Indeed, the better the painting, the more one regrets that so much good work should be spent on so trivial an incident.
Before proceeding to what I have to say about the choice of a subject, I would impress upon you that I only profess to give you my own opinions.
If any student or young artist has a great fancy for a certain subject, the probability is that he will treat it better than he would one less congenial to him, and I should be very sorry to dissuade him from it. Indeed, I should be much pleased to find that he had a subject at all. If there is a rock ahead for the English school, it is a tendency to shirk the difficulties of composition.
Pictures representing single figures (mere models dressed up as men-at-arms, milk-maids, or Highland lassies) are much commoner now than they used to be. Of course, in the minor exhibitions of London one expects to find plenty of work of this class, but the preponderance of these subjectless figure-pictures is becoming very marked even at the Academy; and as lecturer on painting, I should be neglecting my duty if I failed to notice it. It may be that these pictures pay, but art is not a trade; and even from a commercial point of view, I would suggest that there is such a thing as over-stocking the market.
The whole domain of history, both sacred and profane, is open to the artist, besides which there are innumerable subjects which are not strictly historical, but are suggested by history. Finally, to those who prefer illustrating the poets, there are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and a whole host of more modern writers. Surely in such a vast quarry it cannot be difficult to dig out good subjects suitable to every mind. Many subjects are too hastily rejected because they have already been painted; when probably a new reading is very possible, or by slightly altering the moment chosen, the subject assumes another aspect.
In a former lecture I mentioned, as a familiar instance, the parable of the good Samaritan. Here is a trite and hackneyed subject enough. Every one has painted it, and yet it would be very possible, by altering the moment depicted, to give a new version of it.
Take the moment when the good Samaritan intrusts the wounded traveller to the care of the innkeeper, and leaves him money, adding that whatever more he may spend will be repaid him; and you have a capital subject, which has never, to my knowledge, been painted. Again, imagine the return of the Samaritan after a few days’ absence, and the gratitude of the injured man, now nearly restored to health, and you have another first-rate subject.
As an extreme example, take the “Holy Family.” How often has this subject been painted! Raffaelle alone painted it over thirty times, and I should think that there are at least a thousand original Holy Families in existence; and yet the subject seems to me as fresh as ever. The reason of this is, because it embodies the purest form of maternal love in the same way that the good Samaritan illustrates human kindness.
Maternal love and humanity are many-sided, and hence the subjects which illustrate them will be many-sided too.
Some artists shrink from taking known subjects from a laudable modesty. They could not think of entering into rivalry with Raffaelle or André del Sarto.