[2]. Since this was written Mr. Frith has published that Landseer modelled these lions from a tame cat.
These lions were the outcome of the best period of Egyptian sculpture. The Egyptian artists who carved those lions had been striving to interpret Nature, and hence their great success; but as soon as their successors began to neglect nature, and took to drawing up rules, they went wrong, and produced caricatures. |Rameses II. and decadence.| We read that after the time of Rameses II. “every figure is now mathematically designed according to a prescribed canon of numerical proportions between the parts.”
Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians.”
All this we can trace for ourselves in the plates supplied with Wilkinson’s learned work, entitled, “The Ancient Egyptians.” We see in those plates that something has happened to the people and objects represented, something that makes them no longer tell their own story, they no longer look alive, but are meaningless; the reason of this falling off was that the artist no longer used his eyes to any purpose, but did what was then supposed to be the right thing to do, namely, followed the laws laid down by some men of narrow intellect—laws called as now the “canons of art.” The very life of the Egyptian artists of that period was against good work, for they were incorporated into guilds, and the laws of caste worked as harmfully as they now do in the Orient. |Artists'
status.| There is, then, distinct evidence that on the one hand the Egyptian artists of the best period, when untrammelled by conventionality, created works which, though lacking the innumerable qualities of later Greek art, yet possessed, so far as they went, the first essential of all art—truth of impression. Again, on the other hand, directly anything like “rules of art” appeared, and the study of nature was neglected, their art degenerated into meaningless conventionality, and as this conventionality and neglect of nature were never cast aside, the art of Egypt never developed beyond the work done by the artists who carved the stone lions.
Monarchies of Western Asia.
Assyrian art.
Assyrian art differed from that of Egypt in that the outline of the figures was much stronger, and that they painted their bas-reliefs; but the “imitation of nature was the watchword” in Assyria, as it was in Babylon.
Assyrian bas-reliefs.
In studying the Assyrian bas-reliefs, those interested in the subject should go to the Assyrian rooms in the basement of the British Museum, and look at the reliefs of Bani-Pal—the famous lion-hunting scenes. |The lion-hunt.| There is, of course, much conventionality in the work, as there was in that of the Egyptians; but no observer can fail to detect that the Assyrians were naturalistic to a degree that strikes us as marvellous when we consider the subjects they were treating. Note the lioness, wounded in the spine, dragging her hindquarters painfully along. Does this not give a powerful impression of the wounded animal? and does it not occur to you how wonderful was the power of the man who in so little expressed and conveys to you so much. Consider when those Assyrian sculptors lived. Look, too, at the bas-reliefs numbered 47 and 49; and in 50 note the marvellous truthfulness of impression of the horseman, who is riding at a gallop. There is life and movement in the work, though there is much scope for improvement in the truth of the movements. Look, too, at the laden mules in bas-reliefs numbers 70 and 72. Such works as these were done by great men in art, and though crudeness of methods prevented them from rivalling some of the later work, their work is at least honest, and, as far as it goes, naturalistic. The work does not say all that there is to say about the subject; but it does say much of what is most essential, and by doing that is artistically greater than work done by scores of modern men. |Historical value of the bas-reliefs.|In addition to their artistic value, how interesting are these works as records of history. Indisputable, as written history can never be, they are to us a valuable record of the life and times. They constitute historical art in its only good sense.