OLD MASTERS AT THE WINTER

EXHIBITIONS.

I.

'In the critical study of art, range is not necessary to penetration, and labour should be directed less in width than in depth.' 'The most modest work may contain occasion for long processes of analysis.' 'Very great laws may be illustrated in a very small compass.' These are reflections of an accomplished artist, M. Eugène Fromentin, whom France has lately lost, and whose essays on the Dutch and Flemish schools are among the most valuable things ever written about painting by a painter. Such reflections cannot but come up in the mind of the student when he enters upon studies so formidably various and extensive as those to which the two great winter exhibitions just now invite him. Between Burlington House and the Grosvenor Gallery, there are at this moment on public view in London works of the old masters to the number of two hundred and fiftyeight pictures, three hundred and twenty miniature portraits, and twelve hundred and sixty-four sketches and studies; counting doubtful examples, and extending the title of old masters to certain classics of our own and neighbouring schools who have died in recent times; but not counting the English contemporary school of water-colours. These comprehensive collections include examples of the handiwork of almost every man or group of men who have practised the arts with much repute in Europe from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth. It seems ungracious to the Royal Academy and to Sir Coutts Lindsay, who have brought together all these treasures for our benefit, to speak of the regrets which mingle with our gratitude for their exertions; but since regrets there are, it is better to have them out. And it is in every one's mouth, surely not without justice, that to exhibit so much in one season is to kill the goose with the golden eggs. England, rich as she is, cannot contain materials for repeating such exhibitions as these; and if it were possible to repeat them, to do so would not be in all respects desirable. They are magnificent, they are full of pleasure and instruction; but their contents are much too numerous, and very much too miscellaneous. To master or even properly to enjoy them in the given time is impossible. If this

complaint were only true of the two galleries taken together, it might be replied that to take them together is unfair, since they have nothing to do with one another, and since the combined result of the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Exhibitions is due neither to cooperation, nor yet (it may be hoped) to competition, but to accident. The complaint, however, is true of each exhibition separately. Excess, a fault though a generous fault, is characteristic of both alike.

Granting that the Royal Academy have done wisely in adding to their annual show of pictures new elements in the shape of engravings, drawings, miniatures, and the rest, they would, I think, have done more wisely still if they had determined to draw the elements to be so added from a comparatively narrow range in each year. Thus, the noble series of studies by the three great Italians, Lionardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, which have been borrowed from Windsor and Oxford, with supplements from Chatsworth and other private collections, would by themselves have furnished forth in this department an ample exhibition for one season. The collections of miniature portraits lent by the Queen, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Wharncliffe, Messrs. A. Morrison, Whitehead, Joseph, and others, these again offer a whole range of most attractive studies on a scale, and as it were at a focus, of their own; studies in history and biography, in physiognomy, character, and beauty, and in the successive variations of an exquisite skill of which our own generation has lost the use. These might well have occupied a second year, either by themselves or perhaps in connection with that renowned series of portrait drawings by Holbein from Windsor-for history, physiognomy, and power of hand together the most instructive in the world-which is this year too prodigally thrown in with all the rest. Lastly, the miscellaneous drawings of many schools, Venetian, Florentine, Roman, Bolognese, German, Flemish, Dutch, French, and English, which now hang in Galleries VII. and X. at Burlington House, might with advantage have been reserved to form part of future exhibitions destined to illustrate, not all these groups at once in the history of art, but at most some two or three groups at a time. For there is very much more to be learned at a time, and to better purpose, by the study of by the study of twenty

twenty works of one school or one hand, than works of as many different schools or hands. In the latter case, one example does not explain, carry on, or furnish the comment to another; the apprehension is hurried through a series of changes and contrasts, and has not time to understand or accommodate itself to the peculiarities of one artist, his choice of subject and mode of presentment, his gifts, habits, and predilections, before it has to go on and try to understand and accommodate itself to those of another. The study is thus made, in the phrase of M. Fromentin, a study in width, indeed, but not in depth; it almost necessarily becomes disconnected, desultory, superficial; whereas, when a number of kindred

things are seen together, each one does explain and add something to the lesson of the last; the mind is kept in a single mood, and the observation, as it passes from one example to another of work wrought by the same hand, or at any rate conceived in the same spirit, gets not only range but penetration in the exercise.

Already, in traversing the regular picture exhibitions which the Academy have now held for ten successive winters, we have been used to suffer in the same way from too many and too sudden changes, so to speak, of the artistic climate and temperature. Supposing it were possible to go back, and to exhibit all the same pictures over again in the same number of years, not miscellaneously, but in deliberately selected groups, giving the predominance to the Venetians in one year, to the Florentines in another, to the Umbrians, the Milanese, and so forth, in others, in one to Velasquez and the Spaniards, in another to Rubens and Vandyck, in another to Rembrandt and his contemporaries, and in English art sometimes specifically to portrait, sometimes to landscape, sometimes to history or genre-supposing this possible, how much more even than we have gained as it is should we gain by the opportunity thus offered for organised and comparative study. Any attempt of the kind, it is true, would necessarily be very incomplete, so long as not more than half the great historic galleries of private owners in England are opened in response to the invitations of the Academy. A Titian exhibition without the Titians from Bridgewater House, a Raphael exhibition without the Raphaels from Blenheim and Panshanger, such exhibitions—and the list, alas! is capable of being indefinitely extended-would be deprived of half their lustre. And it really seems as if there were no hope of contributions from these and half a dozen other galleries of equal or almost equal fame. Meantime, the conflagration of some great house contributes each year its percentage to the lamentable account of masterpieces destroyed, and supplies an ironic comment to the precautions of those who imagine pictures to be in greater peril at the Royal Academy than at home. This year, excepting the Royal galleries, which have always been opened without stint, and excepting the Duke of Buccleuch's great contribution of miniatures, Clumber and Holkham are the only great houses from which much has come. The systematic exploration of English country-sides may yet, no doubt, yield many treasures that have hitherto escaped notice; and from the results of such exploration, as well as from the generosity of those who have been generous before, we may still hope for a continuance of our yearly feast of pictures. Might not the principle for which we have been pleading, the principle of selecting single schools and groups of painters for systematic illustration each year, be applied more fully in the future than has been done in the past?

Passing to the Grosvenor Gallery, the inestimable service rendered

last year by the experiment of a public exhibition of sketches and studies of the great masters was to some extent marred, as many thought, by the fault of crowding, of heterogeneousness, and of a somewhat too ready acceptance of doubtful or even strictly inadmissible examples. This year, the crowding and the heterogeneousness have increased, and the doubtful examples are not absent. An ideal exhibition would contain perhaps half the present number of examples, illustrating certainly less than half the present number of schools and artists, and arranged in not more than two tiers, so that no drawings should be placed, as very many are now placed, too high for scrutiny. In the case of this intensely personal form of art, even more than in the case of pictures, it would seem necessary that only kindred things should be grouped together, and that the groups should not be very numerous, in order that we may not be called upon to adapt ourselves in too quick succession to the intimacy of too many masters utterly unlike in mind and sentiment.

But, it may be said, it is very easy to lay down in the abstract what for students may be the ideal of an exhibition; but what is the use of doing so when, as a matter of practical experience, the getting together of an exhibition at all is a work of the utmost difficulty and delicacy; when the feelings of owners have to be considered, and, in order that their best things may be secured, their second best must be accepted too; and when, moreover, to tell the true from the doubtful is a matter of nice discrimination, for which the opportunity often arises only when both are actually exhibited side by side? What, finally, is the use of assuming that there are students enough to make an exhibition, so sifted and limited as you would desire it, successful ?-it is not only students, but people in general, that have to be conciliated, and what people in general like is abundance and variety. With reference to the first part of the above contention, assuredly it is only under the fullest sense of the difficulty of the task, and of the immense gratitude that is due to those who have undertaken it, that any one has a right to call for what he may think improvements in the way of carrying out the undertaking. With reference to the second part, I believe that abundance and variety, carried to the point at which we find them this year, are apt to prove as bewildering to the general public as they are overwhelming to the special student. And besides, it is surely fair to assume of the people who frequent these winter exhibitions, that they are not as the aimless summer crowds of the Academy, but that they come with some real object of study; and if so, then the exhibitions should be arranged so as to put them in the best way for study. And that, we say, is to be done not by dispersing, but by concentrating, their attention-not by showing them a vast quantity of things of all sorts, but a moderate quantity of things of a few sorts not too unlike.

What is the difference between the state of mind of an aimless

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visitor and of a student, or one who is in a fair way of study, before an old picture? The aimless visitor only asks, and that with the most languid interest, what does it represent ? and who did it? and only feels, and that with the faintest thrill, that he either likes or dislikes it he knows not why. The student, according to the measure of his faculty, training, and acquisitions, asks and must find an answer to a hundred questions, and is stirred through a hundred avenues of emotion. The What does it represent ?' branches out into a whole system of inquiries, not one of which is irrelevant or superfluous to a just understanding of the work. The subject chosen by the artist, be it a subject of Christian devotion, or pagan poetry, or common reality, be it portrait, landscape, or still life, declares the thoughts that were familiar to his generation, and tells of the men that lived in it and the ideals they lived by, of the scenes they moved among and the objects that stirred their minds or senses to pleasure. From the attributes carried by one figure in a picture, we can tell at the altar of what saint or martyr it was dedicated; from the badge worn in the cap of another, we can recognise the name and family of the donor. In a portrait, these features or those belong to this or that hero whose deeds are a part of history. To find scenes of simple human character and simple landscapes, in the art of any country, taking the place of aureoled saints and Madonnas enthroned among the cherubim, is a sign, for those who know how to read it, of the most momentous of revolutions in thought, religion, and society. The better the student knows how to follow up considerations like these, the fuller and more instructed will become his interest in the subject which any picture represents. But these are considerations which lie to a large extent outside of the picture itself, and belong to the province of historical inquiry rather than to that of the artistic perceptions properly so called. A more vital question for the perceptions is, not What has the painter chosen to represent?' but In what manner has he represented it?' The effects of the painter's art are produced by the imitation on a plane surface of three different properties of visible things in nature-their configuration, or the direction of their boundary lines; their local colours; and their gradations and oppositions of light and shade. Line, colour, and light-andshade, these are the elements of a picture. How, then, in each case does the painter deal with them? Does he attend most to the definition of his human figures and other objects by precision and purity of line? or to their harmonious variegation by splendour and subtlety of colour? or to their modelling and relief, their projection and retreat, their nearness or distance in the atmospheric medium, as indicated by the relative degrees of darkness and illumination upon their surfaces? What personal predilections has he under each head? What ideal schemes and arrangements of line, of colour, of light-and-shade, or of all three together, and suggested by what aspects of nature, are most congenial

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