A great intellectual revolution has taken place in the last half century: a great social and industrial revolution is preparing, or even now progressing. Whether art will again be able to sum up and express adequately in monumental form the new life and its aspirations, as it expressed the heart of ancient life in Greece and mediaeval Europe, must depend upon its power of appeal, and this again must depend upon the sensitiveness to form and colour on the part of the people. In England the domestic sentiment is so strong that enthusiasm for large public works is rare, and opportunities for sculptor or painter to express anything like the generic thought of their time, or to touch the pride or hopes of the nation rarer still.[4] The art that is capable of illustrating this spirit is what is called decorative art: but the art which can cover large mural spaces with a peoples' history and legend in noble and typical forms, the art which can lift our souls with large thoughts, or enchant them with a sense of mystery and romance, can also be a familiar friend at our firesides, and touch each common thing of every day use with beauty, weaving its golden threads into the joys and sorrows of common life, and making happy both young and old.
[4:] It is true we have our frescoes of English history at the Houses of Parliament, but they cannot be said, with the exception of the work of Mr. G. F. Watts, to have been conceived in an epic spirit, but are rather anecdotic or incidental. Though the new pictures for the House of Lords by some of our ablest men of the younger school, such as Mr. Payne and Mr. Cadogan Cowper, show much finer mural and decorative feeling.
THE SOCIALIST IDEAL AS A NEW INSPIRATION IN ART
THE SOCIALIST IDEAL AS A NEW INSPIRATION IN ART
ART as the commentator or the recorder of human life, reflecting not only its physical aspects but its mental attitude, must necessarily be influenced by every change which modifies the course and character of that life. It is the sensitive plate in the camera of the mind of the age which receives every image, every shadow which passes before the lens of its vision, and, over and above the fleeting shows of the hour, registers the prevailing sentiment of its period.
In proof of this we have only to look around us and see how intimately the life and spirit of our own times are represented in the art of the day, more especially pictorial art.
In any of our large annual popular mixed picture shows we may see the effects of the modern commercial principle of individual competition. Pictures of the utmost diversity of subject and treatment are crowded together, clamorous for attention, often injured by the juxtaposition of unsympathetic neighbours, the principal quality telling in such a conflict being force. Certain dominant, or privileged, individuals hold front places, but even the marked individual style of some leading painters is apt to be discounted by numerous more or less successful imitations.