The Academy (magazine)

“ But for my own part, I wish to state it very plainly that I never have thought, or could think, of putting my own candidature forward if ever the academy should become a fact. I have no desire to fill such a post, an Englishman born should do it: it is a national affair. One thing should not deter us from advocating the academy. ”

“ You may find a sufficient number of "Amateurs" ready to immolate their reputation for art, of little value; but you should consider with what an aching heart the poor painter sees the labour of many a day, and many a cherished hope, as soon as the Academy opens, raised to its position of noted contempt. Nor should you have a "Condemned Cell"—such is the octagon-room termed. You render men unhappy—and superciliously seem to think, you pay them by a privilege of admission. ”

“ Of course, a Dramatic Academy would be a splendid institution, with all the best actors as masters teaching the young idea how to shoot—shoot straight, of course; and what a saving it would be to poor managers, who then could refer the thousands of aspirants for dramatic glory to it to become pupils and get prizes before asking for engagements. ”

“ I am loath to say anything to discourage any scheme framed for the purpose of benefiting our art, but I cannot honestly say that, in my opinion, the establishment of a Dramatic Academy would, in any way, serve that purpose. ”

“ Let us now look at the proceedings of the French Academy; it is open to the public, and the public take so great an interest in it, that to secure a seat an early attendance is always requisite. Every scientific point of daily and passing interest is brought before it—comments, such as occur at the time, are made upon various points by the secretary, or any other member who likes to make an observation—the more elaborate memoirs are read by the authors themselves, and if any quære or suggestion occurs to a member present, he has an opportunity of being answered. ”

“ Wyllie had done it, you see, with his great Thames picture, so why shouldn't Guy Lethbridge? The Chantrey Bequest was meant on purpose for the encouragement of such works as the "Seven Mountains from the Summit of the Petersberg." The trustees were bound to buy it as soon as they saw it hung on the line at the Academy; for they are men of taste, and men of knowledge, and men of experience; and if they don't know a good thing when they see it, what's the use of an Academy, anyway, I ask you? ”

“ I do not think the profession to which I have the honour to belong has any necessity for a Dramatic Academy. Actors and actresses have come, and are constantly coming, to the front who have learnt their business at the best of schools—the stage, which is always self-instructing. ”

“ Picture to yourself how well-fitted such a Being would be, as well to fulfil the Requirements of the Comic Artist, as to minister to the Amusement, and therefore greater Happiness, of the Public!
"In Time," he proceeded, "and after a few Generations, my Academy would possess, by reason of this Treatment, a Staff of Models of the most humorous Aspect; some having Heads an hundred times as large as their Trunks (such as are seen in Pantomimes) ”

“ But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this we may be sure, that the present Institution will at least contribute to advance our knowledge of the Arts, and bring us nearer to that ideal excellence, which it is the lot of genius always to contemplate and never to attain.{5}
The principal advantage of an Academy is, that, besides furnishing able men to direct the student, it will be a repository for the great examples of the Art. ”

“ An Academy of Dramatic Art, where each student must first win a diploma before being eligible for the stage, would be an inestimable advantage; but, unless this academy were founded and endowed by the “State,” it would again prove to be impracticable. Moreover, as there is an universally accepted theory that the British public does not want Art, but merely demands to be amused, or to have its attention attracted (by some means or other) , I fear it would be a somewhat difficult affair to induce the “State” to regard the proposition as anything but a trivial one. ”

“ Provided science be kept separate from political excitement, we should like to see an English Academy, constituted of men having fair claims to scientific distinction, and not "deserving of that honour because they are attached to science." ”

“ And the freedom with which he has spoken shows that the shadow of the palm-trees has not clouded his cosmopolitan point of view, nor the classicism of the Academy dulled his wonderful powers of analysis. In his election, representing as he does the most brilliant of the younger and progressive school of French writers, the Academy has not so much honored the man as the man has honored the Academy. ”

“ On the other hand, what danger there is in an academy becoming cliquey, nay even corrupt. We have an academy here in the painting art, but except that it collects within its walls every year a vaster number of daubs than it is possible for any one ever to see with any degree of comfort, I don’t know what particular use it is of. As a school or college it may be of use, but as a critical academy it does very little. ”

“ It is a mistake to believe that a book crowned by the Academy is necessarily good. Noting one year that several absolutely bad, as well as many mediocre, books had been crowned, and sums of money awarded to the malefactors who had perpetrated them, I asked an academician how it was. ”

“ Notwithstanding the neglect of this matter at the Universities, do you think, at the present moment, you could not find ten non-professional persons, of the character you would think desirable, to add to the Academy?—If I may be so impertinent, I may say that you as one of the upper classes, and I as a layman in the lower classes, are tolerably fair examples of the kind of persons who take an interest in art, and I think both of us would do a great deal of mischief if we had much to do with the Academy. ”

“ Your not being in favor of it results from your belief that the lay element that would be useful to the Academy does not at present exist in this country; but you think, if it did exist, and if it could be made to grow out of our schools and universities by art teaching, it might, with advantage to the Academy and to artists, be introduced into the Academy?—Yes. ”

“ In him society has lost one of its best members, our Art one of its firmest supporters, the Academy one of its brightest ornaments, and you a solid, experienced, forcible, and lucid instructor. The innate vigour of his mind supplied every want of education ”

“ As I come here to-night and look around this audience I am seeing again what through these fifty years I have continually seen-men that are making precisely that same mistake. I often wish I could see the younger people, and would that the Academy had been filled to-night with our high-school scholars and our grammar-school scholars, that I could have them to talk to. ”

“ Now you observe that I never speak of this Greek school but with a certain dread. And yet I have told you that Turner belongs to it, that all the strongest men in times of developed art belong to it; but then, remember, so do all the basest. The learning of the Academy is indeed a splendid accessory to original power, in Velasquez, in Titian, or in Reynolds; but the whole world of art is full of a base learning of the Academy, which, when fools possess, they become a tenfold plague of fools. ”

“ We had occasion some time ago to refer to the unscrupulous critical spirit which animates a London weekly called the Academy, a periodical established and conducted on the principle of bullying itself into notice by copying and exaggerating the most arbitrary features of British journalism. A special effort has been made to push the circulation of the Academy in this country, which makes it proper to point out the policy it has adopted toward American as well as English authors. A little American book on botany was republished in London, and attacked by the Academy in the most vicious way. ”

“ Instead of becoming, as they ought to do, the oracle of the age and their nation, our men of letters content themselves with being the echo of that dread tribunal; hence the abject state of literature in the capital. We have some, however, who boldly think for themselves, trust to the judgment of the public, and laugh at the award of the Academy. ”

“ Anxious for the homage due to a national institution, and intolerant of any protest against its rule, it has nevertheless persistently failed to advance with the growth of new ideas of art, and has steadily declined to undertake any enlargement of the original scope of its labours. Of the more important art movements that have arisen since the date of its creation, the Royal Academy has been little more than a spectator. ”

“ An academy quite like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of the highest literary opinion, a recognised authority in matters of intellectual tone and taste, we shall hardly have, and perhaps ought not to wish to have. ”

“ An Academy, in which the Polite Arts may be regularly cultivated, is at last opened among us by Royal munificence. This must appear an event in the highest degree interesting, not only to the artists, but to the whole nation. ”

“ I cannot bear to have it said that I am the first in anything whatever, as a writer least of all; it is not a thing which can be admitted, and these ways of classing people give offence.” Literary man and loyal to the French Academy as he was, he-can yet write to an old friend after his election: “All these academies, between you and me, are pieces of childishness; at any rate the French Academy is. ”

“ The general tendency of the Academic thinkers was towards practical simplicity, a tendency due in large measure to the inferior intellectual capacity of Plato’s immediate successors. Cicero (de Fin. v. 3) says generally of the Old Academy: “Their writings and method contain all liberal learning, all history, all polite discourse; and besides they embrace such a variety of arts, that no one can undertake any noble career without their aid. . . . In a word the Academy is, as it were, the workshop of every artist.” ”

“ Exclusion and suppression of certain things in the range of art are not really possible to any academy upon earth, be it pictorial or literary. It is natural for academies to try, when any rare or new good thing comes before them in either kind ”

“ He was amongst the earliest in his dominions to encourage British art with an open hand. He was not only the founder of the Royal Academy, but a most liberal patron to artists; and he did not limit his patronage to those men alone who belonged to his own Academy. ”

“ The field of art education is large enough to be sub-divided to the advantage and welfare of all, but the Academy must be the highest school, the university of art teaching, or its school department has no reason for existence. ”

“ He wrote the lives of the most celebrated painters and sculptors of the Royal Academy, and founded in that Academy an annual prize for the students who were most successful in expressing the passions. ”

“ There’s something in you, plenty of grit and all that, but you’re young, and, I mean to say, you’re here to learn what we can teach you. When we’ve done with you, you can go your own way and be hanged to you. If you want to smudge about with paint and fake what you can’t draw, there’s the Academy. ”

“ He has always found the study of books a rather difficult task, owing to the lack of early training in them; but he has proved a good student and a very valuable helper at the Academy. The longing desire to become a capable and successful teacher, has kept him there, amid all the changes that have occurred since his arrival in 1903. ”

“ I think that in England, partly from the want of an Academy, partly from a national habit of intellect to which that want of an Academy is itself due, there exists too little of what I may call a public force of correct literary opinion, possessing within certain limits a clear sense of what is right and wrong, sound and unsound, and sharply recalling men of ability and learning from any flagrant misdirection of these their advantages. ”

“ The oblique and ironical method is admirably employed in the dramatized conversations of visitors to the Academy and other exhibitions. In the sketch "Round the R.A." in 1893 the schoolmistress and her bored pupils, the complacent Briton giving himself away at every turn to his French friend, and the prosaic and practical person, are all drawn from the quick. The orthodox verdict is "quite up to the average—such delightful puppies and kittens," while the rebellious pupil of the edifying Miss Pemmican remarks, "Bother the beastly old Academy. ”

“ The Academy is the Royal road to Art. The whole style of English Art, as issuing from this 313Academy, is founded on a principle of appeal to the personal vanity and ignorance of their sitters, and of accommodation to the lucrative pursuits of the Painter, in a sweeping attention to effect in painting, by which means he can cover so many more whole or half lengths in each season. ”

“ That the people he lives among are not artistic, is, for the contemplative stranger, one of the foremost lessons of English life; and the exhibition of the Academy sets the official seal upon this admonition. ”

“ And the gentlemen who opposed him most violently have repeatedly told me that I did the utmost service to the Academy by bringing him in, for never was a man in such a situation so eminently qualified for the task of education. ”

“ Supported by the British government, the English artist has, free of all expense, at this truly National Academy, opportunities to sketch from life, as well as from casts, and has, moreover, access to a well-chosen library of books. With a generosity worthy of all praise, American artists are admitted to the English Academy, with full permission to share with Englishmen the advantages of the life-school, free of all cost ”