806t IS -Hvr m 
 
if 
 
 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 AND 
 
 ART-TEACHING 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED AT 
 
 ARMSTRONG COLLEGE, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE 
 
 ON TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 1911 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR W. B. RICHMOND 
 
 LONDON 
 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMEN CORNER, E.G. 
 
 1911 
 
 Price One Shilling net 
 
UNIVERSITIES 
 
 AND 
 
 ART-TEACHING 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED AT 
 
 ARMSTRONG COLLEGE, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE 
 
 ON TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 1911 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR W. B. RICHMOND 
 
 ,» ■> ..• 
 
 LONDON 
 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMEN CORNER, E.G. 
 
 19H 
 
fin 
 
 » » » » .- . • 
 
UNIVERSITIES AND ART-TEACHING 
 
 It is needless, and would be wearisome to my hearers, 
 to recapitulate the history and the vicissitudes of the 
 * North of England Society for the Promotion of Fine 
 Arts '. Founded by an association of private enterprise, 
 it continued for a time under the happiest auspices. 
 Then, as too often happens, the flame of personal en- 
 thusiasm burnt lower and the Society had to maintain 
 its existence by State aid and under Government inspec- 
 tion. Finally came a period of revival and of renewed 
 energy in which the whole movement merged into the 
 organization of an Art School which was established in 
 connexion with Armstrong College and thus took its part 
 in the University life of Newcastle. 
 
 The prime worker in the original School, Mr. W. B. 
 Scott, I knew well, an accomplished artist, an eager pro- 
 moter of all the elegances and refining influences of the 
 Arts in their several branches. A man of strong opinions 
 formed in a great school of poetic and decorative work 
 headed by the names of Ruskin, Rossetti, and William 
 Morris, the pioneers of a nobler view of the national 
 importance of Art training not only to be applied to 
 technicalities, but principles from which the amateur and 
 connoisseur might obtain guidance at a time when good 
 taste was at its lowest ebb in England. 
 
 The advice offered by Mr. Taylor, the celebrated 
 Master of the Birmingham School of Art, was certain 
 to be good. Mr. Mitchell, whom I had the pleasure 
 of knowing, was a very promising painter, but more 
 
 274911 
 
4 . : . : I JNI\ ERSITIES AND 
 
 important than that fact was the service he brought to bear 
 in the School by forming the Handicrafts' Company, 
 thus initiating in a great commercial centre some principles 
 of design hitherto more or less disregarded. The School 
 then, has been advanced by the Company to the study 
 of a variety of ornamental and useful Crafts, such as silver- 
 work, goldsmithry, jewellery, works in bronze, copper, 
 and iron, stained glass, painted wall decoration, em- 
 broidery, bookbinding, and woodwork. Success has been 
 achieved in these Crafts or minor Arts as they are called, 
 but which are in fact in themselves extremely important, 
 for they are in wide demand, hence if they are good of 
 their kind they must tend to sow the seeds of good and 
 rational taste. 
 
 ' The first object of the School is to give the students 
 a broad conception of the nature and purpose of Art. 
 Taste, Idea, and Meaning are, in this connexion, as much 
 insisted on as technical skill, and much of the success 
 which students have attained has been due to their 
 training in the mental side of their work.' 
 
 The new buildings will give space and scope to the 
 object which I have just quoted, and that object so wisely 
 maintained is the text, as it were, of the remarks I shall 
 to-day offer for your consideration. Before I begin — 
 I hope, to interest, and not to bore you — I may express 
 a hope that Armstrong scholars who may finally specialize 
 in very various directions of study and professions will 
 make use of the teaching of the Arts and Crafts profes- 
 sors, which can only be of use to them in after life by 
 having given to them principles of taste, and aids to 
 comprehend the fact that Science and Art are indis- 
 putably the great factors in the highest intellectual and 
 emotional development of a great nation. The complete 
 man estimates them both, and will readily admit the 
 
ART-TEACHING 5 
 
 importance they both must exercise upon an inteUigent 
 and compHcated community. 
 
 Now to my task ! It seems a curious question to ask 
 in an age of civiHzation, but I am going to ask it. 
 J^ What is Art ? a question easy to answer in a trite 
 fashion, but not to make intelligible to general folk 
 whose other avocations tend in what seems to be, at 
 first sight, a different direction, and who perhaps forget, 
 or have never considered the subject as it bears upon 
 high aspirations of Beauty, noble sensibilities to noble 
 emotions aroused by Form, Colour, and Sound. The Arts 
 represent a variety of emotions, not only such as are 
 transitory but permanent and recurring, from passion 
 to calm, from pathos to serenity, from elegance to gran- 
 deur, from passing desires to eternal hopes, even to the 
 profoundest relations of our innermost sympathies arrested 
 by the beauties of nature, or exalted to the highest abstract 
 ideals sunmioned into being by eternal Truths, Ethic as 
 well as Aesthetic. Hence the Arts, being partly ideal 
 partly realistic, are as a mission from Man to God and from 
 God to Man. 
 
 The relation of Art to Science is close, both seek Truth, 
 though their approach is different. Each searches from 
 Abstraction, each must search through facts. Yet, 
 there is a point where Science and Art in a measure 
 seem to differ, hardly separate. Without supreme 
 accuracy, without mathematical precision infinitely 
 exercised Science would be only guessing. Still, scientists 
 must first conceive, must in a sense mentally prophesy 
 results which can only be fructified by labour minutely 
 expended and arranged as well as broadly conceived. 
 
 .The standard for the scientist must be accuracy. The 
 standard for the artist a noble emotion beautifully 
 rendered. And, in whatever material his Art is stated. 
 
6 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 Emotion, pure and simple, is the propelling force, but 
 cannot be peimitted to dismiss certain laws which may 
 be said to be scientific results accimiulated by centuries 
 of experience, however much changes of customs, and the 
 advancement of utilitarianism involved by a democracy, 
 alter the direction of achievement, and the materials 
 employed by the artist who supplies a demand. 
 
 The scientist deals with facts on all sides. His formula 
 is made for him. Heavenly bodies exist for the in- 
 genuity of the astronomers. The Earth and all its varied 
 formations evolved by water, earthquakes, dryness, or 
 moisture, is the field the geologist explores. The 
 scientist sifts evidence till conclusions shall give him the 
 right to claim for his investigations atoms, or colossal 
 evidences of Truth. The artist should reveal the Beauty 
 of the Firmament and Earth, and lead to the study of 
 their infinite charms ! The artist arrives at Truth by 
 the exercise of inner consciousness or emotion propelling 
 an active desire to formulate for his own pleasure, ideas 
 of Beauty, conceived or derived, but in the first instance 
 abstract until made concrete by the materials which 
 belong essentially to his craft. 
 
 And it is by entire obedience to the essential limitations 
 provided by his materials, that the artist brings into 
 play the science and art of selection and rejection. 
 
 Aware of limitations, aware of the pitfalls in the region 
 of abstraction, the artist is ever balancing Emotion with 
 Reason, lest his work should be ridiculous on the one hand 
 or commonplace on the other. 
 
 In some of the Arts, imitation up to a certain point 
 
 is necessarily an accompaniment of the creative faculty, 
 
 acting as a restraint and a healthy restraining force upon 
 
 a temperament more emotional than reasoning. 
 
 It is a truism that two essentials are sealed upon 
 
ART-TEACHING 7 
 
 human nature. Instinct and Reason, in other words, 
 Impulse and Restraint. 
 
 Classes of intelligence necessarily vary, partly from 
 antecedent ; and peculiar directions of the course of 
 thought, even of impulse, must decide the final result of 
 every human experiment. 
 
 The man of affairs moves in an atmosphere of thought 
 different, almost opposite, to the Creator by Impulse. 
 
 So it is rare to find a balance in one individual of 
 opposites and, except in the very greatest minds, neces- 
 sarily rare, to find opposite quahties exercising equal 
 intensity of appHcation. 
 
 The speciahst is apt to narrow his vision by concentra- 
 tion, and to consider other studies than his own to be 
 futile — as the widely cultivated may become discursive ! 
 
 The object of Education is surely not only the provision 
 of facts for the mind and memory, for the conduct of 
 a profession or a trade, should it not be more generous 
 than that ? and enlarge the boimdaries of appreciation and 
 that most human of instincts. Sympathy, in a world so 
 full of variety, so crammed with subtle differences which 
 include Utility and Beauty, Restraint and Emotion. 
 
 The proper adjustment of Instinct and Reason would be 
 the Ideal ! and the Ideal University would be a place 
 where each man finds an echo to his desires, an impetus 
 for their promotion ; where, meeting a variety of minds, 
 each having an ego to evolve, to promote, and maintain, 
 the young and pHable temperament, which, instead of being 
 narrowed by prejudice, shall take in at every breath an 
 atmosphere stimulating and broadening, refining and 
 sympathetic ; the last quahty surely being one which is 
 not the least valuable and attractive for any career that 
 brings men into . touch with a variety of projects and 
 accomplishments. 
 
8 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 It has sometimes been advanced that the study of the 
 Humanities, and especially those under the headings of 
 ' The Arts ', is debilitating to mental and moral fibre, and 
 that by accentuating or even encouraging taste or emotion 
 manhood is disorganized, perhaps degenerated. 
 
 Upon reflection, such a generalization is far from the 
 truth. It is often the case that the strongest, most virile 
 natures, when moved to enthusiasm or inspired by 
 emotion, have been hmnanized, refined, and rendered 
 sensitive to delicate shades of feeling ; moreover, the 
 essentially manly has been brought into prominence. 
 Greatest strength is not far from tenderness ! Surely it 
 is only the useless folk that are weakened by sjnnpathy 
 with what is delightful and beautiful, who convert or 
 abuse the natural sense, be it of hearing or sight, to 
 enervate self-control and neglect obvious duties. 
 
 Happily it is needless to insist that the study of 
 Aesthetics is tmmanly, it is recognized now more and 
 more to be as worthy a study for a man as Athletics, 
 Trade, or Politics, or the Sciences, and that far from being 
 enervating, it is necessary, if the whole man is to be 
 developed. 
 
 The fact that we are here to-day and on this occasion, 
 that this great northern centre of commerce, of material 
 provision for necessities, of strenuous business life, in the 
 very centre of sport, has found it desirable to encourage 
 the study of the Arts concurrently with other studies in 
 Armstrong College, or, as I should like to say, the whole 
 University, proves the good sense of Northumbrians, 
 their broadening views and civilizing instincts'; splendid 
 men of business though they may be, they will not be 
 disappointed ! 
 
 This occasion also demonstrates that a civilizing 
 element and a gentler outlook which admits the charms 
 
ART-TEACHING 9 
 
 life may present to all, even those contrasted with bare 
 utility, is here, and in such good soil of sound sense for 
 which the Northmen are celebrated, will grow, maintain, 
 and in time prevail. 
 
 There surely can be no danger, even to be apprehended, 
 that the virile race of the North is likely to be disengaged 
 from pursuits which have occupied their energies for 
 a century and more. Rather than that it is certain to 
 occur that the relaxation and wholesome change in 
 directions of thought and enterprise will invigorate 
 repose, provide refinement, solace, and entertainment 
 from pure and beautiful Arts, and generating a larger 
 sense of citizenship and a higher, truer sympathy with 
 those who occupy themselves with Beauty, will improve 
 the race. 
 
 And here in the North is a good soil ; though slow perhaps, 
 the Northman does not go back on his word. And is not 
 a university or a college a place of instruction for the 
 higher faculties of criticism and feeling as well as for 
 obvious utility ? We need both to be complete. Sooner 
 or later every man must find it necessary to exercise his 
 taste, to test his judgement, to prefer one thing to another ; 
 and though perfect taste, or rather, I would say, creative 
 taste is a gift, almost an instinct, which cannot be learnt, 
 direction toward it can be guided by good precedents and 
 examples. 
 
 Good teaching creates good pupils, good pupils become 
 good teachers. For as in Science there is true and false, so 
 for the Arts and Crafts experience has proved that certain 
 rules must not be disregarded, are scarcely to be dismissed 
 even by the man of genius, and which are indispensable 
 to the education in taste of the average man. 
 
 Perhaps we are too near to our time to be fair judges of 
 contemporary work, subject as it so often is to the caprice 
 
 B' 
 
10 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 of a delusive lady called Fashion, in whom there is rarely 
 good sense, and stability never ! The less thoughtful 
 folk are prone to follow ' the last word ' which is change- 
 ful, puzzling, and not rarely destructive to attainments 
 perhaps more permanently reliable. 
 
 The promoters of Fashion, often actuated by self- 
 interest or a desire to be peculiar, to provide shocks for 
 enervated senses, become unworthy leaders, spreading 
 falsity, dangerous, absurd as superficial, even crafty 
 novelties. 
 
 They obtain acquiescence from weak-minded people, 
 who follow because they cannot lead, obey for they 
 cannot reason, and having been taught by convention to 
 be in the swim of the moment, they accept every puff of 
 advertisement so long as it is accepted in ' Society '. 
 
 If it be, and it may be, that the reason of such an abject 
 attitude is ignorance or the result of unwise guidance in 
 early life, it follows that those in whom the foundations of 
 taste are being laid should be taught principles, not 
 transitory or ephemeral, but such as by consensus of 
 thoughtful opinion have become landmarks and standards, 
 rightly immovable until novelties have stood the test of 
 time. 
 
 It is easy to start novelties, it takes long, however, 
 before the best acquire sufficient stability to become 
 creeds, and command concurrence. We must keep up 
 a high standard, inculcate and pursue it. 
 
 We admit the pre-eminence of knowledge for such men 
 and women who have deeply studied any question, and 
 while it is not necessary to grant to their opinion inevitable 
 infallibility, the learner, the novitiate, is wise to accept 
 their dicta in matters of good and bad taste, even if we 
 deny that so it must always remain. 
 
 That there is a science of taste I am convinced. That 
 
ART-TEACHING ii 
 
 taste is not a democratic, anarchic pliable emotion known 
 and to be exercised by the whim of each individual I feel 
 equally assured. 
 
 That good taste is instinctive to some extent we have 
 seen ; perhaps in a measure it is hereditary, but that 
 every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a right to say ' I know 
 what I hke ' in the defence of not knowing why may 
 savour of the ridiculous. 
 
 There is an Ethic in Aesthetics, there is a right and 
 a wrong tendency, as there must be in all things primarily 
 emotional. 
 
 There is science of sound, of colour, of form of com- 
 position and proportion of part to part, tint to tint, and 
 tone to tone, this can be taught, but can never create 
 a musician, a colourist, or a designer. The science may 
 be applied by amateurs and connoisseurs, and it is a pity 
 they have not more of it, when we should hear and see 
 fewer obvious mistakes and futile experiments. 
 
 As a way of getting out of a difficult decision one has 
 heard it stated that if an object answers fully to its 
 purpose it must be beautiful. This is surely a fallacy ! 
 
 An eye, an ear, nose, or mouth, the one seeing, the 
 others hearing, smelling, and speaking perfectly, each 
 being supplied with perfect machinery balanced to per- 
 form its function, may be ugly and yet perfectly answer 
 to its purpose. H there were time, innumerable instances 
 could be quoted to prove that Beauty and Utility, though 
 they may join hands completely — and when they do so 
 much the better — are by no means inseparable. 
 
 H the instance I have given be an apt one, the object 
 which we should all keep in view is the marriage of 
 Utility with Beauty, but that they are consequent is quite 
 another matter. And yet we must possess both ! 
 
 And here comes in a thought which I would like to put 
 
12 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 strongly before you, namely, that Beauty is essential, 
 and as useful, though differently, as Utility ; that each 
 has a science in construction, each arouses emotion, but 
 the nature of that emotion is different. 
 
 One worships the highest Beauty as an independent 
 Goddess, while one admires the ingenuity of the entirely 
 useful thing. 
 
 Custom is a curiously deceptive friend, it may give 
 rise to negative contentment, but it can never create 
 enthusiasm or inspire affection. Custom is cold ! 
 
 An object or a sound to which we are accustomed 
 is and was bad or good, because we have become used 
 to it proves nothing, except that to estimate it justly 
 we must get away from it. 
 
 The laws which regulate Beauty remain, and may be 
 reappealed to as guides to sense of what custom has 
 rendered monotonous. In this sense we are poor judges 
 of novelties, as well as of things to which we are accus- 
 tomed. If what I state be true, too much pains cannot 
 be taken to set before the eyes, mind, and ears of pliable 
 youth only those examples of perfect Art, in Literature, 
 Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, and Music, as well 
 as of the crafts which have stood time's test. Youth is 
 quite certain to follow sooner or later whatever novelties 
 appear that are appealing. Quite rightly ! But guides 
 have been given which, anyhow, may detain anarchic 
 destruction of old lamps for new ones which have not yet 
 perhaps been even lit. 
 
 Train the direction of the youthful mind, free-will comes 
 after! And this would seem to be justifiable because 
 when once the senses have been accustomed to the best. 
 Humans, being conservative, it is highly improbable 
 they will really take to the worst except artificially or 
 superficially ; anyhow, a survival of the best will remain, 
 
ART-TEACHING 13 
 
 perhaps recur ! So good taste, which means a classic 
 reserved liking for what is noble and restrained is unlikely 
 to give way entirely before extravagance or flimsiness. 
 
 As I have indicated to you, I insist that as there is a 
 right and wrong in Science and in Ethics, so there is in Art, 
 which after all includes Reason, however strongly emotion 
 may and should prevail. And those men who have studied 
 the question as an emotion backed by a science are the 
 fittest to teach and the most reliable to be followed. The 
 amateur teacher may be an excellent enthusiast, but 
 the practical man who can execute as well as theorize, be 
 it in Literature, Music, or in any of the handicrafts, is 
 the only reliable teacher ! The others not seeing deeply, 
 not being scientifically trained and only equipped by 
 emotion or recurring phantoms of fashion, are invariably 
 dangerous guides, who at any moment may go off at 
 a tangent, whose ropes may break on the edge of a preci- 
 pice, and an innocent company may be hurled into space. 
 
 The best teacher is the performer, not the theorist. 
 And that is why I am here to-day, my only excuse for 
 speaking to you being that the Arts have been my study 
 for wellnigh sixty years, and having in that time seen 
 the vicissitudes through which they pass, silly crazes die, 
 senseless innovations and violent anarchy overcome by 
 common sense, I feel in a position to warn you as well as 
 advise you, and, not being a pessimist, to assure you that 
 the noblest in Art, as in everything else, will win finally ; 
 but not unless we make an effort to learn. So before 
 I discourse further I ask, not so much the students, 
 but the general public in this north country, to think 
 about the subject of to-day's ceremony so pre-eminently 
 brought before you, as a sign that Beauty as well as 
 Utility are henceforward to claim an equal share in the 
 training and equipment given and granted by the Arm- 
 
14 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 strong College not only to students but the community. 
 There will be no need presently that English people shall 
 be called ' only a nation of shopkeepers '. The reverse 
 should occur, and England shall not only be, as she was 
 once, in the forefront of every artistic enterprise, but a 
 leader of taste, equal, and let us hope superior, to France 
 or Germany. 
 
 And now, with your permission, I would be allowed 
 to say a few words upon the Arts and Crafts, of their 
 relation to each other, of their refining influences, and 
 also of their relation to Utility. Upon the last, their in- 
 fluence is most desirable, though it may appear to some 
 people unnecessary. But surely it will become so, 
 as every competitor in trades, wherein Beauty must 
 take its place, foreign or our own, becomes more and more 
 enlightened, as general love of Beauty grows and education 
 becomes general and handicrafts again take precedence of 
 machine-made goods — ^their right place ! For however 
 useful machinery may be and is when it deals with utility 
 only, yet when it is claimed to express an emotion of 
 any kind whatever, from the gramophone and pianola 
 to the delicate weaving of threads in patterns, it fails. 
 Machinery is and must ever be cold and lifeless, incapable 
 of conveying a single thrill of pleasure, because it is pro- 
 pelled by ingenuity and not by a spontaneous emotion. 
 As the cult of Beauty displayed by all the Arts and Crafts 
 becomes indispensable, as undoubtedly it is, as education 
 is widened in scope and intention, and that must come 
 perhaps more quickly than the most sanguine imagine, 
 jthe country which produces the most beautiful objects 
 as well as the most useful, which finds the point of agree- 
 ment between two necessities, must win in the final race 
 for precedence. If not, what is the use of education, 
 which should develop all sides of a nation's character ? 
 
ART-TEACHING 15 
 
 And let us hope for and strive that the winner in this 
 inevitable race may be our own country. 
 
 This is true if the doctrine of the survival of the fittest 
 is a correct philosophy, and it does seem to be a law 
 to which history gives credence; anyhow, let it be an 
 optimistic desire and a faith that the fittest has tided over 
 many mistakes, much vulgarity, many vandalisms, 
 ignorance, and perhaps brutaUty. And Beauty, being 
 Truth, is finally revealed. 
 
 Thus it is the very best which should be provided and 
 selected by a university in such a centre of world-wide 
 commerce as Newcastle. 
 
 A very fruitful mistake set going by the attractions 
 it provides, accentuated by an easy-going spirit of com- 
 merciaUsm, is the exaggerated priority which has been 
 ceded to the Art of Painting. The public, dilettanti, and 
 connoisseurs flock to picture galleries too often to the 
 entire neglect of those other two Arts, Architecture and 
 Sculpture. Being more abstract and serenely con- 
 structive, hence less obviously emotional Arts, and so 
 less attractive to the casual observer, being less easy to 
 comprehend for any but serious students. Architecture 
 and Sculpture are but little appreciated in England save 
 by an extremely limited minority. Forgetful probably, 
 perhaps ignorant, of the fact that Architecture and 
 Sculpture have filled a more important role in the history 
 of civilization than Painting has done. 
 
 Majestic conceptions upon immense scales of proportion 
 must inevitably engage the highest powers of intelHgence, 
 the most thoroughly scientific adjustment of matter, of 
 balance, equipoise, and strain is demanded of an architect 
 before his conception can assume definition. Architecture 
 is a Science as well as an Art in which emotion is rendered 
 by Art \mder necessary restrictions ; hence Vitruvius, 
 
i6 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 the thoughtful writer upon that noble Art, tells us its three 
 essentials : the first, the object of its service, ' Necessitas ; ' 
 second, its capacity to stand and endure, * Stabilitas ; ' 
 third, * Venustas,' or the Beauty revealed by proportion 
 and ornament, arrangement, elegance, or grandeur. 
 
 In the study of Architecture those three dicta must 
 always be observed, and in the sequence quoted, when the 
 student is searching for a just estimate of Ancient or 
 Modern, Classic or Gothic Architecture. 
 
 The critical faculty is thus asked, not only to rely on 
 an emotion provided by a first impression, however strong 
 that may be, but to go deeper than that, even into the 
 elements of construction which have produced an instan- 
 taneous thrill to a beholder. 
 
 It is on account of the absolute necessity demanded 
 of the student of Architecture, who would comprehend 
 the elasticity of Beauty under restraint imposed by 
 constructional accuracy that the study of Architecture, 
 which is perhaps the noblest as well as the mistress Art, 
 is so rare even among people who profess to like it. 
 
 To appreciate so subtle an Art which for its excellence 
 must combine so many intellectual and emotional 
 problems, which has retained and conveyed the pleasure 
 of spontaneous generation, implies a labour for the 
 student and amateur to which few appear to submit. 
 
 Hence, Architecture is the least appreciated of the Arts. 
 And that is wrong, because it is the most necessary. 
 
 I have said perhaps the noblest of the Arts ! Why ? 
 Architecture is the least imitative of the formative 
 Arts, the most necessary and comprehensive. It presents 
 the fortress, the cathedral, the palace, and the peasant's 
 hut, and each may be of its kind noble and beautiful. 
 What trees are to a forest, Architecture is to cities. While 
 it is an Art into which the highest emotion must enter, it 
 
ART-TEACHING 17 
 
 is restrained, even governed by physical laws which, if 
 disregarded, produce disaster ; governed, yes, but not 
 dominated by construction. For in the initial the con- 
 ception is abstract, and must be seen by the conceiver and 
 reaHzed as a mental vision first, for it must be that the 
 realization of the intensity of the conception makes the 
 first and most intense appeal to the beholder. 
 
 Thus the degree of appeal, its continuity and abiding- 
 ness through changes of fashion, of necessities, even of 
 Aesthetic outlook, must depend upon the intensity of 
 the designer's first conception, upon the genius of the 
 invention ; it is there where the emotion lies. But that 
 is useless, till the artist, the reasoner, the adapter of his 
 vision to inscrutable laws and demonstrable agencies, 
 having retained his conception, has provided it with the 
 skeleton of construction, every part of which being an 
 integral part proportionate to the whole, with stability 
 which grants endurance to the conception, and with 
 a Beauty, perhaps not entirely demonstrable, but evident 
 to many, if perhaps understood only by a few. 
 
 For no Art, believe me, is easy to understand, even to 
 appreciate. The connoisseur must study, and study hard, 
 that he be permitted to enter into the unexpressed, the 
 caverns of possibilities which the artist has explored, and 
 whose most beautiful and hidden treasures can only be 
 suggested to an intelligent sensitive hearer or onlooker. 
 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter ; 
 and here may I venture to express a hope that the study 
 of Architecture may take a prominent place in the 
 curriculum of the new Schools, and not only for those 
 who would be experts, but in general training as an Art 
 of which no one should be ignorant. 
 
 As Music so is Architecture, an emotion clothed in 
 Science. An emotion in which Mathematics have a place, 
 
 c 
 
i8 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 which must be restrained to be intense, never to pass 
 from control of laws which bind emotion, not in grips of 
 iron, but by gentle embrace of sanity, wisdom, and sweet 
 reasonableness. 
 
 The subject is so interesting, I would pursue it ; enough 
 now, if I have set you thinking, and you will fill in my gaps. 
 
 The intellectual side, which must ever play a part in 
 Fine Art, transcending inconsidered emotion, it is the 
 fashion in certain circles where criticism has grown 
 degenerate to condemn. Egotism and Anarchy, the 
 natural children of Vanity and Ostentation, may prevail 
 for a while, but, being ephemeral, will give way before 
 good sense, without which no Art can be great ! One 
 looks to a university to check by scholarship the progress 
 of unbalanced experiments without imprisoning advance 
 in sane and justifiable directions. Some experiments are 
 evidently sane, those that are not must be repudiated as 
 unproductive ! The next in the sequence of the forma- 
 tive Arts is Sculpture, on which I offer a few thoughts. 
 Very little understood, very little appreciated in this 
 country as yet ; partly due to an ungenial climate and to 
 prejudice against the presentment of nude form, inherited, 
 I suppose, from the Puritans. Partly due to the fact that 
 trivial, meretricious hysterics, possible, though of course 
 undesirable in the painter's Art, make a sorry spectacle in 
 marble, bronze, and stone. The meretricious public will 
 find no gratification for jaded appetites and hypnotized 
 self-indulgence in the sublime restrictions imposed by his 
 material on the sculptor. These constitute his guardian 
 angels. 
 
 Hence for the intoxicated emotion hunter Mistress 
 Sculpture is too severe a matron, too pure a virgin; hers 
 is too virile an Art for Aesthetic dram drinkers. 
 
 Sculpture is not a popular Art, but it should be so. 
 
ART-TEACHING 19 
 
 Like Architecture, it must be intellectual, reasonable, 
 sublime, and moniunental, not ephemeral or subject to 
 fashion. It must be nurtured by restraint rather than 
 impelled by mobility, by severity rather than license, 
 telling of eternal truths, not of experiments in poisonous 
 emotions. The Genius of Sculpture is austere not pretty; 
 grave not hilarious, pure not sensual. The Greeks knew 
 that and we almost adore their works. 
 
 It is an Art strongly allied to Scholarship, deeply 
 connected with Religion, intensely anthropomorphic, and 
 being bound up in the volumes of History, is a fitting 
 subject in the curriculum of a university. 
 
 But apart from all association Sculpture presents 
 ' enduring emotions created from pure form disallied from 
 accident or hysterical fads. The appeal it makes is to our 
 higher sensibilities and nobler reason. The materials 
 in its service are unbending, clumsy even ; in sentimental 
 hands it is stubborn to obey, fractious in revolt. 
 
 Allied with Architecture, Sculpture best fulfils her 
 mission. She is not a solitary matron. She is best 
 enthroned in arcades, among columns, in niches; her 
 proper place is among man's rather than God's works. 
 She is fittest when protected from the fury of elements 
 alien to her serenity as to her intellectual and mature 
 Beauty. Still, she may take her place in glades, in 
 artificial gardens and sylvan ingenuities, in a region of 
 conscious Art, almost artifice, rather than among uncon- 
 scious natural growth. Even so placed Sculpture must 
 conform more to a symbol, perhaps a little stiff and archaic, 
 than to flamboyant naturalism. 
 
 So seen, Sculpture will appear as a sonnet or an ode 
 of Horace reads ; it may be a lovely artificial page in the 
 history of emotion, not detached from but bound up 
 with it. Sculpture should never resign Serenity. 
 
20 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 Not Sculpture only but Painting also realizes its 
 highest mission under the restraints of architectural 
 surroundings. 
 
 She also is noblest under the curb. The fact being 
 that the divorce of the three Arts weakens each in 
 exhibition of immortal themes and epic associations. 
 But this is a big question which I must leave to your 
 professors to explain to you in detail. 
 
 A few words on ' Fitness ' or adaptability of design to 
 materials, and materials to design, and I shall finish what 
 is, I fear, a somewhat discursive address. 
 
 The use of steel in construction, both as a skeleton 
 and as a material presenting its own potentialities, is 
 likely to become more general, more than likely, it is 
 certain. It is not possible to prophesy to what extent 
 steel construction may, anyhow for a time, surmount 
 stone and wood. I do not pretend for one moment to 
 like the use or the result of it as far as experiment has yet 
 been applied. But that is not the question, which is, 
 should we not prepare ourselves and discover what steel 
 can and cannot do ? 
 
 It is not difficult to mask its construction, to hide it 
 under mediaeval or classic shams, but doing so gets us 
 no nearer either to the restrictions its use imposes, or 
 to the results which may or may not be produced by 
 a frank admission of it as a material that will answer 
 to Aesthetic demands, i. e. what is beautiful plus what 
 is useful and perchance economical. 
 
 In my opinion, and I give it for what it is worth, steel 
 is a material which has in it somewhere and somehow 
 great though different possibilities of Beauty to those of 
 wood and stone. Perhaps a new Beauty, one to which 
 we shall have to get accustomed, but which, and this I 
 believe to be a certainty, will never be attained by any 
 
ART-TEACHING 21 
 
 imitation of construction or ornament which essentially 
 belong to other materials. 
 
 The only chance of finding what is at present a hidden 
 Beauty is to face the matter boldly, and accept the 
 material frankly, letting us see it wholly undisguised ! 
 
 No cast metal is, and never can be, so satisfjdng 
 to the eye as wrought metal. It induces constant 
 repetition of stereotyped forms and ornament. Orna- 
 ment screwed on, of a stereotyped pattern, can never be 
 interesting, because all ornament should grow out of 
 construction and not be applied ; anyhow I have never 
 seen it look satisfactory, more often its appearance is 
 ridiculous, and obviously there for no real purpose either 
 constructive or ornamental in the true sense. The first 
 thing then to do is to abjure ornament altogether and 
 trust to stability and proportion to attain a logical 
 perhaps beautiful end ! 
 
 Out of perfect adaptability of means to an end a pleasant 
 effect may be granted to the eye, but when we discuss 
 Beauty we are in quite another region. 
 
 For the production of Beauty the emotion must be 
 complete, ingenuity may do much, strains and counter- 
 strains may all be working in order together and simul- 
 taneously, but as we saw in the case of the eye, the ear, 
 nose, and mouth, it does not follow that Beauty has been 
 produced, and Beauty is necessary if complete satisfaction 
 is to be obtained. It may of course be that steel con- 
 struction, if unmasked by a single sham, gives pleasure 
 to the eye of a critical and trained expert. The pleasure, 
 however, to him is that difficulties have been overcome by 
 technical adjustment and haVe been ingeniously solved. 
 But the question of Beauty does not reside there at all. 
 It resides in the emotions of the designer, not on his calcu- 
 lations. It remains to be proved if such an emotion, 
 
22 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 
 an initial emotion, is possible to the engineer ; it may be, 
 but who has ever seen the outcome of it ? 
 
 So the problem remains and has to be met, how in their 
 bare state, nude state, iron and steel buildings are to 
 be made acceptable as stone, wood, and marble are ? 
 
 I can see no reason against it. The word impossible 
 should never come into an enterprise. This problem 
 seems essentially to ask for solution in this northern part 
 of England, and it seems to be one which the Armstrong 
 College might take up as a Science and-, may I say, as an Art 
 also. Adapting the words quoted from Vitruvius, ' Utilitas,' 
 ' Stabilitas,' ' Venustas,' it is a big and a worthy one, 
 which if solved would be most momentous and honourable. 
 It would go a long way to solve the question of Beauty 
 conjoined with Utility, out of which something of a new 
 form of Art might rise up ! 
 
 There are many other questions on which, did time 
 permit me, I should like to address you now. 
 
 The masters of the various crafts taught in the college 
 will supply what I would have said. And to them I offer 
 one text of common sense. 
 
 Teach your pupils to work in a material, not design 
 for it, because until they have worked in a material they 
 cannot be aware of either its capabilities or limitations. 
 And never imitate in one material what has been done in 
 another. Teach nothing you cannot perform. 
 
 And now, before making my bow, I thank you for your 
 attention, and express my ardent hopes for the success of 
 the Armstrong College, not only in the enterprise initiated 
 to-day but for every one in the future. 
 
 It is only natural that I take particular interest in that 
 part of education which deals with Art and Aesthetics, 
 not as exotics but as indispensable to a nation's growth, 
 progress, and greatness. 
 
ART-TEACHING 23 
 
 And when I remind you that our acquaintance with 
 some of the most important pages of history has been 
 built up on the discovered remains of antiquity from 
 Babylonia to Greece and Italy, France and our own 
 England, where Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, 
 and Literature in all branches, poetry and prose, epic and 
 lyric, critical and conjectural have excelled, you will not 
 accuse me of partisanship or exaggeration if my closing 
 words are : if Science holds physical rule, Art may be said 
 to represent the heart of man and present eternal longings 
 for perpetuation and revelation of Beauty ; feelings which 
 are as much a part of us as our physical appetites, but 
 with this distinction, they are nobler and more Godlike. 
 
 «• • • • , 
 •«• • • • ' 
 • •••••• 
 
OXFORD-; HORACE HART 
 'fftlNT&fe T.O THE UNIVERSITY 
 
V-H. 
 
 
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