been much research and study of medieval art in England; there had been many able designers, architects and antiquaries, such as the Pugins and Henry Shaw (1800–1873) and later William Burges (1827–1881), William Butterfield (1814–1900) and G. E. Street and others. The school of pre-Raphaelite painters, by their careful and thorough methods, and their sympathy with medieval design, were among the first to turn attention to beauty of design, colour and significance in the accessories of daily life, and artists like D. G. Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, and W. Holman Hunt themselves designed and painted furniture. The most successful and most practical effort indeed towards the revival of sounder ideas of construction and workmanship may be said to have arisen out of the work of this group of artists, and may be traced to the workshop of William Morris and his associates in Queen Square, London. William Morris, whose name covers so large a field of artistic as well as literary and social work, came well equipped to his task of raising the arts of design and handicraft, of changing the taste of his countrymen from the corrupt and vulgar ostentation of the Second Empire, and its cheap imitations, which prevailed in the ’fifties and ’sixties, and of winning them back, for a time at least, to the massive simplicity of plain oak furniture, or the delicate beauty of inlays of choice woods, or the charm of painted work, the richness and frank colour of formal floral and heraldic pattern in silk textiles and wall-hangings and carpets, the gaiety and freshness of printed cotton, or the romantic splendour of arras tapestry. Both William Morris and his artistic comrade and lifelong friend, Edward Burne-Jones, were no doubt much influenced at the outset by the imaginative insight, the passionate artistic feeling, and the love of medieval romance and colour of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who remains so remarkable a figure in the great artistic and poetic revival of the latter half of the 19th century. To William Morris himself, in his artistic career, it was no small advantage to gain the ear of the English public first by his poetry. His verse-craft helped his handicraft, but both lived side by side. The secret of Morris’s great influence in the revival was no doubt to be attributed to his way of personally mastering the working details and handling of each craft he took up in turn, as well as to his power of inspiring his helpers and followers. He was painter, designer, scribe, illuminator, wood-engraver, dyer, weaver and finally printer and papermaker, and having mastered these crafts he could effectively direct and criticize the work of others. His own work and that of Burne-Jones were well known to the public, and in high favour long before the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was formed, and though largely helped and inspired by the work of these two artists, the aims and objects of the society rather represented those of a younger generation, and were in some measure a fresh development both of the social and the artistic ideas which were represented by Ruskin, Rossetti and Morris, though the society includes men of different schools. Other sources of influence might be named, such as the work of Norman Shaw and Philip Webb in architecture and decoration, of Lewis Day in surface pattern, and William de Morgan in pottery. The demand for the acknowledgment of the personality of each responsible craftsman in a co-operative work was new, and it had direct bearing upon the social and economic conditions of artistic production. The principle, too, of regarding the material, object, method and purpose of a work as essential conditions of its artistic expression, the form and character of which must always be controlled by such conditions, had never before been so emphatically stated, though it practically endorsed the somewhat vague aspirations current for the unity of beauty with utility. Again, a very notable return to extreme simplicity of design in furniture and surface decoration may be remarked; and a certain reserve in the use of colour and ornament, and a love of abstract forms in decoration generally, which are characteristic of later taste. Not less remarkable has been the new development in the design and workmanship of jewelry, gold- and silversmiths’ work, and enamels, with which the names of Alexander Fisher, Henry Wilson, Nelson Dawson and C. R. Ashbee are associated. Among the arts and crafts of design which have blossomed into new life in recent years—and there is hardly one which has not been touched by the new spirit—book-binding must be named as having attained a fresh and tasteful development through the work of Mr Cobden-Sanderson and his pupils. The art and craft of the needle also must not be forgotten, and its progress is a good criterion of taste in design, choice of colour and treatment. The work of Mrs Morris, of Miss Burden (sometime instructress at the Royal School of Art Needlework, which has carried on its work from 1875), of Miss May Morris, of Miss Una Taylor, of Miss Buckle, of Mrs Walter Crane, of Mrs Newbery, besides many other skilled needlewomen, has been frequently exhibited. Good work is often seen in the national competition works of the students of the English art schools, shown at South Kensington in July. The increase of late years in these exhibitions of designs worked out in the actual material for which they were intended is very remarkable, and is an evidence of the spread of the arts and crafts movement (fostered no doubt by the increase of technical schools, especially of the type of the Central School of Arts and Crafts under the Technical Education Board of the London County Council), of which it may be said that if it has not turned all British craftsmen into artists or all British artists into craftsmen, it had done not a little to expand and socialize the idea of art, and (perhaps it is not too much to say) has made the tasteful English house with its furniture and decorations a model for the civilized world. (W. Cr.)
ART SOCIETIES. In banding themselves into societies and associations artists have always been especially remarkable. The fundamental motive of such leaguing together is apparent, for, by the establishment of societies, it becomes possible for the working members of these to hold exhibitions and thereby to obtain some compensation or reward for their labours. With the growth of artistic practice and public interest, however, art societies have been instituted where this primary object is either absent or is allied to others of more general scope. The furtherance of a cult and the specializing of work have also given rise to many new associations in Great Britain, besides the Royal Academy (see Academy, Royal). At the outset, therefore, it will be well to mention the leading art societies thus described. The (now Royal) Society of Painters in Water Colours, founded in 1804, and the (now Royal) Society of British Artists (1823), are typical of those societies which exist merely for purposes of holding exhibitions and conferring diplomas of membership. The British Institution (for the encouragement of British artists) was started in 1806 on a plan formed by Sir Thomas Bernard; and in the gallery, erected by Alderman Boydell to exhibit the paintings executed for his edition of Shakespeare, were from time to time exhibited pictures by the old masters, deceased British artists and others, till 1867, when the lease of the premises expired. A fund of £16,200, then in the hands of trustees, had accumulated to £24,610 in 1884. The Artists’ Society, formed in 1830, has for its object the providing of facilities to enable its members to perfect themselves in their art. To this end there is a good library of works on art, and abundant opportunities are afforded for general study from the life. In the furtherance of a cult the Japan Society, devoted to the encouragement of the study of the arts and industries of Japan, is a typical example; and the Society of Mezzotint Engravers is representative of those bodies formed in the interests of particular groups of workers. One of the remarkable features in the history of art in Great Britain has been the rapid increase of the artistic rank and file. Taking the number of exhibitors at the principal London and provincial exhibitions, it is found that in the period 1885–1900 the ranks were doubled. At the end of the 19th century it was estimated that there were quite 7000 practising artists. Coincident with this astonishing development there has been a corresponding addition of new art societies and the enlargement of older bodies. For instance, the membership of the Royal Society of British Artists advanced in the period mentioned from 80 to 150. Similar extensions can be noted in other societies, or in such a case as that of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, where the membership is limited to 100,
