LECTURE V.
ON THE MODERN SCHOOLS OF EUROPE.
My first lecture of the present course will be devoted to a kind of review of the various painting schools of modern Europe. As one of the jurors at the Paris International Exhibition, I had a rare opportunity of comparing one school with another, and I think that a lecture embracing the conclusions I came to, may be more interesting to you, and possibly more instructive, than a discourse on the works of the old masters.
National schools of art can at this present time hardly be said to exist, at least not in the sense in which they existed 300 years ago. In those times the attributes and characteristics of each school were sharply defined. The Roman, the Venetian, the Spanish, the German, and the Flemish, were as distinct in character as it was possible to be. Now, however, the national characteristics are very slight, and in many countries there seem to me to be none. The French and the German are the two great Continental schools from which the others spring. England, Austria, Spain, and perhaps Holland, have certain features of their own; that is, speaking generally, one would know an English, Austrian, Spanish, or Dutch picture at once.
The Scandinavian and Danish schools are feeble offshoots of the German.
The Belgian is a vigorous branch of the French, and the Swiss is a less robust child of the same parent.
The Italian seems to me to be a mixture of French and Spanish, with a little of the old Italian element surviving. By the old Italian element I do not mean a reminiscence of Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, or Titian, but rather of Carlo Dolce or Sassoferrato.
Russian and especially American art are of a nondescript character, and the reasons are sufficiently obvious.
A young American or Russian artist goes to Paris or Rome, and puts himself to school under a certain master. After a time he will paint pictures more or less like his master’s; he will exhibit them, and may get rewards and medals for them; but he can hardly be called a representative of the American or Russian school. No American thinks of studying art in New York or Boston, and no Russian artist dreams of finishing his artistic education in St. Petersburg or Moscow. There can, therefore, be no American or Russian school properly so called.
I shall begin my lecture with a few words about our noble selves. I will give you rather the opinion of the best French artists than my own. As this opinion was expressed with perfect sincerity, and came from competent and independent judges, I think we may derive a lesson from it.
It has, I know, often been remarked that French artists appreciate best whatever is most unlike their own work, and it was a feeling of this kind which consoled the Belgians for the favor with which the English galleries were regarded. I confess that there is a good deal of truth in the remark.