Avling was a sort of Segantini, but something he says in the play convinced me that he was merely another Verboekhoven. Then Thackeray’s Ridley must have been a terrible Philistine—a sort of Sir John Gilbert. Poor Basil Hallward’s death was no great loss to art, I surmise: his portrait of ‘Dorian Grey, Esq.’, from all accounts, resembled the miraculous picture exhibited in Bond Street a short while ago. I am not surprised that its owner, whose taste improved, I suspect, with advancing years, destroyed it in the ordinary course after reading something by Mr. D. S. MacColl. It is distinctly stated that Dorian read the Saturday Review! Frenhofer, Hippolite Schimier, and Leon de Lora were probably chocolate-box painters of the regular second-empire type. Theobald, we know from Mr. Henry James, was a man of ideas who could not carry out his intentions. It must have been an exquisite memory of Theobald’s failures which made Pater, when he wished to contrive an imaginary artistic personality, take Watteau as being some one in whose achievements you can believe. No literary artist can persuade us into admiring
pictures which never existed; though an artist can reconstruct from literature a picture which has perished we know, from the ‘Calumny of Apelles’ by Botticelli. It was, therefore, wise to make Claude Williamson Shaw a failure as a painter. In accordance with my rule he was an excellent fellow, nearly as charming as his author, and better company in a picture-gallery it would be difficult to find—and you cannot visit picture-galleries with every friend: you require a sympathetic personality. It is the Claude—the Claude Phillips in him which I like best: the Dr. Williamson I rather suspect. I mean that when he was at Messrs. Chepstow, the publishers, he must have mugged up some of the real Dr. Williamson’s art publications. Whether in the Louvre, or National Gallery, or in Italian towns, he always goes for the right thing; sometimes you wish he would make a mistake. Bad artists, of course, are often excellent judges of old pictures and make excellent dealers, and I am not denying the instinct of C. W. S.; but I cannot think it all came so naturally as Mr. Hind would indicate.
The reason why Claude Williamson Shaw discovered ‘that he would not find a true expression of his temperament’ in painting readers of this ingenious book will discover for themselves. Assuming that he had any innate talent, I do not think he went about the right way to cultivate it. His friend Lund gave him the very worst advice; though we are the gainers. It is quite unnecessary to go out of England and gaze at a lot of pictures of entirely different schools in order to become a painter. Gainsborough and our great Norwich artists evolved themselves without any foreign study. There was no National Gallery in their days. A second-rate Wynants and a doubtful Hobbema seem to have been enough to give them hints. It would be tedious to mention other examples. The fortunate meeting of Zuccarelli and Wilson at Venice is the only instance I know in which foreign travel benefited any English landscape painter. Foreign travel is all very well when the artist has grown up. Paris has been the tomb of many English art students. M. Bordeaux, who gave Mr. Hind’s hero tips in the atelier, seems to have been as ‘convincing’ as
the famous barrel of the same name. Far better will the English student be under Mr. Tonks at the Slade; or even at the Royal Academy, where, owing to the doctrine of contraries, out of sheer rebellion he may become an artist. In Paris you learn perfect carpentry, but not art, unless you are a born artist; but in that case you will be one in spite of Paris, not because of it. But if C. W. Shaw had been a real painter he would have seen at Venice certain Tiepolos which seem to have escaped him, and in other parts of Italy certain Caravaggios. Yes, and Correggios and Guido Renis, too hastily passed by. He was doomed to be a connoisseur.
(1906.)
EGO ET MAX MEUS.
‘How very delightful Max’s drawings are. For all their mad perspective and crude colour, they have, indeed, the sentiment of style, and they reveal with rarer delicacy than does any other record the spirit of Lloyd-George’s day.’ This sentence is not quite original: it is adapted from an eminent author because the words sum up so completely the inexpressible satisfaction following an inspection of Mr. Beerbohm’s caricatures. To-day essentially belongs to the Minister who once presided at the Board of Trade. Several attempts indeed have been made to describe the literature, art and drama of the present as ‘Edwardian,’ from a very proper and loyal spirit, to which I should be the last to object. We were even promised a few years ago a new style of furniture to inaugurate the reign—something to supplant that Louis Dix-neuvième décor which is merely a compromise
with the past. But somehow the whole thing has fallen through; in this democratic æon the adjective ‘Edwardian’ trips on the tongue; our real dramatists are all Socialists or Radicals; our poets and writers Anarchists. Our artists are the only conservatives of intellect. Our foreign policy alone can be called ‘Edwardian,’ so personal is it to the King. Everything else is a compromise; so our time must therefore be known—at least ten years of it—as the Lloyd-Georgian period. I can imagine collectors of the future struggling for an alleged genuine work of art belonging to this brief renaissance, and the disappointment of the dealer on finding that it dated a year before the Budget, thereby reducing its value by some thousands.
Just as we go to Kneller and Lely for speaking portraits of the men who made their age, so I believe our descendants will turn to Max for listening likenesses of the present generation. Of all modern artists, he alone follows Hamlet’s advice. If the mirror is a convex one, that is merely the accident of genius, and reflects the malady of the century.
Other artists have too much eye on the Uffizi and the National Gallery (the more modest of them only painting up to the Tate). In Max we have one who never harks forward to the future, and is therefore more characteristic, more Lloyd-Georgian than any of his peers. Set for one moment beside some Rubens’ goddess a portrait by Mr. Sargent, and how would she be troubled by its beauty? Not in the slightest degree; because they are both similar but differing expressions of the same genius of painting. The centuries which separate them are historical conventions; and in Art, history does not count; æsthetically, time is of no consequence. But in the more objective art of caricature, history is of some import, and (as Mr. Beerbohm himself admitted about photographs) the man limned is of paramount importance. Actual resemblance, truthfulness of presentation, criticism of the model become legitimate subjects for consideration. Generally speaking, artists long since wisely resigned all attempts at catching a likeness, leaving to photography an inglorious victory. Mr. Beerbohm, realising this fact, seized caricature