A CENTURY OF ARTISTS.*
THIS truly magnificent volume is evidence of the artistic comprehensiveness of the International Exhibition held in Glasgow in the summer and autumn of 1888. which "resulted in a surplus of some 240,000, and thus, indirectly, in the establishment of a new municipal institution for the perpetual use and delectation of the inhabitants of the city." Whether this comprehensiveness was in itself a good thing, seems dis- putable. At all events, the frankly, and indeed ruthlessly critical author of the literary portion of this book, while testi- fying to "the tact and energy" of the Fine Arts Committee of the Exhibition, admits that "it is not to be denied that there were many who visited the Exhibition to be edified and remained to be bewildered,—who, reflecting that the Fifty Years of' British Art at Manchester, the Loan Collection of French and Dutch Pictures at Edinburgh, and the excellent and useful little shows from time to time presented by the Burlington Fine Arts Club, were not exactly inimitable, would have been better pleased with something less confessedly comprehensive than they found; who would have preferred a collection small in size, choice in material, and touched throughout with that quality of unity—historical, racial, thematic—which dis- tinguished the aforesaid gatherings." But it is the splendour —the full, voluptuous, but not overgrown, much less vulgar splendour—of this book that is the most noticeable fact in connection with it. One feels inclined to exclaim that they do these things better in Scotland than they do in England, and quite as well as they do in France, when one takes in all the excellences of this volume, which is published by the publishers to the University of Glasgow, and printed by the printers to the University of Edinburgh. Except Quasi Cursores—the beauty of which we commented on when it was published—and the Memorial Catalogue of the French and Dutch loan collection at the Edinburgh International Exhibition of 1886, both of which also came from the press of Messrs. Constable, we know nothing to compare
with this volume in printing, paper, lettering, and " get- up " generally. The binding is unique—one might even say, daring—and the design of the title-page is in the best sense a work of art in itself. None the less is it so because, to use Mr. Henley's distinction, it is suggestive of " literature" quite as much as of "paint."
The Fine Arts Committee of the Glasgow International Exhibition succeeded in securing in it a representation of 228 British and 112 foreign painters, by 427 pictures in oil and 492 water-colours,—a total of 919 exhibits, in addition to sculpture, etching, and work in black and white. The Foreign Section of the Loan Collection contained examples of present- day Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and France ; while the France of the immediate past was represented by Bastien-Lepage, Delacroix, Decamps, Troyon, Courbet, Diaz, Daubigny, Georges Michel, Rousseau, Millet, Edouard Frere, and J. B. C. Corot. This volume consists essentially of the reproductions of pictures exemplifying all the elements in the Glasgow Exhibition, with the exception of the Italian, German, Spanish, and Norwegian, regarding which we are told that "it seemed better to say nothing about them than to advertise the fact that they were not worth discussion." The specimens are in themselves so good as to make this volume a valuable possession in itself, apart alto- gether from the Loan Collection of which it is a memorial. The biographies of the artists and the criticisms of their work are contributed by Mr. W. E. Henley, who has incor- porated in this book the articles on Corot, Courbet, Danbigny, Decamps, Delacroix, Diaz, Edouard Frere, Millet, Rousseau, and Troyon, which appeared in the Memorial Catalogue of French and Dutch Pictures at the Edinburgh International Exhibition, 1886. Mr. Henley, like every man of independent mind—or, for that matter, every man, whether he has a mind or not—has a theory of art-criticism. It comes, in effect, to this,—that a great painter is a great master of "paint," not of "disguised literature." This theory, like the practice of so many French, and still more Dutch artists, is valuable as a protest against the mawkishness and what Byron would have termed "the budding-missishness," which is the chief feature of so much of the English art of to-day and yesterday.
• A Century of Artists : a Memorial of the Loan Collection of Painting and Sculpture in the International Exhillition, Glasgow, SM. With Historical and Biographical Notes by William Ernest Henley, and Descriptions of the Pictures by Robert Walker. Glasgow James Maalehose and Sons. Me.
Obviously, however, it may be carried too far. "Disguised literature" is often simply idealism ; and would Mr. Henley banish idealism—he certainly would not banish romanticism —from Art ? Then, again, Mr. Henley is himself the author of some of the truest and most real—as distinguished from realistic—verses that have appeared in England during the last twenty years. But is not a good deal of his volume—the whole of his hospital portraiture, for example—neither more nor less than "disguised paint"? There must be a give-and- take between "paint" and "literature." But take Mr. Henley within the limits of art-criticism which he has prescribed to himself, take him as he is shown in his appraisement of the foreign artists whom he places above our own, and he must be admitted to be a master of paint in words. When, in particular, he allows himself to indulge in unstinted praise, his gorgeous- ness—we use "gorgeousness" advisedly—culminates in epi- gram, as when he says of Corot :—" In his most careless work there is always art and there is always quality—a strain of elegance. a thrill of style, a hint of the unseen, while at his best he is not only the consummate artist, he is also the most charming of poets. If I remember aright, it is Cherbuliez who says of Mozart that he was the only Athenian who ever wrote music.' The phrase is a good one ; it suggests so happily the ideal marriage of sentiment with style. With the substitution of landscape for music, it applies as happily to Corot. Corot is the Mozart of landscape." It is almost unnecessary to say that Mr. Henley takes a quite unconventional view of English art and of English art-criticism. His opinion of Rossetti may be commended to ultra-Rossettians ; his estimate of Turner, to those who can only look at Turner through Mr. Ruskin's spectacles ; neither can be passed over, much less despised. Of Romney he says cleverly that "the dominant note in his life was one of sexual tragedy. The worship in paint which he professed for Emma Lyon is comparable of its kind and in its degree with that which Dante practised for Beatrice in poetry." There is obviously much to provoke con- troversy in Mr. Henley's contributions to this volume,—even his estimate of Constable is not likely to pass unchallenged. Occasionally, too, he seems unconsciously to drop into the grandiose slang of a certain school of artistic characterisation. But there is no doubt whatever as to the almost passionate sincerity of his convictions, the merciless candour of his ex- pressed opinions, or the distinction of his style. And seeing we are for the moment on Scotch soil, we cannot refrain from quoting Mr. Henley's judgment of Raeburn :—" A personality so shrewd and sensible, so natural and healthy and sincere, as to seem not out of place in the cycle of Walter Scott. He was content to paint that he knew, and that only; and his con- science was serviceable as well as untroubled and serene. Of the mere capacity of portraiture—the gift of perceiving and representing individual character and form—he had more perhaps than any portrait-painter that has lived ; and not a little of his merit consists in that he was always so far its master as to be able to vocalise it, as it were, in the terms of paint. In other words, his portraitures are, to begin with, pictures." This is the Raeburn whom Scotchmen know, and whom not a few love, in spite of that pawkiness which formed an element in his character, and not unfrequently found expression in his art.
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