‘Now, if the Directors had not felt quite certain as to the result of the present Exhibition, (of the Flemish School), if they had not perfectly satisfied themselves, that, instead of affording any, even the least means of promoting unfair and invidious comparisons, it would produce abundant matter for exaltation to the living Artist, can we possibly imagine they, the foster-parents of British Art, would ever have suffered such a display to have taken place? Certainly not. If they had not foreseen and fully provided against all such injurious results, by the deep and masterly manœuvre alluded to in our former remarks, is it conceivable that the Directors would have acted in a way so counter, so diametrically in opposition to this their fundamental and leading principle? No, No! It is a position which all sense of respect for their consistency will not suffer us to admit, which all feelings of respect for their views forbid us to allow.
‘Is it at all to be wondered at, that, in an Exhibition such as this, where nothing like a patriotic desire to uphold the arts of their country can possibly have place in the minds of the Directors, we should attribute to them the desire of holding up the old Masters to derision, inasmuch as good policy would allow? Is it to be wondered at, that, when the Directors have the three-fold prospect, by so doing, of estranging the silly and ignorant Collector from his false and senseless infatuation for the Black Masters, of turning his unjust preference from Foreign to British Art, and, by affording the living painters a just encouragement, teach them to feel that becoming confidence in their powers, which an acknowledgment of their merits entitles them to? Is it to be wondered at, we say, that a little duplicity should have been practised upon this occasion, that some of our ill-advised Collectors and second-rate picture Amateurs should have been singled out as sheep for the sacrifice, and thus ingeniously made to pay unwilling homage to the talents of their countrymen, through that very medium by which they had previously been induced to depreciate them?’—‘If, in our wish to please the Directors, we should, without mercy, damn all that deserves damning, and effectually hide our admiration for those pieces and passages which are truly entitled to admiration, it must be placed entirely to that patriotic sympathy, which we feel in common with the Directors, of holding up to the public, as the first and great object, THE PATRONAGE OF MODERN ART.’
Once more:
‘Who does not perceive (except those whose eyes are not made for seeing more than they are told by others) that Vandyke’s portraits, by the brilliant colour of the velvet hangings, are made to look as if they had been newly fetched home from the clear-starcher, with a double portion of blue in their ruffs? Who does not see, that the angelic females in Rubens’s pictures (particularly in that of the Brazen Serpent) labour under a fit of the bile, twice as severe as they would do, if they were not suffering on red velvet? Who does not see, from the same cause, that the landscapes by the same Master are converted into brown studies, and that Rembrandt’s ladies and gentlemen of fashion look as if they had been on duty for the whole of last week in the Prince Regent’s new sewer? And who, that has any penetration, that has any gratitude, does not see, in seeing all this, the anxious and benevolent solicitude of the Directors to keep the old masters under?’
So, then, this Writer would think it a matter of lively gratitude, and of exultation in the breasts of living Artists, if the Directors, ‘in their anxious and benevolent desire to keep the old Masters under,’ had contrived to make Vandyke’s pictures look like starch and blue: if they had converted Rubens’s pictures into brown studies, or a fit of the bile; or had dragged Rembrandt’s through the Prince Regent’s new sewers. It would have been a great gain, a great triumph to the Academy and to the Art, to have nothing left of all the pleasure or admiration which those painters had hitherto imparted to the world, to find all the excellences which their works had been supposed to possess, and all respect for them in the minds of the public destroyed, and converted into sudden loathing and disgust. This is, according to the Catalogue-writer and his friends, a consummation devoutly to be wished for themselves and for the Art. All that is taken from the old Masters is so much added to the moderns; the marring of Art is the making of the Academy. This is the kind of patronage and promotion of the Fine Arts on which he insists as necessary to keep up the reputation of living Artists, and to ensure the sale of their works. There is nothing then in common between the merits of the old Masters and the doubtful claims of the new: those are not ‘the scale by which we can ascend to the love’ of these. The excellences of the latter are of their own making and of their own seeing; we must take their own word for them; and not only so, but we must sacrifice all established principles and all established reputation to their upstart pretensions, because, if the old pictures are not totally worthless, their own can be good for nothing. The only chance, therefore, for the moderns, if the Catalogue-writer is to be believed, is to decry all the chef-d’œuvres of the Art, and to hold up all the great names in it to derision. If the public once get to relish the style of the old Masters, they will no longer tolerate theirs. But so long as the old Masters can be kept under, the coloured caricatures of the moderns, like Mrs. Peachum’s coloured handkerchiefs, ‘will be of sure sale at their warehouse at Redriff.’ The Catalogue-writer thinks it necessary, in order to raise the Art in this country, to depreciate all Art in all other times and countries. He thinks that the way to excite an enthusiastic admiration of genius in the public is by setting the example of a vulgar and malignant hatred of it in himself. He thinks to inspire a lofty spirit of emulation in the rising generation, by shutting his eyes to the excellences of all the finest models, or by pouring out upon them the overflowings of his gall and envy, to disfigure them in the eyes of others; so that they may see nothing in Raphael, in Titian, in Rubens, in Rembrandt, in Vandyke, in Claude Lorraine, in Leonardo da Vinci, but the low wit and dirty imagination of a paltry scribbler; and come away from the greatest monuments of human capacity, without one feeling of excellence in art, or of beauty or grandeur in nature. Nay, he would persuade us that this is a great public and private benefit, viz., that there is no such thing as excellence, as genius, as true fame, except what he and his anonymous associates arrogate to themselves, with all the profit and credit of this degradation of genius, this ruin of Art, this obloquy and contempt heaped on great and unrivalled reputation. He thinks it a likely mode of producing confidence in the existence and value of Art, to prove that there never was any such thing, till the last annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy. He would encourage a disinterested love of Art, and a liberal patronage of it in the great and opulent, by shewing that the living Artists have no regard, but the most sovereign and reckless contempt for it, except as it can be made a temporary stalking-horse to their pride and avarice. The writer may have a patriotic sympathy with the sale of modern works of Art, but we do not see what sympathy there can be between the buyers and sellers of these works, except in the love of the Art itself. When we find that these patriotic persons would destroy the Art itself to promote the sale of their pictures, we know what to say to them. We are obliged to the zeal of our critic for having set this matter in so clear a light. The public will feel little sympathy with a body of Artists who disclaim all sympathy with all other Artists. They will doubt their pretensions to genius who have no feeling of respect for it in others; they will consider them as bastards, not children of the Art, who would destroy their parent. The public will hardly consent, when the proposition is put to them in this tangible shape, to give up the cause of liberal art and of every liberal sentiment connected with it, and enter, with their eyes open, into a pettifogging cabal to keep the old Masters under, or hold their names up to derision ‘as good sport,’ merely to gratify the selfish importunity of a gang of sturdy beggars, who demand public encouragement and support, with a claim of settlement in one hand, and a forged certificate of merit in the other. They can only deserve well of the public by deserving well of the Art. Have we taken these men from the plough, from the counter, from the shop-board, from the tap-room and the stable-door, to raise them to fortune, to rank, and distinction in life, for the sake of Art, to give them a chance of doing something in Art like what had been done before them, of promoting and refining the public taste, of setting before them the great models of Art, and by a pure love of truth and beauty, and by patient and disinterested aspirations after it, of rising to the highest excellence, and of making themselves ‘a name great above all names’; and do they now turn round upon us, and because they have neglected these high objects of their true calling for pitiful cabals and filling their pockets, insist that we shall league with them in crushing the progress of Art, and the respect attached to all its great efforts? There is no other country in the world in which such a piece of impudent quackery could be put forward with impunity, and still less in which it could be put forward in the garb of patriotism. This is the effect of our gross island manners. The Catalogue-writer carries his bear-garden notions of this virtue into the Fine Arts, and would set about destroying Dutch or Italian pictures as he would Dutch shipping or Italian liberty. He goes up to the Rembrandts with the same swaggering Jack-tar airs as he would to a battery of nine-pounders, and snaps his fingers at Raphael as he would at the French. Yet he talks big about the Elgin Marbles, because Mr. Payne Knight has made a slip on that subject; though, to be consistent, he ought to be for pounding them in a mortar, should get his friend the Incendiary to set fire to the room building for them at the British Museum, or should get Mr. Soane to build it. Patriotism and the Fine Arts have nothing to do with one another—because patriotism relates to exclusive advantages, and the advantages of the Fine Arts are not exclusive, but communicable. The physical property of one country cannot be shared without loss by another: the physical force of one country may destroy that of another. These, therefore, are objects of national jealousy and fear of encroachment: for the interests or rights of different countries may be compromised in them. But it is not so in the Fine Arts, which depend upon taste and knowledge. We do not consume the works of Art as articles of food, of clothing, or fuel; but we brood over their idea, which is accessible to all, and may be multiplied without end, ‘with riches fineless.’ Patriotism is ‘beastly; subtle as the fox for prey; like warlike as the wolf for what it eats’; but Art is ideal, and therefore liberal. The knowledge or perfection of Art in one age or country is the cause of its existence or perfection in another. Art is the cause of art in other men. Works of genius done by a Dutchman are the cause of genius in an Englishman—are the cause of taste in an Englishman. The patronage of foreign Art is, not to prevent, but to promote Art in England. It does not prevent, but promote taste in England. Art subsists by communication, not by exclusion. The light of art, like that of nature, shines on all alike; and its benefit, like that of the sun, is in being seen and felt. The spirit of art is not the spirit of trade: it is not a question between the grower or consumer of some perishable and personal commodity: but it is a question between human genius and human taste, how much the one can produce for the benefit of mankind, and how much the other can enjoy. It is ‘the link of peaceful commerce ‘twixt dividable shores.’ To take from it this character is to take from it its best privilege, its humanity. Would any one, except our Catalogue-virtuoso, think of destroying or concealing the monuments of Art in past ages, as inconsistent with the progress of taste and civilisation in the present? Would any one find fault with the introduction of the works of Raphael into this country, as if their being done by an Italian confined the benefit to a foreign country, when all the benefit, all the great and lasting benefit, (except the purchase-money, the lasting burden of the Catalogue, and the great test of the value of Art in the opinion of the writer), is instantly communicated to all eyes that behold, and all hearts that can feel them? It is many years ago since we first saw the prints of the Cartoons hung round the parlour of a little inn on the great north road. We were then very young, and had not been initiated into the principles of taste and refinement of the Catalogue Raisonné. We had heard of the fame of the Cartoons, but this was the first time that we had ever been admitted face to face into the presence of those divine works. ‘How were we then uplifted!’ Prophets and Apostles stood before us, and the Saviour of the Christian world, with his attributes of faith and power; miracles were working on the walls; the hand of Raphael was there, and as his pencil traced the lines, we saw god-like spirits and lofty shapes descend and walk visibly the earth, but as if their thoughts still lifted them above the earth. There was that figure of St. Paul, pointing with noble fervour to ‘temples not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ and that finer one of Christ in the boat, whose whole figure seems sustained by meekness and love, and that of the same person, surrounded by the disciples, like a flock of sheep listening to the music of some divine shepherd. We knew not how enough to admire them. If from this transport and delight there arose in our breasts a wish, a deep aspiration of mingled hope and fear, to be able one day to do something like them, that hope has long since vanished; but not with it the love of Art, nor delight in works of Art, nor admiration of the genius which produces them, nor respect for fame which rewards and crowns them! Did we suspect that in this feeling of enthusiasm for the works of Raphael we were deficient in patriotic sympathy, or that, in spreading it as far as we could, we did an injury to our country or to living Art? The very feeling shewed that there was no such distinction in Art, that her benefits were common, that the power of genius, like the spirit of the world, is everywhere alike present. And would the harpies of criticism try to extinguish this common benefit to their country from a pretended exclusive attachment to their countrymen? Would they rob their country of Raphael to set up the credit of their professional little-goes and E. O. tables—‘cutpurses of the Art, that from the shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in their pockets’? Tired of exposing such folly, we walked out the other day, and saw a bright cloud resting on the bosom of the blue expanse, which reminded us of what we had seen in some picture in the Louvre. We were suddenly roused from our reverie, by recollecting that till we had answered this catchpenny publication we had no right, without being liable to a charge of disaffection to our country or treachery to the Art, to look at nature, or to think of any thing like it in Art, not of British growth and manufacture!
No. 36.] THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED [Nov. 10, 17, 1816.
The Catalogue-writer nicknames the Flemish painters ‘the Black Masters.’ Either this means that the works of Rubens and Vandyke were originally black pictures, that is, deeply shadowed like those of Rembrandt, which is false, there being no painter who used so little shadow as Vandyke, or so much colour as Rubens; or it must mean that their pictures have turned darker with time, that is, that the art itself is a black art. Is this a triumph for the Academy? Is the defect and decay of Art a subject of exultation to the national genius? Then there is no hope (in this country at least) ‘that a great man’s memory may outlive him half a year!’ Do they calculate that the decomposition and gradual disappearance of the standard works of Art will quicken the demand, and facilitate the sale of modern pictures? Have they no hope of immortality themselves, that they are glad to see the inevitable dissolution of all that has long flourished in splendour and in honour? They are pleased to find, that at the end of near two hundred years, the pictures of Vandyke and Rubens have suffered half as much from time as those of their late President have done in thirty or forty, or their own in the last ten or twelve years. So that the glory of painting is that it does not last for ever: it is this which puts the ancients and the moderns on a level. They hail with undisguised satisfaction the approaches of the slow mouldering hand of time in those works which have lasted longest, not anticipating the premature fate of their own. Such is their short-sighted ambition. A picture is with them like the frame it is in, as good as new; and the best picture, that which was last painted. They make the weak side of Art the test of its excellence; and though a modern picture of two years standing is hardly fit to be seen, from the general ignorance of the painter in the mechanical as well as other parts of the Art, yet they are sure at any time to get the start of Rubens or Vandyke, by painting a picture against the day of exhibition. We even question whether they would wish to make their own pictures last if they could, and whether they would not destroy their own works as well as those of others, (like chalk figures on the floors), to have new ones bespoke the next day. The Flemish pictures then, except those of Rembrandt, were not originally black; they have not faded in proportion to the length of time they have been painted. All that comes then of the nickname in the Catalogue is, that the pictures of the old Masters have lasted longer than those of the present members of the Royal Academy, and that the latter, it is to be presumed, do not wish their works to last so long, lest they should be called the Black Masters. With respect to Rembrandt, this epitaph may be literally true. But, we would ask, whether the style of chiaroscuro, in which Rembrandt painted, is not one fine view of nature and of art? Whether any other painter carried it to the same height of perfection as he did? Whether any other painter ever joined the same depth of shadow with the same clearness? Whether his tones were not as fine as they were true? Whether a more thorough master of his art ever lived? Whether he deserved for this to be nicknamed by the Writer of the Catalogue, or to have his works ‘kept under, or himself held up to derision,’ by the Patrons and Directors of the British Institution for the support and encouragement of the Fine Arts?
But we have heard it said by a disciple and commentator on the Catalogue, (one would think it was hardly possible to descend lower than the writer himself), that the Directors of the British Institution assume a consequence to themselves, hostile to the pretensions of modern professors, out of the reputation of the old Masters, whom they affect to look upon with wonder, to worship as something preternatural;—that they consider the bare possession of an old picture as a title to distinction, and the respect paid to Art as the highest pretension of the owner. And is this then a subject of complaint with the Academy, that genius is thus thought of, when its claims are once fully established? That those high qualities, which are beyond the estimate of ignorance and selfishness while living, receive their reward from distant ages? Do they not ‘feel the future in the instant’? Do they not know, that those qualities which appeal neither to interest nor passion can only find their level with time, and would they annihilate the only pretensions they have? Or have they no conscious affinity with true genius, no claim to the reversion of true fame, no right of succession to this lasting inheritance and final reward of great exertions, which they would therefore destroy, to prevent others from enjoying it? Does all their ambition begin and end in their patriotic sympathy with the sale of modern works of Art, and have they no fellow-feeling with the hopes and final destiny of human genius? What poet ever complained of the respect paid to Homer as derogatory to himself? The envy and opposition to established fame is peculiar to the race of modern Artists; and it is to be hoped it will remain so. It is the fault of their education. It is only by a liberal education that we learn to feel respect for the past, or to take an interest in the future. The knowledge of Artists is too often confined to their art, and their views to their own interest. Even in this they are wrong:—in all respects they are wrong. As a mere matter of trade, the prejudice in favour of old pictures does not prevent but assist the sale of modern works of Art. If there was not a prejudice in favour of old pictures, there could be a prejudice in favour of none, and none would be sold. The professors seem to think, that for every old picture not sold, one of their own would be. This is a false calculation. The contrary is true. For every old picture not sold, one of their own (in proportion) would not be sold. The practice of buying pictures is a habit, and it must begin with those pictures which have a character and name, and not with those which have none. ‘Depend upon it,’ says Mr. Burke in a letter to Barry, ‘whatever attracts public attention to the Arts, will in the end be for the benefit of the Artists themselves.’ Again, do not the Academicians know, that it is a contradiction in terms, that a man should enjoy the advantages of posthumous fame in his lifetime? Most men cease to be of any consequence at all when they are dead; but it is the privilege of the man of genius to survive himself. But he cannot in the nature of things anticipate this privilege—because in all that appeals to the general intellect of mankind, this appeal is strengthened, as it spreads wider and is acknowledged; because a man cannot unite in himself personally the suffrages of distant ages and nations; because popularity, a newspaper puff, cannot have the certainty of lasting fame; because it does not carry the same weight of sympathy with it; because it cannot have the same interest, the same refinement or grandeur. If Mr. West was equal to Raphael, (which he is not), if Mr. Lawrence was equal to Vandyke or Titian, (which he is not), if Mr. Turner was equal to Claude Lorraine, (which he is not), if Mr. Wilkie was equal to Teniers, (which he is not), yet they could not, nor ought they to be thought of in the same manner, because there could not be the same proof of it, nor the same confidence in the opinion of a man and his friends, or of any one generation, as in that of successive generations and the voice of posterity. If it is said that we pass over the faults of the one, and severely scrutinise the excellences of the other; this is also right and necessary, because the one have passed their trial, and the others are upon it. If we forgive or overlook the faults of the ancients, it is because they have dearly earned it at our hands. We ought to have some objects to indulge our enthusiasm upon; and we ought to indulge it upon the highest, and those that are surest of deserving it. Would one of our Academicians expect us to look at his new house in one of the new squares with the same veneration as at Michael Angelo’s, which he built with his own hands, as at Tully’s villa, or at the tomb of Virgil? We have no doubt they would, but we cannot. Besides, if it were possible to transfer our old prejudices to new candidates, the way to effect this is not by destroying them. If we have no confidence in all that has gone before us, in what has received the sanction of time and the concurring testimony of disinterested judges, are we to believe all of a sudden that excellence has started up in our own times, because it never existed before: are we to take the Artists’ own word for their superiority to their predecessors? There is one other plea made by the moderns, ‘that they must live,’ and the answer to it is, that they do live. An Academician makes his thousand a-year by portrait-painting, and complains that the encouragement given to foreign Art deprives him of the means of subsistence, and prevents him from indulging his genius in works of high history,—‘playing at will his virgin fancies wild.’
As to the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns, it does not admit of a question. The odds are too much in favour of the former, because it is likely that more good pictures were painted in the last three hundred than in the last thirty years. Now, the old pictures are the best remaining out of all that period, setting aside those of living Artists. If they are bad, the Art itself is good for nothing; for they are the best that ever were. They are not good, because they are old; but they have become old, because they are good. The question is not between this and any other generation, but between the present and all preceding generations, whom the Catalogue-writer, in his misguided zeal, undertakes to vilify and ‘to keep under, or hold up to derision.’ To say that the great names which have come down to us are not worth any thing, is to say that the mountain-tops which we see in the farthest horizon are not so high as the intervening objects. If there had been any greater painters than Vandyke or Rubens, or Raphael or Rembrandt, or N. Poussin or Claude Lorraine, we should have heard of them, we should have seen them in the Gallery, and we should have read a patriotic and disinterested account of them in the Catalogue Raisonné. Waiving the unfair and invidious comparison between all former excellence and the concentrated essence of it in the present age, let us ask who, in the last generation of painters, was equal to the old masters? Was it Highmore, or Hayman, or Hudson, or Kneller? Who was the English Raphael, or Rubens, or Vandyke, of that day, to whom the Catalogue-critic would have extended his patriotic sympathy and damning patronage? Kneller, we have been told, was thought superior to Vandyke by the persons of fashion whom he painted. So St. Thomas Apostle seems higher than St. Paul’s while you are close under it; but the farther off you go the higher the mighty dome aspires into the skies. What is become of all those great men who flourished in our own time—‘like flowers in men’s caps, dying or ere they sicken’—Hoppner, Opie, Shee, Loutherbourg, Rigaud, Romney, Barry, the painters of the Shakspeare Gallery? ‘Gone to the vault of all the Capulets,’ and their pictures with them, or before them! Shall we put more faith in their successors? Shall we take the words of their friends for their taste and genius? No, we will stick to what we know will stick to us, the ‘heirlooms’ of the Art, the Black Masters. The picture, for instance, of Charles I. on horseback, which our critic criticises with such heavy drollery, is worth all the pictures that were ever exhibited at the Royal Academy (from the time of Sir Joshua to the present time inclusive) put together. It shews more knowledge and feeling of the Art, more skill and beauty, more sense of what it is in objects that gives pleasure to the eye, with more power to communicate this pleasure to the world. If either this single picture, or all the lumber that has ever appeared at the Academy, were to be destroyed, there could not be a question which, with any Artist or with any judge or lover of Art. So stands the account between ancient and modern Art! By this we may judge of all the rest. The Catalogue-writer makes some strictures in the second part on the Waterloo Exhibition, which he does not think what it ought to be. We wonder he had another word to say on modern Art after seeing it. He should instantly have taken the resolution of Iago, ‘From this time forth I never will speak more.’
The writer of the Catalogue Raisonné has fallen foul of two things which ought to be sacred to Artists and lovers of Art—Genius and Fame. If they are not sacred to them, we do not know to whom they will be sacred. A work such as the present shews that the person who could write it must either have no knowledge or taste for Art, or must be actuated by a feeling of unaccountable malignity towards it. It shews that any body of men by whom it could be set on foot or encouraged are not an Academy of Art. It shews that a country in which such a publication could make its appearance is not the country of the Fine Arts. Does the writer think to prove the genius of his countrymen for Art by proclaiming their utter insensibility and flagitious contempt for all beauty and excellence in the art, except in their own works? No! it is very true that the English are a shopkeeping nation; and the Catalogue Raisonné is the proof of it.