It may be said of all modern art in whatever land we follow its story, that its master currents flow in the direction of portrait and landscape, and it was in these twin streams that the English school, when a century later it came into being, was destined to prove its acknowledged supremacy. But the realistic spirit which from the first had stamped itself upon the great Venetians, even at a period when they seemed to be labouring wholly or mainly in the service of religion, had gathered in its passage towards our shores yet another impulse, which found its first expression in the art of the Low Countries.
Of the painting of genre—that art which dwells lovingly upon the illustration of the social manners of the time—there is already a hint even in Venice itself; but it was in Holland that it first claimed a separate and secure existence; and it was to the examples in this kind, perfected by the Dutch masters, that we owe the achievement of the great painter who may be claimed as the founder of the modern English school. That school may be said, indeed, to date from the birth of William Hogarth. English painters—not a few—had practised before his time, but their work only followed, without rivalling, that of foreign contemporaries under whose influence they laboured. Hogarth was the first who by the independence of his genius gave the seal and stamp of national character to the pictorial illustration of the manners of his age. It was the fashion at one time to dwell almost exclusively upon Hogarth’s qualities as a satirist, to the neglect of those more enduring claims which are now conceded to him as a great master of the art he professed; but the criticism of a later time has repaired that injustice, and Hogarth takes his place now not merely in virtue of the social message he sought to convey, but even more by reason of his great qualities as a colourist and a master of tone. Not that we need underrate or ignore those dramatic elements by which he still makes so strong an appeal to our admiration. It is rare enough, even among the supreme painters of genre, to find so faithful, so penetrating an insight into character. Of all the great Dutchmen whom he succeeded Jan Steen alone can, in this particular, claim to be his rival; and although the English school is specially rich in the class of composition which his genius and invention had initiated, there are none of all those who have practised in a later day who would not still own him as their master.
The two examples secured for the present exhibition show Hogarth at his best, both as a painter and as an inventor. “The Lady’s Last Stake”—contributed by Mr. Pierpont Morgan—even when our admiration has been glutted by the rich evidence it affords of Hogarth’s unrivalled control of a kind of truth that might have found expression in an art other than the art of the painter, still draws from us the unstinted homage due to a great colourist whose chosen tints are submitted with unfailing skill to every delicate and subtle gradation of tone; while in “The Card Party,” lent by Sir Frederick Cook, where these qualities are not less clearly announced, we are left at leisure to follow and appreciate the unflagging observation which registers every detail that serves for the dramatic presentation of the chosen theme.
From the time of Hogarth to our own day this particular style, which he may claim to have originated, has never lacked professors. As it passed into the hands of Wilkie satire is softened by sympathy, the foibles of character are touched with a gentler and more tender spirit, and the adroitly ordered groups, with which he sometimes loves to crowd his canvas, tell, in their final impression, of the presence of a kind of sentiment, sometimes perhaps even of a measure of sentimentalism, which scarcely came within the range of Hogarth’s fiercer survey of life. And, again, in the later work of Orchardson sentiment and satire have both yielded to another ambition that was content to render with unfailing sympathy and distinction of style the finer graces of social life. In the superb picture of “The Young Duke” we may note how clearly the gifts of the painter dominate the scene, his eye ever on the alert for the opportunities of rich and delicate harmonies supplied by every chosen accessory of costume and furniture; and no less eager to exhibit and to record by means of the subtle resources of his art those finer shades of social breeding that the subject suggests. In this power of granting a nameless dignity to the art of genre—a dignity resident in the painter which by some strange magic he contrives to confer upon the people of his creation—Sir William Orchardson sometimes recalls the art of Watteau, who indeed remains unrivalled in his power to perceive and his ability to register those slighter realities of gesture and bearing which give to the rendering of trivial things a distinction which only style can bestow.
It is interesting to turn from this characteristic example of Sir William Orchardson’s style to the work of an elder contemporary in the person of Frith. The two artists—though both may be said to be engaged in the same task—make a widely contrasted appeal. With the former, whatever other message he may intend to convey, the claims of the painter stand foremost. We are conscious of the controlling influence of the colourist and the master of pictorial composition before we are permitted to study or to enjoy the human realities that he has chosen to depict. With Frith, on the other hand, it is the human element in the design that first arrests our attention. Gifts of a purely artistic kind he undoubtedly possessed, as the example here exhibited sufficiently proves—gifts which at one time criticism tended to ignore or to undervalue; but it remains finally true nevertheless that it is as a student of manners, presented in a form sometimes recalling the arts of the theatre, that Frith makes his first appeal to our attention. In this respect he claims kinship with Hogarth himself, whose influence, I doubt not, he would have been proud to acknowledge.
“Coming of Age in the Olden Time,” necessitating, by the choice of its subject, the employment of historic costume, illustrates only one aspect of Frith’s varied talent, and he will perhaps be best remembered by such works as “The Railway Station” and “Ramsgate Sands,” where he is called upon to render with unflinching fidelity those facts of contemporary dress in which painters differently gifted find no picturesque opportunity; and whatever may be Time’s final judgment upon Frith’s claim in the region of pure art, it cannot be questioned that such richly peopled canvases must for ever remain an invaluable record of the outward realities of the generation for which he labored.
The historic side of genre painting is further illustrated in the present collection in the person of Maclise, who, like his great forerunner, William Hogarth, was attracted again and again by the art of the theatre. But Maclise brought to his task certain larger qualities of design and composition which he had won from the study of the great masters of style; and although he never achieved the highest triumphs in the region of the ideal his efforts in that direction left an impress upon his painting that served to distinguish it from the achievements of those who laboured in obedience to a more modest tradition.
The English theatre has attracted the talent of a long line of artists, some of whom, like Clint, are little known in any other sphere. Perhaps the greatest of them all (if we except the name of Hogarth himself) was Johann Zoffany, whose paintings, admirable in the rendering of incident and character, are even more remarkable for his great qualities as a colourist and his perfect mastery over the secrets of tone. As a student of the theatre he may perhaps be seen to best advantage in the several fine examples in the possession of the Garrick Club; but Lord O’Hagan’s picture of Charles Townley the collector, presented in his library with his marbles, asserts with convincing force his right to rank among the great painters of his time.
Among other pictures in this category whose high claims deserve a fulness of consideration which the exigencies of space alone forbid me to grant, I may mention the Eastern study by Lewis, the “Dawn” by E. J. Gregory, and the group of Sir Peter and Lady Teazle by John Pettie.
I have hinted already that in the brief story of our national school of painting we are constantly reminded of the abiding splendours of the art of Italy, and even in the work of men whose genuine victories were won in another sphere there are constant echoes of the larger language moulded by the great masters of the south. For although, at the first, it is only in the allied departments of portrait and landscape that the art of England claims and owns unquestioned supremacy, yet in the career of the gifted painter who may be said to have first firmly established our claim to rank among the schools of Europe we are not allowed to forget the glorious victories of the Italian Renaissance.