With true regard, yours, my dear Sir,
A. N. Author.
TO THINK, OR BE THOUGHT FOR?
If anything I can say here, on the subject of the painter's Art, will encourage intelligent people of any rank to turn a deaf ear to all that critics, connoisseurs, lecturers, and compilers of guide-books can tell them; to trust entirely to their own common sense when they are looking at pictures; and to express their opinions boldly, without the slightest reference to any precedents whatever—I shall have exactly achieved the object with which I now apply myself to the writing of this paper.
Let me first ask, in regard to pictures in general, what it is that prevents the public from judging for themselves, and why the influence of Art in England is still limited to select circles,—still unfelt, as the phrase is, by all but the cultivated classes? Why do people want to look at their guide-books, before they can make up their minds about an old picture? Why do they ask connoisseurs and professional friends for a marked catalogue, before they venture inside the walls of the exhibition-rooms in Trafalgar Square? Why, when they are, for the most part, always ready to tell each other unreservedly what books they like, or what musical compositions are favourites with them, do they hesitate the moment pictures turn up as a topic of conversation, and intrench themselves doubtfully behind such cautious phrases, as, "I don't pretend to understand the subject,"—"I believe such and such a picture is much admired,"—"I am no judge," and so on?
No judge! Does a really good picture want you to be a judge? Does it want you to have anything but eyes in your head, and the undisturbed possession of your senses? Is there any other branch of intellectual art which has such a direct appeal, by the very nature of it, to every sane human being as the art of painting? There it is, able to represent through a medium which offers itself to you palpably, in the shape of so many visible feet of canvass, actual human facts, and distinct aspects of Nature, which poetry can only describe, and which music can but obscurely hint at. The Art which can do this—and which has done it over and over again both in past and present times—is surely of all arts that one which least requires a course of critical training, before it can be approached on familiar terms. Whenever I see an intelligent man, which I often do, standing before a really eloquent and true picture, and asking his marked catalogue, or his newspaper, or his guide-book, whether he may safely admire it or not—I think of a man standing winking both eyes in the full glare of a cloudless August noon, and inquiring deferentially of an astronomical friend whether he is really justified in saying that the sun shines!
But, we have not yet fairly got at the main obstacle which hinders the public from judging of pictures for themselves, and which, by a natural consequence, limits the influence of Art on the nation generally. For my own part, I have long thought, and shall always continue to believe, that this same obstacle is nothing more or less than the Conceit of Criticism, which has got obstructively between Art and the people,—which has kept them asunder, and will keep them asunder, until it is fairly pulled out of the way, and set aside at once and for ever in its proper background place.
This is a bold thing to say; but I think I can advance some proofs that my assertion is not altogether so wild as it may appear at first sight. By the Conceit of Criticism, I desire to express, in one word, the conventional laws and formulas, the authoritative rules and regulations which individual men set up to guide the tastes and influence the opinions of their fellow-creatures. When Criticism does not speak in too arbitrary a language, and when the laws it makes are ratified by the consent and approbation of intelligent people in general, I have as much respect for it as any one. But, when Criticism sits altogether apart, speaks opinions that find no answering echo in the general heart, and measures the greatness of intellectual work by anything rather than by its power of appealing to all capacities for admiration and enjoyment, from the very highest to the very humblest,—then, as it seems to me, Criticism becomes the expression of individual conceit, and forfeits all claim to consideration and respect. From that moment, it is Obstructive—for it has set itself up fatally between the Art of Painting and the honest and general appreciation of that Art by the People.
Let me try to make this still clearer by an example. A great deal of obstructive criticism undoubtedly continues to hang as closely as it can about Poetry and Music. But there are, nevertheless, stateable instances, in relation to these two Arts, of the voice of the critic and the voice of the people being on the same side. The tragedy of Hamlet, for example, is critically considered to be the masterpiece of dramatic poetry; and the tragedy of Hamlet is also, according to the testimony of every sort of manager, the play, of all others, which can be invariably depended on to fill a theatre with the greatest certainty, act it when and how you will. Again, in music, the Don Giovanni of Mozart, which is the admiration even of the direst pedant producible from the ranks of musical connoisseurs, is also the irresistible popular attraction which is always sure to fill the pit and gallery at the opera. Here, at any rate, are two instances in which two great achievements of the past in poetry and music are alike viewed with admiration by the man who appreciates by instinct, and the man who appreciates by rule.