THE ARTS AND CRAFTS EXHIBITION.
WHEN the Grosvenor Gallery opened years ago, there were many who were surprised and disappointed that the decorative art corresponding in feeling to the pictorial art which made the special point of the Gallery, was in no way represented. For some years previously we had been accus- tomed to delight in Morris's papers and hangings, in William De Morgan's tiles and pottery, in Walter Crane's decorations and picture-books; but there, in the Grosvenor Gallery, the very appropriate place, we thought, for the display of these beautiful inventions, our eyes were met by the most Philistine of crimson-silk hangings, by Sienna marble tables reflected garishly into every glazed picture, supported by gilt scrolls of meaningless and gaudy design. These were the surround- ings to Blume-Jones's pictures. Not only did the Grosvenor Gallery fail to realise the expectations of those who saw the highest English art represented in the decorative work quite as distinctly as in the pictorial work of the school, but in the summer exhibition in this beautiful so-called "New Gallery," again the same want of distinction was shown,—the same errors of omission as well as of com- mission committed. Owing, however, to the energy of Mr. Walter Crane, this Gallery has been hired for two months in order that there should be an exhibition of arts other than framed pictures and pedestalled statues, and of the crafts worked out on sound artistic principles. It is very evident that the one right principle which has incited all good artistic work in all ages is very salient in the work exhibited by the President and by the Committee,—the real worth of the work in hand from the artist's and inventor's point of view has been the first object, not the money worth. Much of our modern life has, unfortunately, been characterised by an -unreasonable respect for money, and for what are called "commercial interests," at the expense of the contentment which can be found in work for work's sake. There has been, however, also a strong reaction towards a better and higher guide to labotir. A few have been gifted with singular genius for inventing on lines which seemed to have been quite used up long ago. These have developed a modern school of decoration, having in it the originality and spontaneous- ness which mark all art that is really alive and -pro-
gressive, and the honesty and earnestness which ally it with that moral refinement which guides the highest thought of the day. The practical teaching of this decorative school • would Let your surroundings be useful and convenient, and as plain as you like; but if you add ornament, let it be ornamental, something really beautiful, however inexpensive ; and, above all things, have nothing which has the appearance of what it is not, for not only cannot the real beauty of any 'material be worked out in a sham, but pretension is always offensive, and corrupts the standard of the workman.'
The most prominent among the exhibitors are Walter Crane, the President of the Society of Arts and Crafts, William Morris, Burne-Jones, Mr. Benson, W. De Morgan, T. Cobden-Sanderson, Heywood Sumner, Lewis Day, Stephen Webb, and several others, all belonging to the Committee ; and a splendid show of all kinds of house and furniture • decoration, tapestry, metal-work, bookbinding, pottery, needle- work, and designs for mosaics is the result. But exhi- bition is not the only object of this show. It is also the first public attempt to disentangle the designer, as an individual, from the firm for which he works. All the great and small art-furniture establishments have been invited to send speci- mens to the exhibition, provided the name of the inventor or designer were given. This attempt to unearth the individual craftsman seems often to be taken as a struggle against the commercial interests of the firm. Eventually it would, we believe, prove to be no such thing. What is generally the relation between the tradesman and the craftsman in any firm where the design and invention of the products are the lucra- tive element ? The firm which either possesses or borrows capital, employs the designer and pays him the wages which the designer can command; but his work goes out in the name of the firm, and his own never appears. To many, this seems a perfectly fair transaction. Capital, in undertaking the risk, ought to command the situation, and where the work done is not invented by the workman, steady wages are doubt- less all the workman can expect. But where the work is invented by the individual, the same arrangement neither seems fair nor wise. It must be remembered that no true artistic invention was ever rightly encouraged or paid for fully by money alone. In the purest artist nature it is also not merely public acknowledgment or praise which feeds its inventiveness and ingenuity. It is, above all things, sympathy and an atmosphere of freedom. To work under the direction of those who have no artistic standard is fatal. The trades- man, however, feels that were he to set his craftsman free, and acknowledge and attach the name of the designer to the things he sells, a danger to his interests would arise, inasmuch as the public might go straight to the craftsman, and, after having advertised him, the middleman would lose his profits. But in this, as in most other transactions of the kind, we believe the evil would right itself if the trans- action were based on right principle and feeling. Not only would justice excite a feeling of generosity, but the craftsman would in the end probably find that co-operation with the firm would bring in more steady work, though as an individual each separate transaction might be more profitable. The real difficulty lies in the fact that the tradesman believes himself to be the better man. His faith in capital is an exorbitant faith, and it requires guilds and co-operative bodies of crafts- men to make this clear, and to unveil the tyranny of capital. Probably no firm is specially to blame ; but the education which tends to immerse the whole nature in commercial interests is very much to blame. A nature so immersed acquires a bluntness in gauging the relative value of human instincts which the most uneducated poor hardly possess to
the same degree, selfish acquisitiveness, which is often but another way of expressing commercial interests, being re-
spected more than those instincts which lead to inventions useful and delightful to all. The result of thus putting the cart before the horse is naturally that of annulling the power of the horse. And so the world in general, as far as matters of taste are concerned, has shuffled along in the grooves of blunt mediocrity. William Morris, Walter Crane, W. De Morgan, and their friends began, now many years ago, from the opposite end. They have encouraged invention in every possible direction, and the results of their principles speak for themselves in this exhibition. The decorative work to be seen here can vie with any former schools, in any country whatever, in all that makes decoration most interesting.
No school can be expected to develop great poet-artists. These spring up apparently quite independently, and without any reference to their surroundings. Michael Angelo's special imaginative genius was in no way developed, as far as we can judge, by the influence of those artists who, as artists, were so supreme in his time. Turner grew up in the usual squalid surroundings by which a boy of his class is closed in. Rossetti owed nothing of his marvellous expressional power to any other artist or school. This kind of rare genius, grown, so to say, on its own roots, and dependent only on its own native impetus, is neither to be trained nor influenced much by schools ; but the genius of the artist pure and simple is generally developed in groups of contemporary artists; and these groups are linked together by imitators who retain the good traditions of the school, whose talent would not have been developed had not a strong influence incited it, though original varieties may be produced on such grafted talent. The nineteenth century has been favoured by the presence of men of first-rate genius in every line. Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, Darwin, Huxley, Wagner, Turner, Rossetti. Watts, Burne-Jones, and Millais all belong to it, and are in their different spheres great originators. As a man, William Morris, perhaps, is the most original of originators. Among the poets, his verse has a romantic charm for many which no other poetry possesses ; but besides this claim, it is no exaggeration to say that his artistic work and his influence have changed the whole aspect of our external life. Life is decorated from a new point of view among the civilised. classes, since Morris has combated so successfully with the affectations and artificialities of second-hand Parisian taste. He has dignified the decoration of our simplest necessities, the walls of our rooms, the coverings of our chairs, with a beauty in harmony with all that is truest and best in the taste of the nine- teenth century. Those qualities which have risen into pro- minence above the confusion and levelling of classes brought about by the revolutions of the last hundred years, are those which have always distinguished the minds and manners of the truly great,—Nature's own aristocracy. The truthful, natural spontaneous qualities in real greatness now form the standard of high tone in manners. High breeding no longer means an artificial arrangement of life which distorts genuine beauty in human thought and feeling. Though still lurking among some of the smaller gentry (the class once described in these pages as the "lesser barbarians "), there are still remnants of artificiality induced by the principle of living for a form instead of forming your life to live, most even of the bigger " barbarians " have freed themselves from it. The best form is to be simple according to the laws of human nature rather than to those of class. The taste of the world has turned towards straightforwardness and genuineness as its highest refinement, and it is with this taste that our English school of
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