GENTLEMEN STUDENTS IN ART.
Ryde, Isle of Wight, 10/7; April 1859. flirt—I trust you will approve of the suggestion I am about to make, which is the establishment of a college for the education of gentleinen-in the fine arts. There are good schools for teaching painting and sculpture, but the great mixture of the students as regards age and rank in society make such schools distasteful to most gentlemen. No class of men are more than real artists : raw students can hardly be called such. I propose a College where gentlemen could reside for periods varying from three months to three years. The expense should not be great, say 100/. to 150/. a year. This to include breakfast and diuier, say a regular mess-room with attendance.
The College to be well provided with every requisite for studying, painting, and sculpture. There should be large studios or painting-rooms ; first-rate casts, living models, drapery, &c. Three or four clever artists should teach, and direct the establisment. It seems to me such a place-would be of im- mense benefit to art.
I, in common with a great many others, cannot easily-afford to pay for the expensive necessaries for artists, such as lofty painting-rooms, living models, casts, &c., unless I frequent the mixed painting acaderoies of Lou- don. One college, at least, for gentlemen students in art ought to answer well.
The Universities are for gentlemen, so are Sandhurst, Woolwich, Addis- combs. Why should not the fine arts have at least one or two colleges on the same principles ? What a deal of talent in art is lost in polite society for want of a systematic professional way of studying painting ! A college such as I have slightly sketched would benefit and develop the best of ta- lents in art, if, as most men of education believe, real gentlemen and ladies possess in the highest degree the very naainspring of true art, refinement a taste and feeling.
I am your obedient servant,
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