nothing, after all, like close intimacy with Nature and fact to strengthen the character all round, and clear the mental vision of morbid states, and, as for art, like the wrestler, it always gains new vigour every time of touching the ground.
If your artist would depict the life about him—the drama of men and women—he will be all the stronger if he has mixed with the actors. If he would give man in all his labours and actions, it is good that lie should understand those actions and labours—that he should be able himself to ride, swim, row, or drive the plough, and wield the scythe or spade. He would be a stronger man and a better artist. For it is as much what we know and feel as what we see that comes into works of art.
Would he be an artist in any of the handicrafts, let him first be a smith or a carpenter; let him understand the material he would work with and its capacities; for it is from the workshop that all good traditions in applied design must come. I have spoken of probabilities and possibilities, and of necessity both enter largely into the consideration of my subject, as of any thought of the future construction and condition of society. Now, while I have the best hopes for art, I do not think it probable that under socialism any one will get labour-values to the extent of £70,000 for a picture; but it would, nevertheless, be quite possible to get a Raphael.
The type of artist—supposing artists existed as a class or order in a socialist community—most likely to be fostered would, I think, be probably such as that represented by the master-craftsmen of the Middle Ages, such as Albert Dürer or Holbein, for instance—men capable of design in all kinds of materials, who could design a building, make the pattern of a jewel or a gown, devise a title-page, or paint a portrait. What may be called, in short, the all-round artist would be likely to be more in demand than the specialist more or less fostered under present conditions.
The essence of art is harmony and unity. We have seen how art depends upon life, and is affected by and reflects its character and conditions. Before we can hope to get harmonious art and thought, therefore, we must realise harmony and unity in life.
For myself, I am confident, in view of these considerations, that what is good for humanity is good for art. Take care of the pence of healthy life—the current coin of individual freedom, of political and social equality, of the fraternity of human service and common interests; take care of the handicrafts and the beauty of wild Nature, and give men leisure and opportunity,—and the gold pieces of art and thought and creative beauty will take care of themselves.
Walter Crane.
THE LATE F. HOLL, RA.
MR. FRANK HOLL, R. A., whose untimely death has come with such a shock on art and society circles, was born in London upon the 4th of July 1845. His father was Mr. Francis Holl, A.R.A., a well-known engraver. The more distinguished son obtained his professional education in the Royal Academy Schools, where he was a very successful student.
His first picture to the Royal Academy Exhibition was contributed in 1864. Since then his work has never been absent from its walls. In 1868 he was awarded the two years' travelling studentship. He received the distinction of A.R.A. in 1878, and in 1884 he was elected an R.A.
Few painters have had a more interesting career than the late Mr. Holl. Producing capably-handled subject-pictures which dealt mainly with the dark side of life, he worked for a long time without attracting special attention till a portrait of Mr. Samuel Cousins, the engraver, exhibited about ten years ago led to a change so extraordinary that in a few seasons the little-known painter of gloomy moralisations became a phenomenally popular portrait-painter.
This development we fear cannot be attributed to any sudden accession of artistic power; for in his later, as in his earlier work, Mr. Holl's strength appears to lie in a vigorous realisation which is dramatic but often commonplace in sentiment. But while his powers in this direction, so long as they were employed in the form of pathetic subject-pictures, impressed the public, it was only when applied to portraiture that they placed him higher in the popular esteem than almost any painter of his time. His strong if somewhat coarse renderings of English notabilities appealed with peculiar force to many who found themselves baffled in their vain efforts to appreciate or define art without the key which is supplied by the possession of natural artistic feeling; and this was the more natural that the painter, with an astonishing power of semi-mechanical repetition, made, once for all, a certain limited demand upon their intelligence.
The strain that portrait-painting, as the term is
