Art - 5. The Cestus Of Aglaia - Chapter 8

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_ ART V. THE CESTUS OF AGLAIA CHAPTER VIII.[79]

92. In pursuing the question put at the close of the last paper, it must be observed that there are essentially two conditions under which we have to examine the difference between the effects of public and private Art on national prosperity. The first in immediate influence is their Economical function, the second their Ethical. We have first to consider what class of persons they in each case support; and, secondly, what classes they teach or please.

Looking over the list of the gift-books of this year, perhaps the first circumstance which would naturally strike us would be the number of persons living by this industry; and, in any consideration of the probable effects of a transference of the public attention to other kinds of work, we ought first to contemplate the result on the interests of the workman. The guinea spent on one of our ordinary illustrated gift-books is divided among--

1. A number of second-rate or third-rate artists, producing
designs as fast as they can, and realizing them up to
the standard required by the public of that year. Men
of consummate power may sometimes put their hands
to the business; but exceptionally.

2. Engravers, trained to mechanical imitation of this
second or third-rate work; of these engravers the inferior
classes are usually much overworked.

3. Printers, paper-makers, ornamental binders, and other
craftsmen.

4. Publishers and booksellers.

93. Let us suppose the book can be remuneratively produced if there is a sale of five thousand copies. Then L5000, contributed for it by the public, are divided among the different workers; it does not matter what actual rate of division we assume, for the mere object of comparison with other modes of employing the money; but let us say these L5000 are divided among five hundred persons, giving on an average L10 to each. And let us suppose these L10 to be a fortnight's maintenance to each. Then, to maintain them through the year, twenty-five such books must be published; or to keep certainly within the mark of the probable cost of our autumnal gift-books, suppose L100,000 are spent by the public, with resultant supply of 100,000 households with one illustrated book, of second or third-rate quality each (there being twenty different books thus supplied), and resultant maintenance of five hundred persons for the year, at severe work of a second or third-rate order, mostly mechanical.

94. Now, if the mind of the nation, instead of private, be set on public work, there is of course no expense incurred for multiplication, or mechanical copying of any kind, or for retail dealing. The L5000, instead of being given for five thousand _copies_ of the work, and divided among five hundred persons, are given for one original work, and given to one person. This one person will of course employ assistants; but these will be chosen by himself, and will form a superior class of men, out of whom the future leading artists of the time will rise in succession. The broad difference will therefore be, that, in the one case, L5000 are divided among five hundred persons of different classes, doing second-rate or wholly mechanical work; and in the other case, the same sum is divided among a few chosen persons of the best material of mind producible by the state at the given epoch. It may seem an unfair assumption that work for the public will be more honestly and earnestly done than that for private possession. But every motive that can touch either conscience or ambition is brought to bear upon the artist who is employed on a public service, and only a few such motives in other modes of occupation. The greater permanence, scale, dignity of office, and fuller display of Art in a National building, combine to call forth the energies of the artist; and if a man will not do his best under such circumstances, there is no "best" in him.

95. It might also at first seem an unwarrantable assumption that fewer persons would be employed in the private than in the national work, since, at least in architecture, quite as many subordinate craftsmen are employed as in the production of a book. It is, however, necessary, for the purpose of clearly seeing the effect of the two forms of occupation, that we should oppose them where their contrast is most complete; and that we should compare, not merely bookbinding with bricklaying, but the presentation of Art in books, necessarily involving much subordinate employment, with its presentation in statues or wall-pictures, involving only the labor of the artist and of his immediate assistants. In the one case, then, I repeat, the sum set aside by the public for Art-purposes is divided among many persons, very indiscriminately chosen; in the other among few carefully chosen. But it does not, for that reason, support fewer persons. The few artists live on their larger incomes,[80] by expenditure among various tradesmen, who in no wise produce Art, but the means of pleasant life; so that the real economical question is, not how many men shall we maintain, but at what work shall they be kept?--shall they every one be set to produce Art for us, in which case they must all live poorly, and produce bad Art; or out of the whole number shall ten be chosen who can and will produce noble Art; and shall the others be employed in providing the means of pleasant life for these chosen ten? Will you have, that is to say, four hundred and ninety tradesmen, butchers, carpet-weavers, carpenters, and the like, and ten fine artists, or will you, under the vain hope of finding, for each of them within your realm, "five hundred good as he," have your full complement of bad draughtsmen, and retail distributors of their bad work?

96. It will be seen in a moment that this is no question of economy merely; but, as all economical questions become, when set on their true foundation, a dilemma relating to modes of discipline and education. It is only one instance of the perpetually recurring offer to our choice--shall we have one man educated perfectly, and others trained only to serve him, or shall we have all educated equally ill?--Which, when the outcries of mere tyranny and pride-defiant on one side, and of mere envy and pride-concupiscent on the other, excited by the peril and promise of a changeful time, shall be a little abated, will be found to be, in brief terms, the one social question of the day.

Without attempting an answer which would lead us far from the business in hand, I pass to the Ethical part of the inquiry; to examine, namely, the effect of this cheaply diffused Art on the public mind.

97. The first great principle we have to hold by in dealing with the matter is, that the end of Art is NOT to _amuse_; and that all Art which proposes amusement as its end, or which is sought for that end, must be of an inferior, and is probably of a harmful, class.

The end of Art is as serious as that of all other beautiful things--of the blue sky and the green grass, and the clouds and the dew. They are either useless, or they are of much deeper function than giving amusement. Whatever delight we take in them, be it less or more, is not the delight we take in play, or receive from momentary surprise. It might be a matter of some metaphysical difficulty to define the two kinds of pleasure, but it is perfectly easy for any of us to feel that there _is_ generic difference between the delight we have in seeing a comedy and in watching a sunrise. Not but that there is a kind of Divina Commedia,--a dramatic change and power,--in all beautiful things: the joy of surprise and incident mingles in music, painting, architecture, and natural beauty itself, in an ennobled and enduring manner, with the perfectness of eternal hue and form. But whenever the desire of change becomes principal; whenever we care only for new tunes, and new pictures, and new scenes, all power of enjoying Nature or Art is so far perished from us: and a child's love of toys has taken its place. The continual advertisement of new music (as if novelty were its virtue) signifies, in the inner fact of it, that no one now cares for music. The continual desire for new exhibitions means that we do not care for pictures; the continual demand for new books means that nobody cares to read.

98. Not that it would necessarily, and at all times, mean this; for in a living school of Art there will always be an exceeding thirst for, and eager watching of freshly-developed thought. But it specially and sternly means this, when the interest is merely in the novelty; and great work in our possession is forgotten, while mean work, because strange and of some personal interest, is annually made the subject of eager observation and discussion. As long as (for one of many instances of such neglect) two great pictures of Tintoret's lie rolled up in an outhouse at Venice, all the exhibitions and schools in Europe mean nothing but promotion of costly commerce. Through that, we might indeed arrive at better things; but there is no proof, in the eager talk of the public about Art, that we _are_ arriving at them. Portraiture of the said public's many faces, and tickling of its twice as many eyes, by changeful phantasm, are all that the patron-multitudes of the present day in reality seek; and this may be supplied to them in multiplying excess forever, yet no steps made to the formation of a school of Art now, or to the understanding of any that have hitherto existed.

99. It is the carrying of this annual Exhibition into the recesses of home which is especially to be dreaded in the multiplication of inferior Art for private possession. Public amusement or excitement may often be quite wholesomely sought, in gay spectacles, or enthusiastic festivals; but we must be careful to the uttermost how we allow the desire for any kind of excitement to mingle among the peaceful continuities of home happiness. The one stern condition of that happiness is that our possessions should be no more than we can thoroughly use; and that to this use they should be practically and continually put. Calculate the hours which, during the possible duration of life, can, under the most favorable circumstances, be employed in reading, and the number of books which it is possible to read in that utmost space of time;--it will be soon seen what a limited library is all that we need, and how careful we ought to be in choosing its volumes. Similarly, the time which most people have at their command for any observation of Art is not more than would be required for the just understanding of the works of one great master. How are we to estimate the futility of wasting this fragment of time on works from which nothing can be learned? For the only real pleasure, and the richest of all amusements, to be derived from either reading or looking, are in the steady progress of the mind and heart, which day by day are more deeply satisfied, and yet more divinely athirst.

100. As far as I know the homes of England of the present day, they show a grievous tendency to fall, in these important respects, into the two great classes of over-furnished and unfurnished:--of those in which the Greek marble in its niche, and the precious shelf-loads of the luxurious library, leave the inmates nevertheless dependent for all their true pastime on horse, gun, and croquet-ground;--and those in which Art, honored only by the presence of a couple of engravings from Landseer, and literature, represented by a few magazines and annuals arranged in a star on the drawing-room table, are felt to be entirely foreign to the daily business of life, and entirely unnecessary to its domestic pleasures.

101. The introduction of furniture of Art into households of this latter class is now taking place rapidly; and, of course, by the usual system of the ingenious English practical mind, will take place under the general law of supply and demand; that is to say, that whatever a class of consumers, entirely unacquainted with the different qualities of the article they are buying, choose to ask for, will be duly supplied to them by the trade. I observe that this beautiful system is gradually extending lower and lower in education; and that children, like grown-up persons, are more and more able to obtain their toys without any reference to what is useful or useless, or right or wrong; but on the great horseleech's law of "demand and supply." And, indeed, I write these papers, knowing well how effectless all speculations on abstract proprieties or possibilities must be in the present ravening state of national desire for excitement; but the tracing of moral or of mathematical law brings its own quiet reward; though it may be, for the time, impossible to apply either to use.

The power of the new influences which have been brought to bear on the middle-class mind, with respect to Art, may be sufficiently seen in the great rise in the price of pictures which has taken place (principally during the last twenty years) owing to the interest occasioned by national exhibitions, coupled with facilities of carriage, stimulating the activity of dealers, and the collateral discovery by mercantile men that pictures are not a bad investment.

102. The following copy of a document in my own possession will give us a sufficiently accurate standard of Art-price at the date of it:--

"London, June 11th, 1814.

"Received of Mr. Cooke the sum of twenty-two
pounds ten shillings for three drawings, viz.,
Lyme, Land's End, and Poole.

"L22, 10s.

"J. M. W. TURNER."

It would be a very pleasant surprise to me if any _one_ of these three (southern coast) drawings, for which the artist received seven guineas each (the odd nine shillings being, I suppose, for the great resource of tale-tellers about Turner--"coach-hire") were now offered to me by any dealer for a hundred. The rise is somewhat greater in the instance of Turner than of any other unpopular[81] artist; but it is at least three hundred per cent. on all work by artists of established reputation, whether the public can themselves see anything in it, or not. A certain quantity of intelligent interest mixes, of course, with the mere fever of desire for novelty; and the excellent book illustrations, which are the special subjects of our inquiry, are peculiarly adapted to meet this; for there are at least twenty people who know a good engraving or wood-cut, for one who knows a good picture. The best book illustrations fall into three main classes: fine line engravings (always grave in purpose), typically represented by Goodall's illustrations to Rogers's poems;--fine wood-cuts, or etchings, grave in purpose, such as those by Dalziel, from Thomson and Gilbert;--and fine wood-cuts, or etchings, for purpose of caricature, such as Leech's and Tenniel's in _Punch_. Each of these have a possibly instructive power special to them, which we will endeavor severally to examine in the next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[79] _Art Journal_, vol. v., pp. 33-4. February 1866,--ED.

[80] It may be, they would not ask larger incomes in a time of highest national life; and that then the noble art would be far cheaper to the nation than the ignoble. But I speak of existing circumstances.

[81] I have never found more than two people (students excepted) in the room occupied by Turner's drawings at Kensington, and one of the two, if there _are_ two, always looks as if he had got in by mistake. _

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