separate from their own studios, 
 which are largely attended by art students, to the instruc- 
 tion of whom (with a generous devotion to the cause 
 of art to which we have not been able to arrive in this 
 commercial country) they give up weekly a portion of 
 time sufficient for the purpose. These schools are not 
 only used in preparation for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts 
 (for which there is an admission test as at the Royal 
 
 H
 
 9S LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 Academy), but are frequented by the students after their 
 admission there ; indeed young artists, who have passed 
 their studentship, frequently continue to work under their 
 master long after they have painted and exhibited pictures. 
 Some of these ateliers have acquired a name for their 
 admirable system of instruction, only second to that of 
 the famous art schools of ancient Italy ; the schools of 
 David, of Ingres, of Delaroche, and others have an 
 European reputation. 
 
 The Italian schools of the Middle Ages, and of the 
 Renaissance, were established on a somewhat different 
 principle. The students in these appear to have been 
 apprenticed to the masters, to have paid down a sum 
 for admission, and to have assisted them in the execution 
 of their great works ; in return for which they received 
 all the instruction which the master was capable of giving 
 them ; it being obviously to his interest to teach them 
 to the best of his power. Michelangelo, it is true, re- 
 ceived payment from Ghirlandajo, when he was received 
 as his apprentice, but this is considered as an exception 
 to the rule, and on account of the extraordinary gifts 
 of the young student ; and there is not the slightest 
 doubt that the practice he acquired in painting, while 
 assisting his master on the frescoes in Sta. Maria 
 Novella, was of the greatest use to him when, although 
 by profession a sculptor, he was required to undertake
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 99 
 
 in after years the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in 
 fresco. 
 
 This system of having apprentices, or articled pupils, 
 is practised by architects in this country, who are in the 
 habit of receiving students for a fee ; the pupils being 
 instructed by the architect, and occasionally giving him 
 assistance in the simpler parts of his work, thus acquiring 
 at the same time the theory and practice of their pro- 
 fession. It is a custom however utterly unknown, or at 
 all events unused, among artists, possibly because works 
 executed on a large scale are not enough in number for 
 artists to require that kind of assistance ; but it is un- 
 doubtedly the best form of instruction that can be given, 
 and one which I have hopes of seeing established to a 
 certain extent in this school at some future time. It 
 would be of the greatest advantage to the students if 
 such of them as were competent and desired it, were 
 employed from time to time on the professor's own 
 works. In an essay on the genius of Beethoven, Ferdinand 
 Hiller, speaking of the advantage Beethoven derived from 
 serving as violinist in the orchestra of the theatre, makes 
 the following just remarks : — " It was invaluable for the 
 future commander of the instrumental tone-world to have 
 served in the line. In fact, every striving young composer 
 ought, as a matter of duty, to act for at least one year as 
 member of an orchestra, were it only at the great drum." 
 
 H 2
 
 ico LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 The squaring out of an artist's small designs to the 
 full size of the canvas, the enlarging of studies, the under- 
 painting of unimportant details of architecture or back- 
 ground in a picture, are to the carrying out of a complete 
 work what the big drum is to the ensemble of an orchestra ; 
 they familiarise the student with the simplest elements 
 of a work of art, so that he is never at a loss how to use 
 them later in life. This method of instruction, however, 
 I have no idea of including in my system at present. 
 It is extremely likely to be misunderstood by the public 
 and the parents of the students, under the idea that the 
 professor would be employing the powers of his pupil for 
 his own advantage ; and any attempt must be made by 
 degrees, and be at first of the most experimental kind. 
 I should, however, be very glad if at some future date it 
 could be combined with the course of instruction which 
 I propose for this school, a course which will be modelled 
 chiefly on the system of the French ateliers, of which I 
 have considerable experience. 
 
 I think there can be no question of the great advan- 
 tage the French, and other foreign artists, have over us 
 in the knowledge of all the technical and practical details 
 of their profession. Most French students have what is 
 called their metier, that is the knowledge of their craft, 
 at their fingers' «nds before they begin to paint pictures. 
 One seldom sees in their works the helpless errors in 
 drawing, the obvious difficulties and struggles in dealing
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 101 
 
 with the material, that characterise the works of young 
 artists which we find in our exhibitions. The superiority 
 of foreign artists in these matters is undoubtedly due to 
 a habit in their schools of thoroughly following out a 
 course of study from the living model, before beginning 
 to paint pictures for exhibition — a practice which our 
 students are frequently either too indifferent or too con- 
 ceited to follow ; but it is also due in part to the system 
 of instruction, which allows no waste of time on useless 
 or unimportant subjects of study. 
 
 Here in our schools of art, every kind of difficulty 
 would seem to be put in the way of study from the life. 
 It would appear to be considered a dangerous practice 
 to begin studies from nature, until a long time has been 
 passed in drawing from the antique, or from what are 
 called drawing-models, or again, from ornamental designs. 
 I have mentioned in the prospectus of this school what 
 I consider the evils of this system. In the first place, it 
 reverses the natural order of things ; for until the student 
 knows something of the construction of the human body 
 from the living model, it is impossible he can understand 
 the generalised and idealised forms in Greek sculpture. 
 In the second place, the habit acquired in drawing for a 
 long time, sometimes through a course of two or more 
 years, from casts from the antique, which are by their 
 nature motionless, and can always be kept in the same 
 relations of light and shade, renders the student helpless
 
 102 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 when he comes to work from the living model, who can 
 never remain quite still or take two days running exactly 
 the same position. Thirdly, the desire of English students 
 to paint, exhibit, and sell pictures, makes them so im- 
 patient of instruction, that it is difficult to get them to 
 follow out any course to the end. Hence, one result of 
 a long course from the antique is, that they frequently 
 begin to paint for exhibition, without having thoroughly 
 acquired the habit of working from nature ; and thus, 
 finding themselves helpless before the model, they trust 
 to their own facility for working, as far as possible, without 
 nature, with the aid only of the small amount of probably 
 erroneous knowledge gained in making elaborate studies 
 from casts ; and this habit, once formed, is never shaken 
 off, nor is further knowledge ever acquired. Possibly, 
 moreover, the student, feeling the system to be a wrong 
 one, imbibes a profound distrust of any course of instruc- 
 tion whatever ; works from nature without guidance, and 
 at his own discretion; and finds his powers crippled for 
 life for want of that knowledge which a good system of 
 study in his youth would have given him. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine how the system I refer to 
 grew to be so universal as it was in our schools when 
 I was a student. It was then necessary to work for 
 some two or three years in a private studio, with a 
 view to making preparation for admission to the Royal
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 103 
 
 Academy, an admission obtained, as you are doubtless 
 aware, by submitting a drawing of an antique figure ; 
 and although studies from nature might no doubt 
 be pursued at the same time, it is clear that the 
 desire of the student would be not so much to obtain 
 a thorough knowledge of the human figure, as to 
 be able to produce a drawing in chalk, which should 
 attain to a certain standard of proficiency. To this 
 end much time was wasted by the students in making 
 elaborately finished chalk studies ; a trivial minuteness 
 of execution very generally being considered of more 
 importance than a sound and thorough grounding in the 
 knowledge of form. Suppose him to have been successful 
 in entering the Academy, instead of the preparatory stage 
 being ended at this point, more studies from the antique 
 were necessary for the student to pass his probationer- 
 ship, in order to be admitted a full student. This point 
 gained, there followed more highly-finished and stippled 
 studies in the antique school, and courses of lectures 
 on perspective, anatomy, &c, all of which occupied 
 frequently more than a twelvemonth of most precious 
 time ; the reward of success and punctual attendance in 
 which was the permission to do what the student should 
 have been set to do the first day he entered the school, 
 that is to make studies from the living model. 
 
 I do not say that there are not many reasons, and
 
 104 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 some good ones, to be found for this routine, but it is 
 difficult to understand how it arose, and grew into such 
 a system as that of which I have just presented to you 
 a true picture. It is true that the Academy has shown 
 its disapprobation of this method of study by making 
 considerable modifications of late years, but the tradi- 
 tion that there is something objectionable in beginning 
 early to study from the life-model is not by any means 
 extinct, and still lingers to a most prejudicial extent 
 in our other art schools. 
 
 Let us look again for a while at the French Academ- 
 ical system. A student enters the atelier of one of 
 the principal painters of the day. There is no divi- 
 sion of classes ; the students of eight or ten years 
 standing work in the same room, and from the same 
 model as the new-comer ; if he has never had any 
 instruction, he is set at first to make a few drawings 
 from casts, to give him some idea of the use of his 
 pencil, after which he begins at once his studies from 
 the living model. Here he works daily, the model 
 sitting for four hours a day for one week, so that he 
 has no time to linger and loiter over the detailed exe- 
 cution of his work ; — his time must be employed to the 
 best of his ability. The master attends twice a week, 
 once on the Tuesday, when the figure is sketched in, and 
 again on the Saturday, when it is nearly finished, and
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 105 
 
 this is amply sufficient for his instruction. Meanwhile 
 the elder students help the younger. When he has 
 acquired a sufficient proficiency in drawing to under- 
 stand the meaning of the forms, and to reproduce 
 them with tolerable accuracy, he begins to paint from 
 the model, perhaps painting and drawing alternate weeks, 
 supplementing his studies by copying portions of pictures 
 in the Louvre, and by drawing at some subscription 
 life-school in the evening. 
 
 His object is now to enter the £cole des Beaux-Arts, 
 and he has to compete for admission. He does not 
 however prepare for this purpose an elaborate draw- 
 ing to be submitted for inspection, but he is placed 
 with the other competitors before the living model in 
 the life studio of the £cole. The model sits for two 
 hours a day for a week, and he thus has twelve hours 
 in which to do his study. He submits his drawing, and 
 if it be up to the standard of excellence he is admitted 
 to the privileges of the school. Nor is the competition an 
 easy one ; for there are generally about 600 competitors, 
 including the students who have already been admitted, 
 and who have to make the competition again every six 
 months, and 100 is the limit of students admitted to the 
 school. Now for the first time he is placed before the 
 antique. Having through a long course of study arrived 
 at a thorough comprehension of the various aspects of
 
 io6 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 nature, he is taught to improve his style by the study 
 of the chef cTceuvres of the great artists of the past. 
 These teach him what are the possibilities of the art he 
 professes, and the study of them acts as a stimulus to 
 look deeper into nature for the beauties which other 
 men have found there. This is the real object of the 
 study of the antique, not, as too often with us, the 
 acquisition of an elaborate system of manipulation. 
 
 Look at the drawings sent up by the Government Schools 
 of Art to the central competition at South Kensington j 
 are any of them executed under six weeks of painful 
 stippling with chalk and bread? How much knowledge 
 of the figure is it to be supposed the student has acquired l 
 during the process ? Some of these prize drawings have 
 come under my notice, of which the elaborately stippled 
 background alone must have occupied more than a fortnight 
 in the execution ; and in my own student days I remember 
 constantly to have seen the same idle and wasteful method 
 of getting through the time. Is it a wonder that, when our 
 national prizes are given for such work as this, we are 
 behind the rest of Europe in our knowledge of drawing; 
 
 1 This understates the case. When I was first appointed to South 
 Kensington, I found students at work on drawings from the antique 
 v hich had already occupied them a considerable portion of the previous 
 term (five months), and were not half-finished. I discovered that they 
 were in the habit frequently of doing only one antique drawing for 
 their certificate.
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 107 
 
 and that those who have aspirations towards a higher 
 kind of work than the market-produce which overwhelms 
 our exhibitions, have either to seek for a better form of 
 study on the Continent, or to keep up a life-long struggle 
 against difficulties, which they have never been taught 
 to overcome, but which are the ABC of art education 
 abroad ? 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on this description of 
 the French system of education, because I am anxious 
 to adopt something of the same kind in this school. 
 It is to my mind admirably logical ; and whatever modifi- 
 cation of detail I may be inclined to introduce, I shall 
 impress but one lesson upon the students, that constant 
 study from the life-model is the only means they have 
 of arriving at a comprehension of the beauty in nature, 
 and of avoiding its ugliness and deformity ; which I 
 take to be the whole aim and end of study. It is for 
 this reason I have instituted what is called in the pros- 
 pectus, the general course of instruction, in which students 
 who are going to study art as a profession may go through 
 a serious and regular system, with the view of making 
 the best use of their time. All students entering the 
 schools will be required first to do a drawing from a 
 figure in the antique, as a test of their proficiency ; if 
 this drawing be unsatisfactory, or show them not suffi- 
 ciently to have mastered the technicalities of the material
 
 108 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 to enable them to encounter the difficulties of drawing 
 from the life, they will remain in the antique school until 
 the middle of the term, when they will again submit a 
 drawing as a test. Thus there will be two opportunities 
 given during the term for students to gain admission to 
 the life-school. This, it will be easily understood, does not 
 involve any departure from the principle just laid down, 
 of setting students as early as possible to work from the 
 living model, but is merely adopted with a view to give 
 them greater facility when they begin their work from 
 the life. Beginners must remember that until they have 
 acquired some kind of power of using their materials, 
 and until their eye and hand have gained a certain degree 
 of correctness, they will be longer in attaining the desired 
 result from the living model than from easier subjects of 
 study. It is not only that the living model is always 
 more or less changing his position ; but the forms are 
 not always so clearly marked as in the antique, and are, 
 especially in the portions of the figure most difficult to 
 draw, obscured by accidents of colour and deformities of 
 various kinds, which are always to be found, and are 
 always changing. In the knee, for instance, even where 
 well formed, the colour of the skin makes the form much 
 more difficult to see and understand than in the antique 
 statues, where one part is as well defined as another. 
 In the hands and fore-arms, the veins are apt to swell
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 109 
 
 and conceal or disfigure the more important anatomical 
 and general features. The feet are always a most terrible 
 stumbling-block to beginners (and even to the most 
 advanced students), not only on account of deformities 
 contracted from various causes, but of the swollen veins 
 and the purple colour which would not be found to so 
 great an extent in a person in motion, but which naturally 
 result from the model being obliged to stand for hours 
 together in one position. It is true, that as far as I 
 am able to manage it, you will be supplied with good 
 Italian models to work from. These are not only in 
 general build and proportion, and in natural grace and 
 dignity, far superior to our English models; but they 
 have a natural beauty, especially in the extremities, which 
 no amount of hard labour seems to spoil. Their hands, 
 though many of them may have been field-labourers in 
 their own country, might be envied by many of a better 
 position amongst ourselves ; while their feet, bare in 
 infancy, are covered later in life by a natural and simple 
 kind of sandal, which protects them without altering their 
 shape, so that they do not run that risk of disfigurement, 
 which is unavoidable with the hard and mis-shapen shoes 
 and boots, in which the feet of children in this country 
 are ruthlessly imprisoned, even before they are able to 
 walk. In short, although you will find nothing in the 
 antique which you cannot find in nature, there is much,
 
 no LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 even in the best models, which you will not see in the 
 antique, and it is precisely these points which make 
 the difficulty in drawing from nature, and which render 
 it necessary for the student to have some acquaintance 
 with the general character and proportions of the human 
 figure, before attempting the study of the living model. 
 This short preliminary practice, however, is a very different 
 thing from the long and laborious system of working 
 from the antique which I have already condemned. 
 
 My first wish was to include all the classes under one 
 fee, 1 directing all the students, whether amateur or artist, 
 to study in the classes according to their proficiency ; 
 but it was represented to me that there were many who, 
 not desiring to make a profession of their art, would be 
 unable to give up all their time to the study of it, and 
 for those I have arranged that there shall be classes 
 three times a week. But I wish it to be understood 
 that amateurs should submit to the same thorough form 
 of instruction they would go through if they were training 
 for artists ; if they are unable to give the time to study 
 that would make them equally proficient, they will at 
 all events acquire an appreciation and critical knowledge 
 of what is noble and beautiful in the great works of the 
 great masters, which those will never do who merely dabble 
 
 1 This plan was ultimately adopted, and was found, as I expected, 
 to work better in every respect.
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. in 
 
 with a little drawing and painting for amusement, and 
 pursue it on no kind of system. Nothing would please 
 me better than that the whole of the students attending 
 these classes should be training as artists. This however 
 is never likely to be the case, and there are, of course, a 
 large number of the students who come here who have 
 no intention of taking up art as a profession ; and though 
 I must not be understood to be desirous of eliminating 
 this amateur element from the school (for I hold that 
 the judicious training of amateur artists is of great value 
 in raising the standard of taste in the country), yet I 
 think it very advisable that they should be, as far as 
 possible, compelled to look upon art in a serious light. 
 The more I can make this understood, the better it will 
 be for our school and for the interests of art generally. 
 
 There is unfortunately a difficulty which has always 
 stood in the way of female students acquiring that 
 thorough knowledge of the figure which is essential to 
 the production of work of a high class ; and that is, of 
 course, that they are debarred from the same complete 
 study of the model that is open to the male students, 
 and for the want of which no amount of study of the 
 antique, of books, or of anatomy, will compensate ; for, 
 as I have said bofore, nothing but constant practice 
 from the model itself will suffice. But I have always 
 been anxious to institute a class where the half-draped
 
 H2 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 model might be studied, to give those ladies who are 
 desirous of obtaining sound instruction in drawing the 
 figure, an opportunity of gaining the necessary know- 
 ledge. There are many prejudices to be overcome in 
 this direction, but it may be remarked that such studies 
 may be pursued with propriety at a public school, 
 though in a private studio they would be nearly impos- 
 sible. It is my desire that in all the classes, except 
 of course those for the study of the nude model, the 
 male and female students should work together; this 
 system was tried as an experiment in the Royal Aca- 
 demy a few years ago, and has been found to answer 
 admirably — and it has always been my opinion that the 
 practice conduces to steadiness of work. 
 
 It now only remains for me to address a few remarks 
 to those of my audience who may have the intention 
 of entering on their course of study in this place. Let 
 me assure them in the most emphatic terms that nothing 
 is to be done without unremitting labour and attention. 
 It is not the instruction you receive that will be the 
 means of your improvement, but rather your own in- 
 dustry and endeavours ; I can do nothing but guide 
 your efforts in the right direction. In a word, you must 
 not rely on me to teach you to draw and paint ; my 
 system of instruction will be directed to the end that 
 you do not waste your energies on the study of what is
 
 SYSTEMS OF ART EDUCATION. 113 
 
 useless or prejudicial. Sir Joshua Reynolds puts this 
 as usual most concisely when he says that " no method 
 of study will lead to excellence, yet it may preserve in- 
 dustry from being misapplied." Industry on your part 
 is the point of the greatest importance to you in your 
 career as students of art. Those even who have no 
 intention of devoting themselves to the arts as their pro- 
 fession, will find it quite worth their while to give all 
 their energies to the work in hand while they are en- 
 gaged in it; their taste and love for the beautiful and 
 noble in art cannot but be in this way improved. 
 There is no influence in the world so ennobling as that 
 of, the fine arts ; to be able to appreciate and under- 
 stand the vast conceptions of a Michelangelo or a 
 Beethoven, is the highest pleasure we are capable of 
 receiving. 
 
 Without understanding, genuine appreciation is im- 
 possible; without study, understanding is impossible; 
 that is why I should wish the amateur to apply him- 
 self to his work as earnestly as if he had to make his 
 living by the practice of art. 
 
 It will be well for the young artist also to pay atten- 
 tion to what I have said : that it is the love and 
 appreciation of what is truly beautiful in nature that 
 makes the great artist. He is not concerned only with 
 the external beauties, which are obvious to all the 
 
 1
 
 114 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 world, but with those also which underlie the surface, 
 and which only the mind of the artist, stimulated by 
 continued study, can discover. The more you work 
 from nature, the more astonished you will be at the 
 beauties you will find; and it will be your pleasure as 
 artists to point them out to others. Remember that the 
 true object of art is to create a world : not to imitate 
 what is constantly before our eyes. If it were possible 
 to invent anything of sublime or beautiful beyond the 
 realm of nature, the artist would be justified in doing 
 it; but there is not only no possibility of this, but 
 there is fortunately also no need of it. Nature contains 
 greater depths of beauty than we can fathom ; and 
 although two or three men in the world's history have 
 risen to so high a conception of beauty that their 
 works have acquired a just right to be called " the 
 creations" of genius, they have had no more to inspire 
 them than what you yourselves may find by searching 
 around you. Indeed they may be said to have had less, 
 for you possess, as an additional property, the example 
 of their unremitting devotion to stimulate you to labour 
 without flagging; and the results of their genius, to goad 
 you on to rival them on the toilsome and arduous path, 
 which may lead you to the achievement of an equal 
 excellence.
 
 LECTURE IV. 1 
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 
 
 In the address I delivered on the occasion of the opening 
 of this school, I endeavoured to set forth the system in 
 use in foreign, especially French, schools ; 2 a system which 
 places Continental artists on so much higher a level as 
 regards technical excellence in Art, than our own. That 
 amazing facility of execution, which enables a French or 
 German artist to attack a canvas ten or fifteen feet square, 
 with as little trouble as it costs us to begin a cabinet 
 picture, while he preserves at the same time the due unity 
 of effect and an even thoroughness of execution, is the result 
 of that system of constantly working from nature, which, 
 giving but a limited time for the completion of a study, 
 obliges the student to work in the simplest and most 
 straightforward manner. This is the system which I have 
 
 1 Given at the opening of the second session of the Slade School?, 
 Oct. 1872. 
 • Lecture III. p. 97. 
 
 I 2
 
 i:6 LECTURES ON ART.. 
 
 iutroduced in these schools, having for my aim to obviate 
 as far as possible that timid and unmethodical style of work, 
 which strikes us as the prevailing fault in our exhibitions. 
 This school is but in its early days, and it is difficult to 
 see as yet how far I may have been successful ; but I 
 may mention here what I find to be a serious drawback, 
 and indeed the greatest obstacle I have to encounter. I 
 refer to the absence in this place of those traditions, which 
 are to be found in long-established Academies of Art, but 
 which an institution like this must necessarily at first 
 starting be without. There are as yet no elder students 
 to whom the younger ones can look as guides : to see the 
 elder ones who have been brought up in the traditions 
 of the place at their work is perhaps the greatest help a 
 young student can have. 
 
 I must confess to having felt somewhat of a shock 
 each time I have looked at the drawings and paintings 
 which were done for the prizes at the end of the last 
 session ; — I must confess to having been shocked at the 
 crude absence of style that characterizes them ; I mean 
 of that free and intelligent manner of drawing, which is to 
 be found in all the French Schools of Art, at a very early 
 stage of advancement. I have often wondered how far 
 this was due to my own method of instruction. 
 
 The above consideration however somewhat consoled 
 me ; for I reflected that students learn mostly by examples,
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 117 
 
 and a style can only be formed after a school has existed 
 for a lengthened period. It is with a view to encourage 
 among you a good style of work, that I now address you, 
 my remarks being intended to direct you where to look 
 for examples for imitation. 
 
 Although I have adopted here a system of instruction 
 pretty closely following the French, I do not by any 
 means consider, or intend to convey the impression, that 
 the result at which French artists arrive is to be held up 
 for imitation. Much as I admire their technical facility, 
 I do not consider that they make that use of it which it 
 should be the aim of a true artist to keep before him. 
 French art has indeed, of late years, enormously degene- 
 rated. Thanks to the continued and persistent efforts 
 of the "realistic" school, it is descending lower and lower 
 to a mere brutal materialism, any subject which may afford 
 a means of displaying technical ability being eagerly seized 
 upon, and as every artist vies with his fellows in the 
 production of the most sensational results, it is difficult to 
 say at what depths of the horrible and morbidly sensual 
 it may finally arrive. 1 It is certainly not with this intention 
 that the great school of David (the model of the existing 
 
 1 This is a true prediction of what has since happened. The French 
 portion of the picture gallery in the Exhibition of 1S78 was remarkable 
 for nothing so much as the display of sensational horrors treated iu 
 the most realistic style, and on an immense scale.
 
 n8 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 French ateliers) was founded ; his aim being the lofty one 
 of trying to recall the glories of antique art. 
 
 It would moreover seem impossible for French artists 
 to conceive of ideal beauty as existing in nature itself. 
 Their ideal school was a failure ; it was never more than 
 a cold and uninteresting misconception of the Classical 
 idea, and had no foundation in nature whatever ; it copied 
 the letter but failed to seize the spirit of antique art. 
 Ingres, the pupil of David, was the great outcome of this 
 school ; and is the real founder of the present excellent 
 system of instruction in France. He himself achieved 
 a mastery of his material, which places him foremost as 
 a painter (using the word in its limited sense), in modern 
 times ; his works are in roundness and richness of model- 
 ling comparable only to those of Velasquez, while there is 
 in them a severe precision of drawing, which is worthy 
 of all imitation; as regards colour however, his flesh-tints 
 are invariably cold and clayey, while any local colour is 
 sure to be harsh and disagreeable, and his works are 
 generally uninteresting in idea. On the other hand, he 
 has the rare merit in a French artist of having painted the 
 nude female form naturally, gracefully, and without affecta- 
 tion ; his picture of La Source stands almost alone for com- 
 bining charm and purity, and is equally free from the 
 sensuality which degrades most French pictures of this 
 kind, and from that false simplicity which shocks us still
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 119 
 
 more. But though painted and modelled in the most 
 masterly manner, this and other of his figures are wanting 
 in the higher forms of beauty, which we see in the noblest 
 Italian works. 
 
 The French school as I have said has rapidly degene- 
 rated. Ingres, and one or two of his pupils who formed 
 themselves the most successfully on his style, are dead, 
 and during the last ten years of the Empire, the works 
 of the French artists ran into every kind of extravagance. 
 Their conception of ideal beauty is not that it is to be 
 found by looking for it in nature, but rather by adding 
 something to nature of their own devising ; this something 
 is chiefly a theatrical and sickly sentimentality, which is 
 peculiarly their own, but which is absolutely devoid of any 
 real and inherent beauty. When on the other hand they 
 paint nature unidealized, it is almost always on the 
 disgusting or the horrible that they seize for imitation, 
 with a cynical pleasure which is no less characteristic than 
 their false and bombastic sentiment. But the skill with 
 which all this is done seems to grow every day more 
 remarkable, and it must be understood that in making 
 these remarks, I do not include the whole French school, 
 but am speaking of that which, for the present at all 
 events, is in the ascendant. The poetry which they seem 
 unable to feel or express in the higher branches of the 
 art, shows itself in the most charming manner in their
 
 120 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 feeling for the beauty of landscape and country-life 
 generally. The stage-peasant and the stage-landscape 
 of our English school are almost unknown to them, and 
 their skilful and simple method of painting places them 
 far above us in all the lower branches of the art. This 
 skill which shows itself in all the work they do, however 
 false we may find the sentiment, is entirely, or almost 
 entirely, due to that thorough training in the constant study 
 of nature which all French students receive from the 
 very beginning of their career, and it is their fault or 
 misfortune if they cannot derive a better result from their 
 studies. To this system I shall then adhere, as I believe 
 that the English love of nature, which is unmistakable, 
 and runs through all the efforts of our poets and painters 
 from the highest to the lowest, should lead us under a good 
 system to a much higher result. If the facility of English 
 students is not so great, they must make up for it by 
 working all the harder, and the mastery they acquire by 
 these means, under good guidance, will be worth more 
 than any natural talent misapplied. 
 
 But the love of nature alone is not sufficient : it may 
 easily induce a trivial realism which is the besetting sin 
 of many of our younger aitists. What is wanted is an 
 appreciative love which is capable of selecting what is 
 worthy of imitation, and setting aside what is unimportant. 
 It is to this end that your studies are to be directed.
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 121 
 
 Your work from the models, which are daily set for 
 your regular study, is not only to enable you to paint 
 what you desire with ease and skill, but is to have a 
 better result than this in forming your ideas of the 
 beautiful, and enabling you to distinguish good from 
 bad ; for the study of nature is not the end of art, but 
 merely a means of enabling you to express your ideas. 
 Mr. Ruskin says on this point in his Modern Painters — 
 " He who has learned what is commonly considered the 
 whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing 
 any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the 
 language by which his thoughts are to be expressed. 
 He has done just as much towards being a great painter, 
 as a man who has learned how to express himself gram- 
 matically, and melodiously, has towards being a great 
 poet." This power of selection you will not find come 
 easily to you for some time, nor indeed is it desirable 
 that it should do so until you have obtained a cer- 
 tain command over your powers of execution ; but 
 as you grow in knowledge a light will break in upon 
 you, so that you will take more and more pleasure in 
 whatever characteristics of beauty you may find, and as 
 the eye gains practice, and the hand acquires facility, 
 you will be able to draw and paint with more freedom 
 and certainty, and thus to acquire that style, without 
 which art must be limited to a mere reproduction of the
 
 122 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 ordinary aspects of nature. It will be well also to remem- 
 ber that all the great and beautiful works of art which 
 have been produced in the world have no other founda- 
 tion than that nature which is set before you for study : 
 indeed you have an advantage which the producers of 
 those great works had not, in that you are able to con- 
 template them for your guidance. It is therefore above 
 all things necessary that you add to the study of nature 
 the study of the works of the great masters. 
 
 There is in this institution, as I have explained, no 
 tradition to help you, nor does there exist in England 
 any such tradition ; for such as there was in the days of 
 Reynolds and his immediate successors, has now degene- 
 rated and indeed almost died out ; the one faint remnant 
 being that study of the antique, on the disadvantages 
 of which, as pursued in our schools, I have already 
 sufficiently dwelt. We must then form a style on some 
 other school, having none of our own, not by imitating 
 the manner of any particular painter or school of painters, 
 but by studying their method of studying. If you think 
 that this will induce mannerism, it is worth while to try 
 and realize how far one painter is independent of another, 
 how far you yourselves, when you think you aie most 
 original, are influenced by the works of others. You 
 have probably no conception of the amount of uncon- 
 cious imitation of particular styles of work you are
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 123 
 
 employing when you think you are only affected by nature. 
 But you can realize it to yourself, if you consider the works 
 of the greatest geniuses of the early Italian school, in their 
 representations of the simplest objects, when they were 
 proceeding entirely by the light of their own intelligence, 
 and had no predecessors to guide them. You will find 
 that Giotto, a man endowed with an artistic faculty and 
 imaginative genius, in no way inferior to the greatest of 
 his successors, whose certainty of hand was so great 
 that there is an anecdote of his having drawn a perfect 
 circle with one sweep of his pencil, could not, in the very 
 highest exercise of his powers, produce a better repre- 
 sentation of a tree or flower than any boy with a taste 
 for drawing might do at eight years old. I give you this 
 instance to show you how helpless any artist is, when 
 depending entirely on his own resources, and how certain 
 it is that you are influenced by the works of other men 
 in all that you do, even when you are most unconscious 
 of it. 
 
 It will almost always be found that it is our more 
 immediate surroundings which influence us the most. 
 Andrea Mantegna, the greatest artist of his time, whose 
 works in some respects give us more pleasure than those 
 of any other, devoted his life to the worship of the 
 antique, and yet rarely succeeded in drawing a figure in 
 correct proportion, or in getting rid of a certain rigidity
 
 124 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 in the movement and expression of his figures; the fact 
 being that the art of the day, being undeveloped in these 
 matters, had more influence on him, doubtless uncon- 
 sciously to himself, than all the beautiful works of past 
 ages which were the objects of his study. What you 
 are certain to do in the first place is to imitate each 
 other, and in the present unformed state of your powers 
 this will not do you much good. You cannot also but 
 be affected by the general style of work which prevails 
 in the present day, and I would have you get as much 
 good out of this as you can, but it will not take you very 
 far. If then our immediate surroundings are such as 
 are not likely to induce a good style of drawing and 
 painting, and with certain exceptions the spirit of the 
 work which fills our exhibitions is ltot generally cal- 
 culated to produce an elevating effect, we must, to come 
 back to what I have said, try to seek a counteracting in- 
 fluence elsewhere. The spirit of antiquity, as shown in its 
 sculpture, is too far from us to produce a very strong effect 
 on a student of painting ; it is only after much study 
 that its real beauty and intrinsic truth begins to be intel- 
 ligible enough to influence his work. It is therefore to 
 the great masters of painting, and especially of the Italian 
 school, that I would rather direct your attention. If 
 in our visits to the National Gallery, we study the pictures 
 of the great masters of that school, from the time of the
 
 HINTS OX THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 125 
 
 revival of art in the thirteenth century to its culmination 
 in the works of Raffaelle and Michelangelo we shall 
 find in them, and in them alone, not only everything that 
 is required for our guidance in the practice of Art, but 
 nothing that we should consider it necessary to avoid. 
 
 The causes of this distinguishing excellence are princi- 
 pally two. First, there was a universally prevailing love 
 of what is beautiful in nature, which, leading them in- 
 stinctively to select what is worthy of treatment in art, 
 never permitted them to choose an ugly, vulgar, or mean 
 subject, or to treat a beautiful one in a mean or vulgar 
 way, and which made them look upon all art in so serious 
 a light as to invest naturally all they did with beauty and 
 dignity ; and, secondly, a love of beauty of workmanship 
 which seems never to have failed them, so that we may 
 look in vain through their pictures for any sign of 
 fatigue, with its inevitable accompaniment of coarse and 
 slovenly execution. In both cases, in fact, we find 
 amongst them such a genuine love for, and all absorbing 
 interest in their art, as leads them never to tire of re- 
 producing beauty with the most perfect skill of which 
 they are capable. These, therefore, are the models to 
 whom I would have you look for the spirit by which you 
 are to be guided in your work. 
 
 You will find the works of many artists of other ages 
 and countries equally full of invention and imagination,
 
 126 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 but it is only in those of the Italians that we find repre- 
 sented every form of beauty. Especially in the workman- 
 ship of their pictures is this noticeable, and it is to this 
 point that I wish to call your attention. Even where they 
 were most wanting in what we understand by masterly 
 execution, as in the case of the early Florentines, Giotto 
 and his followers, the workmanship of their pictures charms 
 us by its noble simplicity and absence of pretension ; and 
 as their power of execution developed, it became more and 
 more what Mr. Ruskin calls " precious," that is, done as if 
 it were a thing of value in itself, and not as a mere display 
 of technical skill. The most consummate examples of this 
 are to be found in the pictures of Andrea Mantegna, and 
 Filippo Lippi ; especially of the former, who combines with 
 the most inexhaustible imagination and invention that ever 
 fell to the lot of an artist, and powers which include the 
 whole range of art, from the most playful fantasy to the 
 profoundest and most passionate tragedy — a skill of 
 workmanship so minutely and marvellously delicate as to 
 defy imitation. 
 
 I am thinking more especially at this moment of one of 
 his pictures in Florence, a triptych, containing an Adora- 
 tion of the Magi, a Circumcision, and an Ascension. The 
 finish of this picture is such as to amaze us, and as I 
 have said, defies copying. A noble work of this master is 
 in the National Gallery, and will afford an example of what
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 127 
 
 I mean. Look at the refinement with which the drapery 
 is drawn, the wonderful delicacy of handling with which 
 the gold-lights are laid on, 1 the beautiful and loving spirit 
 which has presided over the execution of the foliage in the 
 background, and indeed of every detail in the picture, and 
 you will begin to have an understanding of what I mean 
 by workmanship as such, and how an artist proceeds whose 
 hand has been thoroughly trained, and who is truly in love 
 with his art. The two pictures by Filippo Lippi, the An- 
 nunciation and the picture of Saints seated in a circle, are 
 equally worthy of attention. Everything in them, as in all 
 his pictures, and in those of Sandro Botticelli, whose works 
 are frequently hardly to be distinguished from those of 
 Filippo Lippi, is done with this one idea of making the 
 whole work as full of charm and beauty as possible, every 
 detail being subservient to this end. Another gem of 
 workmanship, of a school rather more developed, is the 
 picture of Peter Martyr, by Giovanni Bellini. In this 
 work the dramatic action is kept subordinate to the pas- 
 toral scenery in which it takes place, and as such it cannot 
 be said to be the highest representation of the subject; 
 but there is a certain naivete in this idea which is not 
 without its charm as showing that the horrible and tragic 
 had no attractions for him ; while the spirit of beauty and 
 
 1 This picture is one of the rare instances of a tempera-painting of 
 that date which has happily escaped being varnished.
 
 I2S LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 love for what is delightful in form, and colour, and senti- 
 ment, breathes throughout the whole, and has expressed 
 itself in the most perfectly beautiful piece of workman- 
 ship that ever was put into a picture ; I mean the paint- 
 ing of the green forest which makes the principal part of 
 the background. There will also be found equal perfec- 
 tion of workmanship in the best pictures of the early 
 Flemish schools, notably in the works of Mending and 
 Van Eyck, whose pictures are unsurpassable for delicacy 
 of execution, and as such are most worthy of examination 
 and study. This quality is however combined with such 
 an amount of awkwardness, and ugliness, and poverty of 
 form, wherever the human face and figure are repre- 
 sented, as to modify considerably the pleasure we derive 
 from their contemplation. 
 
 It is not my intention however, to make a critical ex- 
 amination of the pictures in the National Gallery. I have 
 pointed out to you a few of the most noticeable for the 
 perfection of their workmanship, and leave you to find out 
 others for yourselves. Now I do not want you to imitate 
 the special manner of these painters of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury (although you might do much worse) so much as to 
 work in their untiring spirit of love for nature and their 
 art. My object has been moreover to show you what 
 beauties are to be looked for in their work, knowing that 
 with many students the difference between the spirit of
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 129 
 
 modern work, and the Italian art of the Middle Ages, is 
 so great as to render it difficult for them to find where 
 the special beauty lies which so enraptures its admirers ; 
 in which case a hint of this kind is often sufficient to 
 set the student thinking, and to animate him with some- 
 thing of the same spirit. 
 
 For the immediate imitation of the pupils of this 
 school, I wish that it were possessed of a few specimens 
 of paintings of the good schools of a later period, that 
 they might be copied, and the actual method of painting 
 studied in this manner. To copy a portrait by Titian or 
 Velasquez is a better and surer means of forming a good 
 style of handling than all the precept in the world, pro- 
 vided that the work be done under good direction : but 
 we have unfortunately nothing that we can look to nearer 
 than the National Gallery. The large painting which 
 has been presented to us is of great value, as setting 
 before you one of Raffaelle's most imaginative and most 
 masterly compositions ; and I shall refer you to it as a 
 study of design ; but as a painting, although a fair and 
 careful representation of the original, it is hardly so good 
 for study, being after all but a copy, and a copy of a 
 fresco. As a means, however, of forming the best possible 
 style of drawing, I have acquired some of the most in- 
 structive of the series of photographs from Michelangelo's 
 ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. These are placed in the 
 
 K
 
 130 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 Art Library, which, though small at present, will I hope 
 some day become of more important dimensions, and be 
 frequently consulted by the students. It is needless for 
 me to express my admiration for these works ; they are 
 almost beyond admiration, and remain for the amaze- 
 ment of the world for all time. What is the point now 
 is that their subtle truth to nature renders them most 
 admirable studies for students in art to copy, and I have 
 come to the conclusion that the study of them, though 
 doubtless very difficult, on account of the imperfections 
 which necessarily occur in the photographs, will do more 
 to correct that crude want of style, which I have men- 
 tioned as a defect in the drawing in this school, than any 
 works of any other master that I could put before you. 
 You will learn also to appreciate these works by copying 
 them, and gain by that means an insight into the possi' 
 bilities, if also into the extreme difficulties, of your art. You 
 will find also in the Library, among the books presented 
 by Mrs. Grote, large volumes of prints of almost all the 
 famous pictures in the world of the later schools ; though 
 of the time before Raffaelle there is hardly any representa- 
 tion, this collection having been formed at a time when 
 the excellences of that period of art were ignored. 
 These prints will be of great use in forming your style, 
 and should be much consulted for the study of composition, 
 especially those from the works of Raffaelle, who is fully
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 131 
 
 represented ; they will also be of service in acquainting 
 you with the great works which exist in foreign countries ; 
 on which point many of my students seem painfully 
 ignorant. You will find also books of prints from the 
 Dutch painters, whose pictures are generally remarkable 
 for the technical skill and subtle appreciation with which 
 the more vulgar and ordinary aspects and themes of 
 nature are represented. Many of these prints moreover 
 are gems of engraving of their kind. I have also 
 acquired for the Art Library, in addition to Mrs. Grote's 
 gift, some standard works, such as Vasari's Lives, which 
 you will do well to read, and some books on costume, 
 which will be of great assistance to you in treating the 
 subjects which I shall give out for composition from time 
 to time. Reynolds's writings, which I have before 
 recommended, have been removed from the General 
 Library to ours, as well as some others. 
 
 I have drawn your attention more especially to the 
 Library, because I hold that it is quite as important for 
 an artist to cultivate his mind as his hand. The results 
 of want of education and cultivation are painfully appa- 
 rent in much of the work that is done in England ; and 
 the educated and intelligent man is to be recognised at 
 once by his works ; and so also, I may add, is the 
 stupid and the ignorant. The artistic gift is doubtless 
 bestowed indiscriminately, and a man of genius will 
 
 k 2
 
 132 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 always produce results that will astonish, if not charm 
 us. But unless his mind is cultivated, not only by a 
 good general education, but by a knowledge of what 
 other artists have done in the world before him, his 
 range of themes will be of the most limited nature ; 
 and we shall find that most of the artists of the so- 
 called realistic school, that is the school which realises 
 only what is common and obvious in nature, are of 
 this ill-educated kind. It is no sign of genius to despise 
 the work that has been done before us ; but such 
 affectation is not uncommon, and is generally the off- 
 spring of ignorance and conceit. For this reason I am 
 especially glad that I have been able to arrange for 
 some lectures on Classical Archaeology. Independently 
 of its artistic associations, there is no more interesting 
 study in the world than that of ancient history through 
 its antiquities, and when we consider that, except by 
 means of limited fragments of written history that re- 
 main to us, it is entirely through its art that we are 
 enabled to construct the history of the ancient world, 
 the matter becomes one which is especially interesting 
 to artists. The converse holds equally good ; it is a 
 knowledge of the history of the past that helps us to 
 understand its art. 
 
 You will observe that I have made a special point in 
 this lecture of drawing your attention to the excellence
 
 HINTS ON THE FORMATION OF A STYLE. 133 
 
 cf workmanship which is to be found generally in the 
 work of the old masters, and especially of the Italian 
 painters. I am afraid that there may have been 
 a slight misunderstanding of some of the points in 
 the system that I have laid down for study in this 
 school. It may have been supposed that, because I allow 
 but a limited time in which each study is to be done, 
 I do not recognise the great importance of careful finish. 
 What I really want is that you should acquire the habit 
 of finishing as highly as you can in the time given. I 
 may add that the time allowed is ample for the pur- 
 pose, and if you use it properly you will gain a direct 
 method of work which will go far to give you that 
 style in which the drawings here have hitherto been 
 deficient. I have seen drawings by French students 
 done in six sittings of two hours each which are quite 
 as highly worked up as any turned out in our English 
 schools in double the time. Remember that the first 
 essential to a good artist is that he should be a good 
 workman ; the art of painting in the days of which I 
 have spoken so much, was studied regularly as a trade ; 
 and young men were apprenticed to an artist to learn 
 their business, just as they are now to a jeweller or 
 silversmith. If we look at the English pictures of 
 the present day, we shall find that this point is the 
 one in which they are most deficient. The sort of
 
 134 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 execution which passes current is generally of the flimsi- 
 est kind. Now it is not given to every one to be a 
 genius, but all can be good workmen. The fine artist 
 doubtless is he who, as Midas turned everything he 
 touched into gold, cannot make a study or design 
 without giving it some character of beauty; but it is, 
 alas, given to but few of us instinctively to beautify 
 everything we touch. Those who have this gift by 
 nature in any high degree are the great geniuses of the 
 world, and may be counted on the fingers. But the 
 qualities of good workmanship are such as can be 
 attained by any one who has the true spirit of love for 
 his art ; and nothing will ever make me believe — nothing 
 I hope will ever induce you to believe — that it is neces- 
 sary to work down to the level of the taste of the age. 
 This is the true cause of the degeneracy of the art of 
 this time ; but it is easy to rise above it, if we make 
 up our minds to be influenced neither by the interest 
 of our pockets, nor by the vulgar criticism of the 
 ignorant.
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 1 
 
 The object of my present lecture is to systematise and 
 classify, as far as possible, the instruction which is, for 
 various reasons, necessarily imparted in a somewhat 
 desultory manner. 2 
 
 With this intention, I have thrown my remarks into 
 the form of a short sketch of the course of study which 
 I consider best for an art student, and shall describe 
 as I go on the successive points or posts which he will 
 have to occupy. 
 
 Now for the purpose of producing a work of art of 
 the higher order, there are four subjects of which the 
 
 1 This lecture was first delivered at the opening of the third session 
 of the Slade Schools, and afterwards in a modified form at Leeds, 
 and ajjain, with alterations, at the distribution of prizes at the Middles- 
 borough School of Art. I give it here in the form in which it might 
 have been given at University College, with the subsequent alterations. 
 
 2 Through the pergonal nature of the teaching, the school being new, 
 and the scholars few, and not sufficiently advanced to divide into classes.
 
 136 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 painter must acquire knowledge — form, tone, colour, and 
 finally, composition. The knowledge of the first three is 
 gained through the study of nature ; the last is rather an 
 effort of the inventive or imaginative powers, and involves 
 the harmonious combination or arrangement of form, 
 tone, and colour, either separately or togedier. 1 Thus 
 we may have a composition of form only, as in an 
 outline drawing of a group of figures; a composition of 
 light and shade, which even in its simplest expression, 
 as a mere study of effect, acquires of necessity some 
 element of form, however vague or rudimentary; and a 
 composition of colour, which must also in the same way 
 be combined with form, either indefinitely as in a 
 coloured sketch, or definitely as in a stained-glass 
 window, or any subject coloured with flat-tints, like the 
 early Etruscan wall-paintings. Lastly, we may have com- 
 positions of all three combined, which form what we 
 consider the most complete kind of picture ; for though it 
 may occasionally be necessary that figure-pictures, where 
 they are used for purely decorative purposes, should be 
 
 1 It would of course be a mistake to talk of a composition of tone. 
 ' Tone" does not mean exactly " light and shade," but the knowledge 
 of tone means the knowledge of the correct relations of light and 
 shade, and is necessary in order to make what Lionardo calls "That 
 just and natural dispensation of lights and shadows, usually expressed 
 by the word Chiaroscuro." The study of tone must be made from 
 nature, and the knowledge applied to compositions of light and shade.
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 137 
 
 compositions of form and colour only — that is, outlines 
 with flat-tints or a minimum of light and shade — this can- 
 not be considered the highest expression of the art of 
 painting. It is clear then that to make a perfect com- 
 position, the student must first acquire a knowledge of 
 form, of tone, and of colour; and to this end his 
 studies must be directed; but it is also clear that 
 though we may make a composition of form only, with- 
 out light and shade or colour, an element of form must 
 
 f 
 enter into any arrangement of masses of colour, or cf 
 
 chiaroscuro. It is then to the study of form that the 
 attention of the student of painting must first be 
 directed. 
 
 There is no doubt that the simplest way of beginning 
 is to make copies of drawings in outline, beginning with 
 easy forms, and progressing to the more difficult; and 
 the School of Design drawing-books by Dyce are ad- 
 mirably adapted to this purpose. But this course may 
 easily be carried too far, and in my opinion is useful 
 only at the very earliest stage, as a means of acquiring 
 steadiness of hand. The youth who comes to a school 
 of art to study may be supposed to have displayed 
 sufficient fondness for drawing to have practised it in 
 some form or other from his earliest years, and there- 
 fore to have acquired some elementary knowledge. The 
 surest and best method therefore for him on entering the
 
 133 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 school, is to begin to make outline drawings from the 
 round, that is from solid objects, by which, under proper 
 direction, he can attain as great steadiness of hand as 
 he could from the flat. In pursuing this preliminary 
 course his object will be to train both eye and hand in 
 an equal degree, by endeavouring to draw with certainty 
 as well as with accuracy ; that is to say, he should, after 
 first adjusting on his paper the proportions of the object 
 he is copying, try to make his outline at once clear and 
 correct, and draw it with as firm and steady a hand as 
 a young student can command under the difficulties 
 with regard to accuracy which must beset him at the 
 outset. 
 
 The object, then, of the student is first to attain to 
 a definite conception of the form before him, and in 
 this he will fail unless he can express it on paper with 
 a definite outline; next, to acquire the power of ex- 
 pressing the form with certainty and rapidity, which he 
 will never do if he acquires a habit of drawing inaccu- 
 rately to begin with, though he may have the full inten- 
 tion at the time of altering his lines to get them right 
 in the end. In the third place, he must acquire steadi- 
 ness of hand. This he must gain by the habit of 
 drawing his lines continuous from one determined point 
 to another, without retouching, or, as it is called, paint- 
 ing the line,— a point as important in figure as in
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 139 
 
 ornamental drawing ; the quick, and at the same time 
 certain, apprehension of the form he is copying, and 
 the correct rendering of it on a flat surface, being the 
 end the artist aims at throughout his whole career. 
 
 Thus much conceded, the question arises as to the 
 best models for a beginner to work from. My answer 
 would be that he cannot do better than begin with 
 what he intends ending with, that is, the study of the 
 figure. 1 All else is usually but time lost; at whatever 
 stage the drawing of the figure is taken up, the student 
 will find it as difficult as if he started with it at first. 
 At the same time I admit that what are called drawing- 
 models, that is, solid geometrical figures in wood, may 
 be of occasional use in the case of young or help- 
 less students. If a student placed before a cast of a 
 statue or head shows himself incapable of rendering it 
 in any way intelligibly, he may well be set to do a few 
 drawings in outline from geometrical models; when, if 
 he does not soon show signs of progress, it is probable 
 that he has mistaken his vocation ; but this is of course a 
 matter for the discretion of the instructor, some students 
 being much slower than others. It would be dangerous, 
 however, to devote too much time to this stage of study; 
 
 1 It must be understood that these remarks are throughout addressed 
 to Mudents of figure-painting for pictures. For ornamental design a 
 mure eMended cour.- e of outline drawing from the first is necessary.
 
 Uo LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 especially when carried to the extent to be observed in the 
 schools of the Science and Art Department, 1 it involves a 
 mere waste of time; and the student should practise by 
 preference from casts of heads, hands, feet, &c, proceeding 
 by degrees to full-length antique figures. 
 
 Thus far I have dealt only with the earliest and most 
 rudimentary stage of instruction, and most people who 
 have any knowledge, or hold any theories on the subject 
 of art-teaching, will probably not be of a very different 
 opinion on these points to myself. We come however 
 now to a matter requiring more serious consideration. 
 The aim of the student, after he can so draw an antique 
 figure or head as to give correctly the general action 
 and proportions, and to mark definitely the shape of the 
 limbs and features, and the more important divisions of 
 the body within the outline, is to acquire the power of 
 presenting it to the eye as a rounded form. Now, out- 
 line drawing goes but a little way towards expressing 
 form, — or rather, though it may express with perfect 
 accuracy the outer or boundary lines of forms, it does 
 very little towards expressing those inner markings 
 which indicate the construction of the figure, and which 
 are made apparent to us only through shades more or 
 
 1 As much time used to be wasted over highly-stippled drawings of 
 cubes and cones in Schools of Art, as over the antique figures referred 
 to in Lecture III. p. 1 06.
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 141 
 
 less defined and gradated. It would therefore be an 
 error to carry too far the practice of drawing in mere 
 outline, for it is after all a conventional method of 
 representation, and to express correctly and intelligibly 
 in this manner the inner markings of the body requires 
 considerable knowledge of drawing. 
 
 There is a danger therefore of the student acquiring 
 a mannered way of seeing and drawing the muscular 
 and constructional indications, and it is much better 
 that he should proceed, as soon as possible, to study 
 them as they really present themselves to him — that is 
 in light and shade — than that he should confine himself 
 to a hard and unreal outline. I may, however, remark 
 in passing that a student may derive much benefit in 
 this early stage, if he looks at, and in leisure moments 
 copies, good outline drawings of the figure, such as 
 Flaxman's illustrations to Homer and yEschylus, so as 
 to learn how far it is possible in pure outline to express 
 the markings of the muscles and joints in the nude 
 figure. 
 
 These illustrations have another advantage in being 
 excellent studies of composition for beginners ; and 
 although Flaxman may sometimes be found to give to 
 the faces of his heroes a somewhat exaggerated expres- 
 sion, through a mannerism, contracted apparently in the 
 endeavour to impart to them something of the character
 
 142 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 of the ancient tragic mask, yet there is a knowledge of 
 the human form, and a grace and purity of design dis- 
 played in the grouping of the figures and arrangement 
 of the draperies, which is well worth the attention of the 
 young student. 
 
 We suppose the student to have now arrived at the 
 stage of what is commonly called " shading " his figures, 
 and he enters upon the study of tone, which is probably, 
 of all the departments of study to which he has to 
 devote himself, the most subtle, the most complicated, 
 and the most comprehensive. I might almost go on to 
 call it the most important, for it is so intimately bound 
 up with the study of form and colour, that it cannot be 
 kept separate, and is, so to speak, continually inter- 
 fering with the apprehension of them. It is, however, 
 precisely the point of which our English students, 
 teachers, and painters (always omitting from the latter 
 category certain men of eminence, but including those 
 who practise the more popular kind of work) appear to 
 have the most imperfect appreciation. This I believe 
 to be due entirely to the general system of education 
 in our Art Schools. You will find that as a rule the 
 pictures in our exhibitions are in their several degrees 
 strong on every point but this one. 
 
 You will find pictures in which the story is well and 
 pointedly told ; pictures which are in a high degree
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 143 
 
 poetical in conception and sentiment ; pictures harmo- 
 nious in colour, thoughtful in arrangement of forms and 
 lines, and effective in light and shade ; but such as 
 have any value or beauty as studies of tone, are only 
 occasionally to be found, and those almost entirely among 
 painters who have studied or worked abroad. Special 
 stress should be laid on the words effective in light and 
 shade used above, for it is the bane of English painters 
 that they will seek for effect in their pictures by any 
 kind of false trick of light and shade, rather than by a 
 scientific combination of their true relations. This par- 
 ticularly is a fault that students are apt to run into 
 under the influence of bad example. They cover a want 
 of thought in the composition of their pictures, and 
 are constantly advised by their friends to do so, by 
 heightening a light here, or deepening a tint there, in 
 defiance of all the laws of nature. There is no advice more 
 commonly given to a young painter, if one of the inferior 
 personages in his picture interferes with the relief of the 
 principal figure, than that he should " scumble it over " ; 
 that is, place it in a sort of fog (dignified by the name 
 of aerial perspective), to "give it air," as it is called; 
 when the fault all the time is in the original com- 
 position, which was so ill-arranged in the grouping that 
 some false device of this kind is necessary to bring out 
 the intended effect. There are many pictures by artists
 
 144 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 of reputation among us where this stupid trick is re- 
 sorted to, to say nothing of others of the same kind. 
 
 Now the perception of tone, in its extended sense, 
 means the perception of that harmonious unity of effect, 
 under every circumstance, which necessarily pervades all 
 objects and scenes in nature; and the right application 
 of those laws to compositions of form and colour; and 
 it is impossible, unless a student is constantly directed 
 to the acquisition of that perception, from the time when 
 he begins by shading to give relief to his drawings, that 
 he should ever afterwards be able to impart it to his 
 pictures. The choice of effect depends indeed on the 
 taste of the painter. 
 
 Michelangelo loved a bold relief of light and shade, 
 his figures being generally half in light and half in shadow, 
 with a view to developing to the utmost not only those 
 beauties of form which are best displayed under those 
 conditions, but those qualities of modelling with imper- 
 ceptibly gradated half-tints and transparent shadows, to 
 which this particular effect of light and shade lends itself. 
 Rembrandt loved to relieve his principal figure or 
 group, or, in a portrait, the most important portion of 
 the subject, in a bright but softened sunlight, against a 
 luminous gloom. Titian preferred the broad, open, and 
 rather shadowless effect of the glowing light of the 
 evening sky; but each in his kind was master of the
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 145 
 
 effect he preferred ; and their pictures never fail to 
 convey the impress of absolute truth and unity of 
 tone. Compare such works as these with our ordinary 
 exhibition pictures, which are either forced up with a 
 consciously false treatment to make effect in the exhi- 
 bitions, or which lose all the broad truth of tone which 
 is to be found in nature, in the desire to impress on 
 the spectator's notice the infinite labour that has been 
 bestowed on every trivial detail. Nor is it necessary 
 to be consciously false on this point; ignorance of the 
 importance of a true perception of tone will allow the 
 painter to obtrude any or every other quality to the 
 detriment of this. 
 
 It may be, as I have said, a point of sentiment, or 
 of poetry, or of humour, or something inferior to these, 
 which is put forward, while the other more important 
 matter is forgotten. The perception of this quality of 
 tone is indeed a matter of education, the importance of 
 which is hardly felt among us ; and this want is in great 
 part due to the waste of the time spent, at an early 
 stage of work, over laboriously- executed drawings from 
 the antique and other models, in which the primary 
 object of an intelligent understanding and reproduction 
 of the model is subordinated to the acquisition of a 
 laborious style of lithographic shading. 
 
 I have no hesitation in saying that I believe most of 
 
 L
 
 146 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 the want of perception of unity of tone among our 
 artists to arise from the common habit of laborious 
 work with the chalk-point. This use of the point, at all 
 events in the way which is prevalent in our art-schools, 
 not only involves loss of time, and the sinking of the 
 study of form and tone in that of mere execution, but 
 concentrates the attention of the student on minute 
 details which blind him to the general effect. It is for 
 this reason that I have always advised my students to 
 make use of the stump, rather than of the point, in 
 shading their drawings ; for the former, while it allows 
 of any amount of finish of modelling, lends itself par- 
 ticularly well to the production of broad effects of tone, 
 and is moreover much easier for a beginner to manage 
 than the complicated method of shading with the point. 
 There is, it is true, an intelligent use of the point in 
 drawing, which proceeds naturally from the study of the 
 construction of the figure ; but it should be contracted 
 in actual drawing from the figure, and the lines made in 
 shading with the point should always be indicative of the 
 construction. Any student who shows a disposition to 
 work in this way with the point should be encouraged 
 in the use of it, but for the majority, the stump is by 
 far the best means of learning to shade. As there is 
 doubtless a certain amount of mechanical difficulty to 
 be got over in its employment, it is here again that
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 147 
 
 drawing-models may be made use of in teaching the 
 beginner how to make flat and evenly-gradated shades; 
 care being taken that he does not spend more time 
 over this than is necessary to facilitate his work for the 
 future. 
 
 This first mechanical difficulty got over, the one main 
 point the student has to attend to is the general tone 
 or effect of the object he is working from, whatever it 
 may be. And this he will find his great difficulty, not 
 only as a beginner, but all through his course of study, 
 and indeed through his life ; it is so easy to see detail, 
 and it is so difficult to subordinate it to the general 
 tone. The student must constantly keep in mind his 
 subject as a whole, while at the same time he does not 
 omit to give all details their proper value. A prevailing 
 fault with our students, and indeed with experienced 
 painters, is that of making the reflections too strong, 
 and therefore throwing the whole work out of tone. 
 This fault arises among students from the desire to ex- 
 press distinctly everything that is seen ; and in the pro- 
 cess of doing this they forget the general balance of 
 light and shade. With painters the desire is rather to 
 give a spurious brilliancy to their pictures at the expense 
 of truth. It is useless, in making a study of a head, 
 for instance, to have the proportions and features correct 
 in outline, if in shading they are out of tone. A half- 
 
 L 2
 
 i ;5 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 tint too dark, or a light too bright, will destroy the 
 unity of the work, and will cause it to present an 
 assemblage of features, each in itself possibly right, but 
 bearing no reference to the general roundness of the 
 head. 
 
 Again, it is obvious that the tendons on the back of 
 
 a thin hand are long and clearly-defined strings : the 
 
 first impulse of the careful student is to dwell on this, 
 
 to the exclusion of the much more important place they 
 
 hold as subordinate to the general distribution of light 
 
 and shade. Consequently, he is certain to mark them 
 
 too strongly ; so that the back of the hand in his drawing 
 
 becomes a disconnected map of veins and tendons. 
 
 The difficulty arises from the fact that he has now two 
 
 matters to deal with — form and tone ; the forms he 
 
 knows he must represent, or it will not be a hand ; but 
 
 he must also, while still remembering the forms with 
 
 reference to the position of the lights, shadows, and 
 
 half-tints, forget them while thinking of their relative 
 
 ratucs or strengths, and in this sense consider his model 
 
 not as a hand but as a study of tone; otherwise the 
 
 result will be, as I have said, the map of a hand, and 
 
 not the representation of one. And so in making a 
 
 drawing of a whole figure. According to its position 
 
 with reference to the light, it may happen that a leading 
 
 muscular division may be indicated by a half- tint so faint
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 149 
 
 as to be hardly visible ; observing its constructional 
 importance, the beginner will be likely to mark it too 
 strong, to the destruction of the unity of effect in the 
 figure. Or again, on a plane receding from the light, 
 the muscles may stand out in great relief of light and 
 shade ; the student will observe this strong contrast of 
 lights and shadows in each separate muscular form, and 
 forget that the whole plane on which they are relieved 
 is in itself in half-tint ; again to the destruction of the 
 general roundness and unity of the figure. 
 
 There is also in connection with this subject another 
 point to which attention must be directed. It is not 
 only by dwelling on detail that a student may err in 
 not giving the proper tone to his figure ; the whole key 
 of the drawing may be too dark or too light. The 
 former is generally the fault of students who are in 
 earnest about their work ; this arises from their looking 
 too much at the shades with reference to each other, 
 without due reference to their surroundings ; that is to 
 say, from their paying attention only to their relative 
 and not to what for convenience I may here call their 
 absolute, strength in the scale of light and dark. It is 
 very common, for instance, to see the darkest shadow 
 in a drawing from a cast made absolutely, or very nearly, 
 black. Now with reference to other shadows in the 
 figure it may appear to be so, still more with reference
 
 150 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 to the lightest parts ; but let the student look at any- 
 thing really black (as for instance the shadow under 
 the sleeve of a black coat), and he will then find the 
 real value of the shade he is representing in the scale 
 of tones in the room where he is working. This want 
 of reference to the surroundings is the real cause of the 
 blackness so frequently seen in drawings ; by bringing 
 the darkest shade to its proper value in the scale from 
 black to white, you will then have to lighten by degrees 
 the whole of the rest of the shading to bring it into 
 proportion, and the drawing will gradually acquire its 
 proper tone. 
 
 The importance of the correct perception of tone has 
 given rise in France to a system of drawing by tone 
 merely, to the ignoring of constructive drawing ; the 
 result is that there is no school where tone (or as they 
 call it " ks va/eurs") is better understood; the absur- 
 dities and crudities of modern English art in this 
 respect being unknown there. At present the French 
 devote themselves too exclusively to this side of art, 
 and the result is that, in their seeking after its subtleties, 
 they have almost arrived at the conclusion that one ob- 
 ject is as good to paint as another; a female head or a 
 piece of raw meat being looked upon as equally suitable 
 for die exercise of their skill in painting. There is 
 no necessity for carrying matters to this extreme ; the
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 151 
 
 great Italian painters were none the less masters of tone 
 because they devoted themselves to the study of form, 
 and to the higher points of construction and ideal 
 beauty. But it must be kept in mind that no amount 
 of anatomical or constructional knowledge of drawing is 
 of value without a true perception of tone. A figure 
 which, as we say, is "all to pieces" in this respect, 
 however correct the outline, will never stand the light 
 of intelligent criticism. It is our want of perception on 
 this point that makes foreigners laugh when they see 
 our pictures ; and with regard to most of our work of 
 the more popular sort, the laugh is fully justified. 1 
 
 I have thus far set forth the points a beginner has 
 to attend to during his preliminary course of study in 
 the antique, for there is no doubt that such a course is 
 necessary up to a certain point, before proceeding to 
 the study of the living model. So soon, however, as 
 
 1 That there has been great improvement in English art in this 
 respect within the last decade there can be no doubt. The particular 
 garish look that was common to English exhibition-rooms is much 
 modified of late ; and French artists remarked on the great general 
 improvement in English art in the Paris Exhibition of last year (1878) 
 compared to what they saw of it in 1867. I was gratified to hear from 
 a French artist of distinction an opinion which is a confirmation of my 
 own, that our art has improved and will continue to improve, because 
 the English take what is good from other schools without sacrificing 
 their originality. He compared it with the art of the Belgian, Italian, 
 and other schools, which can only imitate
 
 152 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 the student has acquired sufficient comprehension of the 
 general proportions and character of the figure, he should 
 be set to work from the life. 
 
 The great facility in drawing the human figure to be 
 found among foreign artists, is no doubt mainly due to 
 the fact of there being but a limited time allowed both 
 for painting and drawing from the living model. In 
 the six sittings of two hours each, which is the usual 
 time allowed to French students in the Academy for 
 their drawings from the life, drawings are done in which 
 the utmost correctness is combined with the most ex- 
 quisite finish ; and what a French student can do, there is 
 no doubt that an English student ought to do; it is a mere 
 question of the habit of acquiring certainty and facility. 
 If the student is allowed too much time for his work, 
 he will easily fall into 'lazy and careless habits; so that 
 this practice of early drawing from nature, and of being 
 allowed a rigorously limited time for each study, I con- 
 sider most important for the acquisition of a good style 
 of work. 
 
 But at this point we enter on another branch of study. 
 Hitherto the student has been able to draw his figures 
 without more knowledge of construction or anatomy than 
 is given for his help in the course of the teaching he 
 receives. If he does not know as yet the position of 
 the collar-bone in the skeleton, he can at all events see
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 153 
 
 it for himself in an antique figure, forming a ridge from 
 the pit of the neck to the point of the shoulder; and 
 as it is always to be found in the same place on the 
 figure, he will find no difficulty in drawing it more or 
 less accurately. But the case is different when he is 
 before the living model; a slight movement of the 
 shoulder, or a pressure on the elbow, will in certain 
 positions cause the collar-bone to start out in strong 
 relief, or disappear into the shoulder. In order that he 
 may draw it with any accuracy, therefore, it is necessary 
 that he should know its form, the part it plays in the 
 construction of the body, where it is attached at either 
 end, and by what muscles it is surrounded. He must 
 therefore carry on with his study of drawing the study 
 of anatomy, which he will do by drawing from the 
 skeleton and anatomical casts, and attending if possible 
 a course of anatomical lectures. Such studies as appear 
 among the prize-drawings at South Kensington in which 
 the student has outlined an antique figure and drawn it 
 out as an anatomical subject, are very good at a more 
 advanced stage. Still better would be the same process 
 applied to drawings from the life-model, the anatomical 
 firms in the antique being generalised and difficult to 
 discover except by a very advanced student. It will 
 not, however, be of much use for him to study anatomy, 
 until he has made some progress in drawing : unless he
 
 154 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 has some general knowledge of the aspect of the human 
 figure which he can keep in mind while attending the 
 lectures, he will only half take in, and probably soon 
 forget all he hears, and the time spent in drawing ana- 
 tomical studies would be better bestowed on his usual 
 work. It is better therefore not to devote too much 
 time to anatomy at first, as a competent instructor can 
 give all the assistance in this respect that is needed in 
 the earlier stages. 
 
 It must be remembered that anatomy will not teach 
 drawing; it is only a help to the knowledge the student 
 is seeking for, the knowledge of the human form in all 
 its infinite varieties of action and position. I can even 
 conceive the possibility of acquiring a knowledge of the 
 figure, from continued practice in drawing it in all posi- 
 tions, without any acquaintance with anatomy. The 
 Greek sculptors indeed are supposed by many to have 
 worked from a knowledge of the external aspects of the 
 figure only, the art of dissection being unknown to them. 
 But such knowledge would seem to us to be impossible 
 of attainment even in a life-time by the most gifted 
 minds, while by the help of anatomy the ordinary 
 student may gain by a short road the knowledge which 
 would otherwise be but slowly and gradually acquired 
 in the course of his studies. It may therefore be taken 
 for granted that the more acquaintance with anatomy
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 155 
 
 the artist possesses, the more intimate will be his know- 
 ledge of the external aspects of the figure, and the 
 better will he be able to draw it. There is no doubt 
 that Michelangelo, in his later years, was able, with a 
 very small amount of assistance from nature in the shape 
 of preliminary studies, frequently no more than slight 
 sketches, to draw out his grand figures and paint them 
 in fresco, with all their difficulties of foreshortening and 
 relief, purely from his profound knowledge of anatomy. 
 The advantage of tills of course was that the figure 
 when painted was the complete expression of his first 
 intention ; and he could out of his supreme knowledge 
 give to a figure whatever characteristics of beauty or 
 sublimity he pleased, as freely as if he were its creator. 
 If, therefore, I say that it is better not to take up this 
 study too soon, it is only because I think the student's 
 time may be better employed at first in acquiring know- 
 ledge of the more generally important properties of form 
 and tone. 
 
 After the study of form and tone comes the study 
 of colour; and the student having passed a certain time 
 drawing in the life-school, will be anxious to proceed 
 to the practice of this important part of his art. My 
 experience indeed is that students arc frequently too 
 much in a hurry in this respect : they should remember 
 that there is a certain amount of drudgery which is
 
 155 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 unavoidable in the earlier stages of all study, and that 
 art makes no exception to this rule. If, as is unfortu- 
 nately only too frequently the case, the study of art is 
 taken up later in life than most others, the student 
 must do his best to place himself in the position of a 
 beginner, and to understand that nothing but a regular 
 and methodical progress will be of any avail ; that the 
 ground must be gone over at whatever cost of patience ; 
 and that there is no such thing as jumping from one 
 difficulty to another. When the student can accomplish 
 a drawing from the life in black and white, which shall 
 convey a just impression of the movement, proportions, 
 and general characteristics of the model, and which at 
 the same time shall show that he has mastered the 
 more important points of anatomy and construction, 
 and is able to express them in a workmanlike manner, 
 with a due regard to those qualities of tone to which 
 I have attached so much importance ; — I think that 
 then he may consider that he is entitled to add the 
 difficulties of colour to those which he already has to 
 deal with. I am aware that there is a school of artists 
 who consider that painting cannot be taken up too soon, 
 and that students should be taught form through the 
 medium of colour; but these I think are of the same 
 class as those who would teach drawing merely by the 
 study of tone, and their system tends to lead to the same
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 157 
 
 end, — the substitution of the lower arts of imitation, for 
 that incomparably higher art which aims at ideal beauty, 
 and which cannot be acquired without a thorough training 
 in sound constructional drawing. That painting should 
 be carried on side by side with drawing from the beginning 
 is far more intelligible, for the difficulties of oil-painting 
 are extreme, so that one may almost say that it cannot 
 be undertaken too young. I am to some extent of that 
 opinion myself ; only, if the student must begin to paint 
 young, he must be still younger when he begins to draw, 
 for he cannot carry on the two studies systematically at 
 the same time ; and, in brief, the simpler study must 
 precede the more difficult, at the risk of neither being 
 thoroughly learnt. Therefore until a student in the life 
 can draw the figure well enough not to be hampered 
 by difficulties of proportion and construction while he 
 is painting, it will be of no advantage to him to in- 
 volve himself in further difficulties : and it will be - 
 found that he will hardly have gained this necessary 
 amount of proficiency, under two years of regular 
 work from the time of his beginning his course as a 
 student of art, though some may be more rapid in 
 their progress than others. I admit, however, that 
 whatever spare time a student has, and during the 
 vacations, there can no harm, but rather good, result 
 from his making studies in painting; it is only the
 
 15S LECTURES OX ART. 
 
 interruption of the regular course of work that I consider 
 objectionable. 
 
 Now in painting, as in drawing, the just perception of 
 tone is of the highest possible importance. The absolute 
 colour of an object (supposing for convenience' sake that 
 there be such a thing) is hardly ever seen in nature ; 
 it is always more or less modified by the circumstances 
 under which it is seen. A simple example is sufficient 
 to explain my meaning. A blue drapery, in shade, without 
 reflection of any kind falling upon it, or light transmitted 
 through it, will be black (which is equally true of course 
 of any other colour). With a reflection upon it from a 
 yellow wall it will appear green ; with a reflection from 
 a red wall it would appear purple, and so on ; now all this 
 time the drapery will be inherently blue, but to the 
 spectator it will appear of different colours according to 
 circumstances. The various tints that colours take under 
 various circumstances are no! by any means always so 
 obvious as in this example ; indeed they may be said to 
 be practically infinite ; but in every case it is the precise 
 tone of these apparent colours that the painter has to 
 discover and fix on his canvas in absolute colours, that 
 is to say in the various tints which he has mixed together 
 on his palette. 
 
 Now almost every painter has his pet system of painting. 
 There are all sorts of schemes for underpainting, glazing,
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 159 
 
 scumbling, and a hundred other processes, which are 
 calculated to give transparency to the shadows, brightness 
 to the lights, solidity to the masses, and I know not what ; 
 - — the impression apparently being that solidity and trans- 
 parency are to be obtained by some trick of painting 
 rather than by imitating the aspects of nature. But with 
 all this the student has nothing to do. It appears to me 
 obvious, that, if in making his study, he can so match 
 on his canvas the colours and tone of the object he is 
 painting, that an exact resemblance shall result, nothing 
 further can be wished for ; if this is achieved the object will 
 appear solid and the shadows will appear transparent as a 
 matter of course. The intention is so to train the student's 
 eye that he shall be able to see, and see at once, the tones 
 and colours of his model ; and if he is always painting 
 colours which he does not see, with a view of correcting 
 them afterwards by glazes and other methods, what pro- 
 bability is there that he will ever see colour truly ? His 
 only chance is by matching each tint and each gradation 
 of tint to gain the necessary practice in seeing which is the 
 all-important matter ; it is his eye which he must educate 
 to learn the art of painting. The right tones placed in 
 the right places, and the work is done. That is the whole 
 mystery of painting for a student ; aided by his previous 
 practice in drawing, the hand will certainly educate itself 
 with the eye.
 
 i6o LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 For a student, I said ; for when he has once mastered 
 this difficulty of seeing, and knows what nature is like, 
 he may take what liberties with his palette he pleases ; he 
 need never go wrong : and if he thinks he can gain by 
 processes of painting qualities of workmanship which can- 
 not be produced by this simple means of tone-matching 
 (as he no doubt can) he will not only have the liberty 
 to use them, but what is more important, the power of 
 doing so. To a student, however, processes are delusive ; 
 and only lead him to endeavour, as Reynolds I think has 
 said, to begin where the great men have left off. The 
 method I prescribe, therefore, is no method of painting 
 at all, but a method of study or education; it teaches no 
 process ; and I hope no one will imagine for a moment 
 that there is any short road to painting by means of a 
 process. 
 
 To the beginnings of painting the same rule will apply 
 as to the beginnings of drawing ; the simplest proceeding 
 must come first. A student having obtained admission 
 to the painting class in his school, will begin best by 
 painting from the cast, not doing what are called at South 
 Kensington monochromes, which are not paintings but 
 mere light and shade studies in oil-colours, the imitation 
 of tone not being included ; but by really endeavouring 
 to imitate at once the exact tones of the cast. The method 
 indeed, universal in the Government schools, of making
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 161 
 
 monochrome paintings, on a system of not imitating the 
 tone of the casts, is about the most dangerous part of 
 all their system. The practice of merely making a drawing 
 in oil-colours, simply shuts out the one great difficulty in 
 painting; that of keeping in mind the three great qualities 
 of form, tone, and colour. The only method of educating 
 the eye for colour is by teaching the student from the 
 very first to match his tones to those of the model. The 
 painting when placed at the side of the model should be 
 so like it as to be startling in its truth. When the student 
 can do this he may allow full scope to his imagination ; 
 he will be able to paint what presents itself to his mind's 
 eye as easily as that which he sees with his bodily vision ; 
 but unless he can truly paint what he has before him 
 he can do nothing else. 
 
 It is useless to pursue any further the career of the 
 art-student. When he can paint reasonably well from the 
 cast, he will proceed to work from the living-model, which 
 will be the last stage in his course of instruction ; but 
 he must never give up continuing to draw, carrying on 
 this study along with that of painting. The various 
 other studies he will pursue do not come within the 
 limits of this paper, which touches only on the points 
 immediately connected with the study of the figure, 
 but he will do well, indeed he will find it necessary 
 if he aims at any high form of art, to pursue courses 
 
 M
 
 162 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 of Perspective, and of Architecture ; of the latter espe- 
 cially, as opening out fields for the imagination in the 
 treatment of the higher classes of subject, which are 
 closed to any one ignorant of that art. He will also 
 carry on the study of water-colour greatly to his advan- 
 tage ; if he ever has the good fortune to have a 
 painting in fresco to do, he will hardly be able to 
 manage the material' without previous practice in water- 
 colour; unless of course he has made fresco his special 
 study. As for the great masters of painting and 
 sculpture, if he has any love for his art he will 
 take a natural pleasure in constantly contemplating their 
 works. 
 
 4 
 
 If I have expressed myself clearly, I shall have been 
 understood to speak in this paper only of matters 
 which are necessary in the education of all artists, to 
 whatever style of figure-painting they may devote them- 
 selves. A true and correct perception of the three 
 points of Form, Tone, and Colour will have been seen 
 to be as necessary to the treatment of subjects of 
 a lower as well as of a higher order. They do not 
 any of them come under the category of things which 
 may be neglected or not, as the artist pleases. They 
 are the essentials, without which an artist cannot put 
 his ideas into proper form. It is useless for an artist 
 to put forward his poetical feeling, depth of religious
 
 THE TRAINING OF ART STUDENTS. 163 
 
 sentiment, attention to beauty of detail, earnestness of 
 intention, or any other quality, in the place of the 
 workmanlike power which shall enable him to place 
 his intentions before us in an artistic form. And if it 
 were allowable to make a choice amongst these scho- 
 lastic qualities, I, for my part, should rather tolerate 
 a fault of drawing or of perspective, or an inharmonious 
 arrangement of colour, than a false rendering of tone. 
 The true perception of this is, so to speak, a constant 
 in the works of all the great painters : for its sake 
 one forgives the absurdities of Correggio's drawing, and 
 the vulgarity of Rembrandt's heads ; its treatment is 
 developed in the works of Michelangelo to an equal 
 grandeur with that of form ; while it is the whole secret 
 of the position which Velasquez holds as the chief among 
 realistic painters. When Turner begins to lose his per- 
 ception of it, all the poetical and imaginative power, 
 so copiously displayed in the conceptions of his sub- 
 jects, does not save his pictures from being repulsive; 
 while we have one living painter who, though he may 
 not owe his popularity to this quality, has earned his 
 success among artists and intelligent critics to his 
 wonderful power, when he chooses to exert it, of 
 seizing on its higher and more subtle truths. A true 
 appreciation of the important part it plays in those 
 external aspects of nature, which it is the business of 
 
 M 2
 
 164 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 the artist to interpret, is never absent from the work 
 of any great master; and conversely it may be said 
 that no painter, of any time or country, can come 
 into the list of even second-rate artists, whose pictures 
 are deficient in this all-important quality.
 
 LECTURE VI. 1 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF NATURE. 
 
 In some interesting lectures on the Philosophy of the 
 Italian Art of the Renaissance, M. Henri Taine calls 
 attention to the immense advantage the old Italian 
 artists enjoyed over the men of to-day, in the fact 
 that their minds were not overburdened with ideas. 
 Under modern conditions of life we think so much 
 and so subtly, that our impressions of nature no longer 
 come to us with simplicity and directness, while, accord- 
 ing to M. Taine, a noble form of art is only possible 
 when the images which nature stamps on our minds 
 are not blurred or distorted by the intrusion of our 
 ideas. 
 
 This remark is a valuable one, inasmuch as it points 
 out one great difficulty which stands in the way of 
 a free development of art, the difficulty, that is, of 
 
 3 Tart of an Address delivered at the St. Martin's School of Art.
 
 166 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 securing that the study of nature shall be carried on 
 upon right principles. For this " study of nature " is not 
 as simple a matter as it appears at first sight, and it is 
 quite possible that we may pursue it in such a way 
 as to interpose ideas and prejudices of our own between 
 ourselves and nature, which may prevent our receiving 
 its impressions in the form most stimulating to the 
 artistic powers. I will endeavour to make this clearer 
 by a practical illustration derived from the study of 
 artistic ornament. 
 
 In this branch oi* art a novel idea was started some 
 little time ago, which had for its object a new appli- 
 cation of the forms and colours of flowers to the 
 ornamenting of wall papers, hangings, and other 
 materials for surface decoration. This was, that the 
 student should take a flower or a plant, and commence 
 by drawing it in its natural form ; next, that he should 
 dissect the plant botanically, making separate geome- 
 trical drawings, plans, and sections, of the petals, 
 corolla, stamen, pistil, branching of the leaves from 
 the stem, &c, that he might understand how the 
 flowers could be treated geometrically; thirdly, that 
 from these drawings a geometrical pattern should be 
 made, combining artistically the forms which had been 
 discovered during the process. Now here was an idea, 
 a thing that had never been thought of before ■ so that
 
 ON THE STUDY OF NATURE. 167 
 
 a step forward in a direction never before explored 
 seemed inevitable. Yet I must express my opinion 
 that quite the most unfortunate attempts at decorative 
 patterns, both as regards form and colour, that I have 
 ever seen, were some which were produced by this 
 infallible process ! 
 
 The reason is simply this, that the idea takes in the 
 student's mind the place of the impression ; he thinks 
 the design must necessarily turn out well, for he has 
 been taught that nature's forms are beautiful ; and here 
 are nature's forms reduced to their simplest expression, 
 and, with due deference to the exigencies of a formal 
 design, combined in the way in which nature combines 
 them. Unfortunately, this process of reasoning does 
 not necessarily lead to a work of art ; but merely to 
 an ingenious combination, which may be absolutely 
 deficient in any qualities of beauty or prettiness. 
 Nature is not necessarily beautiful in all her forms, in 
 spite of all that we are taught as children,— still less 
 dissected nature. It is not every flower that is good 
 in colour and graceful in form; and it is the business 
 cf the artist to select what is beautiful and reject what 
 is ugly and unsuitable. Now the dissection of a flower, 
 however ingenious the idea may seem, may indeed give 
 the student an admirable understanding of its botanical 
 properties, but does not necessarily lead to an appreciation
 
 1 68 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 of its artistic fitness for ornament. I would not have 
 students neglect any means of advancing themselves in 
 the knowledge of the construction of natural growths : 
 to know the anatomy of a flower is as useful in 
 drawing it as to know the anatomy of the body in 
 drawing the human figure ; but unless the mind has 
 impressed upon it by instinct or observation a distinct 
 image of the various graces of form, and harmonious 
 combinations of colour, which flowers and plants possess 
 in their natural state, no amount of ideas, acquired in 
 the way just described, will be of the least use for 
 the production of good artistic design. Ancient art 
 produced ornamental designs without end, of the most 
 perfect beauty, without the necessity of bringing in 
 any such ideas. These decorative forms were produced 
 by a pure natural instinct, which led the ancients to 
 combine and modify in the most beautiful manner the 
 most beautiful natural forms. There are also abundant 
 examples of oriental decorative work of the most ordi- 
 nary kind, which are perfect in proportion, form, and 
 colour. In such cases we can see in the first place 
 that the beauty of certain natural forms had been im 
 pressed in the most vivid manner upon the designer's 
 mind, and in the second, that his hand was guided 
 by a sort of unconscious instinct when he sought to 
 apply those beautiful forms to a decorative purpose.
 
 ON THE STUDY OF NATURE. 169 
 
 In pictorial art also the same difficulty is constantly 
 occurring : our ideas are continually getting the better of 
 our natural impressions. The remedy is, however, the 
 same as in the other case, and is fortunately easier of 
 application. The highest possible forms of pictorial 
 art have as their object the representation of the human 
 form and face in all their varied aspects of tragic and 
 joyful expression. There the imitation of nature is the 
 principal object, only it is an imitation which leaves out 
 of sight all that is weak, ungainly, or ignoble, and de- 
 lights only in beauty, stqength, and life, as is the case 
 in the noble works of the Greek and Italian schools. 
 For the student of to-day there is accordingly but one 
 thing to aim at, and that is so to study nature as to 
 receive and retain the most complete and distinct im- 
 pressions. Once let his mind be thoroughly imbued 
 with a true knowledge of nature, and he may use it as 
 he pleases; if he has studied thoroughly he is not 
 likely to go far wrong. But to do this, he must get 
 rid of extraneous ideas, and rely on the images which 
 are formed in his mind, and which nature constantly 
 presents to his eyes. And here as before a practical 
 illustration may be of service. 
 
 What I am about to refer to is a very strong and 
 very curious instance of the way in which ideas run 
 away with us in art, to the prejudice of what we might
 
 1 7 o LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 naturally do if we relied on our impressions alone. It 
 has reference to the origin twenty years ago of what 
 was called the Pre-Raphaelite movement ; and I trust 
 that I may not be supposed in these remarks to be 
 attempting to throw ridicule on the enthusiasm of young 
 men, anxious to make a reform which was urgently 
 needed, who have long ago grown out of the weak- 
 nesses which are incidental to enthusiasm, and to 
 whom, as men of genius, we owe the utmost respect 
 and gratitude. The instance is, however, a very appo- 
 site one. At the beginning of this movement, one of 
 the predominant ideas was that purity is in all its 
 forms essential to good art. Purity of subject, purity 
 of sentiment, purity of expression, being all necessary, 
 were only to be secured by the utmost purity of 
 form and colour. To attain to purity of colour was a 
 most important point, and to this end nothing but the 
 most refined and brilliant pigments were to be used. 
 Ochres and umbers were earthy, and perhaps there- 
 fore earthly, so the newest chemical compounds were 
 sought out for the sake of procuring the clearest and 
 brightest tints of green, yellow, scarlet, violet, and 
 blue, that could be employed for the palette. These, 
 combined in prismatic hues on the purest white, were 
 to take the place in flesh-tints of the sober colours 
 which artists had been content to use up to that time.
 
 ON THE STUDY OF NATURE. 171 
 
 The idea was carried so far that the use of these 
 colours was considered as a sort of test of the earnest- 
 ness of a painter in his work, and they were even 
 invested with a sort of religious halo. Here then is a 
 case where the idea completely out-mastered the impres- 
 sion, for it is certain that no painter trusting to his eyes 
 alone would paint the shade of even the purest maiden's 
 cheek with violet madder and emerald green, and with 
 cadmium or orange vermilion to complete the triad of 
 prismatic colours. 
 
 The above is perhaps an extreme instance, but the 
 influence of the same kind of feeling may be traced 
 in various forms through the whole range of our 
 modern art. Sometimes it is a religious, sometimes a 
 sentimental, sometimes a scientific idea which obtains 
 possession of the painter's mind with the effect of 
 deadening his true artistic perceptions. The cause may 
 be found in the want of training common to English 
 artists, which leads them to reject through ignorance and 
 prejudice what practice and experience have shown to be 
 convenient, if not necessary, modes of procedure.
 
 LECTURE VII. 1 
 
 VALUE OF PRIZES. 
 
 The few words which I have to offer to you on the pre- 
 sent occasion are concerned with the result of the recent 
 competition for Scholarships and Prizes, and I shall endea- 
 vour in them to explain the reasons by which I have been 
 guided in making the awards, since without a knowledge 
 of these reasons half the value of the prizes would be 
 lost to you. 
 
 I am aware that there are many persons who consider 
 that the principle of prize-giving is altogether a wrong 
 one, and who hold that the student's enthusiasm should 
 be powerful enough to enable him to dispense with the 
 additional stimulus of competition. Experience does not, 
 
 1 Portion of a Lecture given at the end of the first session of the 
 Slade School. There are a few practical hints in this lecture on 
 various subjects connected with the ordinary school course, which made 
 me think it worth publishing ; but it will probably not be found to 
 contain much of interest for people in general.
 
 VALUE OF PRIZES. 173 
 
 however, lend any force to this view. Practically speaking, 
 it is only when the students are spurred on to their best 
 efforts in the struggle for a prize that the teacher is 
 enabled to judge accurately of the progress they have 
 made ; and though students may doubtless be found who 
 work less well than usual in a competition, it is far more 
 generally the case that they do not even themselves know 
 what they can do until their energies are called out in this 
 manner. Another valuable element in these competitions 
 is, that in awarding the prize to a particular drawing, the 
 master is able to show in a practical manner the style of 
 work which he considers the best for a student to pursue. 
 At the same time the successful competitors must not 
 imagine that they have completed their education in the 
 different departments of study because they have won 
 prizes in them. The prizes are given, not because the 
 student is perfect in his work, but because he is the best ; 
 and it must be remembered that there are two ways in 
 which he may be the best — one where in a good competi- 
 tion he carries all before him, and another where he is 
 only first because the rest lag behind. 
 
 With regard to the Scholarships, it is worthy of notice 
 that the number of competitors eligible in point of age, 
 and qualified to pass the preliminary examination in 
 general subjects, should bear such a very small proportion 
 to the whole number of students in the school. The
 
 *74 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 reason is probably to be found in the fact that parents 
 as a rule cannot make up their minds to let their children 
 study seriously as artists until the time has gone by at 
 which they could enter for these scholarships. 1 The great 
 majority, treating art as an elegant accomplishment to be 
 practised in leisure hours, would doubtless prefer that 
 their sons should make their living in some other way ; 
 the effect of which is, that by the time the inclination 
 shown becomes too strong to be resisted, it is generally 
 somewhat late for a student to begin his course. The 
 fact that more than half the competitors on this occasion 
 are ladies, points in the same direction ; for as art is one 
 of the very few professions in which women can compete 
 with men, those who choose it as a means of liveli- 
 hood will make every effort to begin early, while the far 
 wider field open to the energies of young men tends to 
 lessen the number of those who devote themselves from 
 the first to art. It may, however, be hoped that parents 
 will be induced by the liberal endowment of these scholar- 
 ships to permit their sons to enter on their artistic studies 
 at an earlier age. As it is, for the next few years the 
 young ladies competing will no doubt be in a majority, 
 though when the still-lingering prejudices against art as a 
 
 1 By the terms of Mr. Slack's will, six scholai^hips of 50/. a year, 
 tenable for three years, are open to competition among students under 
 19 years of age.
 
 VALUE OF PRIZES. 175 
 
 profession have disappeared, we may hope to see an equal 
 number of competitors from each sex. 
 
 To pass on to the subject of Prize drawings. It must 
 be understood that the prize is necessarily awarded in 
 every case to the work which is the best done, and does 
 not depend upon the mere amount of pains the student 
 may have taken, though it may be laid down as a general 
 rule that the hardest worker gets in first at the end. With 
 regard to the prize for drawing from the life, the only 
 possible principle is to bestow it on the figure which is 
 best in point of drawing — best, that is, in outline, and in 
 the expression it gives to the character of the model- 
 execution or workmanship being necessarily put in the 
 second place. The important points to be considered 
 are the general action and proportion of the figure, 
 the position of the joints and setting on of the head, 
 limbs, and extremities, the correctness of the outline, and 
 the elegance of the form, while an exact resemblance to 
 the face of the model should always be aimed at. Excel- 
 lence in these matters is difficult of attainment and requires 
 the most painstaking study, while the execution of the 
 drawing is a mere question of practice, and comes of itself 
 if the other points are carefully attended to. 
 
 In connection with this subject, students cannot be too 
 constantly warned against attempting to give a specious 
 appearance of prettiness to their work by an easily-acquired
 
 176 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 knack of execution. The words of Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 
 on this point are well worthy of quotation, and I may 
 
 take the opportunity of recommending his Discourses on 
 
 Art to those who are not already acquainted with them, 
 
 containing as they do the very best precepts that are to 
 
 be found for the guidance of the learner. His Discourses 
 
 are indeed a mine of pithy and apposite phrases, each of 
 
 which might serve as the text for a lecture. Upon this 
 
 matter he says : — "A lively, and what is called a masterly, 
 
 handling of the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed, 
 
 captivating qualities to young minds, and become of course 
 
 the objects of their ambition. They endeavour to imitate 
 
 these dazzling- excellencies, which they will find no great 
 
 labour in attaining. After much time spent in these 
 
 frivolous pursuits, the difficulty will be to retreat ; but it 
 
 will then be too late, and there is scarce an instance of 
 
 return to scrupulous labour after the mind has been 
 
 debauched and deceived by this fallacious mastery." 
 
 Reynolds says again, a little further on : — " A student is 
 
 not always advancing because he is employed ; he must 
 
 apply his strength to the part of art where the real 
 
 difficulties lie." And again : — " The students, instead of 
 
 vying with each other which shall have the readiest 
 
 hand, should be taught to contend who shall have the 
 
 purest and most correct outline." The application oi 
 
 these remarks will be clear; but a word of warning is
 
 VALUE OF PRIZES. 177 
 
 necessary on the other side, lest it should be supposed that 
 because more stress is laid on general correctness than 
 on finished execution, you are therefore exempted from 
 bestowing care upon the latter point. It must be remem- 
 bered that attention to detail, although it comes after 
 attention to general form, is not on that account of 
 secondary importance. It is the tendency to make it take 
 the place of the other unduly that must be guarded against. 
 In the case of the prize for painting, the same 
 general considerations hold good. The figure must not 
 only be well painted, but must be well drawn, though 
 excellence in painting is obviously the quality to which 
 most weight must be given. With respect to the 
 painting and drawing of details, which are not always 
 easily seen at the distance you require for taking in 
 the whole figure, you must adopt the habit of going 
 close up to the model to gain a nearer view of them. 
 Inability to see often means want of knowledge, while 
 forms that you understand you can generally see. 
 Nothing is more objectionable than the use of opera 
 glasses under these circumstances. Those who are short 
 sighted had better wear spectacles ; an opera glass 
 isolates the details and throws them out of their true 
 proportion, thus confirming the dangerous tendency to 
 sacrifice unity to the elaboration of unimportant parts, 
 against which I have often warned you. 
 
 N
 
 i 7 8 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 There remain for notice the prize compositions, the 
 subject for which is the wrestling of Jacob with the 
 Angel, as described in these words: "And Jacob was 
 left alone ; and there wrestled a man with him until 
 the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he 
 prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of 
 his thigh : and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of 
 joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me 
 go, for the day breaketh : And he said, I will not let 
 thee go, except thou bless me." In judging these, as 
 none of the students are as yet very advanced in the 
 technical parts of their art, the drawing of the figures 
 must be put as far as possible out of the question, and 
 the award depend upon which sketch tells the story best, 
 and presents the most agreeable form of composition. 
 
 Now in the treatment of this subject there are two 
 points that might be taken, — one, the act of wrestling; 
 the other, the determination of Jacob not to let the 
 Angel go, although disabled in the way described in 
 the text. Of these two points I think that those who 
 have chosen the latter have shewn the most originality 
 of idea, and the best appreciation of the meaning of 
 the subject, since it affords more opportunity for ex- 
 pression than the mere act of wrestling. This however 
 is quite capable of being treated in a very noble and 
 dignified manner. Supposing it were chosen, the first
 
 VALUE OF PRIZES. 179 
 
 thing necessary would be to make it something more 
 than a mere wrestling match. At the outset you must 
 invest both figures with a certain dignity suited to the 
 Scriptural and legendary nature of the story. Both in 
 his face and figure you must shew that Jacob is no ordi- 
 nary mortal. You must give him the grandeur and 
 dignity of the patriarch of the chosen people, with the 
 strength that should fit him to undertake a combat 
 with a being of superhuman attributes ; while in the 
 figure of the Angol you must combine with the effort 
 of the struggle, a look of ease and conscious superiority 
 in the face, and a simpler majesty and beauty of form. 
 In the figure of Jacob the effort should be more 
 painful; while the effect of the exertion should be more 
 apparent on a wiry and muscular frame, suited to a 
 simple and patriarchal personage. In this way Jacob and 
 the Angel might be distinguished from one another at a 
 glance without the addition of wings or a halo to the 
 Angel. 
 
 For a wonderful expression of ease combined with 
 effort, I may call attention to a group in Michelangelo's 
 Last Judgment, where an angel and a demon are 
 disputing the possession of a soul rising from the earth ; 
 the demon is exerting his utmost strength in pulling 
 the figure downwards, while the angel soars upwards with 
 a calm dignity and an appearance of conscious and 
 
 N 2
 
 1S0 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 irresistible might which makes a sublime contrast with the 
 ignominious exertions of the other. 
 
 The landscape in this, as in every other subject of an 
 exalted kind, should be of the simplest possible nature, 
 so as not to interfere in any way with the interest of the 
 figures. To make the composition a landscape in which 
 the figures only take a secondary place, is quite out of 
 character with the dignity of the subject; which demands 
 that our attention should be occupied as much by the 
 figures as possible, the surroundings being only sufficient 
 to add to the impressiveness of the scene and give such 
 local character as may be deemed necessary. 
 
 In considering the second point which might be taken 
 in this story, the detention of the Angel by Jacob until 
 he has blessed him, the general treatment of the figures 
 must be the same as in the former case, but the struggle 
 of Jacob should be that of a disabled man, and what 
 will be required will be rather a kind of desperate 
 clinging on his part ; and as a certain reluctance on the 
 part of the Angel is implied in the text it will be 
 necessary to convey this impression in the action of his 
 figure. 
 
 Next to the treatment of the subject, comes the 
 equally important point of the composition of the group 
 Lionardo da Vinci goes so far as to say that " the prin- 
 cipal part of painting lies in the art of making happy
 
 VALUE OF TRIZES. 181 
 
 compositions. The expression is the next part in dignity, 
 and consists in giving each figure the necessary attention 
 to what it is doing." This is doubtless in one sense right, 
 for the picture is not a picture at all unless well com- 
 posed ; if it consists merely in the rendering of an 
 action, it will be no better than a photograph of a 
 good actor might be ; but at the same time it must 
 be borne in mind that a composition, which is agreeable 
 in lines, but in which the figures are deficient in action, 
 or the action not in accordance with nature, is mere 
 emptiness, and signifies nothing, however skilful may 
 have been the designer. 
 
 In this as in all compositions it will be necessary to pay 
 particular attention to the draperies, both as to costume and 
 arrangement. It would be possible, no doubt, to treat it 
 with nude figures only, but it would require a Michelangelo 
 to do it ; the superhuman nature of the Angel would then 
 be expressed by his superior beauty of face and form alone ; 
 but the experiment would be dangerous for more ordinary 
 mortals, and failure would involve so ignominious and 
 undignified a presentation of a noble theme that I should 
 not advise a student to make the attempt. A much easier 
 method of conveying the contrast between the two figures 
 may be found by clothing them in draperies of different 
 character. That of the Angel, for instance, may be the 
 conventional flowing dress, girt up for the convenience of
 
 i82 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 the strife ; while the dress of Jacob may very well consist 
 of such a sheepskin coat and rough thick mantle as a 
 shepherd would wear. Special costume, indeed, it is not 
 advisable to introduce ; rather, it is most desirable to 
 avoid ; anything at all approaching the dress of the modern 
 Bedouin Arab would be fatal, even if correct, as imme- 
 diately associating the actors in the scene with the common- 
 places of modern Oriental life, and so destroying the 
 dignified and exalted impressions which we always associate 
 with the Biblical narrative. But any arrangement which 
 should suggest a generic type of the primitive shepherd's 
 dress would be correct. It would be appropriate to make 
 Jacob wrestling in his under-garment, having cast his mantle 
 to the ground ; and in this case the mantle might usefully 
 assist the lines and masses of the composition by being 
 the means of connecting the group together. The great 
 and important use of drapery in a composition is, not 
 merely to serve as a covering to the limbs, or to give 
 character through costume, but to add dignity or grace to 
 the figures, to assist their movement by the direction of its 
 folds, and to knit together by broad masses or leading 
 lines the various parts of the composition ; and in the 
 colouring of a picture it is of course invaluable. Viewed 
 in this light it is perhaps the most difficult part of a 
 picture, and that which requires the most knowledge and 
 study.
 
 VALUE OF TRIZES. 1S3 
 
 It would be of great advantage to the students if the 
 sketches submitted in this competition were now taken up 
 to be carried further, and after having been corrected and 
 improved in composition, in accordance with my remarks, 
 wee worked out from nature. Studies of the action of 
 the figures should be made from models, and persevered 
 in till the required action is obtained. Where necessary 
 two models should be used together. Then must follow 
 separate studies of the hands, feet, heads, and draperies ; 
 of wings, if the angel is to be represented with wings, and 
 of any other accessories that may be required in the picture. 
 Finally, a carefully finished cartoon should be made in 
 chalk or charcoal, with the figures about twenty inches or 
 two feet high. Those to whom models are inaccessible 
 must, when they have fully made up their minds as to the 
 action of their figures, have recourse to prints, antique 
 statues, and the like, for assistance in the matter of 
 drawing. Aids of this kind should not of course be looked 
 to for the suggestion of ideas, but should merely serve as 
 substitutes for models. 
 
 I have here given you nothing more than hints as to 
 how such a subject as you have for competition may be 
 treated. A man of genius might no doubt defy any of 
 the rules for composition here suggested, and produce a 
 work of great and original merit. But if you proceed
 
 i8 4 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 on these lines you will be safer than by trusting to your 
 own unaided original gifts, and by working out your 
 design in this way you will have gained a most im- 
 portant step in preparing yourself for the painting of 
 pictures later on in your career.
 
 LECTURE VIII. 1 
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 
 
 In the few general remarks with which I prefaced the 
 consideration of the prize-drawings at the close of last 
 Session, I signified my intention of developing into 
 the form of a more elaborated lecture the hints I 
 then threw out on the objects of study in art. But 
 a lecturer who is obliged to be frequently before an 
 audience, whether of professed students or an interested 
 public, labours under the disadvantages belonging to a 
 limited theme, that his endeavours to impress on them 
 his views on the theory and practice of art must 
 result in a certain amount of repetition, and conse- 
 quently of monotony. For the subject is of a limited 
 nature, and it is not easy to find anything to say which 
 is not already to a certain extent familiar to the listener, 
 either as derived from previous study or experience, or 
 as the result of his own unaided reflection. 
 
 1 Given at the opening of the fourth Session of the Sladc School.
 
 1S6 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 In other subjects there is generally some matter suffi- 
 ciently new to require explanation, discussion or refu- 
 tation. The discoveries of Science are inexhaustible ; 
 there is always something fresh to tell of, or some new 
 theory being founded on the basis of old discoveries. 
 A scientific point moreover has the merit of being more 
 or less demonstrable ; if different opinions are held upon 
 it, arguments of an interesting and easily appreciable 
 nature can be brought to bear on the discussion, and 
 until the demonstration is complete the interest is ever 
 new. But the lecturer on art has no such means of 
 interesting his hearers ; to express myself perhaps para- 
 doxically, a person must be interested in art to be 
 interested in a lecture on art ; — an argument, though it 
 may be backed up by the highest authority, can never 
 be more than the expression of a private opinion ; at 
 least, it will remain so until philosophers have deve- 
 loped the modern theory, that there is a discoverable 
 and certain basis for criticism in matters of beauty and 
 therefore of art, and that a sufficient study of the sub- 
 ject will make the relative values of various styles a 
 matter of certain calculation. 
 
 The lecture I read to you at the beginning of last 
 Session I devoted to the consideration of methods of study ; 
 and I pointed out the successive stages to be gone over in 
 the course of a system of instruction, dwelling particularly
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 1S7 
 
 on the necessity of a systematic and workmanlike execu- 
 tion, and explaining that attention to the important general 
 truths of form, tone, and colour, must be accompanied by 
 careful finish and study of detail, and that it is of the 
 utmost importance that the work should be done without 
 more than the needful amount of time being spent upon it. 
 These are the points I more particularly insisted on, and 
 in considering the Objects of Study I give the reasons for 
 the recommendations I then made, and their importance 
 will I hope become apparent. In arranging a system of 
 Instruction, we have to bear in mind not only the best 
 means by which that system may be impressed on the 
 mind of the learner, but its fitness for the end in view ; 
 that is, for such a development of his natural gifts, as will 
 give him the free and complete use of them, as well as 
 such a habit of good work that the carrying out of His 
 ideas shall be in no way hampered by difficulties of execu- 
 tion. The power of freely exercising the faculties rather 
 than special training for a particular style, is a prominent 
 matter for consideration in arranging such a system. The 
 placing of good examples before students is nevertheless 
 an important part of any plan of study; thus it is necessary 
 constantly to urge them to the contemplation and imita- 
 tion of great masters of past times, by which they may learn 
 the possibilities of the art they are preparing for, and 
 endeavour to emulate them in their own practice. These,
 
 iSS LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 therefore, are the two principal objects of study, the 
 development of the faculties, and the cultivation of taste, 
 and they must be considered together in treating of the 
 subject in detail. The future career of the student being 
 undoubtedly determined not only by the course of study 
 pursued, but by the opinions expressed by his professors 
 as to the form which his efforts should take in the end, 
 it becomes a matter of necessity not only to speak of and 
 place before him the best method of study and the highest 
 examples for his imitation ; it is important also to direct 
 his attention to the bad results of a bad method or incom- 
 plete course of study, and to the limits which he imposes 
 on himself by aiming short of what his talents and capa- 
 bilities will admit ; and as he is incited to emulate, or at 
 least to appreciate, the incomparable achievements of the 
 great artists of antiquity or the Renaissance, by having 
 pointed out to him the beauties they contain, so it would be 
 an easy task to set before him certain works as a warning 
 against the indifference to study and to the higher aims of 
 art, which is too prevalent at the present time. This, how- 
 ever, in a public place is forbidden ground ; in such 
 circumstances we must follow an excellent rule of the 
 Royal Academy, which forbids the lecturer to make any 
 comments or criticisms on the productions or opinions 
 of living artists in this country. Such remarks would 
 doubtless give a most pointed interest to a lecture on
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 189 
 
 Art, but it would be at the risk of unjustly wounding 
 susceptibilities ; it is necessary therefore to make all 
 criticisms on the work of the present day as general as 
 possible, and even then it is hard to veil references, if not 
 to particular persons, at least to particular schools of art. 
 It is nevertheless impossible for me, as perhaps I need 
 hardly say, to sympathise with either the aims or the 
 productions of the large majority of modern artists. I 
 recognise a certain small number of eminent men among 
 us who are artists in the true sense, but whom it would 
 be invidious to name ; beyond this I recognise a few 
 younger painters whose aims are such as artists should be, 
 with a strong feeling for the sentiment of beauty, but who 
 are hampered in every direction by want of a proper and 
 complete education ; beyond that is a vast majority whom 
 I can hardly consent to call artists ; not, it must be clearly 
 understood, because they do not treat the kind of subject 
 which I personally prefer or admire, but because they fall 
 short on their own ground in those qualities which are 
 essential to the making of a work of art, however 
 unimportant the subject. And this last remark will give 
 you the key to all the opinions I hold on the objects 
 of a system of Instruction. To train a student, what- 
 ever his ultimate career is to be, for the highest 
 forms of art is the one end I keep in view. Thus the 
 subjects I give out for practice in composition are always
 
 iqo LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 drawn from Biblical or classical sources, or are of a kind 
 which require treatment of a classical nature — i.e., they 
 require the introduction of nude or classically-draped 
 figures ; not because I think that no subjects of another 
 nature should be treated ; if I thought that I should be 
 illogical in admiring much that gives me pleasure ; but 
 because I consider that practice in that form of art, 
 demanding as it does the highest sense of beauty, and 
 involving the greatest difficulties in drawing and design, 
 is the best preparation for any style which the student's 
 natural tendencies will lead him ultimately to adopt. 
 
 Again, the study of the nude figure holds a principal, 
 indeed an almost exclusive, place in this School on the 
 same grounds ; to draw the nude figure well will enable 
 the artist to draw anything which does not require special 
 technical teaching. A youth desirous of becoming a land- 
 scape painter cannot do better than study the drawing, 
 painting, and composition of figures ; it will give him a 
 power of drawing to be acquired in no other way, besides 
 cultivating his taste, his style, and his feeling for beauty 
 of arrangement. The mere introduction which it gives him 
 to the works of the great figure painters will be suggestive 
 of a higher order of landscape than that which is gained 
 by the trivial and photographic studies of nature which 
 pass for pictures among the younger school of landscape 
 painters. It will suggest to his mind the perception that
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 191 
 
 there is in landscape as in figure painting such a thing as 
 abstract form. That trees and rocks have as it were bones 
 and sinews, which underlie what is apparent to the super- 
 ficial observer, and that neither the tricks of broad effect 
 to be gained under the usual water-colour routine, nor the 
 elaborate but trivial studies of surface or of construction 
 which grew up in opposition, and as it were as an antidote 
 to the clever but mannered dexterity of a corrupt school 
 of landscape painting, will be sufficient for the production 
 of a real work of art ; he must understand and see in 
 nature the great leading forms and masses of tone and 
 colour on which was formed the style of Claude, Poussin, 
 Wilson, Turner, and others. It is the tradition of their 
 works which is faintly reflected in the mannered and 
 dexterous style to which I have just referred, and 
 to their broad perceptions of nature the other or photo- 
 graphic style should serve but as preliminary study. A 
 proper course of study in a school of figure painting should 
 lead above all things to the conviction that though detail 
 must be known, understood, and expressed, it must be 
 kept subordinated, so as not to force itself unduly on the 
 eye. This knowledge it is my constant endeavour to 
 impress on my students, and it is as important for the 
 landscape as for the figure pointer; but it must not be 
 done by the ignoring, but by the proper expression of 
 detail ; the first is easy enough, and is but too commonly
 
 192 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 practised. I do not pretend that the great painters named 
 above went through such a course of figure study as I 
 should propose ; but they were men of great genius, and 
 both instinct, tradition, and cultivation led them to see 
 nature in a grand and magnificent manner. And as an 
 illustration of my meaning on this last point, I cannot do 
 better than draw attention to Turner's great picture of the 
 Garden of the Hesperides in the National Gallery. Think- 
 ing this, as I do, the finest design of a landscape he ever 
 made, I am of opinion that it is worth study as an illus- 
 tration of that higher truth which is gained through 
 the intimate knowledge of nature, a knowledge which 
 having all by heart, pushes aside everything which is 
 worthless and not subservient to the end in view. 
 Moreover, it is entirely free from the manner acquired 
 from Claude and Wilson, a manner on which, it is 
 true, he invariably grafted something so poetical and 
 imaginative as always to make the work his own ; but 
 I mean that their influence is to be traced only in 
 the great breadth and massiveness of the composition, 
 and not as having suggested the idea or arrangement. 
 The originality in the conception of the great mass of rock 
 pushed out into the middle of the valley, and which is the 
 key-stone of the picture, is only equalled by the surprising 
 truth of its drawing and the luminous sunlight in its colour. 
 Here indeed you will see what I have called the very bones
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 193 
 
 of the rock ; trivialities of detail are lost in the bold treat- 
 ment of its contorted mass and in the granite hardness 
 given to its surface, but are suggested in wonderful grada- 
 tions of colour ; and you will further observe the simple 
 but beautiful arrangement of the cloud, reduced to its 
 simplest expression in form, but admirable in its gradation 
 of light and shade and warm reflection. All combines 
 to place this picture on the highest level as a work of 
 poetry and of art: the mysterious gloom of the distant 
 ravine ; the dragon, his breath mingling with the 
 clouds, and hardly distinguishable at first from the rock 
 on which he lies ; the opening into the valley on the 
 right (doing more for the poetry of the picture in the 
 glimpse it gives us of its sunlit and smiling depths than 
 a less reticent treatment could possibly have done) ; 
 the bold opposing mass of trees in the centre; the 
 agreeable disposition of the figures in the foreground by 
 the deep and tranquil stream, combining and contrasting 
 harmoniously with the few valuable straight lines of the 
 fragments of architecture; the clearness of the blue sky 
 with the bright peaks high up cutting sharply against 
 it; the exact balance of form and colour, and light 
 and shade ; the qualities of painting, the certainty, rich- 
 ness and fullness of the brushwork — all these, I say, 
 combine to place it in my mind as one of the great 
 original pictures of the world. A certain blackness in 
 
 o
 
 i 9 4 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 the foreground alone is a remnant of his early man- 
 nerism, but this is a point which need not occupy us, 
 as I am not criticising, but only pointing out beauties. 
 Indeed to make a comparative criticism of Turner or any 
 other painter or their works is not my intention at present, 
 only to draw your attention to the capabilities of landscape 
 when used as a field on which to exercise the imagination ; 
 such work as this is truer to nature, more really and pro- 
 foundly true, than the most admirably-executed facsimiles 
 of localities. Such art as this is dead now; studies are 
 made from nature, not as a means for supplying the mind 
 with material, but as an end. And as I see that the best 
 landscape painters of to-day are to be found among the 
 figure painters, and as I know that the drawing of the 
 figure is the best preparation for all other drawing, for 
 these and for the other reasons I have given, I am con- 
 vinced that even a student who intends to devote himself to 
 landscape pure and simple, can best cultivate both technical 
 and imaginative faculties by the study of the figure. I need 
 hardly add, though for fear of being misunderstood it may 
 be better to do so, that I have no intention of excluding 
 from the range of the landscape painter's education the 
 necessary amount of careful and painstaking study of forms 
 and colour from nature itself; obviously it is essential. 
 I have not unfrequently been asked whether landscape 
 painting is taught in this school, and why it might not
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 195 
 
 be added as a separate course of instruction. My answer 
 is, that there is no such thing as teaching landscape 
 painting ; I cannot consent to consider it a separate art ; 
 teach a student to draw and paint, and he will paint land- 
 scape or figures according as his inclination to one or the 
 other dictates. My object in drawing your attention to 
 this subject is to point out that the attainment of those 
 qualities which I have described as being necessary 
 to a landscape painter, that power of subordination of 
 detail, that power of reticence arising from the know- 
 ledge of what is worthless and so to be rejected, of 
 what is important and so to be retained as valuable, 
 is the very foundation of all art, and is one of the 
 most important ends to which study is to be directed. 
 It is what gives value to such humble efforts as the study 
 of still-life subjects, and raises them — as in the works of 
 the French painters, Chardin especially, and of some 
 of the Dutch painters — above the level of mere mechanical 
 imitations, and transforms them into works capable of 
 giving us real pleasure. I dwell, and have dwelt, always 
 on these particular qualities, as the tendency at this time 
 and in this country is precisely in the opposite direction, 
 towards giving detail for the sake of detail ; towards a 
 delight in the trivialities of nature, which, charming in 
 themselves, are only charming in a picture when kept in 
 their proper place ; and I dwell on them because no other 
 
 o 2
 
 ig6 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 qualities will make up for the want of them, and no work of 
 any kind or style can be great without them ; but in con- 
 sidering the objects of study we have other matters hardly 
 less important to keep in mind. In placing the study of the 
 figure, as I do, as an essential preparation for the painter's 
 art of whatever style, I must not lose sight of the fact that 
 the painting of the figure, nude or draped, in all its infinite 
 varieties of expression, either in action or in repose, is 
 after all the highest form which that art can take. The 
 human face and form remain the most beautiful of created 
 things, and the most worthy of our study. What is it to us 
 that we are told that classical subjects and nude figures 
 have nothing to do with us at the present day? It is 
 not Greeks or Romans we wish specially to paint, it is 
 humanity in the form which gives us the best opportunity 
 of displaying its beauty. One would think, if we listened 
 to prevalent opinions on this subject, that we have no 
 bodies, more or less beautiful, under our clothes. I would 
 almost give as a reason for painting subjects that involve 
 the treatment of the nude figure, the one fact which is put 
 forward as an argument against them, that we never see 
 the nude figure now. Be this as it may, it is not that the 
 treatment of a modern subject is incapable of beauty or 
 interest; what we have to consider is that subjects called 
 classical are capable of a much higher beauty. That 
 indefinable essence which we call the artistic gift can
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 197 
 
 doubtless invest with beauty the humblest subject, and 
 where it exists, although we may find want of ambition, 
 we shall never find vulgarity; but when cultivated to 
 appreciate the higher forms of beauty, it will hardly con- 
 descend to return to treat of lower matters. The outcry 
 indeed for the modernising of art merely means that it 
 should be brought down to the level of ignorant people, 
 and there is no difficulty in finding a sufficient supply of 
 what is suited to their taste. To discuss this subject 
 would, however, be irrelevant at the present time, and 
 lead me from my argument. Although, then, I say that 
 the object of studying the figure is so to cultivate the 
 natural gifts of the painter as to fit him for his future career 
 whatever direction it may take; though I say that every 
 artist should so study as to enable him to treat the highest 
 class of subjects, so that when he has acquired this 
 power he may choose those themes for treatment to 
 which his natural tastes and instincts may guide him, I 
 say also that there is a higher object in view, which is 
 the cultivation of his taste for these higher forms of art. 
 It is the absence of knowledge, and therefore of the power 
 of choice, which limits the development of the artist's 
 talents and leads to so much that is vulgar and common- 
 place in our modern schools of painting. 
 
 Doubtless the first object to which the student has to 
 apply himself is to gain accuracy — accuracy of hand and
 
 193 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 eye. He must in fact have the power of drawing correctly 
 what he has before him. Superficially one would say 
 that that is all he has to learn, that if he can draw accu- 
 rately he may be said to draw well, and if we take accu- 
 racy in its most extended sense, that is not far from the 
 truth; but in its most extended sense one may say that 
 no one ever learns to draw accurately ; taken in the ordi- 
 nary sense, that the drawing shall be neat, and show no 
 faults, although an absolute necessity in drawing, it does 
 not go very far. A drawing though accurate enough may 
 show no feeling for the character of the figure — that is to 
 say, the accuracy may be merely mechanical. This kind 
 of correctness may be gained at the cost of a great and 
 unnecessary expenditure of time ; constant correction of an 
 inaccurate beginning may get a drawing right in the end, 
 and in order to train the eye to be accurate, these correc- 
 tions doubtless have to be made. It is far from sufficient, 
 however, that a student should be able to get his drawing 
 right in the end; unless he acquires the habit of getting 
 it right at once, his accuracy will be of little use to him ; 
 it is certainty and celerity that he has to aim at ; he can 
 never seize the character of his subject without this habit 
 of certainty, however long a time he may spend over his 
 work ; and unless he combines celerity with certainty, how 
 is he to catch the passing movement, or the passing effect ? 
 I have no intention now of going again into the question of
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 199 
 
 the customary art training of students in this country ; I 
 have given my opinion on this point frequently, both here 
 and elsewhere, and it is by this time a stale subject ; it will 
 be sufficient, if my view of the results of this training be ac- 
 curate, to show how deeply it affects the art of the country. 
 If, as I am sure is the case, the results are to make the 
 student content to attain no more than a tolerable amount 
 of accuracy in the long run, without his ever acquiring 
 the habit of drawing quickly, and with certainty, the tame- 
 ness of our art productions is easily accounted for. To 
 repeat again my reasons for allowing a limited time for 
 studies from the living model in these schools would be 
 wearisome. I may put them concisely by saying that it is 
 with a view to the students acquiring these two qualities 
 of swiftness and certainty. But for this purpose I must 
 have the co-operation of the students themselves. The 
 student who is not possessed with the necessary enthu- 
 siasm for his work will merely make the limit of time an 
 excuse for not finishing his study, or doing it carelessly. 
 A master I had in Paris never allowed his pupils to rub 
 out. I think it possible to carry this system too far ; it is 
 apt to discourage the student, and may possibly lead to 
 the dangerous habit of leaving beginnings unfinished, but 
 the principle is right. All work should be done with a 
 view to its being final; the touch or the line put on 
 should be intended to remain. This is why I view with
 
 200 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 disfavour the use of the ink-eraser in drawing ; the 
 knowledge that any mistake made can be corrected, 
 or any amount of careless work cleaned up has a great 
 tendency to produce not only a slovenly execution, but 
 the want of that directness which is the essential 
 element of a fine style in drawing. 1 Drawing, indeed, 
 requires the constant and unwearying exercise of the 
 mental faculties of comparison and memory. Without 
 this it becomes a mere mechanical proceeding, and useless 
 for any ulterior purpose. But we have another end to look 
 to in the study of the figure, not less important to the 
 ultimate results of a student's career, than those already 
 mentioned ; that is, the knowledge of the figure and the 
 habit of drawing it. A knowledge of the figure, I mean, 
 which is independent of the knowledge of the construc- 
 tion of the figure to be acquired through anatomical study ; 
 what we may rather call the habit of drawing the figure, 
 which is only acquired by constant practice in drawing it. 
 We wish the hand to fall to a certain extent mechanically, 
 and of its own will into the representation of the human 
 form. The importance of this habit, and the hold it acquires 
 
 1 The modern tendency towards loading water-colour drawings with 
 white in order to conceal or correct bad work has precisely the same 
 effect. Compare, for instance, the disagreeable quality in the un- 
 doubtedly clever work of the late Mr. Pinwell and his followers, with 
 the beautifully luminous and simple effect produced by the direct work 
 of our best early water-colour artists.
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 201 
 
 upon the hand and the mind is seen at once in the attempt 
 to draw a figure in an unaccustomed position or view ; it 
 requires a fresh mental effort, and my own experience shows 
 me that the first attempt is rarely successful. The consider- 
 ation of this point indeed supplies a fresh argument in 
 favour of constant study from the living model, as against 
 drawing too much from the antique. The ancient statues 
 that remain to us are so few that the student cannot acquire 
 through the study of them that familiarity with the various 
 positions of the figure which is essential to facility in 
 drawing it ; for we must remember that that is the object 
 to be kept in view — facility, through constant practice, in 
 drawing the figure in whatever position. I do not con- 
 sider that it is so much the difficulties inherent in fore- 
 shortening that make an unfamiliar position harder to 
 draw ; it is more the want of habit. One of the objects 
 of study in the Life-school is therefore to familiarise the 
 student with as many positions of the figure as can be 
 given under the circumstances. In a life-school, where 
 the model has to sit for a length of time in one position, 
 the varieties of pose are, however, necessarily limited ; but 
 within the range of what a model can keep there is variety 
 enough ; certain fore-shortenings therefore become familiar, 
 such as the fore-shortening of the thighs in a sitting posi- 
 tion, and of the upper and fore-arm in various actions, also 
 some fore-shortenings of the back and front of the torso,
 
 202 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 and the fact that a practised student generally renders these 
 as well as the ordinary full and profile views of the body or 
 limbs, makes me hold this opinion that it is not so much 
 the fore-shortening that is difficult as the drawing of the 
 body in an unaccustomed position. The habit, therefore, 
 of drawing the figure in a great number of positions as 
 varied as possible is one of the advantages to be gained 
 in a lengthened course of study from the life, though a 
 complete knowledge of the figure is only to be gained by 
 the study of a life time. 
 
 We have come then to this point, that the object of 
 studying the figure is to be able to draw it with facility 
 in whatever position we require for our purpose ; but 
 supposing our subject demands the figure in such a 
 position that no model can keep it for more than a few 
 minutes together, how can we possibly execute our inten- 
 tion unless we have acquired that habit of the figure 
 which comes from knowledge of its various aspects, 
 backed up by that certainty and swiftness in seizing 
 with accuracy on the characteristics of the movement 
 which I have put forward as the principal objects of the 
 technical part of a student's education? This being 
 established, it is not hard to understand the reason of the 
 tame and wearisome choice of subjects which inundate our 
 exhibition walls, or the monotonous repetition of the same 
 ideas. If an artist has not this command of his powers
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 203 
 
 in respect of drawing the figure — and I do not see how 
 with the limited education or ambition that most 
 students allow themselves they can be in possession of 
 it — it is obvious that his subject must be chosen with a 
 view to what the model or the lay-figure can give him 
 with the least effort on his own part to represent it. I 
 must not be understood to require that all subjects 
 should treat of violent scenes and actions, but I do 
 require that a figure should be made to live ; it is to 
 represent the life that is in us that should be the 
 highest aim of the painter. In the treatment of modern 
 or mediaeval or classic subjects this quality is alike 
 necessary; in the slightest movement of a figure a fold 
 of a dress changes its position; a movement through 
 the air giving grace and undulation to its folds, which 
 must be observed in passing, the momentary turn of a 
 head, which cannot be retained in its freshness by a 
 model, these are what give life to a figure, and must 
 be arrested or they will be lost, and the picture will 
 be dead. Look through the whole range of the works 
 of the great masters, you will find the representation of 
 life and movement as the one great characteristic which 
 runs through them all ; look round the walls of our ex- 
 hibitions, and how many pictures will you find in which 
 the action of the figures goes beyond that of the lay- 
 figure? A small percentage contributed by some half-
 
 2o 4 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 dozen artists whose soul is really in their art. If you 
 want to see this characteristic in its perfection, look at 
 this copy of Raphael's Incendio, 1 and see the movement 
 and the life and the nature that runs through it. I 
 care not for the mannerism that is complained of in the 
 somewhat cumbrous drawing of the limbs, which became 
 a characteristic of Raphael's later work. The grand 
 figure of the woman with the water-pot who is stalking 
 through the gate to assist in extinguishing the flames is 
 so alive you may almost hear her shout, and her drapery 
 seems absolutely moving ; the half-dressed woman drag- 
 ging her petticoats behind her, the children, the group 
 of frightened women in the centre, the man dropping 
 from the wall, the son carrying his father on his 
 back, all are instinct with life ; the intention of every 
 movement is unmistakable at the first glance. We have 
 no right with our puny efforts to criticise such a work ; 2 
 
 1 A full-sized copy of the Incendio del Borgo, which hangs in the 
 Life-School at University College. 
 
 - With regard to the front of the house being open, or rather re- 
 moved, as in a scene on the stage, which superficial observers always 
 seize hold of as a fault, it is obvious enough that Raphael might have 
 closed it if he pleased, and that he did not so treat it without consider- 
 ation. The wall over which the man is climbing must be considered as 
 the symbol of the wall of a house, a perfectly legitimate artifice in a work, 
 meant, as I have explained, to be typical and decorative. The inten- 
 tion, clearly, is to introduce an additional element of interest by showing 
 the interior of the house in flames, from which the man is escaping.
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 205 
 
 compared to our modem achievements it is the work of 
 a giant. Nor is there any reason to suppose that its 
 great author had more than a mortal allowance of genius ; 
 he leans on the support of a greater man than him- 
 self, and without inspiration from him he would in all 
 probability have never acquired his highest style. His 
 first works are comparatively feeble, far different from 
 those of Michelangelo, the Titan who, in Fuseli's words, 
 "as an artist had no infancy." This picture is therefore 
 an admirable instance of what may be acquired by a con- 
 tinuous and determined study of the figure : something 
 of what is here achieved is open to us all — something of 
 it, I say, guardedly — I mean that portion of it which 
 consists in the just representation of living action. The 
 grace and beauty of design, and that ineffable charm of 
 figure and face which characterise Raphael's works 
 above those of all men, these are inherent in the genius 
 of the artist, and unless we possess them, we may strive 
 for them in vain. We may imitate them, but we cannot 
 equal them ; but some of what he acquired by mere 
 force of study we also ought to be able to gain. A case 
 in point, or special instance of the necessity for that 
 directness of work on which I have laid the great stress 
 in this paper, is afforded by the group I have alluded 
 to of the son carrying away his father from the burning 
 house, a group beautifully suggested by Virgil's account
 
 2c6 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 of ^Eneas saving his father Anchises from the flames of 
 Troy. The study for this group remains to us, and I 
 have acquired the photograph of it, as well as of the 
 figure of the woman on the right, for our library. It is 
 not to be supposed that the models which sat for this 
 study could have held their position for long together; 
 it is no trifling matter for one man to hold another 
 full-grown one on his back and remain still, nor do 
 two models sitting together ever remain long in position, 
 or find it again when it is once lost; but you will see 
 that, in spite of these difficulties, the directness and 
 boldness of this drawing is only equalled by its finish 
 and accuracy. There is no hesitation about it ; no 
 jotting down of notes at the side of variation in the 
 position; the whole is complete — heads, hands, and feet 
 equally studied — and everywhere the important points 
 dwelt on. Winckehnan's remark that " Raphael's hand 
 was prompt to execute the conceptions of his imagina- 
 tion," pithily expresses this faculty; nay, more, it sug- 
 gests this further extension of the powers of drawing, 
 that the hand that has gained the power of expressing 
 swiftly and with certainty the object that is before the 
 eye, gains also the power of expressing what exists only 
 in the mind's eye — I mean the promptings of the inven- 
 tion and imagination. 
 
 I must, however, here, in as few words as possible,
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 207 
 
 guard a point which arises in the discussion of this 
 subject. There is a fear of my being misunderstood 
 to mean, that to be able to sketch well and rapidly is 
 the faculty whose value I wish to impress on you. 
 Facility of sketching, as it is generally understood, is 
 far from expressing the power of drawing I mean. Many 
 people have it by nature. What I wish to point out 
 in such drawings as the one I have referred you to is 
 the amazing accuracy and finish of the work ; they have 
 evidently been used as studies to paint from without 
 the necessity for any further studies of detail. I have 
 not had the opportunity of comparing the drawing 
 I have spoken of above with the group in the picture, 
 as I have only within the last few days seen it and 
 obtained it for the Library, but I have no doubt it will 
 be found to correspond closely to the picture, and 
 to have had no further alteration made in it than the 
 addition of a certain fulness and roundness in the 
 limbs ; that subordination of detail being also kept 
 in mind which I impressed on you as the characteristic 
 of all great works, and which is here necessary to elevate 
 the group from a study of individual peculiarities to its 
 place as a type required by the elevated nature of the 
 subject. For in criticising a work of this kind, or all 
 monumental work, it must be remembered that we are 
 looking not at a mere accidental representation of a
 
 2oS LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 fact, but at a typical representation. The figures and 
 incidents are each of a representative kind, and are as 
 far as possible selected so as to produce the utmost 
 amount of effect. The individual peculiarities of the model, 
 therefore, would be of no value, and would distract from 
 the attention to be devoted to the monumental nature 
 of the work. But the expression of the incident must 
 be caught from nature, and it is this that requires the 
 power of seizing the characteristic points. There is a 
 drawing, however, not of Raphael's, but of Michel- 
 angelo's, which I have been able to compare with the 
 original. I know nothing more remarkable than the 
 exactness with which the study for the drapery of the 
 Libyan Sibyl is reproduced in the fresco on the ceiling. 
 At first sight it may not appear remarkable that Michel- 
 angelo should have been able to copy exactly a study 
 of drapery of his own doing. But we must look at the 
 matter in another way. It is not the copying of the 
 study which is difficult, it is making the study for such 
 an action so perfectly and absolutely true and correct 
 that it requires no alteration. I have compared studies 
 of draperies by Raphael with the pictures, and have always 
 found that some alteration has been made, either towards 
 conventionalising the forms, or to make them suit more 
 accurately to the movement of the figure. The fact is, 
 that to make a study of drapery involves a double diffi-
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 209 
 
 culty ; it must be correct in itself, and the form beneath 
 must be expressed correcdy. When a figure is repre- 
 sented in an attitude of repose this is a comparatively 
 simple matter, but the moment that action is introduced 
 the difficulty becomes very great. The mere facility of 
 sketching which comes by nature will obviously be of no 
 use to the artist here. Nothing will help him but the 
 certainty of eye and knowledge of form, which comes 
 through practice. 
 
 If, then, I have explained myself clearly, my meaning 
 will by this time be understood when I say that the object 
 of the study of the figure is, by acquiring the habit of 
 drawing accurately, swiftly, and with certainty its various 
 aspects and characteristics, to give the widest possible 
 scope to the artist's powers; and that without this habit, 
 although a natural taste may enable him to give charm 
 and grace to his subjects, his efforts cannot but be limited 
 to a lower order of art, and a monotonous repetition of 
 ideas. These habits will give the wings to the artist's 
 imagination, without which there is no sustained flight. 
 Unless, however, the genius of the artist be such that he 
 can, like Michelangelo, dispense with the accessories to his 
 pictures, and make the interest depend on the figures alone, 
 there are other objects of study which have to be taken 
 into consideration. His pictures will be empty of interest, 
 not by choice, but from want of range in his ideas. The 
 
 p
 
 210 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 modern popular conception of an artist indeed, seems not 
 to require much more than that he should be able to ring 
 the changes on some one limited theme. Thus we have 
 some artists who devote their lives to birds' nests, others 
 take a fancy to rustic subjects, another is celebrated for 
 his moonlight scenes, others make a fortune out of sun- 
 sets, and so on ; and that, not because a special genius 
 impels them in those directions, but because they consent 
 to the opinion of the public, that it is sufficient to have 
 a trick of doing one thing passably well. It is worth 
 while to compare these aspirations with the idea of an 
 artist of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Italy, when 
 he was frequently not only painter, but sculptor and 
 architect, and not seldom more besides. We need not 
 do more than refer to the great names of Lionardo, 
 Raphael, and Michelangelo; with Lionardo, the most 
 universal genius the world ever saw, painting, which he 
 brought to an inconceivable perfection, was only one of 
 many pursuits ; indeed, he may be said to have been 
 rather an engineer who painted, than a painter by pro- 
 fession, to say nothing of the other arts he practised. 
 Raphael, who was a painter, was architect of St. Peter's 
 for many years after the death of Bramante, and to a 
 limited extent he practised sculpture ; Michelangelo is well 
 known in his fourfold character of painter, sculptor, archi- 
 tect, and poet. But we find also that Giotto, who revived
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 211 
 
 the art of painting, was equally great as an architect ; 
 the Campanile he built for the Cathedral of Florence 
 is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, 
 and Vasari tells us of other works executed by him. 
 Orgagna, whose frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa 
 and in other places place him on the highest level as a 
 painter, both as architect and sculptor has left two of 
 the most beautiful works in Florence, the Loggia de' 
 Lanzi, and the Tabernacle in the church of Orsam- 
 michele. Andrea Verocchio, the master of Lionardo da 
 Vinci, is announced by Vasari as goldsmith, master in 
 perspective, sculptor, carver in wood, painter, and musi- 
 cian ; he ceased, however, to paint on recognising the 
 extraordinary powers of his pupil, and though Vasari 
 says that he had a somewhat hard and crude manner 
 in sculpture, the famous statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni 
 at Venice, would seem to give the lie to this opinion, 
 for in life and energy, as well as in workmanship, it may 
 be said to be unsurpassed. 
 
 The list of those artists who combined two or three arts 
 might be greatly extended, but a brief notice of one of 
 the great men of that period, whose powers appear to me 
 particularly enviable, will give a better notion of the nature 
 of an Italian artist of the Renaissance than any list of 
 names. Baldassare Peruzzi, appears to have been excep- 
 tionally gifted among even the artists of those times; 
 
 p 2
 
 212 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 a contemporary of Raphael, born two years earlier, and 
 outliving him by sixteen years, he never rose to so high 
 a position ; it is his life even more than the greatness or 
 variety of his gifts which one is inclined to envy. Brought 
 up at his own wish as a painter at Siena, he soon gave 
 evidence of such talent that he was entrusted with important 
 commissions at Rome, making acquaintance by this means 
 with one of the great Roman patrons of art, Agostino 
 Chigi, the same for whom Raphael painted a chapel in 
 Santa Maria del Popolo. Baldassare found leisure to 
 devote himself to the study of architecture ; from this 
 time he seems to have had almost the happiest lot that 
 one can imagine falling to an artist, that of building palaces 
 and decorating them with his own hand. He began with 
 the celebrated Farnesina Palace for Agostino Chigi, one 
 of the most justly celebrated in Rome for its beauty. 
 Vasari says, " This should be rather described as a thing 
 bom, than as one merely built." This he decorated with 
 figure-pictures, the stories of Medusa, and covered with 
 decorations in imitation relief so admirably executed, that 
 the great Titian himself was deceived by them, and re- 
 mained in astonishment when he was persuaded that they 
 were not real. He then executed many more paintings 
 enumerated by Vasari, and some temporary decorations, 
 including scenes for a theatre, which seem to have been 
 quite wonderful as illusion and for fertility of invention.
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 213 
 
 He then executes the portico of a house, and does various 
 other paintings, decorative and pictorial. He next makes 
 the design for the organ in a church at Siena. Being 
 called to Bologna, he makes designs in two different styles, 
 Italian and Gothic, for the facade of San Petronio, builds 
 certain houses there, paints a great chiaroscuro picture of 
 the Adoration of the Magi, and designs the portal of San 
 Michele in Bosco, which may be seen there to the present 
 day; he also began another church, but was recalled to 
 Siena to design the fortifications of that city, which 
 having done, he returned once more to Rome, where he 
 builds various houses, and, on the death of Raphael, is 
 appointed architect to St. Peter's, his designs for which 
 were so much admired that succeeding architects availed 
 themselves of parts of them, including, I presume, as 
 it is Vasari who says this, the great Michelangelo 
 himself. 
 
 After executing in Rome numerous other works, including 
 another scene for a theatre which excited much admiration, 
 he is taken prisioner at the Sack of Rome by the Spaniards, 
 but escapes after having painted the portrait of Constable 
 de Bourbon after death. The last work, and not the 
 least beautiful or important, that he executed before 
 his death was the celebrated Palazzo Massimi, which, 
 like the Farnese, he entirely decorated with paintings. 
 This palace is justly considered one of the most
 
 214 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 beautiful and ingeniously constructed in Rome. 1 I put 
 the life of this artist briefly before you to show you the 
 enormous gap that exists between such a man and our 
 modern idea of an artist ; I do not refer to individuals, 
 for among the few men I have mentioned as being the 
 only glory of our English school, we may find one at least 
 who in the variety of his talents, and the perfection to 
 which he brings them, may be said to emulate the painters 
 of the great Italian period. 
 
 At the present day there is doubtless not so much 
 need for an artist being able to practise two or more 
 arts, the various professions being more separated ; many 
 painters in Italy moreover, probably the majority, did 
 nothing but paint. But you will not find any of what- 
 ever school that did not understand the artistic side of 
 architecture, even if they did not practise it as a 
 science. All their pictures give evidence of this fact, 
 from the time of Giotto to the decadence of the art ; look 
 through every school from the Florentine to the Vene- 
 tian, and you will not find one who cannot place his figures 
 in architectural surroundings, not only correctly drawn, 
 but entirely designed and invented by themselves with 
 all their beautiful and appropriate decorations, full some- 
 
 1 See Suys and Haudebourt's work on the Falazzo Massimi, published 
 in Paris, 1818. Lomazzo says that the sight of this palace gave him as 
 much pleasure as that of a picture by Raphael.
 
 OBJECTS OF STUDY. 215 
 
 times of the most ingenious inventions and original 
 imagination. From the elegant Gothic Baldacchinos 
 in which the early Florentines enshrined their Madonnas, 
 'o the gorgeous colonnades with which Paul Veronese 
 mriched not always appropriately his antique and 
 biblical subjects, all show evidence of a complete and 
 tlorough understanding of the art of architecture. And 
 wten we think of what infinite value architecture is 
 in the composition of figures, it seems a shame that 
 all painters should not possess a sufficient knowledge 
 of it to draw it at least correctly, even if they do 
 not aspire to designing it for themselves ; as it is, I 
 douit if there be half-a-dozen figure-painters in England 
 at tie present time who could introduce correctly a 
 background of Classic or Gothic architecture into 
 their pictures, much less design one. Therefore, I 
 intenl to make this an important object of study 
 in tli's school, and the subjects I give for composi- 
 tion vill be generally designed with a view to practice 
 in thi; art. I cannot indeed imagine a better preparation 
 for a student of painting than that he should have been in 
 an architect's office. Turner was apprenticed to an archi- 
 tect to begin with, and it is easy to see what the world would 
 have lost, had not his profound knowledge of architecture 
 helped him to build up those magnificent compositions which 
 he calls Carthage and Rome, which, whatever their faults in
 
 216 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 painting and colour, are unequalled for the effect they 
 have on the imagination. The lectures of the architectural 
 professor are available for all the students, and they cannot 
 do better than attend them. I myself shall also, as far as I 
 am able, give assistance to the students in the simpler am 
 more leading rules of classic architecture in my Friday 
 lectures. Akin to this study, and a necessary additicn 
 to it, is the study of Perspective. A course of le- 
 tures on this subject will therefore be open free to ill 
 students who attend the general course for the wh)le 
 session. It will proceed regularly from the elements of 
 geometrical drawing, that is, the proper use of the ule 
 and compass and square in drawing geometrical figires, 
 through the simpler to the higher forms of Perspective. 
 
 It is impossible that any course of instruction can 
 make artists of those who are deficient in talert or 
 industry, but my whole endeavour is devoted to miking 
 that course the best I am capable of devising, anc if I 
 afford the opportunities to even a few of my studeits to 
 make the best of their talents, or if in the course of 
 placing before them the objects of study to-day I have 
 stirred their ambition, I shall have done much towards 
 achieving my intentions in the conduct of this school, 
 and in writing this paper.
 
 LECTURE IX. 1 
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 
 
 The following lecture might perhaps never have been 
 written, but for a remark in a criticism on one of my own 
 pictures in Mr. Ruskin's Academy Notes for 1875. I am 
 not ashamed to confess this ; I am not over-sensitive, 
 and Mr. Ruskin is welcome to criticise my work as severely 
 as he pleases ; no one is more aware of its shortcomings 
 than I am myself, and compared to some of the exhibitors 
 of that year I am let off very easily ; for his remarks are 
 fair enough, with the exception alluded to above.; and 
 to fair criticism I have no objection, only the more flippant 
 sorts giving me even a passing feeling of annoyance ; 
 foolish perhaps, on my part, but unavoidable when the 
 serious work of months is contemptuously dismissed in 
 an epigrammatic paragraph by the ordinary newspaper 
 ignoramus. 2 
 
 1 Given at the opening of the fifth session of the Slade School, 
 October, 1875. 
 
 9 ,; Voila les gens qui nous jugent, qui nous insultent Sans 
 
 avoir rien appris, rien vu, irnpudents et ignorants" . . "nous qui
 
 2i3 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 But the passage in question introduces a name which, 
 as my readers must by this time have discovered, I (and 
 I am not singular in this) hold in more than ordinary 
 reverence; — for Mr. Ruskin to speak of Michelangelo's 
 object in his work being to show us the adaptability of 
 limbs to awkward positions 1 indicates a depth of ignorance 
 on his part, wilful or unconscious, that could not be 
 
 avons travaille trente ans, etudie, compare, qui arrivons devant le 
 public avec une ceuvre qui, si elle n'est pas parfaite, mon Dieu ! je le 
 sais bien, est au moins honnete, conscientieuse, faite avec le respect 
 qu'on doit avoir de 1'art." Thus Ingres on critics in general in his 
 righteous anger at some unconsidered criticisms on Raphael by no less a 
 person than M. Thiers, who set up as an art-critic. {V Atelier d' Ingres, 
 by Amaury Duval.) As a rule English art-critics start on their career 
 by criticising the Exhibitions, and trust to time and chance hints for 
 learning something about art. One of these gentlemen, who writes in a 
 leading paper, unfortunately tried his " prentice hand " on the Exhi- 
 bition of Old Master Drawings at the Grosvenor Gallery last winter 
 (1879) ; and in making his selection for special praise and (if I remem- 
 ber right) for only mention among the drawings of Michelangelo, chose 
 not only the two which were undoubtedly not genuine, but despising the 
 warning in the Catalogue that one of them was a copy, committed him- 
 self to saying that the owner was mistaken in not ascribing it to the 
 Master ; — the original being all the time in the Academy Exhibition, and 
 nothing less than the celebrated " Arcieri" or Archers, from Windsor, 
 perhaps the best known of Michelangelo's drawings. I may add that 
 to any but an ignoramus, there was no possible mistake as to the copy 
 being a copy, though a very good one. " Voila les gens," &c. 
 
 1 " Of course Mr. Poynter's object is to show us, like Michelangelo, 
 the adaptability of limbs to awkward positions." — Academy Notes for 
 1875, p. 16.
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 219 
 
 passed over ; and its immediate effect was to induce me 
 to read his lecture on Michelangelo and Tintoret, hitherto 
 avoided by me, as, from what I had been told of it, a 
 probable cause of vexation and annoyance. Truly it 
 made me burn with indignation, and, the fire kindling, 
 I felt impelled to point out the glaring perversions which 
 Mr. Ruskin's curious spite against this greatest of artists 
 allowed him to introduce into its pages ; and not only 
 this, but I felt it necessary to explain to my students, 
 likely to be misled by his special pleading, the general 
 blindness to the higher qualities of art, which is observable 
 not only in this pamphlet, but in all Mr. Ruskin's later 
 writings, and which is the necessary result of his want 
 of observation of the highest form of natural beauty, 
 and of his ignorance of the practical side of art. 
 
 In a previous lecture I have given Mr. Ruskin full 
 credit for the exalted and beautiful spirit which pervades 
 his writings on art, and although I fully suspected and 
 even hinted that the result of his teaching might easily 
 be to supplant, by a canting affection of nature-worship, 
 the direct and healthy study which the nobler forms of 
 art require from a young student, I contented myself 
 with showing 1 that the opinions which form the base of 
 
 1 See ante, pp. 78 et seq. : " I only say it is beside the question, and 
 may easily lead to false conclusions in art. It is not that I hold the
 
 220 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 his beautiful theories lie outside the dominion of art; 
 and in my respect for his exalted views, his unrivalled 
 power of poetic description, his equally unrivalled 
 erudition, and his knowledge and love of natural history, 
 forbore to press home the mischievous, I may almost 
 say the deadening effect, that such theories must have 
 on minds not masculine enough to be independent. I 
 could hardly, indeed, anticipate that Mr. Ruskin's theories 
 would lead him to such a display of acrimony against 
 the painters who have been generally accepted as holding 
 the highest place in the world of art ; but consideration 
 should have made me understand that this is the only 
 logical conclusion to be deduced from his writings ; for 
 Mr. Ruskin has so consistently elevated the moral and 
 sentimental side of art over the aesthetic, that we are 
 tempted to suspect him of never having had any per- 
 ception of beauty in art, as distinguished from beauty in 
 nature ; and we may search his later writings in vain for 
 any appreciation of beauty of form or colour. Beautiful 
 colour with him seems synonymous with bright colour, 
 or what he would call pure colour, as typical of purity ; 
 where he once thought he saw fine colour in Titian he 
 has since strenuously denied it ; and his keen admiration 
 
 error to lie," &c. And in the next paragraph, " I can indeed conceive 
 of no writing," &c.
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 221 
 
 of Turner's later work, which is full of crude contrasts 
 of coarse colour, shows that his appreciation of Bellini's 
 exquisite tones must be a mere accident. Of beauty of 
 form he seems to have no perception whatever; as for 
 the great artistic qualities, design and harmony, if he 
 has ever taken them into consideration, or has ever 
 seen them at all, he has long ago set them aside as 
 valueless. In his first splendid volume even he is appar- 
 ently blind to those higher beauties in nature which go 
 to the making of good landscape art. The deficiency of 
 Claude's imagination shown in the incongruous materials 
 of which many of his pictures are made up he is careful 
 to point out ; but this has made him pass over as of 
 secondary importance the far higher and more subtle 
 imaginative power which enabled Claude to see and to 
 render every phase of the limpid purity of the sky, and 
 the tenderest gradations of luminous atmospheric effect; 
 and you have only to ask yourself what Claude would 
 have been if he had been wanting in this faculty, to 
 understand that the utmost ingenuity in the arrangement 
 and invention of material, and the utmost attention to 
 "earnest work" in detail, would never have made him 
 the great master of landscape that he was. That he is 
 untrue to facts is obvious ; how true he is to nature 
 it requires taste and education to perceive. 
 
 These deficiencies of perception are the true cause of
 
 222 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 his want of appreciation of the distinguishing qualities . 
 which make Raphael and Michelangelo what they are; 
 and from this point it is only a step downwards to 
 ascribe to them the baseness of intention in their art 
 which is the running accompaniment to all the strictures 
 in his pamphlet. Perhaps I have above (inadvertently) 
 hit on the key-note of his exceptional invective in the 
 case of these two painters, in speaking of them as 
 "generally accepted" as holding the highest rank. I 
 spoke of Mr. Ruskin in my lecture i at the Royal 
 Institution 1 as the prophet of a new religion, and this 
 is true in a wider sense than I at the time intended ; 
 he is not only its prophet but its high-priest. He has 
 the genuine priestly intolerance of independent judgment : 
 partial admission of his doctrine he will not endure ; you 
 must accept it in its entirety, Or you are of the enemy; 
 he allows of no independence of opinion gained from 
 experience. That anything should be generally accepted 
 that he has not propounded or asserted to be true is in 
 his eyes the unpardonable sin. Hence the comparison 
 between Michelangelo and Tintoret; Mr. Ruskin invented 
 Tintoret in his Modern Painters?- whereas Michelangelo 
 and Raphael are accepted masters about whom others 
 
 1 See ante, p. 76. 
 
 2 In those enchanting chapters on the Imaginative Faculty at the end 
 of the second volume.
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 223 
 
 have ventured to write ; and one is irresistibly tempted 
 to believe that for this reason they are disparaged to 
 Tintoret's advantage. " Nearly every existing work by 
 Michelangelo," 1 for instance, " is an attempt to execute 
 something beyond his powers, coupled with a feverish 
 desire that his power may be acknowledged." Now 
 see on the next page the delicate distinction — Tin- 
 toret is "content to fall short of his ideal." 2 Michel- 
 angelo, that is to say, aimed higher than he could 
 achieve ; Tintoret fell short of achieving what he aimed 
 at. It is useless to waste words on such puerile dis- 
 tinctions. See again, in the same lecture, the amusing 
 paragraph on oil-painting. Mr. Ruskin is here not 
 content with boldly contradicting the well-known remark 
 of Michelangelo that oil-painting is "proper only for 
 women, or idle persons like Fra Sebastiano," by " making 
 the positive statement to you that oil-painting is the art 
 of arts " ; 3 but even adds in a note, in the authoritative 
 
 1 Michelangelo and Tintoret, p. 1 8. 
 
 2 Ibidem, p. 19, and again on the same page. "Both Raphael and 
 Michelangelo are always in dramatic attitudes, and always appealing to 
 the public for praise." 
 
 3 Michelangelo and Tintoret, p. 25. It is highly characteristic that 
 Mr. Ruskin should have omitted all but the first part of this well- 
 known and often-quoted apothegm ; and it may be as well to point out 
 that the remark was rather intended as a sarcasm on Sebastian del 
 Piombo's laziness than as the sweeping disparagement of oil-painting 
 which Mr. Ruskin pretends it to be ; the nature of oil-painting allowing
 
 224 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 tone in which he generally administers the mental pap, 
 of which (in unhappy contrast, alas ! to his former 
 splendid style) so much of his later writing consists, " I 
 beg that this statement may be observed with attention. 
 It is of great importance." There could hardly be a 
 more ludicrous instance of Mr. Ruskin's self-assertion 
 in the character of a high-priest whose ex cathedra utter- 
 ances are to be taken in faith ; for it is certain that, as 
 far as experience is a qualification, his opinion as to the 
 comparative merits of fresco and oil-painting is absolutely 
 valueless. That he has implicit faith in the docility of 
 his audience is clear ; he must be well assured that his 
 disciples will never venture on inquiry for themselves, 
 or he would hardly dare to make the childish assertion 
 that Michelangelo "bandaged the heads" of his figures, 
 as " a cheap means of getting over a difficulty too great for 
 his patience"; the difficulty being the rendering of the hair I 
 
 the work to be dropped and taken up again at will, and so making it 
 suitable for women (who may be supposed to be liable to interruption 
 from other occupations) and for idle persons ; fresco-painting on the 
 other hand requiring continuous and concentrated effort, on account of 
 the limited time during which the plaster remains in fit condition to be 
 worked on, after which it can never be touched again, — except by a 
 different process which takes from its special character. See 
 Duppa's Life of Michelangelo, p. 209. Mr. Ruskin proceeds to point out 
 that Michelangelo said this " because he had neither the skill to lay a 
 single touch of good oil- painting, nor the patience to overcome its 
 elementary difficulty."
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 225 
 
 Bat I have, perhaps, said enough by way of preface 
 to the following lecture ; it is questionable, indeed, whether 
 it was worth while to say so much, when those who care 
 to read Mr. Ruskin's pamphlet can judge for themselves 
 whether I exaggerate in pointing out the glaring per- 
 versions of reasoning which arise from the strange 
 animus pervading it, an animus which it will be charity 
 to put down to the " lunacies of his declining years." 2 
 
 In a lecture on the relation between Michelangelo and 
 Tintoret, delivered at Oxford in 1872, Mr. Ruskin put 
 forward views on the subject of the former artist, which were, 
 to say the least of it, in startling contrast to those which 
 he had previously expressed, especially in the second 
 volume of Modern Painters? In the remarks which follow, 
 I have no intention of offering a detailed criticism on what 
 Mr. Ruskin has said, but only of correcting, as far as in 
 me lies, certain of the more glaring errors into which his 
 present animosity against Michelangelo has led him. An 
 instance of what I mean occurs in the passage in which 
 he says that " you are accustomed to think the figures of 
 Michelangelo sublime, because they are dark, and colossal, 
 
 1 Academy No/a for 1875, P- IJ - 
 
 5 The reader will find Mr. Ruskin's original opinion regarding 
 Michelangelo given in full at the end of this lecture.
 
 226 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 and involved, and mysterious." 1 Now any one at all 
 acquainted with the original frescoes of Michelangelo 
 knows that the work is never dark, unless where it has 
 been blackened by the smoke of candles, but that on the 
 contrary the whole tone of colour in his paintings is re- 
 markably silvery and luminous. "Colossal" his figures 
 undoubtedly are, frequently in actual magnitude, and always 
 in style ; but this quality has not generally been considered 
 to interfere with sublimity. " Involved " appears to me 
 to have no special meaning as expressive of a figure, unless 
 it be applied to it as part of a group, when I should say 
 if this be a sin, it is one which cannot be avoided where a 
 multitude of figures are grouped together in action ; that 
 no one ever " involved " his figures with less sacrifice of 
 clearness than Michelangelo ; or if Mr. Ruskin is using 
 the word with a special meaning (and he does not gene- 
 rally use words without one), and wishes to imply by it 
 that the figures are involved or entangled about them- 
 selves and so unintelligible, I would answer that such 
 positions are rare, the action of Michelangelo's figures 
 being as a rule conspicuously direct and obvious ; and 
 that when they occur, they occur for a reason, as for 
 instance when he wishes to convey the impression of 
 struggling and confusion, as in the groups of lost spirits 
 fighting against the angels, who are beating them down 
 
 1 Sec Mr. Ruskin's lecture on Michelangelo and Tintoret, p. 37.
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 227 
 
 to hell, in the right hand lower portion of the Last 
 Judgment. " Mysterious" again means nothing in this con- 
 nection. The word might be appropriate to Rembrandt, 
 but never to Michelangelo, who was as precise in his 
 representations of form and expression as Bellini. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's curious animosity against Michelangelo 
 is worth illustrating by two other of his assertions ; first, 
 that that artist " understood fresco imperfectly ; " and 
 second, that " his fresco is gone in every part of it." l 
 The latter of these two remarks we all, and he as well 
 as any of us, know to be untrue ; though perhaps by 
 never allowing either himself or his own students to look 
 at Michelangelo's works to judge for themselves, he may- 
 persuade himself and them to believe it. The first 
 assertion, that Michelangelo understood fresco imperfectly, 
 (which, as a matter of fact, is only true " in the most 
 limited sense, and with reference to his first attempt in 
 fresco,) would have been endorsed to a certain extent 
 by Michelangelo himself. On what ground did Bramante 
 persuade Pope Julius to employ Michelangelo on the 
 vault of the Sistine, but that he hoped to bring him to 
 shame through his inexperience in fresco, and so exalt his 
 kinsman Raphael over his head? 2 and on what but the 
 
 1 Michelangelo and Tintoret, p. 26. See also p. 16. All that he 
 did " on a large scale in colour is in the best qualities of it perished." 
 - Condivi, Vita di M. Buonarotti, par. xxxiii., also Vasari's Life 
 
 Q 2
 
 £2 S LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 same ground did Michelangelo first refuse the work, 1 
 and then give it up after he had completed about a third of 
 the painting ? 2 But Mr. Ruskin also accuses him of being a 
 bad workman in fresco : as to how far this is true there 
 may be differences of opinion. Small portions of the 
 painting on the ceiling have faded, but how much of 
 this has occurred through imperfect knowledge of the 
 material, and how much from the penetration of damp 
 through the roof and walls, I am not aware ; he would 
 not in any case be much to blame if some of his work 
 had faded through his imperfect acquaintance with a 
 material, in which he was forced to experiment against 
 his will. 
 
 Large portions of the ceiling are doubtless much covered 
 with small cracks ; chiefly in the neighbourhood of the 
 Temptation of Adam and Eve and of the Deluge, the finst 
 part of the work he attacked. This is due to some fault 
 in the plaster, difficult for an inexperienced hand to foresee ; 
 we find the second half of the fresco, however, very free 
 from these cracks ; the larger ones throughout are formed 
 by the slight settlement of the building, or perhaps by 
 the expansion and contraction of the roof under the heat 
 of the sun ; and some again may have been made by 
 the explosion in the Castle of Saint Angelo, which by 
 
 ] Condivi, " Scusandosi che non era sua arte, eche non riuscirebbe." 
 - See Vasari's Life of Michelangelo.
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 229 
 
 shaking out a large mass of plaster destroyed one of the 
 figures above the Delphic Sibyl. In other respects the 
 ceiling of the Sistine is remarkable for the perfection of 
 its preservation. Most of it looks as if it were only just 
 finished, and of this I can speak from knowledge, having 
 drawn from it. Not so however with the painting of the 
 Last Judgment, which is much obscured and difficult to 
 see in places, but not through any failure in the painting. 
 One or two small portions may show traces of fading or 
 scaling off; for example, some of the figures in the left 
 hand upper corner appear to be imperfect from this cause ; 
 but for this, without examination of the picture itself, it 
 is difficult to judge how far the painter is to blame. On 
 the other hand, this painting is almost entirely free from 
 cracks ; while for the damage it has suffered from the 
 smoke of candles, from ill-treatment in the middle part 
 where the Pope's canopy is placed against it, or from re- 
 painting, even Mr. Ruskin would hardly impute blame to 
 Michelangelo. In any case to admit, or even to insist 
 on, these rare and trifling defects in preservation (even 
 supposing the fault to be Michelangelo's own), is a very 
 different thing to asserting that his fresco is defaced in 
 every part of it. 
 
 But the first on the list of Michelangelo's faults is 
 that he is a bad workman ; that is, I suppose, he tried to 
 do what he could not do, or could not do what he tried
 
 cjo LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 to do. 1 If on this point Mr. Rusk in is right, we must 
 differ entirely on the meaning of good work. If a com- 
 bination of the most exquisite finish in drawing and 
 modelling, which allows the work to bear the closest 
 inspection in its details, with the utmost simplicity, breadth, 
 and clearness of effect in a distant view, constitute, as I 
 believe they do, the elements of perfect work, I must assert 
 positively that Michelangelo is the most perfect of workmen. 
 Examine the Last Judgment ; through all its multitude 
 of figures, from the highest to the lowest point, and 
 into its extremest corners ; and you will hardly find a 
 face, a hand, a foot, a limb, or the smallest portion of a 
 figure, no matter how difficult to execute, or how unim- 
 portant in its place in the composition, which is not carried 
 to the highest point of modelling. The expression ol 
 every face, the movement of every finger, the subtle turns 
 of torso and limb, are as exact, as individual, and as 
 perfect in beauty of form, in the thronging figures which 
 make up the crowd that stands beyond the principal 
 circle, as in the central forms of the saints and martyrs 
 crying out for salvation in the very face of Christ Himself; 
 or as in those of the dead rising from the graves, which, 
 being the nearest to the eye, are necessarily carried as 
 far in finish as possible. On these points the photographs 
 from the Sistine frescoes, which are now well known to 
 1 Michelangelo and Tintoret, p. iS.
 
 TROFESSOR RUSKIN OX MICHELANGELO. 231 
 
 all lovers of art, furnish a complete refutation of all that 
 Mr. Ruskin has written about them. If I pursue the 
 examination of his remarks any further, it is not so much 
 to point out the evasions, or rather perversions, of the 
 real facts of the matter, into which he has been led by 
 his desire to depreciate Michelangelo, as to bring out 
 as prominently as I can what I consider the truth upon 
 the subject, in order that some may in this way be led 
 to the study of the works themselves. 
 
 A detailed defence of the scheme of the Last Judgment 
 would be superfluous ; ignorant people who attempt to 
 criticise such a work have what they might perhaps con- 
 sider an opinion about it; but Mr. Ruskin is not ignorant ; 
 he has chosen, nevertheless, to put forward an opinion, 
 which, though arrived at by much apparent consideration, 
 is not far removed from the most ill-considered judg- 
 ments that have been passed upon it. Or rather he has 
 had two opinions ; his first opinion having been given in 
 language which would lead one to infer that it is, if not 
 the mightiest, at any rate one of the mightiest, creations 
 of human intellect. But "we have changed all that." The 
 truth of the matter is, that to the art of the work Mr. 
 Ruskin' s eyes were never opened; what he once admired 
 was the idea, and the impressive effect produced on the 
 mind by the imaginative power of the artist ; and this 
 led him to assign to its creator the great qualities which
 
 =32 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 he now denies him. He now does not admire the idea, 
 and he thinks the impression produced is a false and 
 dangerous one, and therefore not only assigns to him 
 every artistic crime, but even infers personal poverty of 
 character. 1 
 
 Having been ever blind to the art, he does not see 
 that this remains the same in spite of his own change of 
 views. He goes further; he not only denies that the art 
 is good, because he cannot see and never has seen it; 
 but he virtually and in principle denounces all art as it 
 has been hitherto understood from the beginning of the 
 world until now. He does not say : I mean one thing 
 by art and you another ; he says : I will have no art ; work- 
 manship I allow and require, but not art of a higher kind. 
 Of the higher art, in fact, which studies nature, not for 
 
 1 For instance, " He has a feverish desire that his power may be 
 acknowledged." "He is always in dramatic attitudes, and always 
 appealing to the public for praise." Michelangelo and Tintoret, p. 19. 
 It is worth while to compare with this a note to a passage in vol. ii. 
 of the Modern Painters, wherein Mr. Ruskin sums up the imaginative 
 faculty. The passage runs thus : — " Sympathy it desires — but can do 
 without; of opinions it is regardless, not in pride, but because it is 
 conscious of a rule of action and object of aim in which it cannot be 
 mistaken ; partly also in pure energy of desire, and longing to do and 
 to invent more and more, which suffer it not to suck the sweetness of 
 praise — unless a little with the end of the rod in its hand, and without 
 pausing in its march." And now the note : — " That which we know of 
 the lives of Michelangelo and Tintoret is eminently illustrative of this 
 temper."
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 233 
 
 the mere object of studying, but in order to know nature 
 for the sake of selecting what is good and rejecting what 
 is bad, Mr. Ruskin knows nothing, or at all events 
 allows nothing. Such art, we are to believe, the great 
 painter is distinctly not to practise. Correggio is not to 
 see nature deliriously ; Raphael is not to see it grace- 
 fully ; Michelangelo is not to see it sublimely. 1 This 
 assertion that the artist is to have no independence of 
 idea is continued throughout the lecture on Michelangelo 
 and Tintoret, and in the pamphlet on the Academy, 
 published in 1S75. 
 
 In the former we find it dogmatically asserted that 
 the representation of inaction or continuous action, and 
 not of momentary action, is the attribute of good art ; 2 
 from which it follows that " the introduction of strong 
 or violently emotional incident is at once a confession 
 of inferiority." Therefore, Mr. Ruskin would continue, 
 although it must be allowed that it is not possible always 
 literally to observe these conditions, if an artist ventures 
 
 1 " Holman Hunt was the first assertor in painting, as I believe I 
 myself was in art-literature," .... "that things should be painted 
 as they probably did look and happen, and not as by the rules of art 
 developed under Raphael, Correggio, and Michelangelo, they might be 
 supposed gracefully, deliriously, or sublimely to have happened." 
 — Academy Notes for 1875. 
 
 8 "A continuous, not momentary action, — or entire inaction. Y< u 
 are to be interested in the living creations ; not in what is happening to 
 them." — Michelavgdo and Tintoret, p. 15. Why not in both?
 
 234 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 to represent the murderer of a saint performing his deed 
 in any but an impassive manner, in any way in fact but 
 as Bellini has painted the murder of Peter Martyr, in 
 the least successful part of one of the loveliest pictures 
 in the world, 1 he has at once confessed his inferiority. 
 The necessary conclusion from this would be that 
 Michelangelo is an inferior artist, not because he con- 
 ceives his subjects in a way that is false to general nature 
 (the true definition, by the way, of a bad artist), but be- 
 cause he does not take the view of the treatment which 
 Mr. Ruskin affirms to be the only view admissible. 
 
 If Mr. Ruskin could speak his real mind about the 
 Last Judgment it would probably be something to 
 this effect : " I deny the right of Michelangelo not 
 only to treat the subject of the Last Judgment in a 
 way in which it does not appeal to me, but I deny his 
 right to treat the nude figure at all ; I have never cared 
 to study the nude figure, and have no perception or 
 appreciation of its beauty ; when I speak of the glory 
 of nature and of God's works, I exclude the human 
 figure both male and female, and refer you to 
 mossy rocks and birds'-nests, sunset skies, red herrings 
 
 1 "Bellini's treatment of violence you may see exemplified in a 
 notable way in St. Peter. Martyr ; the soldier is indeed striking his 
 i word down into his breast, but in the face of the saint is only resigna- 
 tion, and faintness c f death, not pain ; — that of the executioner is 
 impassive." — Ibid. p. 16.
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 235 
 
 by Hunt, robin redbreasts, anything you like, in fact, 
 but the figure for its beauty. If, therefore, an artist 
 paints the nude figure, it must be because 'he delights 
 in the body for its own sake ' (a terrible crime, truly), 
 ' to exhibit the action of its skeleton and the contours 
 of its flesh ; ' " and as he affirms in the Academy Notes 
 (when he has had more time to consider the degraded 
 motives of the unhappy Michelangelo), " to show the 
 adaptability of limbs to awkward positions." 
 
 Now there is not the slightest objection to the 
 admission that Michelangelo " delighted in the body 
 for its own sake ; " whether such an admission be made 
 on his behalf, or on that of Phidir.s and the whole 
 Greek school, the merit of whose works we must 
 remember Mr. Ruskin considers to be independent of 
 their beauty. 1 In Mr. Ruskin's opinion, however, the 
 introduction of the human figure is only to be permitted 
 "in its subordination," which, as he explains it, means 
 the place it occupies among ascetic painters, and such 
 as knew not how to give it its proper, much less its 
 most beautiful, form and action. 
 
 1 "lie (the Greek) rules over the arts to this day, and will for ever, 
 because he -oughtnot first for beauty, not fir.-t for passion, or for inven- 
 ti in, but for Rightnes-." — Aratra Penteliri, par. 200, p. 19S, and 
 passim. All good art has sought for what Mr. Ruskin calls "Right- 
 ness" ; the Creek of course excels by the completeness of his sense ot 
 beauty of f jrm, and the un urpassable perfection of execution.
 
 236 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 The matter resolves itself then into the question, Is 
 it or is it not an artistic error or crime to give (in Mr. 
 Ruskin's words) action to a figure " to show its beauty " ? 
 I would just remark here in a parenthesis, that there 
 is a vast difference between this idea and that of giving 
 action "to show the adaptability of limbs to awkward 
 positions," the last accusation brought against Michel- 
 angelo; — and in the same breath against myself, who 
 only humbly try to place my figures in the most likely 
 positions they would take under given conditions. But 
 is it wrong to give action to a figure to show its beauty ? 
 If the action is untrue to the idea which the artist wishes 
 to express by it, it is undoubtedly wrong. No amount 
 of admirable execution or perception of the beauty of 
 the figure, can possibly excuse disobedience to the 
 higher truths of expression. This is the first rule : the 
 action of a figure must be true to itself. The neglect of 
 this rule, wilful or unconsidered, has been the cause of 
 all the odious mannerisms of the later Italian and French 
 schools ; the endeavour, generally very unsuccessful, to 
 give beauty and grace independently of nature, was the 
 cause of the decadence of high art in those schools from 
 the death of Raphael (it began long before the death 
 of Michelangelo) through more than two centuries, till 
 it reached its lowest depth in the affected inanities of 
 Boucher and other painters of the time of Louis XV.
 
 PROFESSOR RUSK1N ON MICHELANGELO. 237 
 
 Again, the action must be true to the idea to be expressed 
 in the general composition or conception of the subject. 
 This rule I place second ; partly because many positions 
 may be equally expressive, so that no one can be said 
 to be truer than another ; partly because in some forms 
 of composition intended to be decorative, a certain 
 licence may be allowed \ not indeed a licence of choosing 
 a position which is untrue, but of admitting one which 
 may not be the most probable under the circumstances. 1 
 This freedom must however be used with caution, and 
 as a rule the most probable action is the one to be adopted. 
 These two points then being well considered, the third 
 condition, that which distinguishes the true artist from 
 the mere painter possessed of poetic conceptions, is that 
 the action of the figure shall be expressed in the most 
 beautiful manner, and shall be studied so as to give the 
 artist an opportunity for the display of the highest beauty 
 of the form, whether it be nude or draped. 
 
 Now all these conditions Michelangelo fulfilled in a 
 higher degree than any artist that has lived since the 
 best Greek period. It is quite certain however that the 
 observance of these rules and conditions is not sufficient 
 to account for the individuality and superiority of his 
 genius. They are the conditions under which all great 
 
 1 As when the artist has to fill a decorative panel of unsuitable form, 
 which occasionally may happen.
 
 233 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 painters work. No one can be called an artist of the 
 higher kind who does not clothe his ideas in a beautiful 
 form. The beauty of the idea is the common property 
 of the poet and the artist; the difference lies in the 
 method of treatment, and it is quite possible for a painter 
 to have a mo^t imaginative and poetical mind, without 
 possessing the power of giving beauty to his work. 
 
 For inexhaustible invention in the treatment of subjects, 
 combined with the most intense dramatic power of forcing 
 the reality of scenes upon the spectator, no one ever 
 surpassed Albert Diirer. He had the faculty, perhaps in 
 a higher degree than any other artist, of bringing home 
 to his own mind the very essence of the drama he is 
 representing. If he had actually seen the tragedies of the 
 Passion, and noted them on the spot, they could not have 
 been made more real to us than as he has presented 
 them in the splendid series of drawings in the Albertina 
 Museum at Vienna ; ! although he uses none of the con- 
 ventional means of making us feel the situation, either in 
 its terror, as in the Crucifixion, or in its pathos as in the 
 Entombment, or its ignominy as in the Ecce Homo. He 
 rises very nearly even to the higher qualities of design 
 in the Deposition, and quite in the Flagellation ; while 
 as a workman in the lower but very necessary sphere 
 of complete and delicate execution, few have rivalled 
 1 Photographed and published by the Autotype Company.
 
 TROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 23; 
 
 him. As a rule, however, his absolute want of perception 
 of beauty makes us feel that in the sense in which we 
 admire a third-rate Italian artist of the fifteenth century, we 
 have to reject Albert Diirer altogether. This is the mean- 
 ing of Michelangelo's words with regard to him and to 
 German art in general. In a conversation with Vittoria 
 Colonna and others, he says, " You will find that he who 
 was only a pupil in Italy has produced more with regard to 
 genuine art than the master who is not from Italy. So 
 true is this that Albert Diirer, even when wishing to deceive 
 us, could paint nothing in which I could not observe at 
 once that it neither came from Italy nor from an Italian 
 artist .... we feel at once the difference." 
 
 This difference that we feel at once is the want of 
 the sense of beauty. It has nothing to do with the want 
 of power to draw correctly, for Mantegna was scarcely 
 more able to put his figures in right proportion 
 than Albert Diirer. This artist in wealth of imagina- 
 tion, in dramatic power and ingenuity of invention, 
 corresponds very closely with Albert Diirer. He also had 
 a kindred love of dwelling on minute detail, and that 
 searching desire to develop and bring into evidence the 
 most unimportant accidents, which gives to his and to 
 Albert Durer's draperies the same angular and broken 
 character. Yet in Mantegna's work we feel the sense of 
 beauty pervading it to the smallest detail. In this very
 
 24 o LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 matter of draperies there is a light fluttering beauty in 
 Mantegna which is in the happiest contrast to the 
 ponderous clumsiness of Albert Diirer. In Mantegna 
 the draperies express, as if by instinct, the limbs and 
 movements. In Albert Diirer they weigh down the figures 
 with their cumbrous folds, and seem wherever possible 
 to contradict with an awkward contrariety their expression 
 and action. For beauty of action, too, Mantegna is unsur- 
 passed, even among Italian painters (witness the nymphs 
 dancing in the beautiful picture of Apollo and the 
 Muses in the Louvre), while Albert Diirer, vigorous as 
 the action of his figures is, never in his life put the 
 beauty of animation into his heavily moving persons. 
 This is the difference, and it is a most important one to 
 remember, between the complete artist and the man of 
 ideas who paints. Ideas we must have, and the power 
 of expressing them we must have, in all work that is not 
 merely imitative ; but the art consists in clothing these 
 ideas in a beautiful form. When we add to these con- 
 ditions a profound and thorough knowledge of nature, 
 so as to add the power of expressing in perfection the 
 promptings of a lofty imagination and instincts of beauty, 
 we have the highest of which art is capable. Ideas 
 and instincts of beauty we find in all the best Italian art, 
 but a complete knowledge of nature only in one man. 
 This it is really which raises Michelangelo above all the
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 241 
 
 other Italian artists; and the reason why Michelangelo 
 learned the body " essentially from the corpse," and 
 studied its mechanism in death, was that he might have 
 the power to express it living ; l not, as Mr. Ruskin 
 insists, for the mere sake of display. 
 
 The genius of Michelangelo consisted, first, in the gift 
 of concentrating his powers on the single important point 
 of expression, so that he had no need of accessories to help 
 him out with his story; and next in something which i; 
 higher than that, something which defies analysis, which 
 has been expressed as "Titanic" and "colossal," and 
 which Mr. Ruskin in his previous writings has described as 
 an " inexplicable power proceeding from an imaginative 
 perception almost superhuman which goes whither we 
 cannot follow." All this undoubtedly places him on the 
 solitary mountain height, where he reigns apart from and 
 above other mortals, but all this, be it remembered, must 
 have remained unexpressed but for the knowledge which 
 alone enabled him to express it. And more than this, too, 
 without something of that same knowledge in the student, 
 the highest qualities of Michelangelo's works must ever 
 remain, a sealed book to him. Without being acquainted 
 
 1 "Mid 1 and Raphael drew the body from vanity and from 
 
 knowledge of it dead." — Michelangelo and Tmtoret, p. 30. " 1 a] hai I 
 and Michelangelo learned it essentially frf m the corpse, and had no 
 delight in it whatever, hut great pride in showing that they knew all its 
 mechanism." — Ibidem, p. 31.
 
 242 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 by study with the capabilities for beauty, force, and activity 
 in the human figure, we can never know how absolutely 
 founded on nature, how true to nature in respects incon- 
 ceivable to the mind untrained in this direction, is every 
 figure that Michelangelo ever produced. For this reason 
 the imagination displayed by Michelangelo in the art of 
 his work, quite a distinct matter from that displayed in the 
 treatment of the subject, is beyond the apprehension of 
 those who have not made the human figure a subject of 
 practical study. 
 
 As far however as Michelangelo's genius is capable of 
 analysis, it is possible to point out wherein lies his marvel- 
 lous power of impressing us ; the innate genius escapes us, 
 the calculated effects we may discover. First among these 
 calculated effects comes the point to which all his study 
 and all his powers were directed, after considering the best 
 method of carrying out his conception of the subject ; 
 this was the endeavour (which Mr. Ruskin condemns) to 
 give the best action to his figures which should show their 
 beauty ; or, in simpler words, he desired, as other painters 
 desire, to express his idea by the most beautiful treatment. 
 As however he considered figures the highest means of 
 telling a story, and never condescended to help himself 
 out by other means, he treated all his subjects with figures 
 only, and his attention was concentrated on the most 
 beautiful form, action, and expression which he could give
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 243 
 
 to them. But on one point he never fails • the thought 
 is never lost sight of, the idea is always paramount ; the 
 figure is never, as Mr. Ruskin pretends to think, posed 
 only for its beauty ; some natural and appropriate intention 
 is the basis of every figure he ever painted. In the series 
 of nude figures in the vault of the Sistine, which are purely 
 decorative as regards their introduction and position, 
 answering, as they do, to the figures of genii and angels 
 so common on Classic and Italian architectural friezes, 
 there is always, beyond the mere intention of beautiful 
 arrangement, some leading idea to be expressed. If the 
 figure is to express repose, it expresses it absolutely ; the 
 repose is deep and contemplative. In activity the figure is 
 full of life and youth and spirits ; in wearisome labour, it is 
 colossal in build, and struggles under the burden, thus 
 expressing the idea in the most forcible way. If fatigue 
 and pain are to be expressed, the head and body are those 
 of a beautiful youth, so that the feeling of pity is doubly 
 awakened. And here I would draw attention to the way 
 in which the face is always with Michelangelo the first idea. 
 So far from neglecting the face for the body, as Mr. Ruskin 
 asserts, no one ever made the body answer so completely 
 to the expression of the face ; without the face the move- 
 ments of the body I allow may be made unintelligible, 
 as in the preposterous engravings after Michelangelo 
 which, before the Sistine Chapel was photographed, were all 
 
 x 2
 
 244 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 the untravelled artist had to guide his appreciation ; but 
 the expression of the face explains everything. The 
 beauty of his faces may however be a matter of opinion ; 
 Mr. Ruskin says he never could help making them satyr- 
 like ; and as an illustration curiously adduces the Oxford 
 drawing, No. 9 in Mr. Robinson's Catalogue, a head 
 strongly expressive of pride and malevolence, 1 the precise 
 contrary to everything we imagine as satyric ; Satanic is 
 perhaps the word he meant to use. 
 
 Upon this point of expression we observe a most 
 interesting change which took place during the progress of 
 the ceiling. At first the treatment of the figures is more 
 purely decorative, their expression and sentiment being how- 
 ever always appropriate to the occasion, and the feeling 
 of real humanity, of thoughtfulness, combined with gentle 
 melancholy, taking the place of the merely abstract expres- 
 sionless form which had hitherto been considered sufficient 
 for such a purely decorative treatment. But this, although 
 it is the essence of the beauty with which the figures 
 impress us, is secondary to the idea of design and arrange- 
 ment ; while as we advance the importance of the idea 
 increases, so that although they still are placed in pairs 
 and balance each other completely in line and mass, as 
 decorative figures should, the idea of representing some 
 mood or passion gains ground and becomes the paramount 
 
 1 Michelangelo and Tintoret, p. 33.
 
 TROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 245 
 
 idea, the purely decorative intention taking in its turn a 
 subordinate place. This is the aim of Michelangelo in 
 these groups, and not, if I may be allowed to refer again 
 to Mr. Ruskin, the desire to show adaptability of limbs to 
 awkward positions ; no, not in these nor in any group or 
 figure he painted in the whole of his life. 
 
 Again, as regards his intention, his calculated effect in 
 the treatment of figures, observe the figure of the Messiah in 
 the Last Judgment. He feels that here in this multitude 
 of figures, the head and the central position alone are 
 insufficient to express the might and power of Christ, so 
 that the whole of his energies are directed to making a 
 body of colossal and simple grandeur exceeding in majesty 
 of form all around Him. The head does not represent 
 the Christ that we know by tradition ; it has been likened 
 to that of a Jupiter or an Apollo. We, according to our 
 various conceptions of the relations of God to man, may 
 have our own views as to whether this is an adequate 
 representation of the Christ that Christians adore, and to 
 many the simple gentleness of early treatment may be 
 more appropriate. Michelangelo had to consider what he 
 could best express in that tremendous scene, and what he 
 has chosen to represent is the power to command the dead 
 to rise, to condemn the sinful, and to raise the righteous ; 
 and it is that power that we feel in the magnificent figure 
 of the Christ. It is to me the culmination of this
 
 2 4 5 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 gigantic work, and it seems but feeble and foolish to stand 
 before it, and speak of the " confession of inferiority " in 
 the introduction of strong and emotional incident. 
 
 I must explain before I conclude, that I do not mis- 
 understand what Mr. Ruskin means, when he speaks of 
 this " confession of inferiority " in comparison with the 
 serenity of Bellini, which he considers a higher attribute 
 than the tumult of Michelangelo's art. He has, as is often 
 the case, confused two ideas. The idea of Bellini living 
 his ninety years, painting his lovely and peaceful pictures 
 (for no pictures are so lovely, and to see Bellini's work at 
 Venice for the first time is a revelation of beauty), his 
 tender Madonnas and angels who " sing as calmly as 
 the Fates weave," in scenes where everything goes on 
 without gesture or effort, is so attractive to him, that he 
 does not perceive, that though all this makes Bellini more 
 exclusively an artist than painters who are more disturbed 
 by the world, it does not necessarily make him a greater 
 artist. It is with this misunderstanding that he places this 
 gentle nature higher than the passionate mind, whose 
 stormy energy is reflected from all his works. After all, is 
 Michelangelo less of an artist because he had not that 
 tranquil power of abstraction, and because the sadness of 
 his mind shows itself as a pervading characteristic of his 
 faces ? Is he the worse artist because at a distracting time 
 he devoted his best energies with passionate love to the
 
 I'ROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHiELANGELO. 247 
 
 defence of his beloved native city, and only stole away in 
 secret and at night to work on the statues for the family to 
 which politically he was opposed, but which he cherished 
 in his memory as that of his benefactors ? I confess I 
 think not. Surely that the sorrow and conflicting emotions 
 of those moments should burn in the cold marble of those 
 solemn figures in the Mausoleum of the Medici, will never 
 again be considered an expression of inferiority. Surely 
 the " shadowed face " of Duke Lorenzo x never has till now, 
 and never will again, be made by any one the subject of 
 a sneer. 
 
 In happiest contrast to Mr. Ruskin's rancorous criticism 
 
 is the sympathetic essay on Michelange o by M. Charles 
 
 Clement, first written for the Revue des Deux Monde s, 
 
 and published in a small volume together with similar 
 
 short notices of Lionardo da Vinci and Raphael. These 
 
 three notices are remarkable, not only for the beautiful 
 
 spirit in which they are written, but for the justice with 
 
 which the three characters are compared and analysed. 
 
 The passage on the Medici monuments is worth quoting 
 
 1 This "shadowed face" is cited by Mr. Ruskin to illustrate the 
 third of Michelangelo's crimes, as expressing " physical instead of 
 mental interest " ; and he goes on to sneer at the unfinished head of the 
 Twilight. Students of Michelangelo's life will remember the condi- 
 ti .11 :, referred to in the text, under which these monuments were 
 executed.
 
 24S LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 at length, if only to lead students who do not know 
 
 M. Cle'ment's book to read it for themselves: — 
 
 " Rien ne prete a l'e'motion dans cette chapelle, claire, 
 
 blanche et froide; et, cependant, qui pourrait voir les 
 
 statues de Julien, de Laurent, les quatre figures alle'goriques 
 
 qui de'corent deux par deux les sarcophages, sans etre 
 
 fortement et profonde'ment emu ? Michelange ne s'est 
 
 pas arrele aux portraits de ses modeles. Dans le tombeau 
 
 de Jules II., Rachel et Lia representent la vie active et 
 
 la vie contemplative ; dans le tombeau des Medicis, les 
 
 figures de Julien et Laurent personnifient la pense'e et 
 
 Taction. Les quatre allegories, — L'Aurore et le Crepuscule, 
 
 le Jour et la Nuit, — rappellent les phases principales et la 
 
 rapidite de la destine'e de l'liomme. Les deux figures de 
 
 Julien et de Laurent sont assises. Julien est jeune, digne et 
 
 hardi ; il est arme, et appuie son baton de commandement 
 
 sur ses genoux. Laurent l est plonge dans une sombre 
 
 meditation ; sa tete, pleine de pense'es, est soutenue sur sa 
 
 main ; le doigt sur les levres semble vouloir arreter jusqu'au 
 
 murmure de la respiration. Est-ce la mine de Florence 
 
 qu'il regarde de ses yeux absorbes et profonds ? Que dire 
 
 dc la majeste et de la puissance de la statue du Jour, de la 
 
 titanique beaute de celle de la Nuit, de la grace serieuse 
 
 de l'Aurore, qui s'e'veille avec tristesse dans un monde de 
 
 1 As Mr. Ruskin points out, the names for these two statues should 
 be reversed. Giuliano, not Lorenzo, is " II I'ensieroso."
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 249 
 
 douleurs ? La langue est impuissante a, expliquer les 
 idees que l'art represente; mais le public [not having 
 Mr. Ruskin as a guide] ne se me'prit pas un instant sur la 
 signification de ces figures ; il appela la statue de Laurent 
 // Pensieroso, le Penseur. La figure de la Nuit fit une si 
 vive et si universelle impression, qu'une foule de poetes 
 s'empresserent de la ce'le'brer." Then follow the well-known 
 stanzas attributed to Strozzi, and Michelangelo's verses 
 in reply, "qui sont peut-etre les plus beaux qu'il ait e'crits, 
 et qui temoignent dans quel trouble de coeur et d'esprit 
 il avait concu et acheve son plus parfait ouvrage de 
 sculpture." 
 
 I am aware that in Mr. Ruskin's voluminous writings 
 (and I do not pretend to have read half that he has 
 written), may be found passages innumerable conveying 
 to the reader a completely different impression of his 
 views from those which he has put forward in his pamphlet 
 on Michelangelo and Tintoret. But it is difficult not to 
 believe that he has in this spoken out his heart ; moreover, 
 he has in his later writings denied much of what he wrote 
 in the Modern Painters. I cannot however resist closing 
 this paper by quoting the whole of Mr. Ruskin's first 
 opinion about Michelangelo, often alluded to in these 
 lectures, which some of his readers may by this time have 
 forgotten, which he himself perhaps has forgotten ; and in 
 doing this I cannot but think that I am not only not
 
 250 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 doing Mr. Ruskin an injustice, but that I am rendering 
 him the best service in my power : " Yet Mino stopped 
 at the human nature ; he saw the soul, but not the ghostly 
 presences about it ; it was reserved for Michelangelo 
 to pierce deeper yet, and to see the indwelling angels. 
 No man's soul is alone ; Laocoon or Tobit, the serpent 
 has it by the heart or the angel by the hand ; the light 
 or the fear of the spiritual things that move beside it 
 may be seen on the body ; and that bodily form with 
 Buonarotti, white, solid, distinct, material, though it be, 
 is invariably felt as the instrument or the habitation of 
 some infinite, invisible power. The earth of the Sistine 
 Adam that begins to burn ; the woman-embodied burst 
 of adoration from his sleep ; the twelve great torrents 
 of the Spirit of God that pause above us there, urned 
 in their vessels of clay ; the waiting in the shadow of 
 futurity of those through whom the Promise and Presence 
 of God went down from the Eve to the Mary, each 
 still and fixed, fixed in his expectation, silent, foreseeing, 
 faithful, seated each on his stony throne, the building 
 stones of the word of God, building on and on, tier by 
 tier, to the Refused one, the head of the corner ; not 
 only these, not only the troops of terror torn up from 
 the earth by the four-quartered winds of the Judgment, 
 but every fragment and atom of stone that he ever 
 touched became instantly inhabited by what m^.kes the
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON MICHELANGELO. 251 
 
 hair stand up and the words be few ; the St. Matthew, 
 not yet disengaged from his sepulchre, bound hand and 
 foot by his grave-clothes, it is left for us to loose him ; 
 the strange spectral wreath of the Florence Pieta, casting 
 its pyramidal, distorted shadow, full of pain and death, 
 among the faint purple lights that cross and perish under 
 the obscure dome of Sta. Maria del Fiore ; the white 
 lassitude of joyous limbs, panther-like, yet passive, faint- 
 ing with their own delight, that gleam among the pagan 
 formalisms of the Uffizii, far away, separating themselves in 
 their lustrous lightness, as the waves of an Alpine torrent 
 do by their dancing from the dead stones, though the 
 stones be as white as they ; and finally, and perhaps more 
 than all, those four ineffable types, not of darkness nor of 
 day, not of morning nor of evening, but of the departure 
 and the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn of the 
 souls of men, together with the spectre sitting in the 
 shadow of the niche above them ; all these, and all else 
 that I could name of his forming, have borne, and in 
 themselves retain and exercise, the same inexplicable 
 power — inexplicable because proceeding from an imagina- 
 tive perception almost superhuman, which goes whither we 
 cannot follow, and is where we cannot come ; throwing 
 naked the final, deepest root of the being of man, whereby 
 he grows out of the invisible, and holds on his God 
 home."
 
 LECTURE X. 1 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 To take any general survey of the effect of art on society 
 is a task of extreme difficulty. The subject is complicated 
 by its connection with so many of the questions which 
 remain a puzzle even to those who inquire most deeply 
 into the workings of our social system, that I may well 
 be excused from attempting any full treatment of it within 
 the limits of this address. Seeing however that I have 
 been requested to preside over the art section of a con- 
 gress which has for its aim the discussion of all kinds of 
 social difficulties with a view to improvement or reform, 
 I find myself under the necessity of attempting, if no! the 
 solution of the main problem, yet at any rate the elucida- 
 tion of those conditions under which alone art can produce 
 that influence for good which I believe it can, and ought, 
 to produce upon society. 
 
 1 Delivered at the Liverpool Meeting of the Social Science Congress, 
 October, 1876.
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 253 
 
 With this in view I would venture to suggest the fol- 
 lowing questions : — In the first place, would the universal 
 extension of a spirit and love of art — such a public spirit 
 as should exact of our artists, manufacturers, and workmen, 
 that all their productions should be characterised by, the 
 highest workmanship, skill, and taste — contribute to the 
 general welfare and progress of the nation ? In the second, 
 to what extent can the cultivation and practice of art be 
 made to take such a hold on our national life, and so to 
 permeate all classes of society, that such an end may be 
 brought about, and that the national sentiment may not 
 permit the making or exhibition of anything false in prin- 
 ciple or offensive to taste? And in the third, how can 
 such a state of things, which certainly does not now exist, 
 be created amongst us ? 
 
 The mere propounding of these questions will show that 
 a host of collateral difficulties, connected with various 
 matters which agitate the minds of men, arise to perplex 
 us ; and that to answer them thoroughly we must carry 
 speculation much further than an inquiry into the refining 
 influence of the higher forms of decorative art. From 
 those who hold with me that the very essence of good 
 art is to be found, above all tilings, in honest and good 
 workmanship ; that, — while we may almost allow that the 
 .blest object of manufacture may become a work of 
 art by being well done, it is quite certain that the finest
 
 254 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 and smartest object of " virtu '' can have no pretensions 
 to be a work of art unless it is of good workmanship and 
 genuine manufacture, — the answer to the first of these 
 questions would doubtless be, that a general diffusion of 
 a sound artistic spirit would be an unmixed good. We 
 know however that opinions are strongly and sharply- 
 divided on this point ; since the ideas of material progress 
 and welfare in vogue with a large section of the community 
 are in direct opposition to the very existence of an art the 
 principles of which seem to us so obvious ; to calculate 
 therefore on any general artistic sentiment becoming a 
 part of our national life would seem more hopeless now 
 than it ever has been. Before this can happen, it is not 
 too much to say that not only must our national charac- 
 teristics be other than they are, but our beliefs in the 
 efficacy of much that is thought essential to the progress, 
 enlightenment, and happiness of mankind must be eradi- 
 cated. To philosophise on this point, however, is not 
 very profitable, and will lead us to no very valuable con- 
 clusions. I have merely hinted at the difficulties which 
 surround a question, which, if insisted on, is perhaps 
 incapable of solution, and which is at all events out of 
 my province as an artist, and had better be left for the 
 political and social economists to settle. 
 
 I find myself obliged therefore to take for granted at 
 the outset, what most persons indeed will readily agree to,
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 255 
 
 that the influence of a genuine art must necessarily be an 
 influence for good. This being admitted, we still have 
 before us the difficult question of how such an influence 
 may be best diffused. And first it will be necessary to 
 inquire to what extent such a diffusion of art-influence 
 may be practicable, and how far there is any possibility 
 of a genuine love of art taking hold on people generally, 
 so that it shall seriously affect the whole community. Is 
 it possible, for instance, ever to recover amongst us the 
 feeling, which is now extinct, but of which a faint tradition 
 lingered perhaps as late as the Great Exhibition of 185 1, 
 that it was not worth while to make furniture that would 
 come to pieces, or to build a house which would not need 
 repair for at least a reasonable time ? I do not mean to 
 say that the class of contractors and manufacturers did not 
 at all times contain individuals who scamped their work ; 
 but in former times the bad work was the exception, now it 
 is the rule, openly the rule, and a piece of well-made furni- 
 ture, or a well-built house, is an article of luxury, and must 
 be made or built by specially-trained hands. I have no 
 intention however of taking into consideration in this 
 address any of the moral causes, such as the ardour to 
 make money at any cost to the public, or trade jealousies, 
 or other causes of the kind, that tend, especially in these 
 days, to the degeneracy of art or manufacture ; but rathe r 
 the inevitable social changes, which are the result of
 
 25-5 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 material progress and civilisation. If we ask, then, is the 
 return to such a state of things possible, or, to put it more 
 fairly, is the return to the time when every workman was 
 also an artist possible, I answer that under existing social 
 conditions it is impossible. 
 
 That feeling of love of good work for its own sake and 
 of pleasure in bringing it to perfection, which is perhaps 
 the most certain evidence of a genuine artistic spirit, was 
 not in former times the property of a few individuals of 
 superior gifts and education ■ it was the common property 
 of all handicraftsmen, whether possessed of original talent 
 or not. I do not for a moment pretend that such a spirit 
 as this has ever risen in this country to the dignity of 
 a national sentiment, and at no time do I imagine that 
 a cheap or easy mechanical substitute for labour would 
 have been refused on artistic grounds. That such a state 
 of national sentiment has existed in the world is, however, 
 indubitable. We have the evidence of everything that the 
 Greeks 1 have handed down to us from the best times of 
 their art, that, amongst them at least, nothing short of 
 perfection was tolerated ; nay more, that they were pos- 
 sessed of a critical faculty which would seem to have 
 
 1 This would perhaps be more exactly true of the Athenians than of 
 the Greeks as a nation, for the new discoveries at Llis seem to show 
 that occasionally they put up with very inferior work (see the Edin- 
 burgh Review fi r Jan. 1879); but the almcst universal perfection of 
 Greek work shows that such a feeling must have existed very widely.
 
 THE INFLUE^ T CE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 257 
 
 surpassed our own, so that their trained and cultivated 
 perceptions were satisfied with nothing less than a subtlety 
 of form and proportion, the advantages of which to our 
 coarser senses seem inappreciable. Nor is it only in their 
 more important works that this perfection is to be found, 
 or in the decoration of such things as our modern cant 
 calls art-objects ; the evidence of their instinctive love of 
 beauty and perfection of workmanship is equally to be 
 seen in their more trifling productions. The Greeks in 
 their art did not aim merely at adornment ; they aimed 
 above everything at completeness and consistency, while 
 their natural instincts, heightened by cultivation, supplied 
 them with ever-varying forms of that beauty which can 
 be appreciated by the eye, but of which description can 
 convey no idea. We may safely say that everything they 
 produced was a work of art, because they never tolerated 
 anything short of perfection in workmanship ; and we 
 cannot but believe that the noblest spirit of rivalry in 
 art animated the whole people from the highest to the 
 lowest. 
 
 It is melancholy to turn from such a state of things to 
 our own times and surroundings, and it is only too clear 
 that we must be content in our own social life with aiming 
 at something very far short of the Greek ideal, and even 
 then we must be satisfied if we get a tithe of what we 
 desire.
 
 258 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 This is not the occasion to inquire into the causes of 
 the high standard maintained at this glorious epoch of 
 Greek art ; but, whatever they were, it must be pointed out 
 that there is no possibility of their ever again coming 
 into operation. The very perfection to which mechanical 
 methods of production have been brought, raising as it 
 does works of mechanical skill almost to the level of 
 works of art in their wonderful precision and finish, has 
 given the death-blow to true artistic workmanship, the 
 charm of which lies as much in the individual character 
 given through the skill of the workman as in the invention 
 displayed in the design. What is now required of the 
 skilled mechanic is not so much that he should understand 
 how to make any particular object, as that he should 
 know how to manage the machine by which it is made. 
 It is useless however to deplore and rail against this 
 invasion of machinery ; the best thing that can be done 
 under the circumstances is to devote ourselves to the 
 consideration of how far it will be possible to make it, 
 under existing conditions, subservient to the principles 
 of sound art. 
 
 The first instance I take shall be from the subject of 
 engineering. There can be no question that for the 
 worst of the eyesores which the progress of civilisation 
 has inflicted on our unhappy cities the responsibility 
 rests with the engineers. That whole districts should be
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIKE. 259 
 
 given up to desolation in our large towns, through the 
 invasion of railways and their appurtenances, is probably 
 unavoidable, at least under the hap-hazard arrangements 
 which have governed the growth of the railway system ; 
 but that the few spots favoured by picturesqueness of 
 grouping, or real architectural beauty, should have their 
 charm destroyed at one blow by the intrusion of some 
 hideous railway bridge or station, shows an amount of 
 heartlessness on the part of the constructors, and I may 
 add of the public, which permits such things to be done, 
 at which we might well be surprised, did we not know 
 that a large section of the community admires at heart 
 what is supposed to be a fine practical preference for 
 utility over sentiment. 
 
 Perhaps the most obtrusive results of this feeling are 
 to be found in London. The views along the Thames, 
 from Westminster to London Bridge, were extremely 
 picturesque, and embraced many beautiful architectural 
 features; they were only marred to the public eye by 
 the meanness of the buildings and wharves along the 
 banks, and it was wisely determined to add an embank- 
 ment, which, if it destroyed inevitably some of the 
 picturesqueness, dear to artists, that is always to be 
 found among barges and waterside sheds, has undoubtedly 
 added an architectural dignity which is worthy of a great 
 city. Strange to say, what was given with one hand was 
 
 s 2
 
 2 6o LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 more than taken away with the other ; monster railway 
 stations of hideous and apparently useless proportions 
 were erected, which overshadowed and dwarfed by con- 
 trast our one beautiful waterside building, Somerset House, 
 and eclipsed by comparison the groups of spires, and the 
 beautiful Dome which rises above the banks. Blackfriars 
 Bridge, another of our finest architectural works, is flanked 
 by two railway bridges, 1 which would appear to have been 
 made ugly on purpose, and we are also at this moment 
 threatened with the disfigurement of another noble struc- 
 ture ; it is not at all certain that London Bridge will 
 not be eventually ruined by the addition of iron foot- 
 ways on each side ; and the public is supposed to believe 
 that these additions will not be objectionable, because 
 they are to be covered with some trumpery Gothic orna- 
 ment. A bridge at Florence, of no great architectural 
 pretensions, perhaps, but a most interesting and picturesque 
 memorial of the past, has just been wantonly ruined in 
 this very way. But the cruel treatment which that beau- 
 tiful city has suffered of late years is too painful a subject 
 to dwell on. 
 
 1 I have in this passage laboured under some strange mental con- 
 fusion. Old Blackfriars Bridge, of which I was thinking, was pulled 
 down some seventeen years ago ; I probably had in my mind the new 
 bridge and the railway bridge alongside it, and the railway bridge 
 by Southwark bridge. In any case there is a confusion of hideous 
 bridges at that part of the river.
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 261 
 
 Now, it is doubtless inevitable that such constructions 
 should be made of iron. If iron is more suitable and 
 cheaper for such purposes than either stone or brick, it 
 is absurd to imagine that it will not be used. It seems 
 to me, however, neither necessary that iron railway bridges 
 and stations should be as ugly as they are ; nor that the 
 only alternative should be to make them an imitation 
 of unsuitable architecture ; nor again that they should be 
 adorned with inappropriate ornament by way of beauti- 
 fying them. A notable instance of this misconception, 
 which seems to prevail so widely, is afforded by the 
 bridge that was built over Ludgate Hill. It is probable 
 that the specially offensive form of construction that is 
 placed there was the cheapest form of bridge that could 
 be made; of that I am no judge; but it is quite certain 
 that an engineer, who had but a little ingenuity beyond 
 what is required for the calculation of strain and cost, 
 might have invented something which in its original 
 form should have been less offensive to the eye. The 
 view of St. Paul's up Ludgate Hill, with the small spire in 
 the mid-distance making a composition of the kind that 
 delights an artist, and at the same time giving dignity 
 by its slender proportions to the imposing mass behind, 
 was heightened in effect by the framing of a busy and 
 picturesque street, and seemed to unite every point that 
 is characteristic and interesting in a great city. The
 
 2D2 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 public in this case reserited the offence to taste, and the 
 company was obliged to spend a large sum of money in 
 covering the bridge with ornament which it was impossible 
 could be otherwise than both unsuitable and useless. A 
 very moderate quota of the national sentiment, which I 
 have referred to as the property of the Greek nation, 
 would have prevented the possibility of the erection of 
 this bridge in such a spot. 
 
 I have said that the use of iron is a necessity in modern 
 engineering works ; but I have no hesitation in adding 
 that where these are obliged to intrude themselves on 
 places already made beautiful by fine architectural features, 
 the public, and the authorities responsible' to it, ought to 
 insist that whatever is put up should be in harmony with 
 the surroundings. In the case just referred to, an iron 
 structure should not have been permitted at all. If the 
 bridge was a necessity, and it must be supposed that it 
 was, 1 the engineer should have been obliged, by the same 
 authority that enforced the addition of the expensive 
 ornamental brackets, to build it of stone. An arch in the 
 style of old Blackfriars Bridge would at least have been a 
 handsome feature in itself. 
 
 But there are many situations where the use of iron 
 
 1 Mr. Street reminds me that by taking the railway across the river 
 a little lower down it might have been carried under Fleet Street 
 instead of over it.
 
 'I HE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 263 
 
 structures is not only a necessity, but need be in no way 
 objectionable. There is here in Liverpool a construction 
 of which the inhabitants are justly proud. I refer to the 
 Landing-stage, which in the ingenuity of its design, its 
 admirable fitness for its purpose, and the excellence of 
 its workmanship, combined with the picturesque accom- 
 paniments of river-life, may be rightly considered in the 
 light of a work of art. The effect of it is, however, to 
 a great extent marred by the ugliness of the iron bridges 
 which connect it with the mainland. It seems to me 
 not too much to say that there is not the least need for 
 their ugliness ; surely a little more ingenuity spent on their 
 construction might have made them not only inoffensive 
 to the eye, but positively agreeable. There are here no 
 architectural features in the immediate neighbourhood ; 
 the surroundings are the wharves and docks and ware- 
 houses, which are the glory of a great commercial city, 
 and which have a character of their own ; any attempt 
 then to have made these bridges architecturally beautiful 
 "would have been wasted in such a spot. Nevertheless I 
 cannot but conceive that there must be a method of 
 carrying out such works which should combine strength 
 and lightness with elegance, without going beyond the 
 necessary conditions of iron-structure. Hut it gives of 
 course less trouble to an engineer to make a square 
 iron-box which shall be strong enough to bear the traffic,
 
 264 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 than to go out of his way to devise something less open 
 to objection; if anything of a more ornamental nature 
 appears necessary, he is saved any further consideration 
 by handing his work over to an architect or artist to 
 plaster with decoration. 
 
 Without dwelling any further on this subject, I may 
 be able to draw a conclusion more or less satisfactory 
 from the remarks I have made. Seeing then that 
 engineering is distinctly an art of the present and future, 
 and that both its materials, and the principles and condi- 
 tions of their employment, are different to any which have 
 hitherto been known ; if it is ever to have any beauty 
 of its own, or, to put it more hopefully, if its results 
 are ever to be less objectionable than they are now, it 
 must be by seeking for such results within the necessary 
 conditions of its existence, and not by the addition or 
 superposition of an utterly unsuitable style of ornament, 
 drawn from past ages and a different order of things. In 
 short, the exercise of ingenuity in works of pure utility 
 must be made to occupy the place filled by decoration 
 in ornamental design. 
 
 Passing on now to works of art properly so called, and to 
 those works of manufacture in which decorative art plays 
 a mora or less important part, we find that here the con- 
 ditions are different. In these, as has been already noticed, 
 part of the charm will be derived from the beauty of the
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 265 
 
 workmanship, and from the individuality given by the mind 
 and touch of the workman, a phase of artistic beauty to 
 which mechanical reproduction is death. What is it 
 that we admire in Japanese art? No doubt the mar- 
 vellous and inexhaustible fertility of invention, and the 
 perfect rendering of natural forms ; but still more, if pos- 
 sible, the exquisite workmanship, which surpasses anything 
 that European hands are capable of. Or to confine 
 ourselves to European art ; wherein lies the beauty of those 
 old Venetian glass goblets, which have the elegance and 
 fragility of a harebell on its stem, and almost its fairy-like 
 lightness? Doubtless, in the first place, in loveliness of 
 design and delicacy of material ; but equally also in the 
 taste of the handicraftsman, whose skill has triumphed 
 over the extreme difficulty of producing a perfectly beauti- 
 ful form in a material requiring such rapid and dexterous 
 treatment as molten glass. It must be remembered 
 that to gain this triumph he must do the work well ; the 
 more exact and true he makes it, the more artistic is 
 the result. This is so obvious a truism that it might be 
 thought superfluous, were it not that there are many 
 persons, manufacturers and others, who consider that the 
 more crooked and irregular such objects are, the more 
 artistic they ought to be considered ; forgetting that the 
 imperfections are due to the stubbornness of the material, 
 and that the greatest artist is he who overcomes them
 
 266 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 best. I make a digression in order to dwell on this 
 point, because I think it one on which the public wants 
 enlightening. There is no doubt that owing to the ill- 
 advised expressions of customers, and perhaps also of some 
 artists, the firm which now reproduces the old Venetian 
 glass has fallen short of what it might have done, through 
 the idea that it is an advantage that the bowls of wine- 
 glasses should be stuck on one side and the necks of 
 decanters twisted awry, and that the results are in this 
 way more artistic than they would be with neater work- 
 manship. This is an error, however, which has grown 
 out of what was originally a truth, — that the imperfections 
 of hand-work are preferable to the cold and lifeless 
 accuracy of mechanical productions. 
 
 It is not with the intention of discrediting the efforts 
 of another firm, which has done wonders in rendering 
 a coarser kind of pottery really artistic, that I refer to 
 a mistake which was committed of the same kind. These 
 gentlemen are apparently under the impression that an 
 additional artistic value is given to their work when the 
 coloured glazes they apply run into confusion or half- 
 disappear in the process of firing, as when a blue glaze 
 applied to a flower at the top of a jar runs into 
 a blotch at the bottom edge. There is no doubt an 
 agreeable variety produced in pottery, where it is not 
 intended to be of the finer kind, through the accidents
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 267 
 
 of glazing and firing ; and some most splendid results in 
 colour have been gained in ancient Chinese porcelain 
 through the studied use of glazes which partially melt 
 into each other in the fire; but in an ordinary way, and 
 especially where there is a pattern to be picked out in 
 colour, to make a point of such accidents is a misappre- 
 hension of the rule which is applicable to all works 
 of art — that the intention should always be to make 
 the work as good as the material and other conditions 
 will permit. 1 
 
 To return, however. How much of this skill of hand 
 and eye is required by the modern glass-ipaker or potter ? 
 His business is not to use his discretion or his natural 
 taste in giving elegance to the form of the glass or pot 
 he is making, but to manage the mould out of which 
 thousands of exactly similar objects are produced ; for 
 there is no doubt that the manufacturer believes that 
 forms are much better produced by the mould than by 
 hand-work. In a small work on glass-making by Apsley 
 
 1 I understand that Messrs. Doulton affirm that so far from these 
 accidents being intentional, their efforts are directed to avoiding their 
 occurrence, which would perhaps point to there being something wrong 
 in the manufacture, as the colours are very clearly and cleanly defined 
 in the old Gris de Flandre. But 1 am confident that with the "artistic " 
 public the charm is believed to be in the imperfection ; I learn from 
 the remarks of my aesthetic friends that it is certainly so in the case of 
 modern Venetian glass.
 
 268 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 Pellatt this opinion is distinctly expressed. After de- 
 scribing the skilful and ingenious way in which the old 
 Venetians made their diamond mouldings, he says that 
 " equally good effects are produced by modern glass-makers 
 in a more direct manner by making brass open-and-shut, 
 or dip-moulds, so as to give at one operation the entire 
 diamond impression, thus saving the tedium of forming 
 each diamond separately." 
 
 It is true that to an uncultivated eye the effect may 
 be equally good, and that to save labour and produce in 
 great quantities may be a necessity ; but in the process the 
 original charm has disappeared, and the delicate fabric has 
 become a mechanical production without life, made prob- 
 ably at a tenth of the cost, and with a tenth of the 
 labour, but one which, so far as the artistic value of its 
 "diamond moulding" goes, it was superfluous to make 
 at all. It would be very foolish to suppose that 
 mechanical reproduction can be done away with : it is 
 part of the necessity of the times ; it is certainly a result 
 of our material progress which we cannot go back from, 
 and, as I have already said, the conditions, under which 
 everything made before the introduction of machinery 
 was in one sense a work of art, can never be restored. 
 All I should wish to be generally understood is, that we 
 must not delude ourselves into the belief that we can 
 produce works of art by the substitution of machinery for
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 269 
 
 hand labour, or that the decoration of objects of common 
 utility by a mechanical process can ever have any artistic 
 value. We should indeed have made an immense step 
 in advance if the public could be persuaded that it 
 is better to have no decoration at all than such as is 
 purely mechanical. 1 
 
 1 These remarks have been misinterpreted in some newspaper criti- 
 cisms to mean that mechanical processes should in no case be made 
 use of in art. It was a question with me when writing this lecture, 
 whether it would not be better to anticipate objections by a digression on 
 this very point ; but I felt that this would so interfere with the course 
 of the argument, that I thought it better to leave it to the intelligence 
 of my audience to infer a certain amount of common sense on my part. 
 Some remarks lately made by Sir Henry Cole at Manchester prove to 
 me, however, that I have not expressed myself with sufficient fulness. 
 It is well to state, therefore, that I had no such intentions as he 
 assumes. The reason why the objections to the mechanical production 
 of the embossed decoration of a wine-glass do not hold good in the 
 case of the printed patterns on a wall-paper or chintz are clear enough 
 on a little consideration. That a repeated pattern may look well, its 
 repetitions must be true ; in a chintz or wall-paper, therefore, mechani- 
 cal reproduction becomes a positive advantage, as the accurate repetition 
 by hand of a pattern recurring some hundreds and thousands of times 
 is either impossible, or so nearly impossible, and in any case so 
 laborious, as to appal one with the idea of the wasted time and energy 
 requisite to such a result ; a result so easily achieved by mechanical 
 mean's. Imagine the attempt to execute by hand the five or six hundred 
 repetitions, to be found in a small room (such as the one in which I am 
 writing) of the elaborately involved patterns in one of the "Morris 
 papers" to which Sir Henry refers me; the result would cither be 
 simple chaos, in a case where precision in the repeated forms is a 
 chief point in the effect required by the designer : or we should require
 
 2jo LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 There are cases, however, where a system of mechanical 
 
 a twelvemonth's work by a slulful workman, which would after all be 
 le-s effective than a few hours' use of the printing-blocks. On the 
 other hand, in decorations where there is no repetition, as in the case 
 of the Chinese hand-painted papers of birds and flowering-trees, it 
 would not only be more laborious to print the pattern, but it is the 
 freedom of the hand-work which gives the charm, the fancy of the 
 artist coming in at every touch. 
 
 The objections to mechanical reproduction in the case of the wine- 
 glass quoted above are more complex. In the first place, the necessity 
 for added decoration is not so strong : blank walls where we could not 
 employ an artist to paint them, or single coloured chintzes where we 
 could not have hand-embroidery, would become wearisome to the eye to 
 such a degree that some easily-produced form of decoration becomes a 
 necessity ; but a plain wine-glass of a good form is nearly, if not quite, 
 as pretty as an embossed one, and the variations to be made in the form 
 alone are practically endless. In the next place, the making of the 
 diamond pattern in the old way involves no laborious process (it is only 
 too slow for the exigencies of trade), but merely a certain amount of 
 easily-acquired skill on the part of the workman ; the skill itself (as 
 explained above) giving the charm to the work. In brief, by our manu- 
 facturers a decorative feature is added to the glass by mechanical means, 
 which only has value when it is not done by mechanical means. It 
 is needless to multiply illustrations and arguments which will readily 
 suggest themselves to the reader, and it must be remembered that I only 
 use the wine-glass accidentally as an illustration, and not as an extreme 
 case. Although an exact definition is not easy, it may be broadly affirmed 
 that mechanical reproduction in art begins to be objectionable at the 
 point where, precise and multiplied repetition not being one of the 
 conditions, the charm of free and skilful treatment outweighs the imper- 
 fections and the more lengthened processes of hand-work ; and con- 
 versely, it ceases to be offensive to taste where the labour of hand-work 
 not only becomes oppressive to the imagination, but cea es to fulfil the 
 requisite conditions.
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 271 
 
 reproduction interferes seriously with such designedly deco- 
 rative works as might otherwise have a high artistic value ; 
 I mean where skill and taste are applied to the decoration 
 of objects originally produced by mechanical means. The 
 beauty of a Greek vase or of a Majolica jar is twofold : 
 it resides first in the form, which besides being beautiful 
 in itself, has the charm of handicraft to which I have 
 referred ; and, secondly, in the decoration. Now. I would 
 ask, what is the use of a manufacturer spending large 
 sums of money on the decoration of a vase which is 
 disfigured, not only by the monotony of surface and 
 form which is the inevitable result of moulding used 
 instead of throwing from the wheel, but by the obtrusive 
 rib which the mould leaves down each side, and which 
 nobody is at the pains to remove before it goes into the 
 artist's hands? I have had under my notice vases orna- 
 mented with unquestionable taste and the most delicate 
 manipulative skill, on which much time and labour had 
 been spent by the artist and no small sum of money by 
 the manufacturer, the effect of which was entirely marred 
 by this obtrusive blemish, and by the fact that the pots 
 were moulded instead of turned. If complaint were made 
 to the artist, he would probably complain in his turn that 
 he is obliged to take what the manufacturer gives him, 
 and has no means of getting anything better, for all the 
 manufacturers are alike. If to the manufacturer, he would
 
 272 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 say that it makes no difference to him ; that it pays him 
 as well as if he took more pains, because people who 
 buy do not notice a fault of this kind, but only look to 
 the decoration. From his point of view he is no doubt 
 right, and although there are happily not wanting among 
 our manufacturers men of spirit and taste who will go to 
 expense, and incur risk, in the production of articles of what 
 is called art-manufacture, none will hazard any loss on 
 the regular profits of their business. The fault lies in the 
 original method of making, which has sunk from a fine 
 art to a mechanical process ; and if the manufacturer were 
 so far a man of taste as to wish to alter it, he would 
 find himself in the difficulty of having to set up new 
 machinery, and engage a different class of workmen, 
 which he would probably not be able to get unless he 
 trained them for the purpose. We thus find ourselves 
 in a vicious circle : the artist cannot help himself; the 
 manufacturer will not help him, for he makes for a public 
 which has not the discrimination to perceive what offends 
 the artist and man of taste; and he is also hampered by 
 the workman, who naturally works in the groove to which 
 he is accustomed, and in accordance with the exigencies 
 of trade, which demand the use of mechanical processes 
 to supersede- labour. 
 
 To trace the evil in this way to its source does 
 not, however, supply us with a remedy. I proceed now
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 2)3 
 
 briefly to consider in what directions we are to look 
 for an improvement on the state of things I have been 
 describing. 
 
 And first I should hope for the most beneficial results 
 from the personal supervision of artists of cultivated 
 tastes over the manufacture of the objects of our daily 
 life. A strong feeling for the higher forms of art has 
 never existed in this country, or, I should say rather, the 
 artistic faculty has never in our race risen of its own accord 
 towards the higher forms of art. Except in architecture 
 we have never produced any works of higher art ; we 
 have never had of indigenous growth anything in the shape 
 of those schools of painting, sculpture, and metal-work 
 which sprang out of the native soil in Flanders, to say 
 nothing of Italy. All the higher forms of art have been 
 imported into England either by foreign artists coming to 
 work for our native princes, or by men of taste and culture. 
 Until within the last hundred years there was no such 
 thing as a school of painting in England at all. But there 
 did exist in England till lately, what indeed was common 
 to all the world, the sentiment and tradition of excellence 
 in such more homely forms of art as are applied to 
 household furniture and fittings ; and such a feeling took 
 of course an English development, which gave its own 
 character to the work produced. Now what I wish to 
 call your attention to is, that this tradition having died 
 
 T
 
 274 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 out through the causes I have mentioned, and the circum- 
 stances under which works of art and manufacture are 
 produced, and matters having arrived at the dead-lock 
 described above, so that, except in a few solitary cases, 
 it may be said that an object of industrial art is never 
 now produced which is satisfactory to the cultivated eye 
 from every point of view — what I desire to point out is, 
 that only through th determination and energy, and to 
 a certain extent the self-sacrifice, of those who are capable 
 of directing the public taste — that is, of artists and men 
 of culture — can an improvement be considered possible. 
 
 There has been a great effort in this direction made 
 of late years. The firm of which Mr. William Morris 
 is the head, of which indeed he is now the sole member, 
 started the idea, now well understood, that the only 
 possible means of producing work which shall be satis- 
 factory from every side, is to return to the principles on 
 which all works of art and art-manufacture were executed, 
 not only in the Middle Ages, but at all epochs up to the 
 beginning of this century. That is, it was intended that 
 the leading spirit of the firm should be not merely a 
 contractor for the work of others, looking to the public 
 to guide his taste, but himself an artist, not only with 
 the power to direct the craftsmen who work under him, 
 but with skill and taste to produce designs, and knowledge 
 not only of the aesthetic but of the practical side of the
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 275 
 
 craft. Such a knowledge and skill Mr. Morris undoubtedly 
 possesses, and there is no less doubt in my mind that from 
 under his direction have proceeded the only thoroughly 
 satisfactory works of decorative industrial art which have 
 been done in this country since the decay of the tradition 
 of sound work. And he has not done this without the 
 determination and energy I have spoken of, nor without 
 a considerable amount of self-sacrifice both of time and 
 money. Since this experiment has been set on foot the 
 movement has become more general; so general in fact 
 that it may be said now to have become a matter of 
 fashion. Many imitations, more or less successful, of this 
 experiment have been made which are perfectly genuine ; 
 but there are many more which are only meant to catch 
 the public taste while it runs in this direction. We have 
 evidence of this in the numerous firms which advertise 
 art-furniture, art-pottery, art-needlework, &c, &c, some of 
 which no doubt are sufficiently in earnest, while others 
 merely trade on the cant of the day, to pass off furniture 
 and other fabrics as bad in design and construction as 
 any that were produced before this movement took place, 
 and infinitely worse in taste. The influence of the designs 
 which have proceeded from Mr. Morris's firm has been 
 immense, and has affected the productions of many who 
 no doubt imagine themselves quite free from it ; for I 
 trace, or fancy I trace it, in the works of men most 
 
 1 2
 
 276 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 opposed in taste and principle ; but the effect on the 
 large mass of manufacturers has only been that they have 
 followed the fashion, and caught a few tricks which they 
 repeat in a servile manner, without having in the least un- 
 derstood or seized the spirit. It is the characteristic indeed 
 of men of genius to be perpetually surprising their imitators, 
 and there is no fear of a " Morris style " being adopted 
 which shall ever outdo him on his own ground. It is to 
 be hoped that the success of this experiment may not be 
 so much a matter of fashion as to leave no lasting trace, 
 and it will be the fault not only of the public but of the 
 artists themselves if this is the case. 
 
 It will of course be quite understood that if I refer at 
 this length to the work Mr. Morris has done, it is not with 
 any view of bringing his name forward, for he is fortunately 
 by this time too well known to require aid from anything 
 I can say. It is because I have a firm conviction that 
 it is only by some such devotion on the part of artists 
 themselves that the degrading tendency of mechanism and 
 all its accompaniments may be counteracted ; and only 
 through such practical application of knowledge and skill 
 can the taste of the public, which has more influence for 
 good or for evil in this country than in any other, ever 
 be really improved. 
 
 To pass on to another point, it may be said that the in- 
 creasing spread of the education which every year is being
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 277 
 
 more widely diffused, and in which the teaching of drawing 
 is encouraged by Government grants, must gradually infuse 
 a spirit of art and a love of beauty ; and what is still more 
 important, a hatred of ugliness, and a capacity for dis- 
 tinguishing the true from the vulgar and pretentious. I 
 believe that it may have a limited effect in this direction. 
 It is not to be supposed, however, that to teach the 
 rudiments of geometry and perspective and elementary free- 
 hand drawing to so many thousands of children, will turn 
 them at once into artists, or even give them any artistic 
 instincts. But it will act as other elementary education 
 acts — give a chance of cultivation to some receptive natures 
 which might otherwise remain undeveloped. These ele- 
 mentary stages in art indeed can hardly be said to be 
 art at all ; and those who complain that free-hand drawing 
 is dull and tedious work for children, and that they should 
 be taught to work at once from nature so as to have 
 interest in their subject, do not understand the reasons 
 for this system. In the first place, the authorities well 
 understand that to make geometrical and free-hand draw- 
 ings can no more be called studying art than learning 
 the alphabet can be said to be studying literature, both 
 being the necessary preliminary stages to a higher culture ; 
 and in the second place, where drawing is only a small 
 portion of the course of elementary education, and is carried 
 on for a very limited time in places where perhaps hundreds
 
 Z,3, LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 of school children are learning, it is necessary to give the in- 
 struction in the most convenient and handy form. There are 
 the art schools for the further development of those whose 
 taste or talent impels them to further study in this direc- 
 tion ; and I may add that a constant effort is being made 
 so to arrange the Government payments to the masters, 
 that there shall be the necessary inducement to lead the 
 pupils from one stage to another — a matter which would 
 be easy enough if the supplies were unlimited, but which 
 is difficult when they have to be kept within bounds. It 
 is in this way then that I hope the influence of the vast 
 machinery of the Art Department may be felt; that 
 is, through the chances given to children of turning 
 their attention to art if their inclinations lie that way, 
 through the inducements to study offered by the art 
 classes and art schools, and through the final induce- 
 ments to enter into training at South Kensington as art 
 masters, and in turn diffuse their knowledge through the 
 country. 
 
 There is, however, another great piece of machinery 
 which runs no such risks, and by which the truest prin- 
 ciples of taste may be diffused among all classes. I refer 
 to the institution and formation of museums. Here again 
 do not let us deceive ourselves as to the influence they 
 may exercise. Without previous culture no one is likely 
 to appreciate a work of high art ; the richness and
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 279 
 
 splendour of workmanship and material in a cup by Cellini 
 will please an uneducated eye, but it needs a long 
 apprenticeship in general and special study for the appre- 
 ciation of the exquisite taste and fancy which has guided 
 the artist. Mr. Morley, in a speech on education, lately 
 asked why the collection of Castellani jewels at the British 
 Museum should not be sent to Birmingham, to improve 
 the taste of the jewellers. If it was in the least probable 
 that the goldsmiths and jewellers would take to heart the 
 lesson that those wonderful specimens of Greek art might 
 teach them, the lesson which I have tried to inculcate 
 in this paper — viz., that exquisite workmanship is the 
 essence of all fine art manufacture, and of jewellery above 
 all things — no risk perhaps would be too great to run in 
 the cause ; but it is far too probable that the only result 
 would be the "cribbing " of a few of the forms to produce 
 a novelty, and the executing them in a more or less coarse 
 and barbarous manner. It must be remembered, too, 
 that museums have another important function besides 
 the circulation through the provinces of fine specimens cf 
 art and workmanship, and that is the preservation of those 
 inestimably precious relics of antiquity which no money 
 or labour could ever restore to us if once lost or destroyed. 
 After this has been taken into account, there can be no 
 doubt that the exhibition and circulation of objects of 
 ait is of great importance, and cannot but have a refining
 
 2S0 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 and educating effect on those whose tastes are sufficiently 
 raised by cultivation to appreciate them ; indeed, to supply 
 the local museums and art schools with the best specimens 
 available, is one of the most important functions of the 
 South Kensington Museum. 
 
 If I have explained myself in these remarks, it will 
 be understood that I see three ways in which the influ- 
 ence of art may be brought to bear on our social 
 system — through the return, if only in part, to that 
 bygone excellence of workmanship which, for reasons 
 that I have dwelt on, and others which I have 
 forborne to discuss, must necessarily be only partial ; 
 through the spread of education ; and through opportuni- 
 ties afforded to art-students throughout the kingdom of 
 seeing fine works of different periods and styles. All 
 these influences however I have been obliged to confess 
 must be limited in their effect, and we must not deceive 
 ourselves as to the extent to which public taste may be 
 influenced by these means. We have only to think of 
 the immense number amongst us of all classes, from the 
 highest to the lowest, who are utterly indifferent as to 
 whether their surroundings are ugly or beautiful, and who 
 trouble themselves only about personal comfort or luxury 
 according to their degree, to realise how impossible it 
 will be ever to instil into them the most rudimentary 
 ideas upon the subject. We who are interested in these
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE. 281 
 
 things, though we appear to ourselves to be a large and 
 important section of the community, form but a very small 
 portion of the whole mass of the nation, which is for the 
 most part animated by other interests, indifferent, and in 
 many cases irreconcilably opposed, to the interests of art. 
 We may remember however as an encouragement, that 
 at no time in the world's history, except at that period 
 of the culmination of Greek art which I have referred 
 to, has a nation been wholly artistic. In Italy, even at 
 the best time, the mass of the people were probably 
 indifferent, and the love of art was confined to artists, 
 artificers, and the cultivated class. It is true that in 
 Florence there seems to have been something like popular 
 enthusiasm when a fine work of art was produced, as in 
 a well-known instance, when Cimabue's picture was carried 
 in procession. It may be doubted howevei whether this 
 was anything more than an exhibition of enthusiasm 
 among the painter's friends or his guild, taking a form 
 of rejoicing common in those days. And although I 
 have said that I do not see the possibility under existing 
 conditions of so complete a diffusion of taste for art among 
 us as shall make us an artistic race, yet there is no reason 
 why it should not become amongst us, as it was once in 
 Italy, the property at least of the cultivated class and of 
 all art-workmen. Let us never forget, too, that the spirit 
 of art will of itself assist in the increase of this educated
 
 282 LECTURES ON ART. 
 
 class, and in the spread of the cultivation by which it 
 lives. 
 
 It may be advisable to add a few words to this paper, 
 left rather incomplete in its latter part. I have frequently 
 in the course of this and other lectures alluded to the 
 dying out of the tradition of good work as a cause of the 
 degeneracy of workmanship in the present day; and I 
 have referred to certain artists and architects as devoting 
 themselves to restoring this tradition of good work by their 
 individual efforts. It is obvious, however, that unless 
 something like a School is produced by these means, such 
 good work as is done must be very limited, its only in- 
 fluence being traceable in the false and cheap imitations 
 which copy the manner without seizing, or desiring to seize, 
 the spirit. The best counteracting influence, therefore, 
 would be the establishment of schools where good work- 
 manship should be taught. Abroad, the spirit of fine 
 workmanship is not dead. The Paris Exhibition of 187S 
 proved that in France and Italy all kinds of technical arts 
 are still in as good a condition as ever as regards execution 
 and workmanship, if degenerate in taste and invention. 
 Some carved panels exhibited in the Italian Court, two of 
 which were bought for the South Kensington Museum, 
 were executed in the highest perfection. And in all matters 
 connected with modelling and metal work the French and
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ART ON SOCIAL LIFE, 283 
 
 other nations excel us on every point ; it is well known 
 indeed that our most eminent pottery firms and silversmiths 
 employ French workmen. Our plan, therefore, is to estab- 
 lish technical schools under the best foreign teachers that 
 are to be found ; and if our manufacturers are not too much 
 under the influence of trade jealousies to allow it, and our 
 mechanics are not too conceited to learn, some good may 
 be done. One of the City Companies has already given 
 assistance towards the formation of a School of Wood- 
 carving under an Italian artist, which promises the best 
 results ; and it would be an admirable thing if others of 
 those rich companies would aid in like manner towards 
 the recovery of those technical arts of which they are the 
 recognised representatives. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 R. CI. AY, SONS, AND TAYLOR. PRINTERS.
 
 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 IV
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 I 
 
 f£Bl3 135U 
 
 J^ J UN 2 5 1975 
 
 IITEIMBRAIT iJoAlTS 
 
 WAY 1 6 1975 
 
 THREE WEEKS FROM nWE dF 
 NQN-*aiEVrfABLE 
 
 iN2 01975 
 
 ■ 
 
 Form L9 — 15m-10,'48(B1039)444 
 
 T€? 
 
 '/&*> 

 
 
 ^M 
 
 ^^ 
 
 III II II 
 
 L 007 284 792 4 
 
 
 W^ 
 
 /H/llMli.ni'ir.^^,^ G 'OMAL L (BRARV 
 
 A * 000 182 135 
 
 ** s 
 
 3*3 
 
 -3" 
 
 
 
 \ \ 
 
 & 
 
 J • 
 

 
 » > fc*'"VflH^*P"^^QPVP r '9^^^^^^tt£S9P3 
 
 ,,»'•• -^>M