Let not the reader be alarmed at the very mention of the National Gallery. We are not about to inflict upon him the evidence in the Blue Book respecting the picture-cleaning, the doings and misdoings of trustees, the “discrepancies” of opinions and statement of facts, the faults of a system which is inconsistently at once condemned and recommended for continuance, the labyrinth of question and answer leading to no conclusion, the blame here and the flattery there, the unwilling admissions and unreserved condemnations: most people we see are perhaps inclined to believe, in this instance at least, that a “big book is a big evil.” We do not, therefore, intend in this place to reopen the discussion which made the subject of our former papers.
The difficulty under which the Commission laboured was visible from the beginning. The trustees had approved of the cleaning. The task of very decidedly condemning this approval was naturally distasteful; therefore, what is too evidently wrong is charged upon a “system,” while the honourable personages are praised and flattered as if they had never had anything to do with it.
The case must for a while rest where it is, and we should have waited with patience the leisure of our now busy Parliament for its resumption, were it not that a very grievous mischief is left in the Blue Book, where it meets with much favour, to be taken up and made the key-note, the first and last principle of every future discussion respecting a national gallery. It might be thought that, after thirty years of its establishment, we should not have now to come to the question, what a national gallery should be. But so it is. There has been as yet no “fixed principle,” we are told, upon which a national collection is to be formed. We have no charge to bring against the trustees on that account; indeed, we rejoice that they had no fixed principle, if by fixed principle is meant such scheme and system as we see pertinaciously and insinuatingly urged upon the public notice in parts of the evidence, and more particularly in the appendix of this voluminous Report.
We give our reader credit for good taste and common sense, and doubt not he will think it sufficient that a national gallery should consist of good pictures—the best that are to be had. But no: common sense is too unrefined for this knowledge-age, and good taste is of private purveyorship, and of very little importance in forming a public collection. However absurd this may seem to be, we assure the reader that it is an idea put forth with a good deal of authority, and perhaps no little presumption, on the part of some of its advocates; we see its dressing up into a substantial image of magnitude, and mean to take up the sling and the stone, and do battle with it. There are always a multitude of dilettanti who, loading their memories with names, love to talk with apparent learning about art, and yet have little feeling for its real excellences. To such, a history of art is better than art itself. They would make a national gallery a lumber-house of chronological curiosities. They have a perverse love for system and arrangement: very good things in their proper places, and with moderation, keeping a very subordinate position, not without value in a national gallery; but the value is little indeed, if put in any degree in competition with what should be the great primary aim—to gather together the finest works of the best painters. The chronological arrangement should be the after-thought, arising out of what we possess, not directing the first choice. This whim of the dilettanti school is not new with us. It may be seen in the Report of the Commission of 1836—and is repeated in the present Report.
“The intelligent public of this country are daily becoming more alive to the truth, which has long been recognised by other enlightened nations, that the arts of design cannot be properly studied or rightly appreciated by means of insulated specimens alone; that, in order to understand or profit by the great works, either of ancient or modern schools of art, it is necessary to contemplate the genius which produced them, not merely in its final results, but in the mode of its operation—in its rise and progress, as well as in its perfection. A just appreciation of Italian painting can as little be obtained from an exclusive study of the works of Raphael, Titian, or Correggio, as a critical knowledge of English poetry from the perusal of a few of its masterpieces. What Chaucer and Spenser are to Shakespeare and Milton, Giotto and Massaccio are to the great masters of the Florentine school: and a national gallery would be as defective without adequate specimens of both styles of painting, as a national library without specimens of both styles of poetry. In order, therefore, to render the British National Gallery worthy the name it bears, your committee think that the funds appropriated to the enlargement of the collection should be expended with a view not merely of exhibiting to the public beautiful works of art, but of instructing the people in the history of that art, and of the age in which, and the men by whom, those works were produced.”
There is but little said here in many words, and that little based upon an erroneous presumption. We do not believe that the “intelligent public” are becoming alive to “the truth,” which is a fallacy, that they cannot profit by great works without having before them the previous failures, experiments, and imbecilities of the earlier practitioners in art. If the public have any intelligence at all, they will appreciate the “Madonna de Sisto,” for instance, without disgusting their eyes with such Byzantine “specimens” as that shown to Mr Curzon in the monastery, where the monk in his strange ignorance inquired if “all women were like that?” Nor is the parallelism between poetry and painting here fortunate. For, besides that books may sleep on shelves and not offend, and pictures (for the purpose intended) must obtrude themselves on the eye, we do not see that Chaucer and Spenser at all bear the relation to Shakespeare and Milton that Giotto and Massaccio do to the great masters of the Florentine school. All these were men of great, mostly independent genius, worthy of galleries and libraries for their own sakes. But they are here placed as screens to hide the chronological deformities behind them. The “not merely exhibiting to the public beautiful works of art” would seem to infer, to give any force to the passage, that not only the painters Giotto and Massaccio had no “beautiful works,” but that Chaucer and Spenser were poor poets, having no beauties, and no other or little merit but that of being the warning precursors to Shakespeare and Milton, to enable them to eschew their faults.
The committee very cautiously abstained from defining any chronological limits, for we are not to infer that they are to begin with Giotto. However they may consider him the founder of the Italian school, the appendix shows that the Byzantine and very early Italian art (if to be obtained) are desired specimens. “The specimens more especially fitted for a gallery of paintings commence with movable paintings on wood, by the Byzantines, representing the Madonna and child, single figures of saints, and sometimes extensive compositions on a minute scale,” going back even to the ninth century, and so to the earlier Italian “influenced by Byzantine art.” And more decidedly to show the mere chronological object, it is added, “In the case of works without names, or inscribed with names before unknown, the test of artistic merit must chiefly determine the question of eligibility.” Artistic merit only in these cases, and then “chiefly” so that in other cases names are everything.
And all this is for the purpose of instructing the people, not in art, but in the history of art, which may be quite well enough learnt from books by the curious, or in some museum of curiosities, better than in a national gallery, where the real and proper instruction would only be hindered by the sight of things antagonistic to any beauty. We do not doubt that this idea, carried out, would lead to a pictorial chronological mania, if it does not commence with it, not unlike the Bibliomania, ever in search of works, only rare because worthless. Such a national gallery as this scheme contemplates would be the exhibition of a pictorial Dunciad, in which we hope the veræ effigies of the first schemers and promoters would not be omitted, that some future satirist may give them also their merited immortality. Why cannot a committee upon a national gallery confine themselves to the objects for the consideration of which they are appointed, and not run needlessly into the duties of an educational committee, and talk of instruction, when the preservation and advantageous exhibition of the monuments of antiquity and fine art “possessed by the nation” are what they are required to give their attention to? There is enough to be done in the line pointed out to them, and no need of bewildering themselves or the public, led astray by this ignis fatuus of a chronological whim. We are weary of the daily cant; everything is to be instruction, works of art are to be “specimens.” Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio, are to be known only by and as “specimens.” The “people” must be ever in a worry of knowledge, flying about from specimen to specimen: it is for knowledge alone they are to come to a national gallery—we hear nothing of enjoyment, of an indulgence in the repose of taste; and we do sometimes smile, in turning over the leaves of the Blue Book, when meeting with much talk about instructing the people, and turn our thoughts for a moment to the happy “specimens” of instruction the walls of our or any National Gallery exhibit. Is moral instruction or art instruction to be gathered in by the people’s eyes, with their astonishment at “Susanna and the Elders,” and that other Guido purposely purchased as a companion to it, the “Lot and his Daughters?” very costly specimens of instruction, the one amounting to £1680, the other £1260, and neither thought very good specimens for instruction in art—not that the severe criticism upon Guido in the evidence is quite to be depended upon. The great flustering “Rape of the Sabines” is not of very nice instruction, perhaps, either in morals or art. There are the “Three naked Goddesses” by Rubens, to whom the caterers of public instruction took the part of Paris, and threw the golden apple, and a very large one too;—what are their Flemish nudities to teach? A stern moralist showed his insulted purity by dashing one offending specimen to atoms.
We do not, however, profess to be such purists as to desire an irruption into the Gallery of a mob of mad Savonarolas, not easily gathered together in these Latter-day-Saints’ times, knowing as we do the real why and wherefore of collecting; yet we cannot but smile at the pretence of instruction, which is sometimes put upon moral, and sometimes shifted to pictorial, grounds. But there is a class of pictures we could wish to see more sought after—pictures of a pure sentiment. It is true they are rare, in comparison to those of a far other character; but they are the most precious, and the really improving. Nevertheless, at once to get rid of this pretence and sham of instruction, we would ask, to whom are such works of sentiment precious, and whom are they likely to improve?—Certainly not the multitude, who would look at them with indifference, and pass them by. They are precious to cultivated minds and pure tastes: minds which, either from natural dulness or evil habits, cannot receive, or even admit, the perception of common virtues, will be altogether untouched by their pictorial representations. Fortunately, there are enough works of a simply pleasing character, that excite little emotion, and none of a high caste, so that, to a certain degree, those may be gratified, and receive a pleasure, who will neither receive instruction nor improvement from a national gallery. And it is this modicum of pleasure to all which justifies expenditure for a national gallery. The real, solid benefit, delight, and improvement are very great, but they are the luxury of the few.
It must be that the multitudes go to such an exhibition more from curiosity than from any love of art. Nor is love of art likely, in the first place, to be there implanted; for, in most cases, a certain love of art, commencing, perhaps, with a mere love of imitation, precedes taste—that perception of what is good. If we were to collect only for the masses, we should have a very worthless gallery. Nor would “the people” ever even learn, from a chronological collection, that history of art, which it seems, in the opinion of the Commissioners, so desirable to teach them. Art, which is not valued for itself, will not, in general, be valued for its history; and without the love for itself, a knowledge of its history is nothing but pedantry. High art is a common prate; it is in every one’s mouth, but in very few hearts. It is not difficult to find the “reason why.” High art treats of high and noble sentiments, of generous actions, fortitude, patience, sublime endurance—all that is great, and good, and pure—all tending to a real “elevated taste.” If it be true that “Similis simili gaudet,” the recipients of delight from this High art should, in some degree at least, be recipients of these high virtues themselves. It must be a large nature for High art. Such a nature may not always be good; but if it be large, even if it be viciously great, it may be possible that it will have a perception of what is great in art, though it may lose its finer qualities. But narrow and utterly selfish minds are altogether out of art’s pale. There are degrees of narrow-mindedness and of selfishness, and there is a condition which may be free from these vices, yet of no very elevated virtue. We do not wish to put all our fellow-men in the worst category, but we do maintain that there is a general lack of moral training—of moral habit—and not confined to one branch of society, which operates as a bar to the acquirement of a real taste for art. We live in too mercenary an age. There is too great a worship of mere money—there is cold calculation where there should be feeling. The romance of life is a term of contempt. What is useful supersedes what is good. Take classes with their characteristics, and see if they be fit for the enjoyment of the Fine Arts. The Parliamentary class have established new maxims. Expediency has taken the place of honour, and perhaps of integrity. To say one thing and mean another not only meets with no reprobation, but is justified and applauded. Statesmen make sham speeches and false promises; politicians bribe and are bribed. Is it likely that High art, whose essential being is good, great, and noble, and, beyond all, truth, should find a real love among such? We deny not exceptions, we speak of that which prevails. View the large and important class, the manufacturing, the great fabricators of wealth—they are encouragers of art, but of what quality? Shall they who thicken their cotton goods with flour, to give them a deceitful substance; shall the common traders, who adulterate everything, whether it be what we put in our mouths or on our backs—nay, to a fearful extent, even the drugs, for lack of whose genuineness miserable sufferers die—shall these, we say, stand with delight before the grand dignity wherewith Michael Angelo has embodied our common nature; or before the pure “Spozalitio” of Raffaelle; or, to come to a “specimen” in our National Gallery, before the lovely countenance of the pure-minded St Catharine, beaming with every grace of truth, of love, of faith, and of fortitude, that appears too much natural instinct to have the effort of strength? Will they, whose pursuits are the material things of a material world, stand for a moment to receive one impression that shall produce an unusual awful thought, before the solemn miracle, the “Raising of Lazarus” of Sebastian del Piombo? No one will deny that there is but little feeling for works of this kind; and that there is so little, characterises our utilitarian times.