Here as elsewhere, superlatives are used in such a way in describing unimportant English painters that no adequate adjectives are left for the truly great men of other nationality. It would be difficult to find a better example of undeserving eulogy as applied to an inconsequent British painter than that furnished by Brangwyn, whose compositions, we are astonished to learn, have “a nobly impressive and universal character.” Such a statement might justly sum up the greatness of a Michelangelo statue; but here it is attached to the works of a man who at best is no more than a capable and clever illustrator.
The foregoing examples by no means include all the instances of how English painters, as a result of the liberal space allotted them and the lavish encomiums heaped upon them by the Encyclopædia Britannica’s editors, are unduly expanded into great and important figures. A score of other names could be mentioned. From beginning to end, English art is emphasized and lauded until it is out of all proportion to the rest of the world.
Turn to the article on Painting and look at the sub-title, “Recent Schools.” Under “British” you will find twelve columns, with inset headings. Under “French” you will find only seven columns, without insets. Practically all the advances made in modern art have come out of France; and practically all important modern painters have been Frenchmen. England has contributed little or nothing to modern painting. And yet, recent British schools are given nearly twice the space that is devoted to recent French schools! Again regard the article, Sculpture. Even a greater and more astonishing disproportionment exists here. Modern British sculpture is given no less than thirteen and a half columns, while modern French sculpture, of vastly greater æsthetic importance, is given only seven and a half columns!
VI
NON-BRITISH PAINTING
If the same kind of panegyrics which characterize the biographies of the British painters in the Encyclopædia Britannica were used in dealing with the painters of all nationalities, there could be made no charge of either unconscious or deliberate injustice. But once we leave Great Britain’s shores, prodigal laudation ceases. As if worn out by the effort of proving that Englishmen are pre-eminent among the world’s painters, the editors devote comparatively little space to those non-British artists who, we have always believed and been taught, were the truly significant men in painting. Therefore, if the Britannica’s implications are to be believed, England alone, among all modern countries, is the home of genius. And it would be difficult for one not well informed to escape the impression that not only Turner, but English painting in general, is “like the British fleet among the navies of the world.”
A comparison, for instance, between English and French painters, as they are presented in this encyclopædia, would leave the neophyte with the conviction that France was considerably inferior in regard to graphic ability, as inferior, in fact—if we may read the minds of the Britannica’s editors—as the French fleet is to the British fleet. In its ignorant and un-English way the world for years has been laboring under the superstition that the glories of modern painting had been largely the property of France. But such a notion is now corrected.
For instance, we had always believed that Chardin was one of the greatest of still-life painters. We had thought him to be of exceeding importance, a man with tremendous influence, deserving of no little consideration. But when we turn to his biography in the Encyclopædia Britannica we are, to say the least, astonished at the extent of our over-valuation. He is dismissed with six lines! And the only critical comment concerning him is: “He became famous for his still-life pictures and domestic interiors.” And yet Thomas Stothard, an English painter who for twenty-five years was Chardin’s contemporary, is given over a column; James Northcote, another English contemporary of Chardin’s, is given half a column; and many other British painters, whose names are little known outside of England, have long biographies and favorable criticisms.