Mr. Ruskin’s Moral Criticism.
The Sacrifice of Art to Veracity.
Toil in Details.
If I were asked what is the particular difficulty that usually prevents the English from understanding art, I should answer, The extreme energy and activity of their moral sense. They have a sort of moral hunger which tries to satisfy itself in season and out of season. That interferes with their understanding of a pursuit which lies outside of morals. The teaching of their most celebrated art critic, Mr. Ruskin, was joyfully accepted by the English, because it seemed for the first time to place art upon a substantial moral foundation, making truth, industry, conscientiousness, its cardinal virtues. The English imagined, for a time, that they had subordinated the fine arts to their own dominant moral instincts. Painting was to abandon all its tricks and become truthful. It was to represent events as they really occurred, and not so as to make the best pictures, a sacrifice of art to veracity that pleased the innermost British conscience. Again, it was assumed that mere toil in the accurate representation of details was in itself a merit, because industry is meritorious in common occupations. In short, all the moral virtues were placed before art itself, which, in reality, is but accidentally connected with them.
The English love of Nature.
An Impediment to the Appreciation of Art.
The English love of nature, in itself one of the happiest of all gifts, has not been altogether favourable to the understanding of art. It has led many English people to subordinate the fine arts entirely to nature, as if they were but poor human copies of an unapproachable divine original. In reality the fine arts can only be understood when they are pursued and valued for themselves.
The Parisian Mind.
The feebler moral sense of the Parisian mind and its less passionate affection for nature have left it more disengaged and more at liberty to accept art on its own account, as art and nothing more. There is a kind of Paganism which is able to rest content without deep moral problems, and to accept with satisfaction what art has to give without asking for that which it cannot give.
Diversity of Ideals.