English painting is so unlike French that there can be no direct rivalry between the two schools, whereas in Belgian work the rivalry is unpleasantly close.
I may, perhaps, be allowed to add, that for the same reason those English painters who approximate most to the French school were precisely those who were the least appreciated. Novelty has a great charm, particularly to a Frenchman. If you ask a Parisian to dinner and wish to please him, do not give him delicate little French dishes, with light claret to drink. Give him half a codfish followed by a sirloin of beef, with plenty of bitter ale to wash it down with, and he will bless you and afterward cherish the memory of these alimens vraiment Britanniques.
Novelty of treatment was, however, certainly not the only reason of the success of the English school.
In the first place, it was noticed that there was a certain refinement and elegance about the English galleries which was very pleasant to the jaded juror who had just been wading through long rows of coarse imitations of French art.
The English school was thought very highly of not on account of its color, still less on account of its drawing, but chiefly for the sake of the refined thought and invention shown in some of the pictures.
Then, again, in some cases, the novelty of the mode of execution, or the delicacy of the color, pleased our foreign judges; but I am quite sure that the popularity which English art has undoubtedly gained in Paris is due more to our brains than to our brushes.
The remarks and criticisms I heard in Paris all tend to confirm the opinion I have often expressed about the importance of originality in painting; of every artist, in short, thinking out his subject for himself, with nature as his only guide. Of course, novelty of treatment, unless combined with truth, is valueless. It would not be difficult to mention some novelties about which the remarks of my French friends would be the reverse of complimentary.
The first quality in the pictorial rendering of a subject must be truth, the second novelty or originality, and the third feeling or poetry. Where these three qualities are combined in a picture, it will more than hold its own in the eyes of competent judges against works far more brilliantly executed.
It must not, however, be supposed that foreign artists were delighted with all they saw in the British galleries. Our old faults—namely, indifferent drawing, and feeble, scratchy execution—were often noticed, but were not nearly so prominent as twenty-three years ago. I have no doubt we have improved in these respects, but I also think that our foreign judges are apt to be much more lenient than of old as regards drawing.
Their own drawing is not what it used to be in the days of Ingres and Flandrin. They have acquired other qualities, but they seem to me to have lost the art of expressing beautiful form. Of course, in my remarks to-night I shall speak of the general tendency of the schools. In every school there are exceptions to the rule, and amongst the French painters of the day there are at least one or two striking exceptions to the general decline of drawing power.