Slade School of Fine Art

“ The School of Fine Arts, which was reorganized under the University in 1879, has enrolled over 200 students, and gives a wide and careful training in all the departments of drawing, painting, and modelling, with instructions in anatomy, perspective, and composition, and has life classes for both sexes, in drawing from draped and nude figures. Its lecture, working rooms, and galleries of paintings and casts are in its Crow Art Museum—a beautiful building, well planned and justly distinguished for architectural excellence. It ranks among the best Art buildings in the country. ”

“ The fact is, that an artist, to excel as a draughtsman, should consider himself a student all his life.
The school of painting ought to be the school of drawing in color, and no student ought to be allowed to color a badly drawn figure or head. ”

“ In 1872 he migrated to London, became a student at the Slade School and finally adopted the artist’s profession. He gained immediately a wide reputation as a prolific and original illustrator, gifted with a genial, humorous faculty, and he succeeded also, though in less degree, as a painter and sculptor. ”

“ All universities recognize literature in the sense of the old rhetoric, which is art incarnate in words. Some, to their credit, recognize art in its narrower sense, to a certain extent, and confer degrees for proficiency in some of its branches. If there are doctors of music, why should there be no masters of painting, of sculpture, of architecture? I should like to see professors of the fine arts in every university; and instruction in some branch of their work made a part of the arts curriculum. ”

“ A good picture will never come from their École des Beaux-Arts. The most precious thing is the originality, the independence of an artist. Schools have no right to exist; there are only painters. Independently of system and without attaching myself to any party, I have studied the art of the old masters and of the more modern. I have tried to imitate the one as little as I have tried to copy the other, but out of the total knowledge of tradition I have wished to draw a firm and independent sense of my own individuality. ”

“ I do not, indeed, ignore the fact that there is a school of artists belonging to this decade who set forth that beauty is not an essential part of art; which they consider rather as an instrument for the statement of fact, or an exhibition of the artist's intellectual observation and skill of hand. Such a school would seem at first sight to have an interest of its own as a genuine traditional development of the art of the eighteenth century, which, like all intellectual movements in that century, was negative and destructive ”

“ But the real educating after influences; the inspiring and refining sources of artistic invention in design must be found in the splendid array of examples of ancient art of all kinds in our museums and galleries—which are mines of artistic wealth to the student and the designer.
Yet the most ordinary art-school training cannot be without its effect, even if only negative. The mere practice of cultivating the observation and uniting it with a certain power of depicting form is an education in itself, and gives people fresh eyes for nature and life. ”

“ In the matter of literature and the arts of design, where there is likewise an implicit intention of enriching æsthetic appreciation, an agreement is more easily reached, by reason of their closer relationship to outer life, to action, and the more familiar processes of thought. Few would maintain that the purpose of college courses in English literature is to train professional novelists and poets; the college leaves to the special art schools and to private studios the development of painters, sculptors, and architects. ”

“ The schools of light and shade, on the other hand, are partly, in their academical formulas, too haughty, and partly, in their narrowness of imagination, too weak, to learn much from the schools of colour; and pass into a state of decadence, consisting partly in proud endeavours to give painting the qualities of sculpture, and partly in the pursuit of effects of light and shade, carried at last to extreme sensational subtlety by the Dutch school. In their fall, they drag the schools of colour down with them ”

“ The Slade Professor was also expected to organise and superintend the teaching of drawing; and his first words in the first lecture expressed the hope that he would be able to introduce some serious study of Art into the University, which, he thought, would be a step towards realising some of his ideals of education. He had long felt that mere talking about Art was a makeshift, and that no real insight could be got into the subject without actual and practical dealing with it. He found a South Kensington School in existence at Oxford, with an able master, Mr. Alexander Macdonald ”

“ Now, when the veriest dauber of canvas can send in his work, the whole talk is of genius neglected! Where judgment no longer exists, there is no longer anything judged. But whatever artists may be doing now, they will come back in time to the examination and selection which presents their works to the admiration of the crowd for whom they work. Without selection by the Academy there will be no Salon, and without the Salon art may perish. ”

“ There always has been a fight on the part of the school to get what it wanted from the directors; but things can be done. Read the list of “illustrious names” of visiting instructors, years ago, and then compare the student roll of the same time. Once the Art Institute was an art school with art students, who were artists, who in spite of everything led the life of artists, knew the analogy between painting and the other Arts, swarmed to concerts and the theatres, and created their own atmosphere. ”

“ It is the student’s own choice whether he will, therefore, sacrifice his idea for a place in the catalogue, or run the chance of missing that and keeping his ideas.
Of course when he is famous he may do as he likes, and the world will say all is perfect that his hand touches.
Academies must be good when they foster the art youth, encourage originality, train his eye and his hand, and keep active his mind to the true principles of art and the animation of thought; bad if, while they train the hand, they crush out spirit, originality and thought. ”

“ It is obvious that a college course in æsthetics must be inspirational, must seek to develop a real appreciation of the beauty of line, of color and of sound. Such a course must, therefore, encourage contact with the products of art, rather than promote the study of texts on the history of any of the arts. So, too, courses in music or in literature which do not send the student away with an intense desire to hear, to see, to feel the masterpieces of music or literature must be judged dismal failures. ”

“ This can only be acquired by him that enlarges the sphere of his understanding by a variety of knowledge, and warms his imagination with the best productions of ancient and modern poetry.
A hand thus exercised, and a mind thus instructed, will bring the art to a higher degree of excellence than, perhaps, it has hitherto attained in this country. Such a student will disdain the humbler walks of painting, which, however profitable, can never assure him a permanent reputation. ”

“ Three hundred artists of different nations, some of whom are known by master-pieces, while others announce the genius necessary for producing them, are to be distributed in the seven classes of this academy, which include the fine arts of every description. Each artist being at liberty to follow the branch to which he is most partial, it may easily be conceived how noble an emulation will be roused by such an assemblage of talents. Several are now employed here in the workshops of Painting, Sculpture, Mosaic, and Engraving. ”

“ It is not an easy task to point out those various excellences for your imitation, which lie distributed amongst the various schools. An endeavour to do this may perhaps be the subject of some future discourse. I will, therefore, at present only recommend a model for style in painting, which is a branch of the art more immediately necessary to the young student. Style in painting is the same as in writing, a power over materials, whether words or colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. ”

“ A college of art founded in this part of the world cannot be expected, like a college of literature, to lay before its young members all that may be necessary to complete their knowledge and taste. What is to be had from books may be obtained almost every where; but the books of instruction by which the artist alone can be perfected, are those great works which still remain immoveable in that part of the world, where the fine arts in modern times have been carried to their highest degree of perfection. ”

“ The Royal Female School of Art, the Slade School, and Schools of Art everywhere throughout the country each and all are now engaged in swelling the ranks of the profession with a far greater number of aspirants to a living than there is any room for. ”

“ THE RISE OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
he famous artists of the Continent almost invariably organize schools of art, converting their studios into miniature academies, surrounding themselves with pupils and disciples who sit at their feet, listen to their teaching, assist them by painting for them the less important portions of their works, adopt their processes, and follow their styles of drawing and colouring. There is something to be said for the system. It is an advantage to the young student to be constantly brought into contact with a real master of the art ”

“ It has dropped out of the Exhibition when the pictures came to be actually hung; leaving some food for pondering to those who care for the higher and completer forms of pictorial work. They may feel—and the feeling would be only enhanced by some other things they may have heard, and a great deal of what they see on the Academy walls—that an off-hand style of painting, now predominant, has interests of its own clashing with those of some graver phases of art ”

“ Admission is by examination—that for a sculptor entailing the presentation of an anatomical drawing, showing bones and muscles, a model in the round of an undraped antique, and a life-sized medallion from the living model.
In many respects the Academy system is superior to that of the École des Beaux Arts. Such a judge as Mr. Edwin Abbey has even recommended American art students to choose London in preference to Paris on this account. “In Paris,” he says, “all the personality is rubbed out of a student. ”

“ Corresponding with the maintenance of fine traditions is the excellence of the system of teaching. The Institute and the École des Beaux Arts perpetuate a standard, characterised by technical perfection and elegance of style, while the tendency to academic narrowness is offset by the influence of independent sculptors; for there is not a thought-wave in modern art that does not emanate from or finally reach Paris. It is the world’s clearing-house of artistic currency. ”

“ The ideals of English artists during the early years of the nineteenth century had sunk very low, and the standard of public taste was several degrees lower. Portrait-painting was the only lucrative branch of art, and the Academy was almost entirely in the hands of the portrait-painters, who gave little encouragement to works of imagination. ”

“ They must put their own consciousness into a picture. At the dawn of this stage of appreciation the esthetic tastes should be stimulated by exposure to, and instructed in feeling for, the subject-matter of masterpieces; and instruction in technique, detail, criticism, and learned discrimination of schools of painting should be given intermittently. Art should not now be for art's sake, but for the sake of feeling and character, life, and conduct; it should be adjunct to morals, history, and literature ”

“ I trust a period will come, when this Academy will be able to send the young artist, not from one spot or one seminary to another, but to gather improvement from every celebrated work of art wherever situated. But the progress and all future success of the artist must depend upon himself. He must be in love with his art or he will never excel in it.
"That the arts of design were among the first suggestions vouchsafed by Heaven to mankind, is not a proposition at which any man needs to start. ”

“ EDUCATION IN TASTE
There is a naïvely systematic way of teaching artistic appreciation to the students of many of our city schools. To each class is allotted a famous painter. The class is then taken en masse to the art museum, and, under the guidance of one of the official show-women, confronted with the masterpieces of its proprietary genius. ”

“ Yet, in the shape of elementary drawing, the rudiments of art are beginning to take their proper place in our schools as a necessary and indispensable element of all real education, and the art galleries and the foreign musicians of a few of our older cities are beginning to exert their influence, if a slight one, in introducing higher ideas of the importance of art into our new country. They will have but a limited influence, however, till the study of the fine arts takes its proper place among us as a necessary element in every conception of true education. ”