It is only necessary to compare the Irish Nationalist represented—at the best, it is true—by Justin McCarthy with the Irish Nationalist represented to-day by “President” de Valera in order to realise the mischief wrought rather by levity than ill intent. The impotence of the Nationalist Party in the Nineties made it a negligible ally and a negligible enemy, and both English Parties hastened to forget that there was an Irish question. Thus the opportunity of a settlement in the absence of agitation passed, and when, with restored Irish unity, a new demand arose, the atmosphere was in the nature of things unfavourable to statesmanlike handling. The “Union of Hearts,” had it been a real thing, might well have worked a cure for Irish ills. Being in the main an unreal thing, it but added to Irish embitterment. And to-day we know the greatness of our gain.
CHAPTER XXV
LORD LEIGHTON AND G. F. WATTS
The Nineties were rich in painters of all kinds. People bought pictures then, and all sorts of pictures; in those days of still happy and careless barbarism there was no veto on any school, and one could hang things of almost any school in almost any surroundings. The influence of the Prince Consort was not altogether dead, and people unashamedly admired the picture with a story, as well as the portrait with a likeness. So the older-school painters were still for the most part extremely comfortable. Herkomer and the other standard portrait painters covered acres of canvas annually; Alma-Tadema brought yearly an extra polish to his marbles; the silver birch of MacWhirter put forth fresh leaves every spring; “Derby Day” Frith survived, and even did some little work, to remind the world of the brave days of victorious sentimentalism; at Christie’s, Goodall, Maclise, and Landseer still won the dealers’ respect; J. C. Horsley, protesting against the nude, was only mildly laughed at as “Clothes-Horsley.” Millais, cured of his pre-Raphaelite enthusiasms, was now more of the old gang than the new. But Mr. Sargent, the Sandow of the brush, proved that the public was by no means illiberal; it was just as much pleased to be artistically hit between the eyes as to be tickled. Whistler, still unaccountably reckoned by many a mere fop—so strong was the influence of a Ruskin yet in the flesh—was busy making cloudy masterpieces and clear-cut enmities, and a whole school of morbidity danced in grisly sort round the early tomb of Beardsley.
LORD LEIGHTON.
(From a portrait by J. McLure Hamilton.)
If among all the considerable painters of the Nineties I distinguish Leighton and Watts, it is not because I think them possessed of the greatest talents, or even the most interesting personalities, but because they seem between them to represent rather specially what sharply marked off the art then passing away from what has taken its place. Both were very much of the nineteenth century in the largeness of their ideas and their sense of the importance of their mission. In many ways there could have been no two men, and no two craftsmen, more distinct. Both were picturesque and stately figures. Both had features cast in the noblest mould; the grand-ducal geniality of Leighton was not less impressive in its kind than the frozen though gentle austerity of Watts. In any circle each took quite naturally a commanding position—Leighton as a kind of king, Watts as a kind of priest. Each was at bottom shy, though both were immovable in their opinions in any company. But spiritually they were so utterly unlike that the one served as a foil to the other. When they were together—they were early friends, and the friendship lasted till the end of Leighton’s life—they might have served as models for an allegory after Watts’s own heart. Leighton was the epicurean, Watts the stoic. Leighton represented the world at its gracefullest, Watts the travail of the spirit. Of Leighton it might be said that he would have been a better painter could he have thought of something really worth painting. It may certainly be said of Watts that he was at his best when he was under no obligation to decide what was worth painting. His painfully meditated allegories might now be spared without too considerable a pang; his portraits, simply as documents of the time, could not. But, strongly as they differed in other ways, both men illustrated in a remarkable degree the curious seriousness and arrogance characteristic of the Victorians. Leighton conceived that the painter should be very much of the gentleman. Watts conceived that the painter should be very much of the preacher. Neither felt that he had any affinity to the workman. When I say seriousness, I do not mean that either was a prig; I only mean that each had a profound conviction that the painting of easel pictures is an immensely important thing, whereas the painter of to-day of anything like equal stature would be the first to say that, while he paints easel pictures for a living, they are about as important as chocolates, cigars, liqueurs, circulating library novels, and vintage wines—things, that is to say, to titillate individuals rich enough to afford them. When I say arrogance, again, I do not mean that they were vulgarly conceited: Watts revealed a beautiful humility, and Leighton was always bemoaning his inadequacy. But both were full of the notion that the artist is in the world to teach something, if it is only deportment, and should be respected as a teacher. Both would have rebelled against the suggestion that the artist is a workman, and that it is his sole business, as it is any workman’s, to make the best use of his material.
It is not to the present purpose to adjudicate between the didactic and the ultra-technical ideas of art; the question, moreover, is by no means so simple as many of the controversialists have made it; no Victorian was ever fool enough to believe that bad technique was excused by good ethics, and it may be doubted whether any sane person on the other side ever believed—though some apparently sane persons have occasionally said—that technique is an end in itself. Grant that a painter has essentially the same problem, and is essentially the same kind of craftsman, as the bricklayer; grant that ethical painting is as absurd as ethical bricklaying, we are still far from admitting the wilder developments of “art for art’s sake.” The bricklayer’s business, after all, is to build houses for men and styes for pigs, and not simply to play the wizard—or the fool—with his material out of mere joy in his dexterity. So the painter, too, has a task to perform, and if he does not perform it, if he leaves unachieved the main and obvious purpose, then he has failed, whatever incidental miracles he may have performed. The difference between the Victorians and their successors is not to be measured by the stupidest of one age and the maddest of the other. Yet the difference is there, it is really considerable, and it is, I think, in the main the difference between the first and second generation of agnosticism.