VISUAL ART.* " OH ! that mine enemy would write

a book !" has long ceased to be a wish whose gratification was attended by the result desired, namely, the humiliation of that enemy ; for in these days all enemies, and friends too—worse luck—write books, and to have them heartily abused is only one form of advertisement. We would venture to suggest the substitution for the above sentence of,—" Oh ! that mine enemy would write a preface to his book, and make it as personal as possible !" This suggestion is prompted by a perusal of Mr. Noy Wilkins's preface to his book on Visual Art, or, Nature seen through the Healthy Eye, a work which is one of the most curious which we have met with for some time, but whose preface would be insulted by being called eccentric. " Eccentric " is too mild and common a name to be applied to the extraordinary farrago of violent assertions, illustrations, and irrelevant facts contained in these first sentences of the book. Let us give our readers a faint taste of its quality, before we proceed to speak of Mr. Wilkins's theory of " Visual Art."

The first words in the preface, we confess, thoroughly frightened us. They read like a warning to all wise people to close the book. Here they are The following pages are intended to be philosophical and mental !" Heaven only knows what Mr. Wilkins intends us to understand by " mental pages," but we may be sure of one thing,—philosophical pages expressed in terminology so loose as the above will do little besides vex the mind of the unwary reader. Listen, moreover, to what follows :—

"Like my first venture of 1857, they will also be found as applic- able to other subjects, as well as those of [sic] pictorial art. Indeed, were it otherwise, I should not care to write again, for the subject of art per as is not sufficiently inspiring ; while its elementary treat- ment may be best left to ' Our Government Schools,' that, unfor- tunately for all private or individual ability seeking-to write or paint by the aid of such teaching, perform their task only too well. Yet, though without a private fortune at my back, I dare to dictate to Correggio and Raphael—supposing those gifted painters to have been free to paint what they saw—and therefore including all lesser suns, past and present !"

This sentence is the key to the style and the great faults of the book. Mr. Wilkins has so many half-ideas, and is apparently so overmastered by them, that they slip from his pen in a con- fused heap, tumbling over one another like marionettes return- ing from a funeral. It is really little less than maddening to read this book, and try to follow the author's thoughts ; to dis- cover the exact meaning of his theory, and its bearing upon Art. And the irritating part of the matter is that there is really half the troth, or at all events some part of the truth, about a branch of art theory contained in these pages ; and the reader cannot help feeling, in those words so vaguely comforting to many perplexed minds, " that there is something in it."

Unfortunately, this " something " is not sufficient for a re- viewer till he has determined its exact character, so we will even make the attempt to do our duty in this respect. We put the theory, as far as we can, in the form of a geometrical demon- stration, merely for the sake of brevity :—

" Art is concerned, not with the things themselves and their actual shapes, but with the effect produced on the eye by them. " (Conventional, i.e., Egyptian, Japanese, and Chinese art ignore this, as do the Pre-Raphaelites.)

"Foremost in the composition of a picture is the proportionate placement of the several objects in geometric relationship to each other, and the frame or boundary.

"Now, in the pupil of the eye itself the object is always in the centre.

" Therefore, the truest form for a picture is the circular or vignette, with the principal object in the centre. "Again, if an oblong picture is desired, the effect of nature upon the retina must be gained by placing the object according to another

• Visual Art. By W. Noy Wilkins. London : W. H. Allen and Co.

formal requirement, which is by dividing the space to be filled into nine parts, and placing the object at the intersection of the dividing lines."

Then follow explanatory diagrams of pictures arranged well or badly, according as they follow or depart from this theory. We have given this theory in Mr. Wilkins's own order of demon- stration, and as nearly as possible in his own words ; but as, perhaps, some of our readers may be as puzzled by it as we were the first time we read it, we offer them an hypo- thetical interpretation, which we by no means guarantee to be correct. In our opinion, the only practical deduction from Mr. Wilkins's words are, that we must put in a picture each object in the same place as it would occupy in nature upon the retina. Each object on the retina, however, cannot be in the centre at once, but successively. Being unable, therefore, to make any approach to the placement of the scene as it occurs in the eye, what becomes of the theory that the artist's busi- ness is to arrange his picture in a similar manner P The great fallacy consists in this,—that it is not the actual arrangement of objects on the retina at any given moment which we have to consider in Art, but the effect of which we are conscious. Now, surely it will not be maintained by Mr. Wilkins, or any one else, that what we are conscious of in looking at any scene is a circular picture, with a main object exactly in the centre of the field of vision ? For as a matter of fact, in looking at any scene in nature, we are never conscious of boundaries of any sort; the eye roves with incredible swiftness from one detail of a landscape to another, concentrating its attention for the millionth part of a second, perhaps (we are speaking remember, of an ordinary look given at a landscape), upon

each detail ; and the mind, in some way perfectly unknown to us, reports upon these details en masse,—in fact, we have a picture.

As to Mr. Wilkins's arrangement of an oblong into sections by dividing lines, which he neither proves by experiment, in our opinion, nor gives any reason for, we do not think it worth while to say much. The examples he gives are not so much arrange- ments of form as different proportions and arrangements of light and shade, and have nothing to do with this part of his theory.

The deduction from this theory is as follows :—

" So, I cannot too often repeat, it is what the eye will take in within its natural range of sixty degrees that we have got to attend to and give ; and under such conditions, in all subjects of interest worthy of pictorial representation, the eye will ever go to ono portion of the field of vision, which will be the centre. The rest, then, in military language, ' Take close order,' in such a manner that while seeing clearly the principal subject, we will also see the subordinate ones. And the foregoing rules of proportion and arrangement for composi- tion are given with this view, namely, to give by art on a fiat surface the effect of nature in apace."

This theory of Mr. Wilkins's is surely the old shibboleth of " centre- ing your main interest," " focnssing yourlight and shade," " gener- alising your drawing," and all the other rules for making an imper- fect and incorrect statement of facts do duty as a true one. As he puts it, " visual art allows only of one point of sight, round which all other objects are seen more or less distinctly, as they recede from this point." Take, for example, a picture such as the large work of Mr. Prinsep, iu the Royal Academy, of the " Durbar at Delhi." Here, no doubt, Lord Lytton would have to be the point of sight ; Major Barnes, the herald, would be rather dim and ghostlike in appearance ; and the poor Indian Princes, who at present blaze in individual splendour, would, on Mr. Wilkins's theory, be lost in a haze of coloured light.

The best parts of the book are those which treat of light, and the changes which it effects both in the colour and apparent solidity of objects ; for though there is nothing in them which will be new to the art student, they put clearly in some way facts which are commonly forgotten. The latter portion of the book is an account and defence of Mr. Wilkins's method of manufacturing pigments, of which the chief feature is his " banishment of white lead," and the limita- tion of the palette to mineral colours. It seems that our author has made a white pigment by grinding china clay with oil, which is (according to his own account) perfectly durable and much more brilliant than the ordinary white lead, and as such far more suitable for fresco-painting, espe- cially in its quality of reflecting rather than absorbing light. In conclusion, we must say of this book that its style is abominable, and will prejudice every reader against it from the outset. Mr. Wilkins makes the most random accusations in the most violent manner against the public, the artists, the Govern- ment, and indeed against any one with whom he disagrees, and seems to consider himself, for some unexplained reason, as a victim to the combined folly, ignorance, and malice of all these bodies. Writing of that kind can do the author no good, and is likely to do him a great deal of harm.