British art

“ But no one can examine even superficially the works which adorn these walls without perceiving that British art retains all its fertility of invention, and this year as much as in any year that I can remember, exhibits in the department of landscape, that fundamental condition of all excellence, intimate and profound sympathy with nature. ”

“ But in the case of American art, not even the strictly impartial treatment occasionally accorded French and German painters is to be found, with the result that, for the most part, our art suffers more than that of any other nation when compared, in the pages of the Britannica, with British art. ”

“ Present State of British Art.—It is owing either to a mistaken theory of elevated art, or to the want of models in nature, that the English are hitherto without any painter of serious historical subjects, who can be placed in the first rank of genius. Many of the pictures of modern artists have shown a capacity for correct and happy delineation of actual objects and domestic incidents, only inferior to the masterpieces of the Dutch School. ”

“ The foregoing examples by no means include all the instances of how English painters, as a result of the liberal space allotted them and the lavish encomiums heaped upon them by the Encyclopædia Britannica's editors, are unduly expanded into great and important figures. A score of other names could be mentioned. From beginning to end, English art is emphasized and lauded until it is out of all proportion to the rest of the world. ”

“ Not only is the Encyclopædia not comprehensive and up-to-date, but the manner in which British art and artists are constantly forced to the front rank is so grossly biased that a false impression of æsthetic history and art values is almost an inevitable result, unless one is already equipped with a wide understanding of the subject. If one were to form an opinion of art on the Britannica's articles, the opinion would be that English painting leads the modern world in both amount and quality. ”

“ The manner in which the subject of painting is dealt with reveals the full-blown flower of British insularity, and apotheosizes the narrow, aggressive culture of British middle-class respectability. In the world's art from 1700 on, comparatively little merit is recognized beyond the English Channel.
The number of English painters whose biographies appear in the Britannica would, I believe, astonish even certain English art critics ”

“ By being true to fact, by recording faithfully what they saw around them, they have added to British art much that is well worth possessing, and they have proved that realism under suitable conditions is a factor of infinite value in pictorial production. ”

“ No doubt this is partly due to the fact that British art has concerned itself very greatly with what may be called the physical characteristics of the country. A considerable proportion of our painters have been devoted students of nature, and have occupied themselves with records of British scenery, and of those subtle effects of atmosphere and illumination which are the product of the variable British climate. ”

“ If you ask nine-tenths of the British public what is the meaning of the word æsthetics, they will tell you it is the French for affectation or the German for a dado; and if you inquire about the pre-Raphaelites you will hear something about an eccentric lot of young men to whom a sort of divine crookedness and holy awkwardness in drawing were the chief objects of art. To know nothing about their great men is one of the necessary elements of English education. ”

“ If the same kind of panegyrics which characterize the biographies of the British painters in the Encyclopædia Britannica were used in dealing with the painters of all nationalities, there could be made no charge of either unconscious or deliberate injustice. But once we leave Great Britain's shores, prodigal laudation ceases. As if worn out by the effort of proving that Englishmen are pre-eminent among the world's painters, the editors devote comparatively little space to those non-British artists who, we have always believed and been taught, were the truly significant men in painting. ”

“ The practice of the fictile art in England dates back, as I have already said, to a very remote period—that of its Celtic or ancient British population, by whom there is abundant evidence it was much esteemed. ”

“ Practically all the advances made in modern art have come out of France; and practically all important modern painters have been Frenchmen. England has contributed little or nothing to modern painting. And yet, recent British schools are given nearly twice the space that is devoted to recent French schools! ”

“ Since then, his work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist. ”

“ We likewise visited another collection, resulting from an institution which might easily be introduced into France, to the decided advantage of art and taste. A society has been formed in England, called the British Institution for promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom. Every year it has, in London, an exhibition of ancient paintings, to which individual galleries send their choice pieces, so that in a certain number of years all the most remarkable pictures in England pass under the public eye. ”

“ As British ideas of art were principally derived from Italy, British academics endeavoured to follow the methods of teaching in vogue there in later times, and so the art student in Great Britain has had his intention and efforts directed almost exclusively to the representations of the abstract human form in abstract relief. ”

“ Unhappily, partly through the poverty and anarchy brought about by the French wars and the Wars of the Roses, the development of art in England made little progress after the beginning of the 14th century, and it was not till a time when the renaissance of art in Italy had fallen into decay that its influence reached the British shores. ”

“ Now, if the representatives of these respective schools be compared, or if the universal works of each be taken as the criterion of merit, in either case it would not be difficult to show, that separately, or as a school, the British artists of the present age have made the greatest attainments towards excellence. ”

“ In the past, the great English artists have been those who painted portraits, landscapes, or animals; reproducing out of experience the men and women, horses, dogs, and out-of-doors they knew so well; rather than creating out of imagination dramatic scenes and pictures of the struggle and splendour of life. Their art has been a peaceful art, the complement rather than the mirror of the heroic militancy that always has dominated English activity. ”

“ The seventeenth century was a great period for famous painters, and the presence of numerous excellent foreign artists in England influenced the attitude of society among the higher classes towards art. ”

“ We never think of the plaster star in the middle of our ceiling as belonging even to the same range of ideas as, say, the frescoes in the Houses of Parliament.
A nation in such a condition as that is never truly artistic. The artist with us, even now, is an exceptional product. Art for a long time in England had nothing at all to do with the life of the people. It was a luxury for the rich, a curious thing for ladies' and gentlemen's consumption, as purely artificial as the stuccoed Italian villa in which they insisted on shivering in our chilly climate. ”

“ My conception and invention are, on all hands, allowed to be superior; my execution will be found so too. To what is it that gentlemen of the first rank both in genius and fortune have subscribed their names? To my inventions. The executive part they never disputed.
The painters of England are unemployed in public works, while the sculptors have continual and superabundant employment. Our churches and our abbeys are treasures of their producing for ages back, while painting is excluded. Painting, the principal art, has no place among our almost only public works. ”

“ Hence the general conclusion seems evident, that in Britain, the art, as compared with itself, has continued to improve.
Compared with foreign art, the distinctive character of the English school is strongly marked. Painting on the [Pg 224] Continent exhibits a striking uniformity of style, with such peculiarities as, on a general view, will not lessen the truth of a common classification. The Continental artist, then, studies to detail, but fails in power of general effect; his performances are more valuable as works of art and of imitation, than of imagination or abstract resemblance. ”

“ I may say this without presumption, because the great question which we are discussing: "How can Art be made most useful to England?" involves the two other questions: "What are the best conditions under which artists can work?" and "How can the best work of artists be made to influence the rest of the community?" ”

“ The reader, however, must have perceived that what I started to say was that the taste for art in England is at bottom a fashion, a need of luxury, a tribute even, as my friend says, to propriety; not an outgush of productive power. So the reflective stranger concludes, after having gone the rounds of everything in the way of an exhibition that the season offers him; and so, if he had time to make the reader perform the same interesting tour, he would expect the latter to conclude with him. But if art is a fashion in England, at least it is a great fashion. ”

“ The greatest empire still remains for them—the empire of art. And, indeed, this wonderful face, seen last night for the first time in America, has filled and permeated with the pervading image of its type the whole of our modern art in England. Last century it was the romantic type which dominated in art, the type loved by Reynolds and Gainsborough, of wonderful contrasts of colour, of exquisite and varying charm of expression, but without that definite plastic feeling which divides classic from romantic work. ”

“ This is the spirit of our movement in England, and this is the spirit in which we would wish you to work, making eternal by your art all that is noble in your men and women, stately in your lakes and mountains, beautiful in your own flowers and natural life. ”

“ England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of admirers of art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever portrait-painters. How many artists? Let the reader count upon his five fingers, and see if, living at the present moment, he can name one for each. ”

“ Life is joyful, to be lived in luxurious boudoirs, exquisite in refinement of decoration, or in pretty gardens where Nature, properly disguised, welcomes aristocratic shepherds and shepherdesses to her pastoral delights.
The changed political and social conditions of the XVIII century had their immediate effect in the world of art. Except in England—relatively democratic as compared with France and other continental countries—art was almost exclusively aristocratic, and mirrored the self-indulgent interests of fashionable patrons. ”

“ This admirable Queen of England died in 1369, mourned by all the kingdom. To her influence England is indebted for the establishment of factories and commerce as national assets to her progress.
Art commingles with history when it comes to portraits. Or shall we say that portraiture pronounces the development of humanity when said portraits represent the high lights of history.
One of the functions of art is the portrayal of character that has influenced a nation, an epoch, or a dynasty for better or worse. ”

“ I will not repeat here what I have already twice insisted upon, to the students of London and Manchester, respecting the degradation of temper and intellect which follows the pursuit of art without reference to natural form, as among the Asiatics: here, I will only trespass on your patience so far as to mark the inseparable connection between figure-drawing and good ornamental work, in the great European schools, and all that are connected with them. ”

“ And, the commonplace character of so much of our English painting seems to me due to the fact that so many of our young artists look merely at what we may call ‘ready-made beauty,’ whereas you exist as artists not to copy beauty but to create it in your art, to wait and watch for it in nature. ”

“ In England, then—and as far as I know, in England only—painters of pictures have grown, I believe, more numerous, and certainly more conscientious in their work, and in some cases—and this more especially in England—have developed and expressed a sense of beauty which the world has not seen for the last three hundred years. This is certainly a very great gain, which is not easy to over-estimate, both for those who make the pictures and those who use them. ”

“ When I think how still more deplorable is the state of painting in England, how little Italy and Germany now merit their former fame, I am tempted to fear that this art will share the fate of painting on glass ”

“ Of their number and value the exhibitions held for several years past, during the winter, in the rooms of the Royal Academy, and formed by the loan of choice specimens of the old masters, have been a liberal intimation. These exhibitions give a great impression of the standing art-wealth of Great Britain, and of the fact that, whether or no the English people have painted, the rest of the world has painted for them. They have needed pictures; it is ungracious to look too narrowly at the grounds of the need. ”