Lectures on Art. By Sir E. J. Poynter. (Chapman and
Hall.)— These lectures, which were delivered at various places between 1879 and 1885, cover a wide ground. They deal with art theories in the abstract, and also, in those lectures delivered at the Slade School, when their author was Slade Professor, with the practical training of the artist. In the lecture on "Old Art and New" Sir Edward Poynter traces the rise of imitative painting. By imitative painting he means that style which seeks to portray the beauties of Nature as an end in itself. He considers that the distinctively modern spirit in painting treats per- fect imitation of a beautiful object as the end and goal of art. Whereas ancient art merely used Nature as the Language to express ideal beauty. "A work of pure imitation per se was a thing unknown up to the end of the sixteenth cen- tury, not because it did not occur to the sculptors and painters of those times to produce such work, but because they rejected it as siot worthy of consideration, knowing well that true art is a different thing." With this principle we agree heartily. The difficulty, however, arises when we come to its application. We cannot so easily admit that "landscape painting is necessarily put in the second rank of art ; " as being "but a record and an imitation." The art of painting seems to stand half-way between the arts of poetry and of music. One side of painting—that which deals with the human figure—approaches the domain of poetry with its definite ideas and emotions. The other side—landscape painting—comes into near relation with instrumental music and its indefinite ideas and emotions. To say, as Sir Edward Poynter does, that Turner's best work is merely the highest form of imitative art is to apply the principle in a way that many will reject, although they agree with the main proposition. In no part of this book is the author more interesting and convincing than in the passages in which he speaks of Michelangelo. A large portion of the artistic public has been misled to a woeful degree by the later writings of Mr. Ruskin about Michelangelo. Mr. Ruskin, from some personal limitation, dislikes the art of this great painter, and to justify his dislike he has invented a whole series of moral reasons why Michelangelo was a bad artist. The lecture on "Professor Ruskin and Michelangelo" is an admirable counterblast to the former's "Michelangelo and Tintoret." Sir Edward Poynter has desired throughout these lectures to bring before people the importance and surpassing greatness of Michelangelo. The story he tells in a note shows that this desire was not unnecessary. After lecturing at a provincial institution an official remarked to him in accents which betrayed his nationality, " Ye'd better have left out all that about McLangelo ; we know nothing about McLangele here." The lecture dealing with the formation of a style by students is full of sound sense, and should be studied by every art teacher.
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