MR. CARR'S PAPERS ON ART.* THERE is a peculiar kind

of art criticism which has obtained of late years, of which the world has had nearly enough, which took its rise with the admiration of the teapot and the worship of the dado, and which will probably die when those objects are rele- gated to their proper place in domestic economy. Some years ago, in the Spectator, the writer of the present article mentioned this "higher criticism" at some length, and culled some of its gracious phrases for the edification of our readers. "The sweet silence of Leonardo ;" and "the shadowy land where gracious sights and sounds steal across the fancy, as in twilight ;" and "the subtle mysteries of the brooding chiaroscuro ;" and "the Papers on Art. By J. Comyns Carr. London; Macmillan and Co.

deliciosis morbidezza of light and shade,"—these were some of the sugar-plums with which the writers referred to refreshed and regaled their disciples. It was, therefore, with a sense of almost disappointment that we discovered he had left the silent land and the silver twilight for the plainer paths of every-day English. To speak plainly, these essays by Mr. Comyns Carr are very different from his earlier art-writing. They are all, or nearly all, reprints of articles which have appeared elsewhere, or have been delivered as lectures ; and although they occasionally relapse into the old oabalistic language, they are in the main comprehensible, and show considerable acquaintance with the subjects of which they treat. There is a strange interest, though it is, perhaps, somewhat of a cynical kind, in noticing how ex- cessively similar the higher criticism becomes when it is denuded of its mysterious epithets, to what everyday people like ourselves have thought and said. What, for instance, could be more simple and instructive, with regard to Mantegna's drawings, than the following extract from the initial paper of this book, entitled, "Drawings by the Old Masters" ? :—

"These drawings are all executed with the pen on vellum ; and although the theme they are intended to illustrate is not easy to de- cipher, their association cannot be deemed accidental. Relying merely upon the evidence of the designs themselves, it would seem probable that the artist had been commissioned to record the succes- sive incidents of some serious history, with which he has linked, by way of elegant commentary, a number of inventions of purely fanciful character, dealing with the adventures of a race of amorini. The presence of these sporting Cupids warrants the surmise that the book may have been prepared as a marriage or birthday-gift."

This is a fair sample of Mr. Comyns Carr's present style of writing—a plain literal statement of fact or surmise. But it is more than this, for it is also an accurate type of the

character of the whole book. It shows care, and a certain acquaintance with the details of the subject ; but it does not, to use a colloquial phrase, amount to much, nor does the whole book amount to much. In this paper on the Old Masters, for instance, though there is a considerable amount of small detail as to the probability with which such and such a drawing may be attributed to such and such a man—detail which is both in- structive and fitting in its place as preface to a catalogue—there is no such attempt to deal with the matter on the broader lines which alone would make an essay interesting. In truth, Mr. Comyns Carr repeats carefully what others have said and proved about this or that design ; but he has nothing to say of himself as to its character, meaning, or beauty, which throws any light upon the subject. That is the gist of the matter. The essay was written when a collection was made at the Grosvenor Gallery, of which Mr. Carr is a Director, to serve as a preface to the cata. logue, and was, no doubt, useful in that place. At the present time, it is simply a weariness to the spirit from its multiplicity of reference to designs which the reader has not before him for purposes of reference. It is out of place in a public form in a book of this kind. And, in fact, the most interesting part of the whole essay is that in which the author relapses for a moment into his old manner, and tells us that,— " The temperate action of this youthful figure, the simple motive that inspires, without disturbing, the rhythmic grace of faultless limbs, and the order of the composition as a whole, with its perfect balance of mass and line, leave an impression that even the finest antique marble could hardly surpass ; while in the type of form, no less than in the face, there dwells a latent energy of passionate life that gives to the work a modern force, and stamps it with the individuality of the artist."

But if the first paper in this book is somewhat wearisome in

its-detail, the second essay, which is devoted to James Barry, and which was originally delivered as a lecture before the Society of Arta (for which Society Barry's great series of historical compositions was painted), is less a criticism of that master's work than an extraordinary jumble of remarks about

Reynolds, and Gainsborongh, and Vandyke, Michael Angelo,

Mantegna, and Rubens. The attempt to explain Barry's failure by a variety of assertions about the effect of the Reformation on English Art, the inability of painting at any special time to "undertake the expression of the higher problems of the spirit," and such like comparatively

complicated reasons, seems to us no less unnecessary than it is absurd. In every time of the world during which art has flourished, there have been men whose imaginations were bigger than could be expressed by the work of their hands or their brains ; and it is not necessary to postulate any overwhelming historic influence or artistic degeneracy to account for the fact that Barry was simply an artist of great enthusiasm, whose ambitions were too lofty for the skill which he possessed. It is this fatal habit of making much out of little, of going a long way off to seek for reasons which lie close at hand, of taking hold of a particular instance and trying to account for it by all kinds of great high-sounding assertions as to what was possible and what was not possible at such a time, which reduces to inanity half the art-writing of to-day. Thus, to take only a single paragraph in this essay on Barry, we find Mr. Comyns Carr asserting, in reference to Rubens, "that we have to confess that one great epoch in ideal Art was closed, when

gods and goddesses descended to take upon themselves the ample flesh of Flemish men and women." If one man feels the art-value of gods and goddesses from a coarse, material standpoint, what does that prove but that, no matter how brilliant his genius in other respects, he was incapable of grasping the spiritual side of such subjects ? Art is not ended because one man is splendidly incapable, any more than it begins when a greater genius arises than those of former times. And this knack of trying to make out that Jones did not do something, simply because Brown and Robinson had done something else, is mere windy verbiage. In nineteen cases out of twenty, as Mr. Swinburne said long ago of Coleridge, we get out of the man all he has in him to give ; and

it is useless blaming him or others because it is not something else.

With regard to the other papers in this book, there is one each on Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and Dante Rossetti. Very much the same criticism applies as that which we have already suggested in our remarks upon the first two essays—the best of these latter papers being the one on Gainsborough ; the worst, the one on Rossetti. Indeed, in this latter case, it is difficult to believe that Mr. Carr had the slightest comprehension of Rossetti's art, other than that which he has gained from Ruskin and Mr. Swinburne. The following quotation may serve as an example of the manner in Which the author obscures his subject and wanders from one thing to another, till he leaves the reader completely bewildered. Talking of a certain period in Rossetti's life, Mr. Carr says :—

"It is a central period of Rossetti's career—the season wherein the earlier and later ideals of his art meet and divide, and when he could command for the expression of both, the fullest measure of teehaical resource. An unexampled richness and splendour of colour is the one quality that is common to the varied work of these ten years; and in this respect such pictures as the ' Monna Vanua,' and The Beloved,' are clearly distinguishable from all that have gone before and from all that follow. The pure gem-like tints of his earlier painting had been fused and blended on anew sense of realism ; they had not yet been tarnished by the obscurity of tone that shrouds and shadows the work of later life. And this nearer approach to illusion in the treatment of colour is indicative of a deeper change in the spiritual direction of Rossetti's art."

And so on. Verily, we may say with the King in Hamlet,—" I

have nothing to do with this answer These words are not mine."