ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.—I.
• AN ingenuous writer in the Pall Mall Gazette has been ad- monishing the painters and critics whom he is pleased to call New, because they do not share his tolerance for the kind of amusement that the Academy annually provides for the kind of people who can be amused that way. "The great public," he says, "which cares nothing at all for tones and relations and qualities, expects to find there what it likes, and we cannot conceive why any one should grudge this great public its babies and bishops and puppies, or other scenes of peaceful domesticity which give such unalloyed pleasure." No one, truly, except perhaps a New Journalist, would feel tempted to interrupt so harmless a debauch. Why should not the Great Public have a place of resort where they can have their "painting" without tones and qualities and relations, just as they can obtain their " music " without melody or harmony at the ballad concert, just as they can get their " religion " without reverence from the Salvationist, just as they can buy their tea and their tobacco devoid of any taste or element of either at the proper shops ? The cheap tea or tobacco secures to the palate that it suits, a conventional stimulus, even so does the cheap Baby or Bishop or Poodle act as a symbol, pull strings of association in the heads of those for whom the visible world does not exist except as a gaudily ticketed catalogue of sentiments. With all this, who would be so busy as to meddle, who would be so keen a missionary, so blind an enthusiast, so heartless a man, as to suppress Tit- Bits in the name of Literature, to disencharm those whom the organ-grinder sways as Orpheus the animals of fable, or to snatch from the contemplation of a Dicksee or a Leader, a Hacker or MacWhirter, those who have been equipped with senses fitted for that enjoyment. Nor, as things are, would it be reasonable to complain that this popular entertainment is chartered by Royalty, blessed by the Church, flattered and enriched by State and Society; and it would be grudging indeed to envy its managers, in solemn festival assembled, such applause, counsel, and comfort, as the Professor of Literature or the Authority on Entomo- logy can supply. But why, in the name of all that is mixed, invite the painter or the critic to glow over the proceedings ? There may be a motive for such a demeanour if your task is to perform an egg-dance among the brittle reputations collected in a Pictures of the Year ; but why expect a critic to join in so uneasy and compromising an exhibition ? If the Academy were entirely, as it very nearly is, a popular entertainment, then indeed painter and critic alike would not concern them- selves with it ; they could afford to feel pleased that other people were enjoying themselves in their own way. But this is not the case. The Academy is a place where such few painters as are artists have to fight for inches of ground, have to contend for the attention of the public with this crowd of competing entertainers, with this clamour of Cheap-Jack and peep-show ; and they have to do it because here is the one arena where there is a chance of their entertainment paying its way. It is as if there were one large promiscuous stage open once a year to the dramatist; the best places are re- served, are allotted to privileged performers, bad or good ; the rest is a jostle where the most pushing and vulgar win ; only here and there in a corner a play is allowed to go forward on such terms as are possible within sound of the steam- music of the merry-go-round. Why, you ask, does the painter come there at all ? He comes because he must try to earn his pittance. And why does the critic come ? He comes, to speak plainly, to try to make the public pay for the artist. Left to themselves, they will never Eaten,: to this quiet performance ; they are enjoying themselves elsewhere. It is the business and honour of the journalist critic to make them attend, by every argument and 'coercion he can bring to bear, to render them uncomfortable and ashamed, to induce 'them to feign a pleasure that is not theirs but his, and to pay for it, and thereby for the existence of the artist. It would be useless, it would be rude, to interrupt their enjoy- ment if this much more important matter were not at stake ; but it may be hazarded that as much is given as is taken ; that a man feels a certain proud and fearful joy- in affecting an admiration, if only he somehow have absorbed the conviction that it is right to do so ; that in the end the good
picture will serve his turn, will give him a tepid pleasure almost as well as the bad ; that he will be able, when persuaded, to summon up the familiar excitement over Shakespeare or Whistler that once he felt over Joe Miller or Jan Van Beers. The critical business, then, is a field of battle, and a polite encouragement of the enemy in their amusement of neglecting the artist is out of place.
How ill-matched the combatants, at what disadvantage the artists fight, may be conceived when it is remembered that for the enemy there are no rules of the game, whereas the artist must win, if he win at all, by their stringent observance. If you are so constructed that .you can use colour cheerfully as an alarum, as a mode of attacking dull nerves, then you obviously have an unfailing resource for drawing attention to your wares ; whereas the artist can no more jangle the bells in red and blue, than the violinist could afford to keep a hooter going while he played. And in a hundred other ways you are baulked of the fine freedom of the insensible. You cannot take the subject that is not your own, though a hundred generous leader-writers press it upon you. The writer already referred to does this. You say, he urges, that "subject" is nothing, "treatment" everything ; why not, then, become a popular painter by treating the popular subjects ? Why not paint the Bishops, the Babies, the Puppies, since subject is neither here nor there ? The reply is obvious. If the thing could be done, it would be done in vain. If it were possible to disentangle from a popular painting what you call its "subject," and treat it artistically, the popularity would be found to have vanished. There is a superstition, which our writer shares, that Bishops and Babies are " subjects " that are " popular " and tabooed by artists. Let us take Bishops, then. Let us suppose that our artist has Bishops at his com- mand, and has a taste that way. It is a subject, it may be remarked in passing, eminently tempting—that gravity of character and office poised on an accident of dress so coquettish—but to suggest this treatment would be to con- fuse the issue. There are two clerical portraits in the Academy that very conveniently illustrate that issue. In one, Mr. Charles Furse has made an effort to treat a Bishop artistically ; in another, Mr. Tadema has produced what, from its reception in the Press, one must judge to be a popular portrait of an Archdeacon. Mr. Farse'a portrait is much more like a man than the other, and is also an effort at a decoration. It is not altogether successful, because the scheme is not frank enough ; but its failure is an artistic failure. Mr. Tadema's portrait is neither like a, man nor like a picture ; it has neither reality nor reserve; it insists on attention just in virtue of those defaults ; the languid passer-by cannot but be arrested by a red-hot Archdeacon beaming over a hood that shrieks and whistles to tell him it was crimson. The success, be it noted, is one of treatment, abominable treatment; since the subject, for aught we know, is beautiful and charming. This is how the public likes to be reminded of its interest in Archdeacons ; the other treatment makes them dislike even a Bishop ; and the Academicians foresaw this and skied the portrait. So with Babies. There is a painter, Mr. Monat Loudan, who can make pictures of babies ; his pictures are accordingly turned out of the Academy; while Sir John Millais shows his measure of his public by giving them just so much of a baby as he knows will act symbol to their sentiment. The painter of The Huguenots cannot paint a face altogether devoid of expression, but he can acquiesce in a taste that calls for neither "tone nor quality nor relation ;" the patch of blue in the background of this canvas is only a more open confession of the fact than the other parts of it.
The Academy of 1892 is dignified by the presence of one work of art of the first order. To wander through the galleries devoted to painting is to be oppressed by a doubt whether one's senses are at fault rather than the pictures, whether these can really be as bad as they seem. But to find oneself in the sculpture-gallery before Mr. Gilbert's Posthu- mous Bust of Baron Huddleston, is to be amply reassured ; here, with the occasion, returns the zest of admiration that seemed beyond recall. The noble design of the whole, the weight of character in the face, the expressive action of the hands; the delicate and ingenious treatment of detail, the charm of colour—gold on a warm ground that suggests, without' realising, flesh,—there are all these witnesses for a masterpiece, and for the trivial nightmare quality of those thousand pictures. There is other good work in sculpture
to be left for a future examination. A diligent search among the pictures reveals an incredible poverty; the very sky-line is wretched, and it is difficult to collect a bare handful of satis- factory work. The choice for first place lies between Mr. Lionel Smythe and Mr. Clausen. Mr. Smythe's picture is of gleaners, a woman and child, a little girl, and a flight of pigeons. It has certain imperfections; its thinness and spotti- ness of quality suggest water-colour ; you seem to feel the paper meagrely washed in parts of it, and the sky par- ticularly has a mottled effect of colour, and is not completely bound up with the rest ; but the work has the invaluable and the highest element of life. If there are inequalities, it is, as in Mr. Orchardson's work, when the artist wanders over the field, and quickens up here and there into delighted observation that notes and caresses the life and sparkle of things. The girl alone, stooping in a flutter like one of the birds, and with a sheaf of corn under her arm that fans out like their tails, is for gaiety of invention worth all the would- be " decorative " figures in the place. This is no ornament stuck down in a field to mock its realism with an imported idyll, but the touch of sport and beauty discovered in its very life.
Mr. Clausen's work this year seems to indicate an interest- ing change and advance in his ideal. His recent vindication of his master had an uncertain ring, and here, beside a familiar head painted in the old still-life, Bastien Lepage manner, we have a study of Mowers which is all action, and in which he seems to have carried over from his pastel-practice a technique that suggests the come-and-go of light and colour, the flicker of movement. The sky and background are a trifle solid and heavy for the rest ; but there is a fine fullness and frankness of colour throughout.
For the rest, there is a portrait of two ladies by Mr. Lavery that gains extraordinary distinction from its surroundings ; indeed, it is difficult to judge either this or Mr. Roche's land- scape absolutely, so painter-like do they seem among their neighbours. After these, here are a few gleanings, in the order of the galleries :—C. H. Mackie, Sandy Pastures (35) ; Grosvenor Thomas, Evening (326) ; A. G. Webster, A Study (472), and St. Martin's Altar, Imam (824) ; R. M. Coventry, On the Kintyre Coast (498) ; C. W. Wyllie, The Brimming River (569), in which the foreground of flowers is good ; C. W. Purse, The Vice-Provost of King's (593), in which the colour is uninteresting, bat the pose extremely natural; R. C. W. Bunny, A Soirée in Bohemia (932) ; R. M. Stevenson, Landscape (935) ; K. McCausland, Two Little French Girls (937), a fresh, bright piece of painting ; T. Austen Brown, Potato Harvest (1,028), with good colour in it of a daring sort; J. Michael Brown, The Ferry (1,029). Further discussion of these, and of disputable work by the President and others, must be reserved for another article ; but this much may be said, that from the ancient hand of Sir John Gilbert comes work that has more of the essential stuff of art in it than that of most of his fellow-Academicians.
D. S. M.
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