Although, however, there are so few artists who object to having their pictures caricatured, there is, of course, another side to the question. It is indeed most true that nothing kills like ridicule, and in the course of my experience I have found it is just as easy unconsciously to inflict an injury with my pen and Indian ink as it is to do good. Let us suppose, for instance, that a great painter has just finished a very sentimental work—a picture so brimful of beauty and pathos that it appeals to everybody, myself included. As I stand before it, and admire, it is impossible perhaps for me to restrain a sympathetic tear from making its appearance in, at all events, one of my eyes. But how about the other? Ah! with regard to that other eye, I must confess it is very differently employed, and, superior to my control, is searching the canvas high and low for that "something ridiculous" which, except in the case of the very greatest masters, is always there. Now what ensues? The purchaser of that picture, who, mark you, unlike myself, regarded it and admired it with both of his eyes, congratulates himself upon its acquisition. I have known it for a fact, however—to my regret—that after the publication of the caricature the purchaser was never able to look at his picture again through his own glasses, and bitterly regretted his outlay.
THE GREAT BACCARAT CASE. MY SKETCH IN PENCIL MADE IN COURT, AND CONGRATULATORY NOTE FROM THE EDITOR OF PUNCH.
An art publisher with whom I was acquainted agreed to pay a heavy sum for the copyright of a work of a well-known and popular painter, and after the caricature had appeared in Punch he resolved to forego the publication of the engraving from it by which he had hoped to recoup his expenditure, because he considered that the sobriety of the work was so completely destroyed as to preclude the possibility of sale; and an eminent sculptor, who was responsible for a well-known statue which I caricatured some years ago when it appeared in the Royal Academy, has told me, since it was put up in the Metropolis, that he has actually meditated replacing it by another piece, owing to the ludicrous suggestion affixed to it.
On the other hand, the caricature of an important work is sometimes received in the proper spirit. Here is a letter from Professor Herkomer, with reference to my caricature of the work of our greatest art genius, Alfred Gilbert, R.A.:
Of course, the caricaturing of pictures has its seamy as well as its smooth side. Among the annoyances to which an artist engaged on this description of work is exposed I am inclined to give a prominent place to the fussy and vexatious regulations imposed upon him by the authorities at Burlington House. One would have supposed, for instance, that anyone like myself, who is well-known as merely taking notes for caricature, would have been allowed to consult his own convenience to some extent in making his sketches. But not a bit of it. The penalty is something too dreadful if you are found making the slightest note of a picture at the Royal Academy at any other time than on the one appointed day. The object of this regulation is, of course, to protect the copyright of the pictures—a very proper and legitimate precaution; but I submit that a better instance of the spirit of Red Tapeism which is so rampant at Burlington House, and which I am always endeavouring to expose, could not be adduced than the inability of the officials to discriminate between the accredited representative of a paper and the piratical sketcher who is taking notes for an illegitimate purpose. I need hardly say that this regulation is peculiar to the Royal Academy. At the Grosvenor Gallery, which, alas! is no more, the officials about the place understood these matters better, and at all times were pleased to give every facility to the representative of the Press. The polite secretary would give up his chair to me any day I liked to look in, and would often point out to me some comical feature in the surrounding canvases which his sly humour had detected.