Depreciation and Discovery
Punch's virtual conversion to the principles of Pre-Raphaelitism has already been noted, and the alliance was confirmed by the enterprise of his publishers in connexion with Once a Week, to which Millais, Sandys, and Rossetti were regular contributors. So we are not surprised to find his criticisms of the Royal Academy growing in frankness and even hostility during the early years of the period now under review. In June, 1858, he complains of the monotony of the subjects chosen for treatment at the annual show—endless portraits of a lady or gentleman; Tom Jones and Sophia; Sancho Panza and the Duchess; Moses and the Spectacles; Sir Roger de Coverley; Bruce and the Spider. To the same year belongs his protest against the patronage of foreign sculptors à propos of the Wellington Memorial Competition. But the point of his criticism is rather blunted by his failure to acknowledge the merits of native genius, as represented by Alfred Stevens, that "rare artist, too little recognized and revered," as a modern writer has truthfully described him. Punch refers to his design, but misspells his name "Stephens," and evidently saw nothing uncommon in his work. Against this lapse may be set the evidence of a true flair two years later. Amid a wilderness of mediocrities Punch finds an oasis or two at the Academy Exhibition of 1860. The names of most of the exhibitors are forgotten, but there is one notable exception:—
One would have expected Mr. Whistler's talents to have been developed on the flute rather than At the Piano (598). Nevertheless the painting of that title shows genius. The tone which he has produced from his piano is admirable, and he has struck on it a chord of colour which will, I hope, find an echo in his future works.
THE GREAT EXHIBITION
Sarah Jane: "Lawks! Why, it's hexact like our Hemmer!"
In 1861 the practice of holding "single picture" shows, charging for the privilege of beholding one canvas the price of a whole exhibition, comes in for semi-serious rebuke at the hands of an income-tax payer. But there was another evil against which Punch inveighed with positive ferocity in the tirade provoked by the Academy Banquet of 1862. The Royal Academy was not merely "mean in its local habitation" (the present exhibition rooms were not built till 1866), it was mean all through:—
Mean in its spirit, its schools, in the quality of the Art it has most fostered and engendered, mean in the self-seeking spirit of its rules of exhibition; mean in its treatment of the greatest men who have belonged to it, and still more, of the painters outside its pale; mean in the cliques which divide its own ranks, and the jealousies which distract its councils.
But it reaches the climax of its meanness once a year—at its Annual Dinner—and at this year's dinner it has capped the climax of meanness reached by all the dinners of all the years since first the Academy dined together.
This Academy Dinner is like the banquet which the poor lunatic, whose story is told by Sir Walter Scott, used to be set down to every day in his cell at the asylum. He fancied his table spread with a magnificent dinner of three courses, and ate of this imaginary feast with great gusto; but "somehow" he used to whisper to his visitors, "everything tastes of porridge." So at the Academy dinner everything tastes of toads.
The R.A. Banquet