All this is what I call good training. It is honest, conscientious work, and it is this which tells favorably on a school, rather than Manchester patronage or Oxford æsthetics.
I would observe, in conclusion, that in the appointment of our new President we have another cause for self-congratulation. It would be out of place here for me to dwell on all his qualifications for the important post he fills, but I should not like my first lecture under his presidency to pass without expressing my thorough satisfaction with the choice we have made. To say more would probably be unpleasant to him, to have said less would have been unpleasant to me.
I may, however, point out that the progress of the English school of art does by no means rest with the President of the Royal Academy (however excellent he may be); it depends on the individual exertion of every member of the profession, from the President down to the probationer who seeks admission to the schools. Let us all do our best to produce careful, honest, and original work, and I have no doubt of the result.
LECTURE VI
ON DRAWING.
Drawing is the backbone of all great work, and it is an art which, if neglected when you are young, does not appear ever to be acquired in after-life.
Most artists improve in color, and particularly in execution, as they get older, but in drawing they seldom acquire greater correctness. They acquire facility, but not accuracy. It is, therefore, of the highest importance that all students should carry out their studies in drawing as far as they possibly can whilst they are young. I am not speaking of their chalk studies alone, but also of their painted studies.
It often happens that as soon as a student gets a palette on his thumb, he considers himself completely emancipated from all the trammels of correct drawing, and after sketching his figure with a few hasty strokes of charcoal or red chalk, he smears on his color at once. I have known some who would not condescend to make any preliminary outline at all, but went in for drawing with the brush.
I can quite understand that when you first begin painting, the novelty of the material and the difficulties of color should prevent your drawing with the same precision and firmness as you would with charcoal and chalk; but when these difficulties are overcome, you should endeavor to return to your former precision. It is very difficult, when once a slovenly habit of drawing has been contracted, to return to accuracy; but nevertheless it is possible.
The fact is, that an artist, to excel as a draughtsman, should consider himself a student all his life.
The school of painting ought to be the school of drawing in color, and no student ought to be allowed to color a badly drawn figure or head. This was always the rule, not only in Delaroche’s School, but in all the ateliers of his contemporaries; and as more than half the present members of the Institute were students in these schools, the system cannot have been a bad one.