REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS ON THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[SECOND NOTICE.]
THE play of "Hamlet," omitting the part of the Dane, is not a greater absurdity than a school where the scholars have no master. Yet this virtually exists at the Royal Academy. And the duties which properly and primarily belong to such an institution are supposed by its members to have been satisfactorily discharged by a simple invitation to students to come to its school-rooms and there to teach themselves. "There is DO such thing as teach- ing in point of fact. You give your students models to copy from, and they occasionally ask questions of the visitor, but the visitor is not occupied in absolute teaching during his sitting there." Thus says Sir E. Landseer, and denies that any good would come from the substitution of a permanent professor, who should make it his business to do what at pre. present is systematically neglected. The system hitherto pursued is for each of the Academicians to take his turn, one month at a time, to act as a visitor in the Life and Painting Schools. By such a system, it is argued, the students have the advantage of different minds, and thus, instead of being directed into the narrow channel of a single artist's ideas, are led to take what is best from the mind of each visitor, so as to combine their various merits in a large, con- sistent, and original method. These are fine words and convey a doc- trine which sounds well and sagaciously. And every one will admit that it is worth an effort topreserve originality andkeep clear of man- nabob. But practically what happens ? It is to be feared that the doctrine is far too comfortable a one for the preachers, and that what they thus speciously defend is maintained more on account of the little expense, either of trouble or money, which it entails on the Academy, than for the real advantage it confers on the students. The defenders of the system, such as it is, have not really carried it out. "There is, in fact, no teaching ;" the visitor sits by, like Jupiter, enveloped in a cloud of dignity, and though condescending to speak when petitioned to solve a difficulty, he has, of course, all the advantage which arises from the reluctance of the students to approach his awful presence. If there be any doubt whether the nodes be vindice digs us, we may be sure who gets the benefit of it. Under such a system, it is pertinently observed by the Commis- sioners, it would hardly be necessary to have visitors at all ; you would only require a sort of curator to see that order was kept in the rooms. And the only reply that occurs to an optimiz- ing Associate of the Academy is that "the visitor is so far an advantage, that he becomes in a measure intimate with the stu- dents, and gives a tone to them, or should do so, which a curator would not." I apprehend that the public will be a little surprised to find that the only things taught at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts are behaviour and general deportment ; but yet, like a good- natured public as it is, it would not quarrel with the theoretical incompleteness of the system if the fruits borne by it proved its practical utility. People in general, however, are not quite satisfied that this end is secured. They know enough of the works of foreign schools to perceive that in the quality most easily taught, viz., drawing, the English school is very inferior, and they have read, or heard in various quarters, how widely different the system pursued in foreign schools is from that to which the English Academy so pertinaciously clings, and, therefore, find less difficulty in accounting for the difference in result than the aforesaid optimist, who, pressed by this consideration, took refuge in the reply, "I am not acquainted with the foreign schools." "I do not think," he adds, "the drawing is very good in our school, certainly," " but," in the same breath, "the education here (i. e., at the Academy) appears to me to give every advantage to the student. I am. not conver- sant with foreign art education at all." But the system of foreign art education is no secret, and may be learnt from some of our own artists who, repelled from the barren pastures of Trafalgar Square, have sought more nourishing food in the schools and ateliers of Paris or Munich, and, be it added, have shown by the mastery they have attained in the use of their pencils that the in- feriority of the English school flows not from any natural inaptitude of the English scholar, but from the faulty system pursued by his master. Space is wanting to describe here the foreign system. It may be found detailed at length in the evidence appended to the report, especially in that given by Mr. E. Armitage. Suffice it now to say that it applies itself confessedly to teach. Loss of individuality has not there been such a bugbear as to frighten men away from the sustained and connected precepts of a master mind ; nor because the assumed " originality " of some moderate intellects runs the risk of a temporary absorption in the acquired ideas of the pre- ceptor, has it been thought necessary to purchase exemption from mannerism at the price of a miserable ignorance of the elementary language of art. Accordingly, the Commissioners advise that instead of the present superintendence by the keeper in the Antique School, and by visitors alone in the Life and Painting Schools, "there should be a general director of the schools, with a salary large enough to secure the services of a first-rate teacher," and that under him "there should be competent and well-paid instructors at the head of the different departments." And they think that, "whatever advantages have hitherto attended the system of visitors may be still secured by the appointment of a sub-committee of the Council, which should visit the schools from time to time, and make any suggestions they might consider requisite."
This is the principal improvement recommended with regard to the teaching of the Academy, and by its importance has claimed so much space as to leave no room for a complete notice of certain minor details of less importance. I protest, however, against sub- jecting the Academy to the neceasity of accepting a certificate of the South Kensington School of Art as a sufficient qualification for admission into the schools of the Academy. The Academy should be quite free in this respect. One other point may be particu- larized, viz., the recommendation "that chemistry, as applicable to art, should be taught, and that there should be a chemist and a laboratory attached to the Academy, colours and vehicles for paint- ing being submitted to practical tests . . . and that the results should be carefully registered, made generally accessible, and pub- lished in the annual report of the proceedings of the Academy?' The science of chemistry, thus pursued, has to do only with the mechanism of painting, and its introduction into the curriculum does not lead the Academy beyond its generally recognized pro- vince,—the teaching, namely, of the language of art. The Com- missioners have not adopted the suggestion that the Academy should be a species of university, where everything which tends to make men better artists ought to be taught. However true the thought which inspired that suggestion, its adoption is hardly pos- sible in practice. All natural science, history, poetry, every variety of knowledge which enlarges the sphere of his understanding and warms his imagination, is a direct aid to the artist in his profession. In his constant office of selection and combination of natural ele- ments it is essential for him to possess so much scientific knowledge as shall save him from joining things which nature never combines, and from disjoining things which nature in a healthy condition never separates. It is important, for instance, if his object be to
present a form of perfect human beauty, that he should not, as the sculptor of the Venus de Medici is accused of having done, make the head idiotic ; or, in painting the portrait of a good-natured gentleman, repeat the fault attributed to Sir T. Lawrence in a portrait of George IV. of placing the ear in such a position as indicates the head to be that of a deliberate murderer. But can the Academy, to save an artist from such errors in expression, therefore undertake to teach the science of phrenology? I conceive that no more can be expected of such a body, than lectures which shall insist on the necessity and suggest the mode of attaining such ingredients of the artist's education as are derived from some know- ledge of the sciences of botany, geology, optics, mechanics, physio- logy, and the like.
But greater space in the building of the Academy is absolutely needed before the schools can be efficiently organized. Of course, they ought to be open throughout the year, except some time for vacation ; but at present they are closed during the exhibition, the very period of the year when their opening would be of the greatest importance and value, and this solely, on account of the want of space. From the same cause spring many of the worst grievances of the exhibition ; and though neither Mr. Millais nor Mr. Frith are likely to find many to subscribe to their opinions when they say, the former, that "the hanging of the pictures is universally satisfactory, and that there is no cause of complaint on that head ;" the second, that "this year particularly the space has been fairly distributed" (Mr. Frith was him- self on the hanging committee), yet there can be no ques- tion that when more pictures are rejected than are admitted, and some of the admitted ones are hung either too high or too low to be fairly seen, a large proportion of the hardship inflicted must be ascribed to the want of space. This want the Commis- sioners (after recommending that the Associates should no longer share with the Academicians the absolute right of admission for a specified number of works, and that the Aeademicians should in future be restricted to four) think ought to be supplied at the pub- lic expense, and suggest that the but arrangement for this pur- pose would be to surrender to the Academy on such conditions as to the improvement of the facade or otherwise as Government might determine, the whole of the present building in Trafalgar Square, the national collection being transferred to a new building to be erected on the site of Burlington House. This would be an equitable arrangement. The Academy could no longer grumble at the worthlessness of the " lodgings " allowed them by the public (albeit refusing 40,000/. to be bought out), and the public would secure the right, which they would not otherwise possess, of inter- fering in the affairs of the Academy. The immense fund of 140,000/. formed by accumulations of 5,000/. to 6,000/. a year, accumulations which the Academy always defended as being necessary for the building they might some day be called on to provide for themselves, would be set free, and the income of it, to- gether with the proceeds of the exhibition, amounting in all to 13,000/. andupwards, become applicable to the efficient organization and maintenance of the schools and of the other objects immediately connected with the interests of art.
On the whole, the report, though conceived in a spirit friendly to the Academy, is firm in its recommendations ; and though, perhaps, rather fanciful on. some points, and too much occupied with detail, contains advice which, if adopted, will convert the Academy from its present anomalous condition into a public body which will command the respect and confidence of the nation, with a constitution especially adapted to promote the study and the
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