"Sir James Thornhill, at the head of one of these parties, then set up another in a room he built at the back of his own house,—now next the playhouse,—and furnished tickets gratis to all that required admission; but so few would lay themselves under such an obligation, that this also soon sunk into insignificance. Mr. Vanderbank headed the rebellious party, and converted an old Presbyterian meeting-house into an academy, with the addition of a woman figure, to make it the more inviting to subscribers. This lasted a few years; but the treasurer sinking the subscription money, the lamp, stove, etc. were seized for rent, and that also dropped.
"Sir James dying, I became possessed of his neglected apparatus; and thinking that an academy conducted on proper and moderate principles had some use, proposed that a number of artists should enter into a subscription for the hire of a place large enough to admit thirty or forty people to draw after a naked figure. This was soon agreed to, and a room taken in St. Martin's Lane. To serve the society, I lent them the furniture which had belonged to Sir James Thornhill's academy; and as I attributed the failure of that and Mr. Vanderbank's to the leading members assuming a superiority which their fellow-students could not brook, I proposed that every member should contribute an equal sum to the establishment, and have an equal right to vote in every question relative to the society. As to electing presidents, directors, professors, etc., I considered it as a ridiculous imitation of the foolish parade of the French Academy, by the establishment of which Louis XIV. got a large portion of fame and flattery on very easy terms. But I could never learn that the arts were benefited, or that members acquired any other advantages than what arose to a few leaders from their paltry salaries, not more I am told than £50 a year; which, as must always be the case, were engrossed by those who had most influence, without any regard to their relative merit.[31] As a proof of the little benefit the arts derived from this Royal Academy, Voltaire asserts that, after its establishment, no one work of genius appeared in the country: the whole band, adds the same lively and sensible writer, became mannerists and imitators.[32] It may be said in answer to this, that all painting is but imitation. Granted; but if we go no further than copying what has been done before, without entering into the spirit, causes, and effects, what are we doing? If we vary from our original, we fall off from it, and it ceases to be a copy; and if we strictly adhere to it, we can have no hopes of getting beyond it; for 'if two men ride on a horse, one of them must be behind.'
"To return to our own academy. By the regulations I have mentioned of a general equality, etc., it has now subsisted near thirty years, and is, to every useful purpose, equal to that in France, or any other; but this does not satisfy. The members, finding his present Majesty's partiality to the arts, met at the Turk's Head in Gerard Street, Soho, laid out the public money in advertisements to call all sorts of artists together, and have resolved to draw up and present a ridiculous address to King, Lords, and Commons to do for them what they have (as well as it can be) done for themselves. Thus to pester the three great estates of the empire, about twenty or thirty students, drawing after a man or a horse, appears, as it must be acknowledged, foolish enough; but the real motive is, that a few bustling characters, who have access to people of rank, think they can thus get a superiority over their brethren, be appointed to places, and have salaries as in France, for telling a lad when an arm or a leg is too long or too short.
"Not approving of this plan, I opposed it; and having refused to assign to the society the property which I had before lent them, I am accused of acrimony, ill-nature, and spleen, and held forth as an enemy to the arts and artists. How far their mighty project will succeed, I neither know nor care; certain I am it deserves to be laughed at, and laughed at it has been.[33] The business rests in the breast of Majesty, and the simple question now is, whether he will do what Sir James Thornhill did before him, i.e. establish an academy with the little addition of a royal name, and salaries for those professors who can make most interest and obtain the greatest patronage. As his Majesty's beneficence to the arts will unquestionably induce him to do that which he thinks most likely to promote them, would it not be more useful if he were to furnish his own gallery with one picture by each of the most eminent painters among his own subjects? This might possibly set an example to a few of the opulent nobility; but even then it is to be feared that there never can be a market in this country, for the great number of works which, by encouraging parents to place their children in this line, it would probably cause to be painted. The world is already glutted with these commodities, which do not perish fast enough to want such a supply.
"In answer to this and other objections which I have sometimes made to those who display so much zeal for increasing learners, and crowding the profession, I am asked if I consider what the arts were in Greece, what immense benefits accrued to the city of Rome from the possession of their works, and what advantages the people of France derive from the encouragement given by their Royal Academy? It is added, why cannot we have one on the same principles? That we may not be led away by sounds without meaning, let us take a cursory view of these things separately, and in the same order that they occurred.
"The height to which the arts were carried in Greece was owing to a variety of causes, concerning some of which we can now only form conjectures. They made a part of their system of government, and were connected with their modes of worship. Their temples were crowded with deities of their own manufacture, and in places of public resort were depicted such actions of their fellow-citizens as deserved commemoration; which, being displayed in a language legible to all, incited the spectator to emulate the virtues they represented. The artists who could perform such wonders were held in an estimation of which we can hardly form an idea; and could we ascertain the rewards they received, I think it would be found that they were most liberally paid for their works, and might therefore devote much more time than we can afford to rendering them perfect.
"With all this, even there, the arts had but a slow rise; and when they had attained their highest state of perfection, the Romans (having previously plundered and butchered their own neighbours) attacked and conquered the Greeks, and robbed them also of their portable treasures, particularly their statues and pictures.[34] To sculpture and painting, war is a most destructive enemy; the rage of conquest, civil broils, and intestine quarrels, necessarily put a stop to the exercise of the imitative arts, which lay in a dormant state until they were revived by the introduction of a new religion; this, in the magnificent style it was there brought forward, called upon sculpture and painting for their auxiliary aid. The admirable specimens that during the perturbed period above alluded to had been hidden in the earth, were now restored to light, eagerly sought for, and in some cases appropriated to purposes diametrically opposite to their pagan origin.[35] Even those that were mutilated were held in the most enthusiastic admiration. The 'Torso,' and many other inimitable specimens, prove that their admiration was just. The contemplation of such works would naturally produce imitators, who in time rivalled, but never could equal, their originals. These remains of ancient grandeur being thus added to their new productions, and both interwoven, forming a sort of ornamental fringe to their gaudy religion, Rome became a kind of puppet-show to the rest of Europe; and, whatever it might be to their visitors, was certainly very advantageous to themselves. The arts are much indebted to Popery, and that religion owes much of its universality to the arts.
"France, ever aping the magnificence of other nations, has in its turn assumed a foppish kind of splendour sufficient to dazzle the eyes of neighbouring states, and draw vast sums of money from this country. We cannot vie with these Italian and Gallic theatres of art, and to enter into competition with them is ridiculous; we are a commercial people, and can purchase their curiosities ready made, as in fact we do, and thereby prevent their thriving in our native clime. If I may be permitted to compare great things with small, this nation labours under similar disadvantage to the playhouse in Goodman's Fields, which, though it might injure, could never rival the two established theatres, so much more properly situated, in any degree material to itself.
"In Holland, selfishness is the ruling passion; in England, vanity is united with it. Portrait-painting therefore ever has, and ever will succeed better in this country than in any other.[36] The demand will be as constant as new faces arise; and with this we must be contented, for it will be vain to attempt to force what can never be accomplished, or at least can never be accomplished by such institutions as Royal Academies on the system now in agitation. Upon the whole, it must be acknowledged that the artists and the age are fitted for each other. If hereafter the times alter, the arts, like water, will find their level.