It may be as well here to notice what is said in the body of the evidence with regard to this chronological principle. The questioning is not very extensive, and was, perhaps, purposely limited. J. Dennistoun, Esq., is examined, and says: “The only further observation I would venture to make is the extreme desirableness of something like an arrangement of the pictures. I believe that is a matter felt to be so important that it is hardly necessary for me to speak upon it. I think a chronological arrangement in schools is desirable; but, in the meanwhile, as that would be totally impossible in the present building, I think, as far as possible, an arrangement of the pictures might be made chronologically, without reference to schools,—even that would be a step.” We observe that Mr Dennistoun subsequently, as if alarmed at the chronological prospect, very much qualifies this his opinion. To Question 5901, he says: “I have already stated that I think they should omit no favourable opportunity of obtaining any monument illustrative of the progress of art in any school, such as pictures authenticated by signature or date, and of sufficient interest to be specimens of art of that period. But I think it is desirable that they should, in the first place, bestow their attention and dedicate their funds to that more particularly interesting and valuable period of Italian art, which I have already considered in the course of my evidence.” This puts the chronological arrangement happily a little more in the background. As might have been expected from the accomplished and learned author of the Dukes of Urbino, we find in Mr Dennistoun a nice appreciation of the immediate predecessors of Raffaelle, but he has no very long list; he only mentions twenty whose works should be collected, not merely on account of their historical relation to Raffaelle, but for their merit.
No one is more thoroughly acquainted with the Italian schools than Sir Charles Eastlake, both as an artistic critic and historical scholar. He is (Q. 6512) consulted with regard to chronological arrangement. He evidently fears the subdivisions of the whimsical process. Q. 6515: “Would you then propose to arrange the Italian school in a chronological series as a whole, or would you subdivide it into separate schools?”—“I would certainly not separate the schools needlessly; but I would not take out the finest works and put them apart.” Q. 6015: “Then you do not approve of having separate apartments for paintings of the Venetian, Florentine, and other schools?”—“I see no objections to a separation, but I do not see that there would be anything gained by having a mere historical series independent of merit.”
We rejoice to find that the influence of Sir Charles, deservedly great, will not tend to turning our National Gallery into an hospital of invalids and imbeciles. We now come to Mr Dyce’s evidence. Q. 7471: “You have also, in your published work, made suggestions as to the mode of carrying into effect the historical and chronological principle in the arrangement of the collection?”—“I have touched on the subject very slightly, though I have laid it down as a primary rule in the formation of the National Gallery, that the historical arrangement of the works should be had regard to.” Q. 7472: “You insisted that an endeavour should be made, as far as possible, to show the origin and progress of a school of art, independently of showing the excellence of its highest and most perfect works?”—“Yes.” As Mr Dyce’s pamphlet, a Letter, addressed, by permission, to H.R.H. the Prince Albert, K.G., may be considered the first, and perhaps authorised, movement towards the fully setting up the chronological system, we shall make it the subject of our comments more at large; preliminary to which it may be useful to show the reader the number of painters in the several lists furnished in the Appendix, which, we are yet told, is imperfect—in fact, deficient, by many omissions; so that the actual lists—as the mania of making fresh acquisitions would become very restless and busy—would be possibly doubled and trebled. Sir Charles Eastlake, in his suggestions in the Appendix, not very strenuously, we think, notices the object, keeping it somewhat subordinate; and we discover here why Mr Dyce has dedicated his letter, by permission, to H.R.H. the Prince Albert. “The idea of a catalogue of the masters, who might sooner or later be represented in a national gallery, has occurred to many; but the actual formation of such a list has only been recently undertaken, according to a plan suggested by His Royal Highness Prince Albert, and for His Royal Highness’ use. With reference to that list, I may add, that the catalogue of the Italian masters was prepared by myself, and that relating to the other schools by Mr Wornum. The series cannot be considered complete; there are probably both omissions and redundancies; but it may, at least, be taken as the ground-work for such a guide.” We find the lists for this chronological collection to contain (the Byzantine curiosities not included) one thousand five hundred and fifty-five names, and it is probable that as many more might be collected. So that these specimens, if even confined to one for each name, would very soon exhaust the public purse, and possibly so disgust the nation, by their exhibition, as to cause a stoppage of supply for a national gallery. Seeing this array of names, Mr Dyce may well add, when he asks, “What ought a national collection of pictures to be?”—“extensiveness will, I think, suggest itself as one of those characteristics.”
We are not denying that catalogues of this kind are of value—far from it; they are parts of the history of Art; but surely a dictionary of painters is one thing and a collection of pictures another. An army and navy list are valuable documents, but would be rather unwieldy national incumbrances if accompanied by each individual’s portrait at full length—especially viewing the collection, as is the case with this gallery scheme, “independently of merit.” It may be well said, that it is absurd to think of such a scheme with our present building; and it would be difficult to find a site of sufficient area for these specimens by thousands, and at the same time provide for the increase at the present ratio of art propagation.
We proceed to consider Mr Dyce’s pamphlet, or letter—happily not very long—for we have seldom met with so much serious nonsense in so few pages. He blunders on the very threshold of his work; for, as shown, he makes extensiveness a characteristic, whereas it must be but the accident of finding good things to collect. He considers it as a museum, having evidently in view a collection of curiosities, the thing above all others a National Gallery should not be. “Then, again, as every collection has in view some definite purpose, the systematic fulfilment of that purpose on the most enlarged basis—in other words, systematic arrangement, and a wholeness or completeness in relation to its particular purpose, seem necessary to the idea of a national collection.” Words, words, words! all to envelop a commonplace truth that no one need be told. Of course, every man, woman, and child, having a “purpose,” should suit the matter in hand to it. If the man had been destined to manufacture small-clothes instead of writing about art, he wouldn’t begin at the wrong end, and stitch on the buttons before he had cut out his shapes. Of course, he would have had his arrangement and his “chronological” measure too, and not put the boy’s fit on the aged father. There is no end to writing in this style; there may be, if a writer pleases, miles of verbiage before reaching a place of rest or tolerable entertainment, without any prospect of the journey’s end. Then he goes on thinking, and “thinks” what nobody ever doubted: “I think we may assume that a public museum ought to fulfil its purpose” (so ought a pipkin)—but more—“and, secondly, that the objects contained in it ought not merely to be coextensive with that purpose, but illustrate it with the greatest possible fulness and variety; that is to say, the collection ought to be at once extensive and complete.” Extensive and complete—or we would put it plainly, as with regard to the pipkin, that care should be taken that as much be put into it as it will hold without boiling over, preserving in the simmering every variety in the broth—the meat, the bone, the fat, and the vegetables. Notwithstanding this his very clear explanation, he immediately again gravely asks, “But what are we to understand by the completeness of a collection of pictures?” The reply to this question (a reply which may well astonish any inquirer) “depends upon the view we take of its purpose;” that is, to pursue our illustrations, whether the small-clothes be to be made for grandson or grandfather; whether the pipkin is to hold porridge for breakfast, or broth for supper. “Now all, I imagine, will agree, that the object of our National Gallery is, to afford instruction and enjoyment” (a discovery which he very shortly annihilates, by taking out the enjoyment, and making the instruction doubtful); “that it is, or ought to be, an institution where the learned study art, and the unlearned enjoy it, where docti artis rationem intelligunt, indocti sentiunt voluptatem; so that we have to consider how that instruction and enjoyment which the gallery is calculated to afford ought to be provided for.” Not a doubt of it. But why, Mr Dyce, ride your poor hobby-horse round this circle? Don’t you see you haven’t advanced ten paces beyond the stable door. In fact, you have said but the same thing over and over again; but you have taken out of the pack-saddle a scrap of Latin, which, however well it may sound, and your own hobby may prick up his ears at it, is really a piece of arrant nonsense; indeed the reverse of it is the truth; for it is the unlearned, of course, who come to your lecture, that they may understand, “intelligunt;” and the learned, the “docti,” they who know something about the matter, only who can perceive, “sentiunt,” the “voluptatem,” the pleasure of art. But we said Mr Dyce would annihilate enjoyment, and see if he does not do the thing, and most astonishingly. After the passage last quoted, follows: “Now, if there be any, and at this time of day it is to be hoped there are very few, who think that the purpose of the National Gallery will be served by what in popular phrase is termed ‘a selection of the best works of the best masters’” (we rejoice to find so sensible a phrase is popular), “I will simply beg them to apply their opinion to the case of any section of a national library to convince themselves how utterly untenable it is.”
Now the Curiosity Museum is a Library, and a Museum of Curiosities and a library are, ergo, moulded into one—a National Gallery; whereas the materials will not amalgamate,—not one is a bit like the other. To go on is really to get deeper and deeper into the quagmire of nonsense, the only kind of depth to be met with in the whole pamphlet. It must sadly have tired the patience of his Royal Highness, if he did read it; and if Mr Dyce wrote it with any view of giving his Royal Highness a lesson in the English language, which was not needed, he has furnished as bad a “specimen” as could be well met with. But to the matter and the argument:—“the best works of the best masters” is as silly an idea, he thinks, as to supply a library with the best dramatists, Shakespeare, of course, included. He is an advocate for the worst, such as no one would read—and why?—the very sound of it is truly asinine. “Would such a proceeding be tolerated for a single moment? Would it be endured that they, that any body of men, however eminent, should possess the right to withhold from the public any attainable materials for literary knowledge and criticism?”—for which purpose Mr Dyce does not withhold this pamphlet. His materials it is not difficult to decide. It certainly could never have been intended for knowledge but under the greatest mistake; supposing it then to be for criticism, we take him at his word, and indulge him accordingly, or, as he says, “in relation to its particular purpose.” But he is not satisfied yet; having nothing more to say, he must say that nothing in more words. He continues—“that, in fact, they should have it in their power” (that is, the any men, however eminent) “actually or virtually to pronounce a judgment on the comparative merits of authors, the accuracy of which could only be tested by the very comparison which the judgment has the effect of preventing. Yet there is no difference between such a proceeding and the restriction of the national collection of pictures to such works as might happen to be considered the best.” What a circular jumble of words is here!—“a judgment on comparative merits” not to be pronounced, not to be endured to be pronounced, because such judgment has the effect of preventing the said judgment, which is here made at once both desirable and undesirable.
The reader sees how much nonsense may be comprised in less than two pages, for we have not advanced further in the pamphlet. A library, to be a good library, ought to contain the veriest rubbish, even Mr Dyce’s letter, because without comparison therewith we shall never be able to appreciate the styles of Swift, and Addison, and Milton, nor Shakespeare’s dramas, without ransacking the “condemned cells” of Drury Lane. And when at length, by these forbidden comparisons, we have discovered the best works of the best masters, it is not to be endured that “any men, however eminent,” should prefer them to the worst, or at least not give the worst equal honour. Our letter-writer thinks he strengthens his argument by quotations from the evidence, which, if there be anything in them, are quite against him, for they tend to show that selection should be of the best: thus Mr Solly is asked, Q. 1855—“Is it your opinion the study of these earlier masters is likely to lead to a purer style on the part of our own painters, than of the later and more effeminate school?”—“Certainly. I perfectly agree with the questions that have just been put to me, and I am not aware that I could add anything to them, as I think they comprehend all that I should have thought of suggesting myself upon the subject.”
It would have been surprising if Mr Solly had not agreed with questions so manufactured by epithets—for “purer” and “effeminate” make an undeniable difference. The questioner might as well have said, Don’t you think good better than bad? Don’t you think virtue better than vice? This is a specimen of the art of dressing up a false fact, to knock down with it a true one; but even here, according to the Dycian theory, the only earthly reason for preferring the purer is that it is the earlier; if the effeminate had by chance changed places with it, it would have had his chronological post of honour.
In his next quotation the pamphleteer is intent on giving a blow to his compeers of the English school. Mr Leigh confirms Mr Solly’s view—is questioned, Q. 1913: “You say the more chaste works of the Italian school—do you refer to an earlier era?”—“I allude to that particular period so justly referred to in the questions put to Mr Solly.” Q. 1914: “Do you mean the historical painters who were contemporaneous or prior to Raffaelle?”—“Yes.” Q. 1915: “You prefer these to the schools of Bologna?”—“Yes; it is a school whose works we are exceedingly in want of, to enable us to correct the tendency of the English style towards weakness of design, effeminacy of composition, and flauntiness of colouring.” But Mr Dyce has altogether forgotten his own rule, that it is not to be endured to give a judgment, &c.—that is, to pronounce what is good, what is “best” and “of the best,” and that if proved best, we have nothing whatever to do with that accident. We have just warned the public, by showing the probable number of specimens for this new “Old Curiosity Shop,” to be called our National Gallery. Page 18, Mr Dyce says, “Still, if it be remembered that only fifteen years after the commencement of the Royal Gallery of Berlin it possessed works of all classes, from the rude Byzantine down to productions of the last century, to the number of nearly twelve hundred, we need entertain no great misgiving as to the possibility of forming even a very considerable collection within a moderate period.” The public, we hope, do entertain a very great misgiving of the consequences of so frightful an inundation, especially as it is to begin with the rude Byzantine. But as the “rude Byzantine” may stand as high art, or fine art, in comparison with still more rude beginnings; and as antiquity lore is ever increased as it looks backward, and is not confined to country, there may be cause for misgiving whether there may not be an attempt to ransack China and Japan for new old schools—to discover picture mines in Peru, for monstrosities in paint and design; for all become legitimate sources under the ever-growing chronological mania, this outrageous pedantry of the “The history of Art.” And here the writer of the pamphlet, having perhaps momentary misgivings himself as to the quality of the stuff to be collected, goes backwards and forwards in oscillating contradictions, from best to any specimens, and from any specimens to best, ending in such wise conclusion as he generally comes to, that it is “best” to get the “best” specimens we can, but no matter whether we get them or not, provided we get any. For he insists that the one object is to have “a collection illustrative of the history of the art, and “(in italics)” the formation of it must be undertaken expressly with that view.” Moreover, “secondly, that though it be desirable that all works collected should be of the highest order—that is to say” (he loves to explain himself thus by duplicate) “that every master should be represented by one or more of his best works, yet as such works are not essential to the completeness of the collection, considered as an historical series, but serve rather to enrich it as a mere assemblage of beautiful works,” &c. &c. Can anything show more his contempt of mere beautiful works, as in no way being an object in collecting? In fact, the whole pamphlet is to recommend, if not to enforce, the gathering together an enormous mass of curiosity lumber, and building a labyrinth of “Chambers of Horrors” to hold them. And it must be taken into account that this absurd, this tasteless scheme, is not confined to pictures. It is proposed, in most views of our future gallery, that statues are to be added, and architecture is to claim its due share as one of the Fine Arts; and where are we to begin, and where end? Is statuary to find its rude commencement in the “Cannibal Islands,” its progress in Tartary, its rise and deification in joss-houses, Burmah furnishing “specimens,” even the wheels of Juggernaut moving slowly and majestically to a new enthronement in Kensington Gardens, or wherever our grand, national, amalgamated museum is to be? Pagodas will yield up their deformities to the new idolatry of chronological worshippers; the old monsters of Nineveh will be revived; and to prove Lord Jeffrey to be right, that there is no principle of beauty, many a hideous image will in arrangement claim affinity to the Venus de Medicis and the Apollo Belvidere. Really, all this is but a natural consequence of the first step in the system. It is to be, not art, but a history of art, to be shown by “specimens;” nor will it do to bring a brick even from Babylon as a specimen of its architecture. The public may rejoice in its ruin, or it would have to be brought in bodily, and a hundred or two crystal palaces added to our wonder of the world; as it is, there must be an “hiatus maxime deflendus.” We should have architecture, and “specimens” of architects of all the several countries and schools, as of pictures and painters. The English progress would be delightful to see. Holingshed says, that within the memory of many in his days, chimneys were rare; of course we must have “specimens.” We might go on indeed to weary the reader with absurdities, and it would only be following out Mr Dyce’s chronological idea in all its collateral branches; for, getting warm in riding his hobby, his heated imagination looks out for inconceivable vanishing points, which recede as fast as he finds them, till he sees in the unbounded space of art, which he thinks he has himself created, arts and sciences flying about in every direction, and crossing each other like so many dancing comets. The reader must look for a little incomprehensible language and confused utterance when Mr Dyce descends, having breathed the bewildering gas of his extraordinary sphere, to put his thoughts on paper, and thus he writes: “What I was going to say was in substance this—that if the idea of a complete museum of the fine arts involved the illustration of decorative art, and of physical science in its relation to art, to an extent which, though not unlimited, is nevertheless indefinite, if the vanishing point” (the italics of Mr Dyce), “so to speak, of such a museum lies somewhere in the region of practical science, one is immediately led to consider whether, as the reverse is true—viz., that practical science finds its vanishing point in the region of fine art—the true idea of a museum of arts would not be that which embraced the whole development of the artistic faculty, and commenced, therefore, on the one hand, with those arts which are solely, or almost solely, dependant on æsthetical science, and terminated on the other with those which are solely or chiefly dependant on physical science. Such an institution would start at the one extreme from physical science, and at the other from fine art; and these two would meet and cross one another, the influence of each vanishing and disappearing towards the opposite extremes.” So that, if there is anything to be understood and unriddled from this confusion of wordy ideas, it is this, that these arts and sciences, æsthetical and physical, do not meet to kiss and be friends, but to cross each other, and, having simply blazed awhile in each other’s faces, to fly off to their own vanishing points, more distant than ever, disappearing beyond the hope of that happy junction which, nevertheless, it had been the whole purpose of Mr Dyce’s pamphlet to bring about, and which, perhaps, he thinks he has brought about, or intends to bring about, unconscious of the impossibility which he has set in their way.
Lest the reader think we have needlessly brought in this body of architecture, we must again quote Mr Dyce. He certainly, to do him justice, does admit that specimens of architecture may be too big; but if he enumerates and measures his “fragmentary remains” from the British Museum and elsewhere, “models of whole structures, or models and casts of details,” “adequate to the great purpose of exhibiting the development of architecture, both as it is a science and a fine art, in all the various stages of its history,” and if some genii could bring them all together and throw the brick and plaster down before him, we doubt if his, or any known human agility, would enable him to escape the being buried under the dust that would be made by the deposit.