probes the case. Let us take the view of art which,
though not new, may fairly be called the modern
view, and let us clearly understand where it leads us.
Art, then, in this view, consists in the production by
action of eye and hand of certain arrangements of
lines and colours, these arrangements of lines and
colours appealing, and appealing alone, to the lust
of the eye. Thus, only an eye educated in line and
colour can understand and apj)reciate a work of art.
A painter can no more be understood by an unedu-
cated eye than can a musician by an uneducated ear.
But this education is really an artistic training, and
therefore the general public, not being trained in this
manner, camwt appreciate art, and will not encourage
it. If the artist is riglit in limiting art as above indi-
cated, he is wrong in expecting public appreciation.
Because the public, being engaged in its own affairs,
and not having had artistic training, cannot ap-
preciate art. The public can understand a story,
can understand applied art ; but piu'e art it can be expected to appreciate no more than it can be expected to appreciate pure mathematics.
' Art,' says Mr. Whistler in his Ten O^Cloel; ' is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others.
' She is withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only, having no desire to teach, seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times. As did her high priest, Rembrandt, . . . as did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, ... as did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez. . . .
' No reformers were these great men, no improvers of the ways of others ! Their productions alone were their occupation, and, filled with the poetry of their science, they required not to alter their surroundings ; for, as the laws of their art were revealed to them, they saw, in the development of their work, that real beauty which to them was as much a certainty and triumph as is to the asti'o- nomer the verification of the result foreseen with the light given to him 'alone. In all this their world was completely severed from that of their fellow-creatures, with whom sentiment is mistaken for poetry, and for whom there is no perfect work that shall not be explained by the benefit conferred upon themselves.'
This is perfectly true and sound ; and now let our artists be consistent even as Mr. Whistler is, and let them admit that the public cannot appreciate art, and that municipality and state are precisely in the same position. When they attempt to encourage art they almost invariably make blunders. Witness the treatment by the municipality of Liver- pool of Mr. Stirling Lee, the sculptor, and the recent purchase by the same municipality of an imposing picture of questionable merit. Cynical as the position may appear, it is fairly evident that the artist must learn to get on without the aid of the state, without calling upon the unwilling taxpayer to support him, without een knocking at the doors of the Royal Academy, or courting repulse from the doors of patrons. If he is to take his place in the evolution of society it must be by calling to his aid all his virility and resource for the production of effective work of the kind for which, by inherited aptitudes or by training, he himself is best suited ; in short, by doing as the great masters of all time have done, not always but in their best moments. Only by such action on the part of artists can things be thrown from the saddle. '^ What the artists have got to do is to encourage each other, the profane vulgar having, on the artist's own showing, no knowledge of nor interest in these things. The limitation of art to a certain definite sphere, and the bold denial of any entrance to this sphere to all but artists, is perfectly rational and legitimate. What is irrational and illegitimate is the expectation, and in some cases even the frantic demand, that the public will, by taxation or other- wise, support the artist while he produces objects of art in which the public have, and can have, so long as they are as they are, no intelligent interest.
But what about art patronage. It is well frankly to acknowledge that the days of the Daimios are over, even in Japan, and that the pluto- cratic patronage which has succeeded the aristo- cratic is not so good in itself, nor are the conditions which helped to bring it into being, and which still exist, capable of producing the artist-prote'ge any more than they are capable of producing the connois- seur patron. Instead of the Daimio living with objects of art and knowing no other — keeping his artist as he kept his cook and his ' private buffoon,' we have the hlune pueoeurunte, who patronises art by speculating in old masters, and who finds out geniuses when they are dead, or when their pictures are rising in the market.
We have, as described, now no popular appreciation of art. If Mr. Whistler is right in saying that there never was an artistic period, that there never was a time when the people appreciated art, then the protest of the artist against the public is completely futile. ' It is admitted that, as a nation, we live in an inartistic environment. Who makes this environment for us.' It is our artists, such as they are. They design our houses, our furniture, and paint our pictures. They are ugly ; very ugly.
' Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.'
— Emerson.
