A story is told of a late Bishop of Peterborough, to the effect that at a public dinner he said that he once bought a picture of a sunset on a river, which he hung in his study; it was a bad picture, but it had a beautiful influence over him, and he confessed that when he looked at the picture "a curate might play with him."
FAITH.
(By Alfred Drury.)
The Bishop without doubt knew a good work of art when he saw one, and his knowledge informed him that technically his "sunset on a river" was bad; but it appealed to his sentiment and occupied its place on the study wall in spite of its defects. In this respect, most people are with the Bishop; it is not so much the quality of a work of art that makes it popular, but the particular strain of sentiment it contains that touches a responsive chord in the hearts of those who look at it. The English public are sentimentalists first and foremost in art, and the artist who receives the greatest acclamation is he who is most skilful in this direction. And if this is so in respect to painting, how much more so is it with regard to sculpture. Public enthusiasm is rarely roused by the sculptor's art. Next to the architectural room at the Royal Academy, the sculpture hall is the least frequented, and we fear it must be said that the majority of those who do go there go because it is the coolest place in the exhibition.
This, of course, is matter for regret, for there are as ennobling and inspiriting works of art to be seen there as in the picture galleries. The sculptor has the power to appeal to our ideals and aspirations to as great an extent as the painter, limited though he be by his materials. (It can at once be realised that the worker in marble has not the same freedom as he who uses paint and canvas—he has greater difficulties to surmount, less subjects to choose from, and far narrower scope in which to express his thoughts.) We have had "sermons in stones" which have been quite as powerful as any preached by painter or poet.
The classical tradition has undoubtedly affected the sculptor more than it has his brother-artist of the brush; it has weighed him down, and made his work cold and lifeless; and men and women of to-day want art that is living, helpful in their daily straggles, responsive to those aspirations which every one of them possesses in a measure. As a distinguished member of the Royal Academy, now dead, once wrote, "We have aspirations, we reverence something more than the ordinary life of mortals; we have before our eyes an ideal of truthfulness, piety, honour, uprightness, love, and self-sacrifice greater than any which exists on earth." To appeal to these emotions by a beautiful and living art should be the object of our artists, and those who do can be sure of receiving the approval and the gratitude of the toilers of the world. This has been proved over and over again by the votes taken at Canon Barnett's picture exhibitions as to the most popular works shown, when men like Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., and the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones have been first favourites. And this probably accounts in a measure for the public indifference to works of sculpture. The sculptor has for the most part neglected subjects which appeal to the hearts of the people of his day, and based his work on classic models and precepts.
In saying this we do not in any wise belittle the great works of the past. It is impossible to look on the mighty works of the ancient Egyptian workers in stone without feeling the sense of awe which the people of those days must have experienced—and were intended to experience—when gazing upon them. Mystery is the keynote of Egyptian sculpture, mystery deep and unfathomable. Look upon those inscrutable, gigantic faces in the British Museum; coldly inhuman; giants of stone, indifferent to the passions which pulsate in the human breast. Mighty works indeed—parables impossible of interpretation!
Look, too, at the works in the Assyrian galleries of the same collection. Marvellous of execution, they again draw forth admiration for the skill of their creators, for their dexterous records of the life of those far-off days, for the massive and imposing decorativeness of the semi-human lions and bulls. And then, coming down the ages, consider the beauty of form of the works of the sculptors of classic days; the wondrous productions of the Greeks, the perfection of line and grace of these representations in stone of the "human form divine." Masterpieces of the world which will never be excelled as works of art, they, nevertheless, do not appeal to the hearts of the people, and in adhering to the style of ancient Greece our sculptors have themselves to blame for the lack of popular sympathy.