AT THE
DINNER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[MAY 3rd, 1851.]

Mr. President,

My Lords and Gentlemen,—

You have been very kind in responding with so much warmth to the toast which your President has just proposed to you, and he will allow me to thank him very cordially for the flattering expressions which he used towards myself in introducing to you that toast.

I shall feel very happy if the future should prove that the Great Exhibition, to which all nations have so generously contributed, should, amongst other advantages which I firmly hope will result from it, likewise tend to assist in the promotion of the Fine Arts in this country, of which you are the representatives; and I feel proud that we can show to the many foreigners who are now visiting our shores specimens of British art such as these walls display.

Although I have, since my first arrival in this country, never once missed visiting the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, and have always derived the greatest pleasure and instruction from these visits, it is but seldom that my engagements will allow me to join in your festive dinner. I have, however, upon this occasion, made it a point to do so, in order to assist in what may be considered the inauguration festival of your newly-elected President, at whose election I have heartily rejoiced, not only on account of my high estimate of his qualities, but also on account of my feelings of regard towards him personally.

It would be presumptuous in me to speak to you of his talent as an artist, for that is well known to you, and of it you are the best judges; or of his merits as an author, for you are all familiar with his works, or at least ought to be so; or of his amiable character as a man, for that also you must have had opportunities to estimate: but my connection with him, now for nine years, on Her Majesty’s Commission of the Fine Arts, has enabled me to know what you can know less, and what is of the greatest value in a President of the Royal Academy—I mean that kindness of heart and refinement of feeling which guided him in all his communications, often most difficult and delicate, with the different artists whom we had to invite to competition, whose works we had to criticise, whom we had to employ or to reject.

Gentlemen, the production of all works in art or poetry requires, in their conception and execution, not only an exercise of the intellect, skill, and patience, but particularly a concurrent warmth of feeling and a free flow of imagination. This renders them most tender plants, which will thrive only in an atmosphere calculated to maintain that warmth, and that atmosphere is one of kindness—kindness towards the artist personally as well as towards his production. An unkind word of criticism passes like a cold blast over their tender shoots, and shrivels them up, checking the flow of the sap, which was rising to produce, perhaps, multitudes of flowers and fruit. But still criticism is absolutely necessary to the development of art, and the injudicious praise of an inferior work becomes an insult to superior genius.

In this respect our times are peculiarly unfavourable when compared with those when Madonnas were painted in the seclusion of convents; for we have now on the one hand the eager competition of a vast array of artists of every degree of talent and skill, and on the other, as judge, a great public, for the greater part wholly uneducated in art, and thus led by professional writers, who often strive to impress the public with a great idea of their own artistic knowledge by the merciless manner in which they treat works which cost those who produced them the highest efforts of mind or feeling.