THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ART.
4' The English school is every year less and less elevated in the objects of its imi. tation and its manner of imitating them; and must at this rate speedily fall to the level of the Dutch school." SPECTATOR, 12th June, 1830.
Sin,—I am an old man, fourscore and one come next May. I re- member the foundation of the Royal Academy, sixty-two years ago. I remember the anticipations of noble and simple, when that event took place. I remember, the King and all thought and all said that we should do great things ; but I said then what I say now, we shall never do great things if you leave the Royal Academy to struggle on by itself; I said, you will see that we shall be hardly much further in fifty years than we are now. And I was asked why ; and I replied, This is the reason—now you will educate a great many clever young men, and you will give them gold medals, and you will send them to Italy, and you will tell them fine things about the grand style in your lectures, and when they come back, I said, if they have no fortune, what must they do ?—Why, they replied, —do--oh, yes—very true,—why, they must paint portraits ! To be sure, said I, they must; but they can do that just as well without all this fuss, as they have been doing these three hundred years. So you found an aca- demy, said I, and you read them lectures on anatomy, and you teach them
\ to draw the Apollo, and you send them to Italy ; and all this to make them paint portraits in the lead!—Now, Sir, at that time I was a young JUlettante, nrarcitiOurse nobody believes a young man ; and! said, as the Ring has founded an academy of design to instruct young men in the principles of art, the Ministers and the Government should back his Ma-
jesty, and grant an annual sum of money to employ them when they come back from Italy all in a heat, because, if they do not do that, the young men will have studied in vain, and they must break off from all their habits into which they will be flattered by medals and praises, to get subsistence; and you may depend, said I, if this be not done, that historical painting will not be so far advanced fifty years hence as it is now ; and the Academy will have been founded in vain. And, Sir, would you believe it, they all laughed heartily, and said I was young and all that,—though Buonaparte was only twenty-six when he conquered Italy, and Alexander died at thirty-two, after conquering the world : so much for the sneers of aged experience against the conclusions of healthy youth Now, Sir, I have been no silent observer for sixty-two years of the whole course of art. What I talked in private, I said in a conversation with Sir Josutra, and I could not get Sir JOSHUA to come to any conclu. sion—he kept taking snuff, and putting up his trumpet. And I talked to Wasp; and he said," Yes, indeed, Sir, you•see, Sir;" and that's all he said OPIE said, "I was damn right ;" and FrasEat, "He had beat saying the saame ting all his life." And they all said I was right, but they would not do any thing. And one young man after the other kept getting medals, and going to Italy, and coming back, and making grand attempts as he had been taught he must do, and sinking into want, and dying off, and then lie was forgotten. It brings tears into my old eyes to think of the waste of great genius I have witnessed in this country these last sixty years !—Oh, it is shocking—it is disgraceful--and all might have been prevented by a little common sense when the Academy was founded !—and it is still more shocking to think how many great geniuses will yet be sacrificed before the Government will be at last convinced they ought to do something. Well, Sir, things went on, and at last came the Orleans Gallery ; and this gallery containing come exquisite specimens of the cabinet size, gave the patrons a disposition for small pictures ; which, though it has been the cause of the perfection of our domestic style, yet it turned aside more than ever the great object for which the Royal Academy was founded ; and the historical painter kept getting medals and going to Italy, and starving when he came back, just as much as ever. The patrons at last were convinced that they ought to do some. thing : so they founded the British Gallery, and all the old painters crowded their best works into the first exhibition, and it was the best they have ever had ; but the patrons said they did not want great his- torical works, but little ones ; and the Government still did nothing. And thus, Sir, after twenty-five years, the last exhibition was by far the very worst in history, because there are no employment and no reward, and young men are beginning to see that medals and journies to Italy will not get them a dinner when they come back: and they all turn to pore traitovhen they are sure, if they sell a decent article which is wanted, to get a fair profit.
Old age, Sir, has a privilege, which is to dwell on the past, because the future is hopeless. I am a little twaddling—you are a good-tempered editor, and I hope you will pardon it, and I hope your readers will pardon it too.
Though all my predictions have proved true—all—yet I have the same difficulty to convince people a vote of money would do all that is re- quisite. They say, " What does the House of Commons know of art ?" —to which I reply, "What did the House of Commons know of the -Elgin Marbles ?" yet Sir, 1 believe, Sir, no equal number of gentlemen knew more in one fortnight. The House of Commons comprises in it the high feelings of the aristocracy with the keen investigating habits of a democracy ; and, Sir, I would he bound, in one fortnight, such a report would be made by a committee on the state of art, and the best means of relieving it, as would open the fairest prospects. But, Sir, this would be a third power in the art, higher than the Royal Academy or the British Gallery ; and of course with them it is not, and never will be popular; but with all those who wish well to the art, and care nothing for the private interests of the corporate bodies, it is so. Sir, I am art old dilettante, and I fear we are all too much inclined to think no man's works are fit to be looked at till he be screwed in his coffin. This is very prejudicial to modern genius. The genius of the time, when once a system of support was established, should get the patronage of the time. CIINIABITE had as much patronage as RAPHAEL : had the authorities waited till Ram:a r. came, he never would have been the RAPIIAEL he was. RAPHAEL., Sir, only completed what CIMABur and Gael T TO left incomplete ; RAPHAEL was the blown flower—his predecessors the root and the stem. But, Sir, had not the root been watered, and the stem propped as it grew, the flower would never have opened in the most radiant sunbeam !
I fear, Sir, I am getting tiresome—if not to you, I am to myself: leaning forwards to write has brought-on a fit of coughing. Old age, Sir, is a shocking thing ; but if this letter does not make you or your readers yawn, I have something yet to say in a concluding one.
Your admirer, if you keep to the quotation above,
Aw OLD DILETTANTE.
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