First, the establishment in connexion with the National Eisteddfod, of an Advisory Board, which may be consulted by the local musical committee at pleasure.

Second, the abolition of money prizes, as far as possible, and the substitution in most cases of rewards directly musical in their nature.

Third, the substitution for fragmentary pieces, in choral competitions, of an entire choral work, any part of which competitors may be called upon to perform.

Fourth, all possible encouragement of efficiency in reading the "old notation".

Sixth, steady and constant effort in every way to enlarge the scope of musical study by the people.

I shall not be misunderstood in giving this advice. I am not now, for the first time, showing an interest in Welsh music, or devoting some hours of a busy life to a consideration of the ways and means by which it may be improved. My motive must be known, but let me say that, as an Englishman, I am not altogether unselfish. There is in Wales a rare capacity for serving our common country in music. Much of it is undeveloped, and it is to the interest of British art generally that the whole should be brought under cultivation. Welsh music does not belong to Wales alone. We all have a share in it through the advantage we gain from its efficiency, and upon this fact, as well as upon my keen sympathy with Welsh effortsin art, I base my claim to tender such counsel as many years of experience and observation have suggested.

r

DOMESTIC AND DECORATIVE ART IN

WALES.1

BY

THOMAS E. ELLIS, M.P.

I DESIRE at once, and quite unreservedly, to repudiate any claim to speak with authority upon any one of the arts, graphic or plastic, domestic or decorative. I am a mere wayfarer on the Queen's highway, who, in the bustle of the crowd, glances to right and to left to appreciate the beauty or the barrenness of the land; and any remarks which I may make to you to-night, I make, not as an expert, not as one who has any special knowledge or any claim to speak dogmatically upon these matters, but as an observer and a wayfarer.

As we look round upon the life and the activities of our day in Wales, I think we cannot but feel that we are in the glad spring-time for Wales. There are bud's and blossoms and flowers of promise in every sphere of the activity of the Welsh people, whether they live in Wales or over the border, and I think in a season of awakening it is right and well and perhaps a duty on our part, to see what is the meaning of the awakening, how deep it is, and into what channels the new life which comes from the awakening is spreading itself.

I think one may say at the start-and one admits it

1 Address delivered before the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion at 20, Hanover Square, on Wednesday, 10th March, 1897; Chairman, Dr. Isambard Owen, M.A., Senior Deputy Chancellor of the University of Wales.

with sorrow as well as with frankness-that not the most patriotic of us can claim for Wales the possession of a native school of art, such as is possessed by other small countries which have obtained and enjoyed the priceless gift of self-government. I remember well in 1889 spending a few days in the Centenary Exhibition at Paris. I have forgotten most of what I saw there. I have a vague recollection of the crowd, the physiognomy and characteristics of those who came from the various provinces of France, and of the enormous wealth exhibited, the wealth of industry, of art, of commerce, and of the various activities of the great country of France. But the one thing which stands out in my memory, which I think will stand out so long as I live, is the fact that, not alone had the great countries, France, Germany, Great Britain, their separate rooms for the exhibition of the products of their art, but that Denmark, Finland, Servia, Greece, and countries very much the same as Wales in population and in ordinary material wealth, had, each one of them, even distant Finland, separate rooms in that great Exhibition, in order to show, as show they did, the splendid products of the native art of their respective countries. I wondered then, as I often wonder now, whenever I think of these nationalities, whether it is possible that in the times to come our own country may, as an outcome of enfranchised nationhood, claim a place in the galleries which from time to time will show the collective activities of the nations of the world.

But, even without this, one is glad and proud that there have been from time to time witnesses to the latent power for art in the Welsh people. It is true that many of these have shown this latent power well over the border of Wales and in other lands, but I think they have almost all shown it with a personal pride in their early training and recol

lections and associations connected with their life in Wales. Take, for instance, the fact, which must bring some pride to the heart of every Welshman, that the real father of the British school of landscape was Richard Wilson, who was brought up in comparatively humble surroundings in the little village of Penegoes. One of the most prolific and ablest of the sculptors who have brought glory to the British name in sculpture, was John Gibson of Conway. Inigo Jones in architecture, and Owen Jones in laying down the principles of ornament, have shown that from time to time there will arise witnesses to the latent power which lies in the race and people of Wales.

In our own day we have witnesses to this same power. Were it not for his presence here to-night, I would venture to say a word or two as to the feeling of joy with which we look upon the career and the bright promise of a still greater career of our countryman, Mr. Goscombe John; and, at any rate, one can (in the absence of Sir Edward Burne-Jones) express the pride which every Welshman and Welsh-woman must feel that it has been left to one of Welsh blood, who is proud of his Welsh blood and lineage, to bring forth new powers and reveal new secrets in art, in the person of Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Who, it has been fittingly asked, can measure the wealth of the thought and reading and fine literary discrimination which is signified by the command possessed by Burne-Jones over the entire range of Northern and Celtic and Greek mythology, or the tenderness and largeness of sympathy which have enabled him to harmonise these with the loveliest truths of the Christian faith?

Before I touch upon my actual subject, I ought to refer to one other point. That is the change which has come over Wales in one respect during the last thirty or forty years in the fact that artists-not, I am sorry to say, as a

rule Welsh artists, but artists from outside-have from time to time lived and settled down in Wales, in order to interpret the scenery and the life of Wales. My feeling of regard for them is tinged with sadness at the thought that the interpretation of the beauty of the landscape and of the life of Wales should be left to artists from outside, and that their products should be for a public outside Wales. Their pictures do not pass through the mind or the heart of Wales. This must be so, until we have a municipal gallery or galleries, or a national gallery or galleries, where the works of these artists, who have seen the loveliness of Wales, can be exhibited for the wise enjoyment of the Welsh people. As it is we have neither galleries nor artists of our own, nor any means, except the wealth and good fortune and taste of an individual Welshman here and there, of securing for our people either temporarily or permanently, the artistic interpretation of the landscape and life of Wales.

But, perhaps, national or municipal galleries are not the main thing necessary for the cultivation among the Welsh people themselves of a sense and capacity for art. I think it quite possible that both in England and in Wales we may have the production of hundreds and thousands of paintings or pictures, and at the same time a deterioration of the public taste in art. Art and artists on the one hand, and ordinary life and industry on the other hand, have during the last century and a half been more and more divorced, and I am convinced, from what I can read and learn and observe, that we can never expect a real pervasive feeling and taste for art until this divorce between the artist and his studio, on the one hand, and the workman and his workshop, on the other hand, can be done away with, and the gulf between them be bridged over. If that be so, I feel that we should at present not so much

C