THE PRESENT CONDITIONS OF ART In a recent article in this Review the question was asked, 'Is a great school of art possible in the present day?' In other words, are our modern conditions such that not only individual genius can existgenius which overrides all outside influences and creates distinguished work under any conditions-but are they such as would encourage and create a school, a group of painters, sculptors, and architects, whose work collectively would have a force marking the age in which they live, becoming part of the history of the country to which they belong, and existing in the future as a lasting monument of the best feelings and thoughts of the present time? Will the people, say, of the twenty-third century be able to read what is best in our English history of the nineteenth century, its highest feeling, its purest and subtlest thought, by the light of those monuments of art now being produced or capable of being produced, as we read the history of Egypt, Greece, and Italy in the legacies of art those countries have left for us? The question is, do modern conditions create or destroy the possibility of such a school? It is to be feared that only on the ground that all things are possible is a great school of art possible. It must be distinctly understood that a great school is spoken of and intended. The position of individual artists, or the claims of individual artists, are not for a moment questioned. It is certainly probable that in purely artistic qualities we can never again rival the productions of the men so highly gifted, so fortunately surrounded, and so earnest in their way of working, as were the great painters, sculptors, and architects of past ages. It is not necessary to take into consideration the gifts of these great men. There are men in all times who are gifted; but the nature of conditions will direct the stream of thought, and develope or repress peculiarities of intellectual activity. A great school cannot exist unless beauty is cared for for its own sake, and this is not a consequence of modern civilisation, certainly not in England. All modern conditions are nearly as unfavourable to art as they can Written last summer, and referring to an article in the Nineteenth Century of April 1879. be. It is not uncommon for the hard-headed practical man to pride himself upon his insensibility to beauty with regard to material forms, even when he accepts poetry as a legitimate utterance. We do not want beauty for its own sake and because it is a good thing in itself; we may tolerate it when we have leisure, and even desire it as a proof of prosperity; but the active mind, or that condition of society which represents progress, cannot lend itself to such trifled Trifles-which have been the vital spark that has rendered the resuscitation of apparently dead nations possible! Our modern art, in spite of the money given for pictures and the crowds that throng to the many exhibitions, enters into no natural life of the time. This is proved by the utter ignoring of it in all 'serious matters. When the question of what belongs to the class of sensations appertaining to beauty comes into competition with the smallest amount of money interest, it is seldom a matter of a moment's consideration which shall be sacrificed. Few people hesitate to cut down a tree or grub up a hedgerow if twenty shillings a year will be gained by so doing. Moreover, utility and charm appear to be intentionally disconnected. To some one speculating upon what a mediæval designer would have made of a steam-engine, and lamenting that no attempt was made to take advantage of its suggestiveness, the answer given (by a man of refinement and collector of works of art) was, 'Oh! we don't want beauty in a steam-engine or an ironclad '-which meant: We only want beauty in playthings, as so many of us only want religion for Sundays.' The untiring interest, the pains, the love bestowed formerly upon the perfecting and decorating of almost all objects of daily use, even when the service required was most material, is one of the most striking points of difference between ancient or mediæval and modern life. Armour is an example. In unaffected, unconscious artistic excellence of invention, approaching more nearly to the strange beauty of nature, especially as presented to us in vegetation, medieval armour perhaps surpasses any other effort of human ingenuity. Our confirmed habit of regarding art and all that belongs to it, all the delights that come to us through the medium of the noblest of all our organs, as necessarily separated from the serious business of life, must be fatal to art. The necessity for, and instinctive delight in, beauty must be felt before we can hope to see great art flourishing healthily. The eye must appreciate noble form and beautiful colour before the jar consequent at the sight of ugliness is felt which would as a rule prevent its existence. In our modern life the cultivation of the eye is sacrificed to all kinds of meaner considerations. Other organs of taste are respectfully treated. Few people lightly value the importance of the cook's preparations. The welldressed dinner is not put off till Sunday; to be indifferent to bad smells would be to confess defective organisation. Sounds are serious matters. We make efforts to escape discordant noise, or submit with grumbling. But with regard to the eye we submit habitually to conditions which are equivalent to tearing raw meat with our fingers and teeth, living in the midst of vile odours, and complacently enduring abominable discords. Sight and hearing are the two senses which the natural man, in common with the lower animals, possesses in great perfection, and it is evident that, in addition to its usefulness to him as a mere animal, the eye affords him interest and delight long before his other senses become intellectually developed. In the very earliest stages of his existence we have proof in scratched outlines of animals that he observes with curiosity and pleasure the varieties of animal form which surround him. In his progress towards modern civilisation he rejoices in beautiful combinations of line and gorgeous arrangements of colour. All through the long ages till the seventeenth century this is distinctly visible, but growing fainter from the sixteenth, and it is when modern discoveries and appliances in the nineteenth have placed almost unlimited means in his power of gratifying this instinct that it disappears altogether. Costume vanishes, utensils and weapons cease to be ornamented, or are ornamented with a conscious effort instead of natural impulse, beauty of form and colour no longer has any charm, and the eye becomes indifferent. The ugliness of most things connected with our ordinary habits is most remarkable. A well-dressed gentleman ready for dinner or attired for any ceremony is a pitiable example-his vesture nearly formless and quite foldless if he can have his will. His legs, unshapen props-his shirt front, a void-his dress coat, an unspeakable piece of ignobleness. Put it into sculpture, and see the result. The genius of Pheidias might be defied to produce anything satisfactory. We see without disapproval ugly, shapeless, ignoble forms, and it must be remembered that these form the language in which the artist has to speak. The human form, the noblest and most interesting study for the artist, is distorted in the case of men's dress by such monstrous garments, and in the case of women's dress by extravagant arrangements which impede all simple nobility and refined grace of movement. If in our public schools any attention were bestowed upon the cultivation of the sense of beauty, the educated gentleman would not encourage by his admiration the vagaries of feminine fashions, not because of its changes-variety is charming-but because all the changes revolve round a centre of radically bad taste, formed by two fixed ideas, viz. that the waist and the foot cannot be too small. Amid all the changes there is no being rid of the stiff contracted waist, really ugly, always so low down as to suggest the positive deformity of short lower limbs, and cruelly destructive to health, nor of the straight compressed shoes, destroying the form of the foot, and turning the beautiful structure into a crippled bunch of bunions. To the eyes of Plato or any ancient Greek accustomed to see the human form and to understand its excellence and beauty, an Eton boy would be a thing to wonder at. To admiring mammas the ridiculous get-up is perfectly lovely, and the boy himself values it beyond measure. A thoughtful mother says, in one of Dumaurier's pictures published in Punch, 'Remember it is not the coat that makes the gentleman.' 'Oh, I know that,' replies the boy; it's the hat.' This is really not a caricature. The traditions of the boy stick to the man, who would rather be smitten with leprosy than commit a sin against the sacred laws of society. Accustomed to the ignoble arrangement which has been a glory in his eyes since he was old enough to envy his elder brother, he cannot know how far he has departed from a sense of the natural; it is pure perversion of taste, for which convenience cannot be pleaded. The Eton boy does not play cricket in his tall hat, nor does the member of Parliament choose his ordinary costume for tramping over the moors, or for lawn tennis. The Eton boy grows into the man, dispensing judgments and influencing events. What can be expected from his habits of mind in matters of taste? He will perpetuate the pot-hat and the shapeless costume his second nature has taught him to believe in, and all that is unusual or the least grateful to the eye in colour or shape will be regarded as 'bad form. Yet it is from him as an educated gentleman that encouragement to art should be expected. Under such conditions taste must suffer, and no great art can have a natural spring. One side of national character will be arid without art, for that absence implies the absence of sense of beauty, and of enjoyment in natural loveliness. The greatest purity in morals, and the highest attainable intellectual elevation, will still leave wanting much that is essential to a nation's greatness and happiness. Philosophers in future time may come to contend that among the objects of wise government should be the developing of contentment, not alone by encouraging the arts of becoming rich, but also by providing as much as possible for natural enjoyments. Even the poorest, accustomed to take pleasure in what is gratifying to the natural sense of beauty, would, if beautiful objects were among them, as they were in the Middle Ages, find moments of relief infinitely grateful to them in their habitual weariness. The plea for art rests on much wider and more solid foundations than mere amusement for moments of leisure. In the economy of civilisation its place must be beside poetry, a place that should be recognised by those who write upon it. Nothing is so likely to cure the wide spread of habits of intemperance that disgrace the nation as taste for art and music generally developed. Probably nothing but the general practice of the latter can now effect anything in that direction. The taste and practice were common in England in the Middle Ages: and the artistic sensibility was not wanting. This is proved by old songs and habits now becoming obsolete and discouraged. Pleasure in natural beauty is distinctly indicated by constant allusion to objects agreeable to the sight, and the carrying about of flowers on May Day, &c. No such habits could grow up naturally now. While still in possession of these sensibilities, the miserable condition of the peasant was to him more bearable than it is now. Never perhaps in the history of mankind has the peasantry been so unoppressed, but the divergence between the landlord and the agricultural population is rapidly increasing. The somewhat morbid sensibility which would abolish field-sports and the change that has taken place in their character will tend to place the landlord and tenant more and more in opposition, by destroying a connecting link of great value, and this will probably be felt at no very distant time. Most of us have seen how willingly the mounted farmer allowed his fields to be ridden over, and the keen enjoyment of the farm labourer as he followed on foot for half a mile, marking the vicissitudes of the chase, laying in a stock of enjoyment for the next three days. Civilisation looks coldly on mere animal enjoyments, often seeming to forget that man is after all an animal. It may be right in its direction, but while it represses on the objectionable side, it should be even more active to develope a counterpoise. The tendency to discourage our natural safety-valves for superabundant national energy will only leave open the fields of manufacturing and commercial enterprise, neither in these days favourable to gaiety-one, manufacturing by machinery, most unfavourable-and the nation must become more and more a prey to gloom and sullenness, more and more seeking refuge in the intemperance that so disgraces us, more and more distracted and disaffected. People dissatisfied with daily home life cannot be satisfied with any possible government. As our foreign policy must in a great measure be governed by the action of the foreign Powers we are brought into relation or collision with, and therefore cannot, beyond the establishment of certain principles, be wholly under our control, it might be wiser to consider home legislation for the moment as more important, and by earnest endeavour, among other means of improvement, to infuse more pleasure into the daily life of the community at large, to increase or preserve a healthy state of mind among the wretched many whose voices in reality do, and must more and more govern- to which end art and music are efficient agents. What cannot be achieved in this direction by the State, might be in a great measure brought about by widely spread and judicious co-operation of those who have leisure and other means at their disposal; and art, pressed into the service of general education, as once it was into that of religion, might again be great, and become a vital power. The dying out of the natural sense of pleasure derived from sight |