Art
The Academy Exhibition
THERE are always numerous popular errors and misconcep- tions about all public events which arise from their very publicity. People vaguely hear them discussed, and form all sorts of strange ideas of them. I discovered the other day at the private view of the Royal Academy that an intelligent friend of mine, who moves in extremely well- informed society, especially as far as art is concerned, had the most extraordinary notions about what the Press so often refers to as " the picture of the year." He asked me which it was this year : Had it yet been selected? I said that according to the Daily Express it was Sir John Lavery's picture of the Premier at home, and according to the Morning Post the late Mrs. Swynnerton's Gipsy Girl. I found that my friend was much disappointed. He had imagined, he said, that at least a laurel wreath would be hung over the picture ; that by now it ought to have been decided on ; and when I said that one daily paper had actually said that the picture of the year was a thing of the past, it was as though I had told him that the Derby this year would be run on strictly non-competitive lines. "What ! no winner ? " was his attitude ; and I confess I sympathized. " Work crowned by the Academy," one reads on the cover of a French novel or biography sometimes. " The Academy " in France is thought of as a literary institution, an intellectual oligarchy. In England it is not so, and unless the Book of the Month Club eventually earns a Royal Charter, there is no likelihood of there ever being such a body.
But there are many other errors just as natural about the Royal Academy and its exhibitions. One is that the exhibits represent what we might call academic art ; the work of the sort of artists who win the approval of teachers, connoisseurs, museum officials and art-historians. Many people vaguely suppose that directors of public galleries, prominent art- teachers, writers on art and experts form part of the hanging committee. The fact that a former director of the National Gallery is a regular exhibitor might seem to lend colour to this supposition, which is of course quite unfounded. Another mistake, which is not, to judge from the daily Press, very wide- spread, is to suppose that the Academy represents at all com- pletely the respectable elements in English art. This year's Chantrey Bequest purchases constitute a very generous recognition by the Academy itself that this is unfortunately not so ; they are chosen largely from outside academy circles.
What eventually becomes of all the pictures exhibited every year at the Royal Academy ? Some of course find buyers ; but many are not immediately sold. The appearance at Christie's of Mr. Mark Symons's large Crucifixion subject, so soon after it was first exhibited, must be regarded as excep- tional ; but it is surely a singular and a creditable example or courage in an artist that this painter should exhibit another large work this year so soon after the sale by auction of his previous effort for so low a price—actually I believe less than ten pounds.
The belief that exhibitors at the Royal Academy are inspired mainly by mercenary motives does not bear inspec- tion. Portrait-painting, it is true, is a profession whose emoluments may still be commensurate with the talent and labour expended ; and a sensational picture may occasionally command a sensational success. But the artist's professional pride must account for far more of the ambitious works shown than any other single motive. Whether it is a good thing that painters should annually be encouraged to throw themselves into these ambitious undertakings is another matter ; what is certain is that if they do so, it is not for the critic to minimize the energy and skill they expend. The construction of racing ears and yachts, the performance of the feats of endurance involved in breaking records of all sorts, is a parallel pheno- menon. This year's model is scrapped next year, perhaps ; the waste may be enormous ; but we know that apparently wasteful ebullitions of energy are a characteristic of nature, of which man is a part. There is something essentially seasonal about the Royal Academy. Its opening coincides with the astounding annual miracle of spring, and must command in
the reflective observer something of the same feeling of awe. But it must not be supposed that the value of achievements of this sort is necessarily of as transitory a character as the
green of spring. Visitors to the Tate Gallery should certainly not miss, among its more recent acquisitions, a picture by the late Erskine Nichol, entitled, I think, Donnybrook Fair. It is enormous ; as big as Frith's Derby Day., A picture in this year's Academy by Mr. Cundall, which actually represents
Epsom Downs on that unique occasion, is a much smaller,
picture in which the same unity of effect is sought through a multiplicity of detail. That Erskine Nichol's huge work, a characteristic example of an old-fashioned Academy picture, should have been looked upon, as I believe it was, with envious eyes by so sound a judge as the present Director of the National Gallery of Ireland before its purchase for the Tate, is interest- ing, for it is certain that it was not as a mere candidate for popular favour that it appealed to him. Indeed it would certainly not have been a popular picture in Dublin ; as a comment on Irish character it is crude and superficial. Curiously enough it is as art, not as history, that such a- picture appeals to good judges, while the more ambitious works of the same date are interesting only to the historian as examples of misguided artistic ideals.
A direct assault on the fortress where beauty so impregnably lurks is often doomed to failure. Many organized and often rather confident schemes for ensnaring the elusive goddess arc every year exposed to public inspection at the Academy. The various champions who embark every year on the cam- paign are indomitable in their efforts ; they lavish their colours, with a prodigality which reminds one of nothing so much as the yearly expenditure on armaments and uniforms which makes our national defences so stirring a spectacle.
Indeed the Royal Academy opens in very much the same atmosphere as some great annual military parade ; the numerous preliminary inspections involved in such an effort, culminating in the final selective scrutiny of the Hanging Committee, ensures the perfect polish of every button, the exact fit of every uniform. There is no atmosphere of khaki, either ; at no other exhibition during the year does one see so much or such optimistic colour. The gardener who perhaps in Lis own domain prefers more private and discreet harmonies is at least grateful for an occasional orgy. The tulips in Hyde Park may perhaps lose a little of the praise they would earn as individual plants by being massed in battalions, but they gain in emphasis what they lack in individuality. The accusation of vulgarity is here beside the mark ; the Union Jack is not vulgar ; it is national. Nor are there lacking in this pageant of painting the flags of some of the staunch, independent minorities. The Hanging Committee is no Fascist body. The style of Mr. Stanley Spencer, for instance, conforms to no ordinary canons ; he fills his canvas full, it is true, but he fills it on a plan of his own. One gets value for one's money ; but the value is of a sort unfamiliar in the markets of the world, and for that reason perhaps better suited for private than for public contemplation. I wonder of how many exhibits at the Academy this could be said ; for it is an important test.
I will conclude with a story. I quote it from a review, published thirty years ago, in the Athenaeum, of M. Mauclair's book on Impressionism, a movement to which a signal tribute is rendered this year by the Chantrey Bequest purchase of a picture by Camille Pissarro's son, Lucien, which is on show at Burlington House in room V : A friend of Degas' met, in someone's drawing-room, an academi- cian, who on hearing Degas' name, exclaimed, " Really ! do you mean to say he's a friend of yours ? Do tell me all you can about him ! " " Well, I must. say, Fin rather surprised," Degas' friend said, " that you show so much interest in a man whose name is not associated with the sort of style—whose work in fact is rather .. " Now, do you really imagine I'm fool enough," the academician interrupted, " not to know that Degas is one of the greatest masters of design now living ? "
" Yes, but you'd refuse his work at the Salon—or shall we say, your colleagues would." The academician was a little troubled at this. " Well, yes, of course," he said, " of course, the fact is, the Salon exhibitions, the hanging committee and all the rest of it— well, that's nothing to do with . . . I mean, well, it's another matter altogether '
This is indeed the moral of M. Mauclair's book, the reviewer ends (could it have been Mr. McColl, the Ramer director of the Wallace Collection, and one of the first champions of Impressionism?)—that all sincere art, in whatever direction it makes, must, under modern conditions, lie wholly outside the field of our big exhibitions and decorated official painting.
W. W. WINRWORTH.
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