CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Imitation as a fine art—Economic substitution—European imitativeness—Parallels in English craftsmanship—Early plating—Silver platers at Sheffield.
Imitation is no new thing in art. Indeed it may be advanced as an axiom that no art worthy of the name has ever come into being without inheriting the traditions and technique of some preceding motifs. Bizarre movements have at one time and another seized artists and craftsmen, they have become anarchist in regard to all previous art postulates, and produced somewhat chaotic and formless results. The fantastic jazz in art circles known as L'Art Nouveau some years ago, temporarily upset the balance of the younger generation of designers, spent its force in unchecked licence, and ended so ignominiously that it is now entirely forgotten, nor has it left any permanent impression upon succeeding schools.
Now and again imitation has been resorted to by well-known masters to flagellate the taste of their own day. Embittered by constant praise of old works they have made imitations of old masters' styles and foisted them on their critics until at such moment they divulged their authorship and pricked the bubble of the undue adoration of the ancients. Pierre Mignard fabricated a Magdalen and through the complicity of a dealer it was sold as a newly discovered Guido to the Chevalier de Clairville. Presently it was noised about that the painting was by Mignard. Le Brun, the great painter, pronounced it to be a Guido and in his best manner. The jest had gone far enough, the owner, Mignard, Le Brun, and the critics met to settle the affair. Le Brun and the critics adhered to their belief in its authenticity. Mignard protested otherwise, and said he had painted the work over the portrait of a cardinal, and as proof dipped a brush in oil and disclosed the cardinal's hat. Le Brun, bursting with anger, satirically exclaimed, "Always paint Guido but never Mignard." But the canvases of Mignard and Le Brun both hang together in the leading galleries of Europe.
Nor is this a solitary instance of the pique of artists for lack of discernment in contemporary criticism. Goltzius, that masterly exponent of strongly graved lines on the copper, produced and published six prints in the style of Albert Dürer, Lucas van Leyden and others, and one, the Circumcision, was sold as one of Dürer's finest achievements. These six engravings of Goltzius are known among his work as the "masterpieces." They are certainly masterly imitations, and he executed them to show his critics that though his was a new style, yet he could if he chose slavishly follow the manner of the old masters. These are instances of imitation used ironically as a weapon to pour scorn on the mediocrity and want of knowledge of critics.
In pictures there have been whole generations of imitators and copyists. The continent in the eighteenth century was flooded with sham Correggios, Claudes, Poussins, and Cuyps, and many English painters, afterwards well known, did not disdain to make copies for the dealers of old masters' pictures. David Allan, called the "Scottish Hogarth," was an adept in copying chalk drawings from the old masters; and many artists eked out a pitiable existence as copyists while waiting for the public to acclaim their original work. John Jackson copied the head of Reynolds for Chantrey which could have passed for the original by Sir Joshua. A Rubens he painted in the presence of the students of the Royal Academy was acclaimed as faithful to the original. He was unequalled in such facsimile imitations. Henry Liverseege, in the early days of the nineteenth century, copied Vandyck, Rubens, and Teniers with such skill that few could say which was the original and which the copy. Two pictures, one by Sir Edwin Landseer, and the other a copy, were to be sold on successive days at auction. The painter, strolling in to the auction room on the day before the copy was sold, mistook it for his own work.
At the galleries of the Fine Art Society, in Bond Street in 1875, an exhibition was held of a series of facsimiles of Turner drawings in the National Gallery lent by Ruskin and executed for him by Mr. Ward. Of these replicas, Ruskin said in a note: "I have given my best attention during upwards of ten years to train a copyist to perfect fidelity in rendering the works of Turner, and have now succeeded in enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas—facsimiles which I must sign with my own name to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes."
Economic Substitution.—But imitation has many phases. Modern photography in copying the great works of old masters has made it possible to study their works with exactitude in the dimensions of black and white, and if the work is an etching or an engraving the reproduction claims a closer relationship with the original. The art of engraving from painters' work is imitative to the extent that it depicts the same subject and takes its initial inspiration from the painted canvas. But it claims a much higher regard—the great school of interpretative engravers translated painting into terms of black and white.
Economically, therefore, it will be seen that there is a real reason why imitative art, on whatever plane it finds itself, should hold its place. In a broad sense it has had a mission. It is true, as Goethe said, that "There are many echoes but few voices"; but the echoes have their value too until they reverberate into nothingness and new voices arise. As a substitute, therefore, for unattainable works of art any medium that will so successfully simulate the original as to convey the lines and the grace, the colour and the harmony, though in a lesser degree than the original, is to be welcomed for its own sake.