Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters

by J. Comyns Carr

“It seems to me,” he said, “that there must be some defect. If it were extremely anxious to develop taste or encourage art I think that some means would have been found. A merchant finds means if he wants to improve his commercial arrangements. Whatever a man wishes to do, he finds a way of doing it more or less satisfactorily. But I do not see that the Royal Academy has done anything whatever.” And again, in relation to public taste and its guidance in all that concerns the erection of public monuments or public buildings, Mr. Watts says, “It seems to be a monstrous thing that the Royal Academy has had no voice in this matter.” And further, referring to independent efforts for the encouragement of public schemes of mural decoration, he most emphatically declares, “I think it ought to have occurred to the Academy, as a body of men having the direction of art and taste, many years before it occurred to the Prince Consort; and I think also that, when the initiative was taken, the Academy ought to have adopted the movement and have given it every advantage possible.”

And this was already matter of history at the time that the Grosvenor Gallery was founded. But the same spirit that had dwarfed their conception of the duties of a national institution on the administrative side, had also coloured the ungenerous attitude that they had at first betrayed towards that great movement in modern painting which was heralded by the pre-Raphaelite brethren.

In the teeth of a keen opposition that was at first displayed towards his work, Millais had fought his way into the august ranks of the academic body; but with that exception nearly all the great leaders of the new movement still stood without its walls. Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, and the great sculptor Alfred Stevens knew nothing at that time of academic honour, and their work, if it was submitted for official judgment, was either coldly received or was treated in a spirit of active hostility.

It was that which gave to the movement which resulted in the establishment of the Grosvenor its importance and significance.

The battle has long ended now, and the fact that these men did, or did not, receive academic recognition counts for nothing in respect of the place they hold in modern English painting. Such rebel forces as have since come into existence have not been of a kind to win a like distinction, and public interest in art has become so languid in its exercise that if such a body of men were now to arise it may be questioned whether their work would stir the feeble pulses of the time.

But at the period of which I am speaking their gradual advancement was watched and welcomed by enthusiastic admirers, and it was that which made it possible for institutions like the Grosvenor and the New Gallery to challenge the sleepy self-complacency of the dwellers in Burlington House.

And it will now scarcely be denied that each of these two institutions in its turn has served a useful purpose. In a sense, indeed, they have been almost too successful, for a distinguished success achieved in one or the other has again and again proved the means of obtaining for the artist tardy recognition from the authorities of Burlington House. But the forces ranged on the side of orthodoxy are in this country always formidable, and it may be questioned now whether enough vitality survives in English art to justify the continued existence of independent institutions such as those I have named.

The great prices obtained at public auctions for the earlier masters of our School are sometimes quoted in support of the view that the taste for art remains unimpaired. As a matter of fact I think they may be taken to warrant an exactly opposite conclusion. The buyers of thirty or forty years ago who helped to encourage the painters of their own day were guided for the most part by their own individual preference. Their taste may often have been uninstructed, but at least it was their own. They loved the pictures which they sought to acquire, and, as their collections grew, a better taste grew with them. The modern buyer, on the other hand, is for the most part the mere puppet of the dealer. He buys at the top price of the market because he believes the market will maintain its price, and with a prudence that the dealer is careful to foster he makes his choice from among those older pictures whereof the market value has been appraised by time.

And so long as these purely commercial considerations dominate the taste of the time, the cause of contemporary painting must surely suffer. That a truer feeling will come again with the passing of time need not be doubted, but any one who has followed the movement in English painting since the middle of the last century must perforce experience a feeling of melancholy at the listless apathy and indifference which has taken the place of the earnest enthusiasm of an earlier day.

That enthusiasm was still at its height when Sir Coutts Lindsay founded the Grosvenor Gallery; it survived with scarcely diminished force when Mr. Hallé and I succeeded in establishing the New Gallery, and I look back without regret to my long association with both these institutions. As the child of our own creation the New Gallery has claimed from both of us the larger and the longer service. At the inception of our task we had the loyal support of Burne-Jones, whose art we both deeply loved, and when he died I think we both felt that a part of our mission had gone.