Joseph Drew

“ Scarcely a single work of art is in existence that has not its thousands of copies, whether in sculpture, painting, carving, or engraving, no matter how costly, for the higher the value the more likely it is to be copied for the use of the many, but as we have said before, we live in an age of imitation. ”

“ Indeed the possessors of some of the best works of Reynolds, Turner, Wilson, Hilton, and a score of other modern men, look with increasing dismay on the widening cracks and fading colours of those otherwise matchless productions of art, and they feel they have a right to invoke the aid of the Royal Academy, whose council are supposed to be the conservators of this particular art, to investigate the cause and point out the remedy for this gigantic evil, which is robbing posterity of the art treasures it is our duty to hand down to them in as good a state of preservation as possible. ”

“ Some of the sculptures in the Egyptian sanctuary, although upwards of 4,000 years old, stand before us as perfect in preservation as if the last touch of the finishing tool had just been given, and yet, notwithstanding their preservation and beauty, many of the works of our modern sculptors will bear a critical comparison with those of the same class, whilst like them they have become the imperishable records of our age, in which will be read the history of our art schools, and from which posterity will be enabled to judge of the elevation or decadence of our art productions. ”

“ Without, however, presuming to be an art critic, and without being so enthusiastic as some in favour of ancient art, we cannot pass through the courts of the British Museum without being struck with the massive grandeur and classic beauty of some of the ideal creations of those men who have left us such a comprehensive syllabus, as it were, of primeval civilization. ”

“ The intrinsic value, however, of the art treasures bequeathed by this glorious painter to posterity does not consist simply in their high state of preservation and delicate work, but in the emotions produced by the contemplation of their conception and beauty; in fact, the effect produced by the study of a really beautiful picture upon the mind is never effaced, it becomes photographed, as it were, upon the imagination, and we can always bring to our remembrance some prominent incident in connection with its composition or general beauty. ”

“ One country may decline in art, but the great wave of intelligence and genius will be found surging on other shores, and unlocked for examples of excellence have been and will again be the result. To a certain extent, however, we have come to recognise an idea of perfection, and to believe that each particular department in the art world culminates at its own specific time. ”

“ But as we have remarked, we do not believe that the art has waned, but we do believe that all this mischief can be traced to the present rage for cheap productions. The age in which we live is essentially an age of electro-plate, and lath and plaster, not through the lack of genius, but owing to the inordinate spirit of competition, and the desire of all classes to imitate the grades above them in society. ”

“ Alexander the Great was a munificent patron of the fine arts, and by way of encouragement, he gave a monopoly—so far as his own person was concerned—to Lyseppus the sculptor and to Apelles the painter, and refused to permit any other artist to carve his bust, paint his portrait, or even to introduce his figure as a copy in any of their productions, without his special license or consent, and by these means men were stimulated to compete for true excellence. ”

“ We can go quite as far back for examples of the painter's art as we can for those of the sculptor's, but they are not so familiar to us from the fact that very few are found in private collections, for paintings were not always the moveable chattles and cabinet gems they are at the present day. ”

“ The artist colour-man, with his prepared canvas at so much per yard, coated with whiting and size, and his tube colours, and megilph, so neatly put up, but which will not bear the action of light of a few years, was unknown in these early days; and it was not until the productions of this particular branch of trade were made competitive in price, and cheapness became the order of the day, that decay commenced its ravages, and the durability of paintings could no longer be relied upon. ”

“ All these very early productions, however, were in outline only, and it was not until Apollodorus, the Athenian, established a school for painting, about 400 years before our era, that the distribution of light and shade became a recognised principle of the art. Apollodorus was the first man who contributed to the glory of painting, and before he appeared there were no productions of the easel worthy to be call works of art. ”

“ Then in the metropolis, painting are hung in rooms were the air becomes highly vitiated by the presence of large assemblages of human beings and by the pernicious influence of gas, and this is a very prolific source of destruction to these works of art, added to which even the air of London itself has been declared by competent authorities to be very prejudicial to the preservation of paintings, owing to the excess of carbonic acid and other deleterious gases in the atmosphere ”

“ In examining the preparation on some panels of the 15th century, we found the surface upon which the picture was painted much harder than the panel itself, whilst in modern panels it is quite the reverse. In the early panels the surface broke with a gelatinous kind of fracture, the edges of which were sufficiently hard to cut the fingers, whilst in the modern panels a fracture of the surface presented a soft marley appearance, and the preparation itself could be crumbled by friction or pressure. ”

“ The statue is a free copy of the famous bronze figure of Diadumenos, by Polycletus, a celebrated sculptor of Sicyon, now Basilico, a town of Peloponnesus. Polycletus lived about 232 years B.C., and was universally reckoned the most skilful artist of his profession among the ancients. A companion statue, known as the Doryphorus, or spear bearer, by Polycletus, was regarded in antiquity as a figure in which the proportions of an athlete were presented in a form to serve as a canon for all succeeding sculptors. ”

“ It appears then that this want of solidity in the preparation of canvasses and panels permits the colours to sink in, it extracts the medium in working them, and thus the pigments become so non-elastic, that as the panels and canvasses contract or expand by the atmospheric changes so prevalent in this variable clime, so the colours are rent in all directions, and the fine network of cracks which we so frequently observe spreading over the surface of a picture would appear to be the first step towards its decay. ”