English Faith in Art

IN England, during the last fifty years or more, visible religious influence — using the word ” religious ” in its accepted Christian meaning — has gradually weakened. During the same space of time there has been a marked revival of interest in art. Whether any actual relation exists between these two facts, whether one is the cause of the other, would be difficult to prove. But the study of this art movement makes it seem possible that, while some men have sought to rekindle the fire of religious love and faith by flying to Rome with Dr. Newman or to ritualism with Dr. Pusey, by organizing the Salvation Army with General Booth or by disfiguring the fair English country with the tents of evangelizing societies ; while others have endeavored to replace the old ideals by setting up new temples to humanity, or reërecting the old altars to Isis, a few have unconsciously turned to art as to a fitting substitute for the religion that may perish.

If the new apostles of art have not, like the lovers of humanity, attempted to establish a definite creed and regular form of worship, they have persistently striven to give art a higher and broader meaning, and to find for it a higher and broader sphere, than have hitherto been ascribed to and supposed possible for it. The significance of their efforts is clear to any one who will pause a moment to contrast modern English thought on art with old, or indeed with foreign, methods.

The Italian painters, who are the saints of the new belief, were esteemed by their contemporaries, and have been found worthy to live forever, chiefly and above all because of their technical skill; perfect, if not according to our standard, at least to that of the age in which they lived. Cimabue’s Madonna was carried in triumph through the streets of Florence because it far surpassed Byzantine conventionalism, and Florentines saw its greater excellence. Giotto was summoned by the Pope to Rome not because of his faith and humility, but because he knew how to draw better than any other mail then living. Would Andrea del Sarto have received the favors of Francis had he not been the Faultless Painter ? Would Cellini have called Michelangelo divine if the latter had not been perfect master of brush and chisel ? It is the same with all those giants of the olden time, whether of Italy or Spain, of Belgium or Holland, whose paintings and sculptures fill the galleries of the world. It is not for moral, mystic, or religious qualities in their work, but because they were great artists, that they have been given shrines in the Temple of Fame. Even in England, as late as the last century, when a school of art first received royal and national support, the chief end of art was still held to be technical knowledge and skill. Work, work, work, was the refrain to all that Sir Joshua Reynolds said to the students. Study old masters who could paint and draw, not merely those who could pray and love. If he spoke to them of the ideal in art, it was but to urge them to study, — study of nature, of the human body, of the works of great sculptors and painters ; and perhaps the study of poetry, ancient and modern, might not be amiss. The attitude of French and Germans, of Italians and Spaniards, of Americans, to-day is that of early Italians, of Velasquez and Rembrandt, of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

But Englishmen of our times, who are looked up to as artistic authorities, would change all this. It is, they say, in its sanctity and sweetness, its morality and holy beauty, its earnestness and hopefulness, that the greatness of art consists. Of course it would be foolish always to look at pictures only for their technique, just as it would be to read poetry solely for the metre. But the other extreme is still more absurd. It would be no less a folly to make a man who murders the queen’s English poet laureate because he is morally sound, than it would be to praise an artist because, though his work is had, his sentiment has a religious, moral, or poetic value ; and yet this is the extreme to which art teaching and criticism are leading. Because of the beauty of their principles, the greatness of the pre-Raphaelites in art must not be denied, no matter how poor their drawing, crude their color, or defective their perspective; a picture is great if it is “ the record of a man’s endurance in high aims, and his conquest over numberless difficulties.” Fancy such criticism being applied to Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, Michelangelo’s Sibyls, Rembrandt’s Night Watch ! What was the artist’s thought is now the all-important point to be decided, though the artist himself may agree with a painter whose pictures always find a place in the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery, and are noted in England and America for their beauty and suggestiveness, and who told a modern art critic, eager to know what was in his mind when he painted a certain picture, “ An artist has got no business to think at all.” When Mr. Ruskin was appointed professor at Oxford, his first care was to ground his pupils in the relation of art to religion, morals, and use. Once, at least, when the president of the Royal Academy delivered an address to the students, he devoted it to the same question. It is true, the latter did not uphold the didactic theory with Mr. Ruskin, but it is the prominence given to the subject rather than the conclusion reached that is significant. Others of the new teachers care less for the morality and religion of art. than for its unfathomable mystery and ineffable melancholy, for the property a painting or statue has “ of affecting one with a special unique impression of pleasure.” What difference does it make how Botticelli painted his weary, wan Madonnas ? Or what should we look for in Lionardo but the strange blossoms and fruits brought out of the secret places of a unique temperament ? The great matter is not that the artist should know his art, but that his work should arouse in its admirers rare and unspeakable emotions and sensations. Beautiful as is this æsthetic criticism, and thankful as we should be for the power painting and sculpture have to inspire it, its influence is for evil when, as is threatened, it utterly supplants the honest, practical criticism, without which it is worthless, and which is well expressed in the following lines from a late notice, written by the art critic of the New York Nation : “In hard words, after all, the best criticism of a picture of Christ on the cross may be expressed in this wise, for instance : ‘ The chest is luminous and well in relief, the arms are well drawn, the movement is good, and the legs belong to the body ; the head is well constructed.’ Apply this sort of criticism to the great pictures of the world, and they will always bear it. There are brutal pictures of the Crucifixion, and there are refined ones ; but they must be good from the point of view of the soulless technician, or they will not live.”

I do not mean to say that no writers in England recognize the true value of technique, or that it is altogether ignored by those who give the first place to ethical and poetic beauty in art. Though Mr. Ruskin does distinctly say that in fine art hand must go together with head and heart, the principal lesson taught by his writings — I except, of course, the Elements of Drawing — is that art will make man good and pure, life holy and righteous; so, though a few English critics have a healthy and hearty appreciation of technical skill, the tendency of the majority is to overlook or belittle its importance. Were it not so, this would not be the age of art literature as Sir George Trevelyan justly called it, when he opened the exhibition in St. Jude’s schoolhouse. Technique is not a subject to inspire beautiful and brilliant writing. It really seems as if Englishmen, filled with the passion and poetry and love of the writers of Hindu Vedas and Hebrew Scriptures, but without their supernatural inspiration, had chosen art upon which to expend their intensity of feeling. Of all this school of writers it may be said, as Mr. Morris has written of Mr. Ruskin, their ‘ wonderful eloquence would, whatever its subject matter, have gained [them] some sort of a hearing in a time that has not lost its relish for literature.” But no sooner had it gained them a hearing than their beautiful theorizing began to bear practical fruit. They might have gone on forever talking about the weirdness, and mysticism, and holiness of artists who lived centuries ago, and no great harm would have been done. But the worst of it was that painters living to-day began to believe that in a picture the idea is everything, and the technique nothing, and consequently have filled their canvases to overflowing with ideas and bad painting ; so that their finished work needs a book, or at least a pamphlet, to explain it and point out its beauties. Even as Vedic singers and Scriptural prophets were followed by commentators and theologians, so a host of critics, as serious and conscious of their high calling as an Augustine or a Thomas Aquinas, have sprung up to develop theory into doctrine, until even common folk are convinced that good drawing, direct simplicity, and beauty that explains itself are enough to damn a picture. Studios of artists whose work is based on the new teaching are thrown open on Sundays to the few against whom church doors may be said to be closed. Pictures whose beauty is that of holiness, whose greatness is that of intention, are exhibited in a dim religious light, while before them are ranged chairs, where the initiated sit and worship in solemn silence ; and if the mystery is too deep for them, as it assuredly was in the Triumph of the Innocents, leaflets full of Mr. Ruskin’s sayings are scattered here and there, to be consulted as a good Christian might refer to his Thomas à Kempis. It is to be regretted that so great an artist as Munkácsy has condescended to these puerile accessories, since he has found that in England and America they pay. Sects have arisen within sects, and the most devout of the art worshipers still cling, like those of other creeds who love the better part, to a peculiar dress, by which they may be known, and hence respected. The very story in Punch of the æsthetes trying to live up to their blue china is not without significance.

It may be said that all this is the passing folly and fashion of men who are forever seeking some new excitement, some new sensation for their jaded senses, and that, moreover, Postlethwaite and Bunthorne are the physicians who all but cured the English world of its æsthetic fever. Only the other day, the art critic of the Standard asserted that English painting seen in the Royal Academy, the most conservative of places, is far less literary than it was a dozen years ago. I do not dispute this, and indeed it matters little to my argument if it be true. For if art had been tried as a substitute for religion only for so small a minority as the æsthetes, it would not be indicative of the feeling or tendency of the age. But of latter days more practical exponents of the new gospel have arisen to preach it, not to a select handful, but to the great mass of the people at large. No one who pays the least attention to what is going on in England can have failed to notice the concern of the benevolent nowadays for the cheerlessness of life as it is lived by the working classes. There is as much effort made to relieve its dullness as to add to its comfort. It was all very well for the charitable man of other days to leave money for almshouses and weekly distributions of bread. But his modern successor must busy himself in giving the poor concerts and sociables, and finally building for them a huge Palace of Delight. The latter bids fair to prove a huge Palace of Instruction, but this was not the object of the principal instigators and agitators of the movement. Their desire was to provide the people with recreation: not only that which has physical exercise for an object, but recreation that can elevate thought, dignify action, and fill life with the beauty and meaning engendered by high ideals and ends ; in a word, recreation that should answer much the purpose that is served in Italy by the Church, with its many ceremonies, and processions, and feasts. Slumming is going the way of æstheticism, but earnest men work on, and it is to art they too have turned for the cheer that religion is apparently fast losing the power to give. The people, they cry, are starving not so much for bread as for beauty; are sickening not so much from overwork as from joyless work and aimless amusement. Therefore, throw open picture galleries on Sundays ; give picture exhibitions in the East End; teach the people wood-carving mosaic-work, modeling, — in fact, all the decorative arts that for so many years have languished. Nor has this new crusade against ugliness and dullness and their consequent evils been confined to London and large English towns. The minor arts have been carried in triumph to village after village in England, and finally to Ireland, where they are to achieve that which Reform and Coercion bills have never yet accomplished. With the acceptance of art by the people the social millennium will come. The hungry workman will forget his hunger, according to one of the Rothschilds, by looking at pictures ; according to the hero of the day, by the practice of one of the minor arts. Once he has learned to seek consolation and to centre his aspirations in art, he will no longer be unhappy. If this reasoning be pushed to its logical conclusion, it follows that with the death of unhappiness all striving will cease ; and hence, once the rich have given the poor what has been called the splendid and priceless gift of bringing art as a familiar factor into the lives of the latter, they themselves will have nothing more to fear from socialists and anarchists, who are beginning to cause them some uneasiness.

I believe with the new reformers that that which makes poverty, even of the most respectable kind, in England so bitter by comparison with the still greater poverty on the Continent, for example, is its joylessness. Every man is the better for having something in his life besides actual necessities. I also believe that the study of art cannot be too zealously encouraged. What I do question is whether art can accomplish all that these enthusiastic dreamers and doers promise, and prove the great reformer of modern times. Will the most beautiful pictures, painted by the greatest artists, help a workman to forget his hunger and the misery of his children ? Will the power to carve wood or work in metal reconcile the discontented to a life of toil ? I confess the question is one that interests me ; and to find an answer to the first proposition apart from that based on theory, I have been to the National Gallery on bank holidays, and to the Whitechapel art exhibition on Sundays, less to see the pictures than the people. It is but reasonable to suppose that from the beginning of the good work may be foretold something of its future. Let me admit at once, and that very emphatically, that in both these places I thought art was fulfilling at least one of the ends set forth by its present apostles. It served excellently as a pleasant pastime, a cheerful presence. The National Gallery was crowded ; the flags decorating St. Jude’s Church and the adjoining schoolhouse, where the pictures were exhibited, did much to break and relieve the far-famed and overestimated monotony and ugliness of the East End. But I saw and heard little to encourage the expectation that art will prove something more and mightier than a refining and pleasure-giving factor in the lives of the so-called lower classes. I must explain that the classes were not quite so low as I should have liked. The man with the handkerchief around his neck and the girl with the big hat and feather and long coat were there, but they were not in the majority, being far outnumbered by small tradesmen and the higher class of artisans. But in matters of taste the former seemed of the same mind as the latter. In the National Gallery, the most striking fact was that the pictures which tell a story plainly were in greatest demand. Those of the Flemish and Dutch schools were popular above all others in the east galleries. Often as I passed Rubens’s Abduction of the Sabine Women, I never failed to find a crowd in front of it. The people, who as a rule stood in spellbound silence, may never have heard of Romans and Sabines, but it was quite evident to them that, as I heard a genuine old workman in corduroys, bolder than the rest, explain to his wife, “they ’d been to war, and the conquerors was a-carryin’ of ’em off.” The story told itself ; the unmistakable signs of a fight appealed to the manly Briton. Even the Pinturicchios, with their tall, slim young men in striped hose and painted shoes, and the little caps so jauntily set on their thick flowing hair, were not without admirers. The Story of Griselda a small boy pronounced “ a very good picture ; ” others followed Ghirlandaio’s Procession to Calvary with interest; one girl, at least, thought Velasquez’s Adoration of the Magi “ very pretty ; ” and I noticed that the British matron, as she was represented on these occasions, was not outraged by the nude.

It was the same in the west galleries : the stories carried the day. Ward’s picture of James receiving the news of the landing of William of Orange, Wilkie’s of Knox preaching, and Maclise’s of the play in Hamlet were surrounded hour after hour, while Rossetti’s Annunciation and Turner’s sunsets and seas were passed unnoticed. The only Turners that seemed to be looked at were the paintings of Greenwich and Richmond parks. The people knew the places, and tried to find them in the pictures.

It was the same at the exhibition in St. Jude’s schoolhouse. This, as is known, was a loan exhibition, and, probably that it might do the greatest possible good to the people of Whitechapel, many of the pictures lent were paintings by Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Watts, Walter Crane, and others, who seek in their work to express what the Pall Mall Gazette, apparently unconscious of the satire, calls the “ gospel of quaintness,” and to realize Mr. Ruskin’s definition of greatness in art, — a definition printed on the cover of the catalogue : “ Painting is nothing but a noble and expensive language; invaluable as an article of thought, but by itself nothing. He is the greatest artist who has embodied in the sum of his works the greatest number of the greatest ideas.” I was curious to see the effect of the ideas which have been artistically embodied during our age upon men and women who have no culture, but who, since they live in the same age, should find them easy of comprehension ; that is, if art belongs to the people, and not merely to Grosvenor Galleryites. Unfortunately for my purpose, the exhibition proved as attractive to the West as to the East End, and was, moreover, like the National Gallery on bank holidays, patronized by people belonging to what I suppose is the lower middle class, — small clerks and tradesmen, the men and women who are always seen at the Derby, at Margate and Ramsgate, during holiday seasons, and who, in the galleries at least, have the power of crushing the workman. The latter but too often passed from picture to picture, silent and crestfallen. His silence may have been merely another instance of the British reserve which makes so many Englishmen of the highest class non-committal upon their first visit to cathedrals at home and churches abroad, until one wonders if reserve is not sometimes a polite name for stupidity. However, by returning time and time again to the pictures in question, and spending hours in front of them, within earshot of promising parties of workmen, I succeeded in forming some idea of the impression that was being made. I have little to record. I am surprised that an Unpretentious Guide for the General Public through this year’s Grosvenor, in his indignation against critics who find one half of Mr. Burne-Jones’s work preposterous, the other a clever piece of manipulation, should declare, “Yet when the necessary attempt is made — as in Mr. Barnett’s East End exhibitions — to show that the manipulation is not all, the pictures of the mythic school are actually as popular, even with the most ‘ general ’ public, as any representations of Grandmother’s Pet, or That’s Where Pa Is.” The mere fact of the pictures being exhibited in Whitechapel is not an assurance of their popularity in Whitechapel. The result of my observations was, that such pictures as Mr. Watts’s Sir Galahad, Rossetti’s David the Shepherd, David the King, and the Son of David, and his Marigolds, were utterly neglected, while Mr. Walter Crane’s La Belle Dame sans Merci fared little better. “Wot’s that ? ” was the sole criticism it drew from the people to whom it was intended to appeal. It is only fair to add that the same artist’s Pan-Pipes awakened one response, for the shepherd’s pipings set, not only the village maidens in the picture, but two factory-girls in front of it, to dancing. I almost hesitate to speak of the reception given to Mr. BurneJones ; that which I have to say will, to many, seem sacrilegious. His Days of the Creation occupied a conspicuous place in one of the lower rooms, but it was absolutely a dead letter to the people, who scarcely waited to look at more than the first stage of the picture. One man expressed the general verdict when he exclaimed, “ But I don’t understand ! ” Another, when he turned away with, “Days of Creation! Wot you givin’ us ? ” In one of the rooms up - stairs was The Mill, representing three tall and slim maidens, with wan faces and clinging draperies, joining hands in a solemn dance in the foreground ; beyond is a building, at which you must look twice before you recognize it to be a mill. All who have seen the picture will remember that its color is very rich, its lines beautiful, but that its meaning, however intelligible to the artist, is obscure to the average mortal. The catalogue, as if the compilers felt this obscurity, contained an elaborate explanation, rather pretty to read: " In the quiet hush of the evening, an old mill, its busy day’s work over, its wheel at rest, stands reflected in the stream. Pigeons settle down to rest, and while the men refresh themselves in the cool water, after the day’s toil, the girls dance gravely to the music which, unseen by them, Love is playing to their hearts, — the music of inward peace and happy memories; for Love is crowned with forget-me-nots, which grow by every such mill-stream as this.”

“ Where’s the bloody mill ? ” asked the to-be-reformed British workman.

One girl, with the big hat and feather and heavy fringe, called it “ grand,” and hurried on. Two Jews flippantly sang The Maid of the Mill, as they passed. A young man and girl, arm in arm, consulted the catalogue. “ Wot is it ? ” asked the girl, staring at the picture. “ The Mill,” read the man. “ It is n’t! ” she cried, with indignation ; and he had to show her the catalogue to prove it was not “ his fun.” Next came an old man and woman, very shabby and ragged. The woman read aloud the little paragraph, slowly and carefully, and the man was silent for quite a minute. Here at last, thought I, is one who appreciates beauty and poetry. Then the man gave his criticism: “ There ain’t no dress improvers wanted there.” And he, too, like the others, went his way.

But, on the other hand, as in the National Gallery, a picture that told a story — whether Mr. Herkomer’s Arrest of the Poacher or Sir George Hayter’s Christening of the Prince of Wales, Mr. Eyre Crowe’s Day after the Battle or Chierici’s A Ghost Story in the Apennines — was examined, discussed, and enjoyed. Any that suggested sport, dearer than aught else to Englishmen, from the Prince of Wales to the London rough, had its knot of admirers all day long, and I am not sure that the tigers in Mr. Briton Rivière’s Roman Holiday were not the success of the exhibition. I am sorry not to be able to agree with the more flattering conclusion of the Unpretentious Guide, that in the East End representations of the Grandmother’s Pet type are not more popular than Burne-Jones-y (the adjective is his, not mine) mythicism. While The Days of Creation and The Mill were deserted, Fortune Favors the Brave and Childhood’s Treasures, by artists comparatively unknown, met with cheerful and hearty favor. In the first, a kitten is withheld from drinking out of a near saucer of milk by a big dog standing over it. “ Better give ’er a little drop,” suggested a jovial workman. The other picture showed some children and puppies, and the latter were the great attraction. “ Look at this ’ere little ’un,— jes’ loike loife,” I heard one of a group of men exclaim. I include in story-telling pictures landscapes and paintings of houses and churches. Three copies of Turner elicited but an expressive “ Hum ! ” and the remark that Storm Wind and Speed must be an American scene. But Southwark Inns, by Mr. Philip Norman, and Mr. Herbert Marshall’s London sketches were carefully, and I might even say lovingly, studied; while in proof that good painting is appreciated by the “ most ‘ general ’ public,” the picture that in popularity ranked only second to Briton Rivière’s Roman Holiday and the war scenes was technically by far the best in the exhibition, namely, Rico’s Venice on the Grand Canal. I was struck with the fact that though Mr. Burne-Jones and Mr. Watts failed signally to teach the people the spiritual truths which they sought to express by quaintness and soft, visionary forms, Rico impressed them at once with the material truths which he had expressed by good technical work. “ It must be a nice place to live in,” I heard one man in corduroys declare ; and “ There ’s color for you! ” another cried out, as if he had been an art critic, I thought Rico himself must be satisfied that his picture had achieved its purpose, and reproduced for others the loveliness and brilliancy of Venice as he saw it.

My conclusion, then, is that Mr. Barnett, by giving art exhibitions in Whitechapel, is accomplishing a good work that cannot be too highly praised, since he thus contributes to the recreation of the masses ; but I am also convinced that it is by its realism, and not by its idealism, that art appeals to the people, to whom pictures may prove a lasting amusement, but hardly ministering agents to their spiritual life. Mr. Gambier Parry, in a to me somewhat unintelligible essay, says that “ fine art, profoundly more a thing of spirit than of sense, is the minister commissioned to interpret its lovely parables to the world.” But by his own admission on a previous page, that “ as the course of life is often rough, and the ways of it not ways of pleasantness, but of uniformity and depression, it too often happens that, amid the absorbing necessities which harden practical life, fine art is valued by the multitude rather for its furniture than its poetry,” he shows why it is impossible for art to succeed as a spiritual interpreter to the very classes whom it is intended to reform.

I know it will be said that it is entirely too soon to measure the true good to be accomplished by art exhibitions. The working-classes must be educated before they can be influenced and elevated and consoled by pictures, and their ai-t education has but begun. Mr. Besant asserts that the many exhibitions in the Bethnal Green Museum have done little good ; that the people who do not come to them with the sense of beauty and feeling for artistic work acquire nothing of it there, the pictures saying no more to the crowd than would a Hittite inscription. But in the country and the ages where art attained a height of glory and popularity it never reached before or since, there was no need to prepare the people for its acceptance. There was no talk, then of education that Florentines might understand the meaning of Giotto, and Luca Della Robbia, and Michelangelo ; or Venetians that of Carpaccio and Bellini, and even of Titian and Tintoret; or Romans that of the great artists who came from every part of Italy to decorate the Sistine Chapel. I do not deny that allowance must be made for the fact that Italians are naturally the art-loving people which Englishmen have never been. But there is another important reason for this contrast, which, in the new fanaticism, selfappointed teachers forget. In those times, art was looked to, not to teach great ideas and holy truths hitherto unknown to the people, but, on the contrary, to express those ideas and truths which were their birthright, and hence had long been familiar to the lowliest; or else it was a record of beauty which, like the charm and color in Rico’s Venice, was so well rendered that all men could see and feel it.

Nowadays, if a copy in mosaic of one of Mr. Watts’s pictures is set up in Whitechapel, its explanation must be placed at its side; when Mr. Burne-Jones’s pictures are exhibited, interpretations though they are supposed to be, they must in turn be interpreted by the catalogue. But the peasant from Tuscan hills or Venetian waters could have explained as clearly, though perhaps not in as beautiful language, as Mr. Ruskin the true meaning of Giotto’s frescos or Carpaccio’s pictures, because Giotto or Carpaccio had taken his legend from the people, not given it to them. There was no need of long and elaborate explanations to point out that Titian’s women were all-fair, Michelangelo’s men all-powerful. Artists represented on their canvases and in their marbles what they and the people knew, and this was the reason that they gave life and popularity to their pictures and statues. The things of religion were as real to them, especially to the men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as were the things of state ; and when they painted the Annunciation and the Resurrection, their meaning was as clear to the people as when they painted the triumph of doge, or gonfalonier, or pope. Moreover, to make their pictures of sacred subjects more real, they put into them the men and women, the houses and churches, the rivers and mountains, about them. The Virgin was but a Florentine, or Venetian, or Roman maiden, with a halo around her head; saints and angels but Florentine, or Venetian, or Roman youths, each with special marks of martyrdom, —the arrows of St. Sebastian, the gridiron of St. Lawrence, the wings of Gabriel and Michael, — symbols as helpful to mediæval Italians as were the lyre of Apollo and the vineleaves and thyrsus of Bacchus to their Roman forefathers. In the background to Gospel tales and scenes of martyrdom were the hills, bare save for their pines, the cypress groves, and the winding rivers of Tuscany, the canals and campanili of Venice, even as we see them now. Vernon Lee, in pointing out the sameness between the religious pictures pointed in Florence in the fourteenth and those painted in Venice in the sixteenth century, really demonstrates not so much their similarity as the vital difference between them; for if, taking the subject of the Presentation as an example, “ the long flight of steps stretching across the fresco in Santa Croce stretches across the canvas of the Venetians, and the little girl climbs up them, presenting her profile to the spectator, ... at the top of the steps there is in one case a Gothic portal, and in the other a Palladian portico; and at the bottom of the steps in the fresco stand Florentines who might have known Dante, and at the bottom of the steps in the pictures stand Venetian patrons of Aretino.” That men went on painting these subjects in the same way is due to that same tendency to give a realistic representation of any and every subject which filled Venetian canvases with Venetians, Florentine canvases with Florentines. Just as the arrows were indispensable in a picture of St. Sebastian, so certain “ definite conceptions of situations and definite arrangements of figures ” became absolutely necessary in pictures of the Presentation or Resurrection, the Annunciation or Crucifixion, if these were to be understood at once by the people to whom, during the two centuries that separate the Gaddi from Titian and Tintoret, the traditional conceptions and arrangements were made as familiar as the stories upon which they were based. The only change permissible was in those very particulars in which Vernon Lee shows how much they did differ, and because of this change Venetians endeared their pictures to the people for whom they were painted.

This realistic interpretation was not confined to pictures of sacred subjects. Pinturicchio’s Ulysses was but another young fifteenth-century Italian, like those who stalk around in his Story of Griselda ; according to Veronese, the ladies and gentlemen of the court of Darius were resplendent in full Venetian costume ; you have seen many of Titian’s women in the flesh, as they fill their buckets at the wells, or carry them over the bridges of Venice. These are but a few of endless examples.

I have spoken entirely of Italy, because, in the first place, it is usually to Italy we look for religious art in its perfection ; and in the second, there is not space here to treat the subject exhaustively. But that which has been said of Italian art is applicable to the art of every country and age in the past, whether expressed in the frieze of the Parthenon or on the canvases of Velasquez and Murillo, of Rembrandt and Rubens. Hitherto artists have not separated themselves from the people, but have gone to them, to their life and belief, for inspiration. Art has been loved by the people when it has been the embodiment, not merely of the artist’s conception and aspirations, but of life as they knew it; the record, not of his commendable industry, but of beliefs dear to them; the representation, not of mystic or mythic beauty, but of beauty created for all times and all men.

It is the fact that churches and monasteries contain, or have contained, many of the most famous pictures of the world that has misled us to imagine a mysterious connection between art and religion, until we sometimes fancy them to be inseparable. Because Mr. Ruskin asks how far art may have been literally directed by spiritual powers, and how in any of its agencies it has advanced the cause of the creeds it has been used to recommend, it never occurs to us that temporal and material powers were responsible for even its most religious expressions, and that it is extremely doubtful if real art, however much an ornament, was ever a stimulus to any creed. If in Italy religion secured the service of art, it was because religion, in the shape of popes and bishops, monks and nuns, was best able to pay for it. The relation between religion and art was there eminently business-like and unspiritual. It was because of his cheapness, for example, that the monks of Monte Oliveto brought to their monastery Sodoma, of whose name as he is best known to us the less said the better. It was because Perugino had the best regulated shop that he had such innumerable commissions for his pretty Madonnas and tripping saints and angels; the priest or monk who ordered a picture from him could count upon having it at the promised date, when it was brought to him by the young Raphael, perhaps, with the bill in his pocket. Artists like Fra Angelico were the exception ; those like Perugino on the one hand, Sodoma on the other, were the rule. They loved art with a love that cannot be fostered by Royal Academies, or even Grosvenor Galleries and pre-Raphaelite brotherhoods ; but they looked upon it as a trade, not as a religion. Their ambition was to excel in it, not to use it to preach a sermon or enforce a moral. It may be argued that, no matter what the artist was, his art was an aid to the piety of the people. But if you will ask a great number of good Christians what art has done for religion, you will be told that it has done nothing, since it led to Mariolatry and other damnable idolatries. To look at the question from the standpoint of the pious Catholic or of Mr. Ruskin is not much more encouraging. For, admitting the possibility of Art becoming the handmaid of Religion, there can be no doubt that in devout, artistic Italy pictures and carvings absolutely without art — staring Bambinos and blackened, battered Madonnas — excited the deepest reverence and devotion in the faithful. That art can make religion beautiful there is no doubt. There must necessarily be more pleasure — not spiritual, however —in prayers offered in the church of Assisi than in those uttered in the ordinary Wesleyan chapel, just as there is more of the same kind of pleasure to the people of Whitechapel in wandering through the picture-hung halls of St. Jude’s schoolhouse than in staying all day in their own hare rooms. But it is the mission of art, if indeed it may be said to have any mission whatsoever, to awaken, satisfy, or stimulate our love of beauty and joy therein, not to purify or sanctify us. When the Christian religion was a subject of general interest, artists painted its history, legends, and traditions; when the Renaissance set men’s thoughts to paganism, they painted pagan myths. Whatever seemed to them fair or lovely in life they put upon their canvas. So little concerned were they with mythical or mystical meaning that some of the greatest pictures in the world — and Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love is the supreme example of pictures of this class — are, according to modern standards, meaningless.

If pictures, then, judging from the past, when art was most loved by the people, most honored by artists, cannot be expected to give men faith and hopes they do not already possess, the question remains, Can decorative art be looked to to accomplish this, — to become a source of happiness, peace, and consolation to the millions ? The theory so enthusiastically advocated to-day by many Englishmen is, that once the minor arts are taught to the masses, factorygirls and sewing-women, workmen and laborers, will no longer crowd the streets and saloons of the East End, but, coming home tired from factory or shop, will fill their leisure hours carving wood, beating brass, setting mosaics, and by so doing will make life worth living. This is all very well in theory, but hardly in practice. There are two serious drawbacks to the scheme, overlooked by its upholders. Decorative art is not play, but work; to treat it as play is to bring about its deterioration. That mediæval artists chuckled over their carving and hammering, that Eastern weavers and embroiderers delighted in the color and texture of their wools and silks, may be unquestionable. But it is less certain that nine hours in a factory or over a sewing-machine would have left them in fit humor for chuckles and delight. To say that art helps a man to take pleasure in his work is very different from saying that art makes work a recreation. The decorative artist may not find his daily occupation irksome, but he is as thoroughly tired out by it as the mill-hand or the stone-breaker is by his labors. There would be an outcry if a shopkeeper forced his assistants to keep at their posts for twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours a day. And yet it is not much more merciful to ask the man who has been adding up figures, or the woman who has been measuring silks, from eight in the morning until six in the evening, to hurry at once to a workshop, only to take up the chisel or the chaser. That the people to be redeemed will rebel against such means for their redemption I have no doubt. There may be exceptions, of course. Some men are born artists, just as others are born musicians. To Giotto the shepherd there was no pleasure equal to that of drawing the sheep and lambs of his flock, and there have been Giottos in England. What is true of the painter of pictures is true as well of the decorator. But the Giottos are always the exceptions, and we are here concerned with the rule. Those who have it in them to do art work will probably, as in the ease of one artist I know, endeavor to toil at the desk all day, and in the studio all the evening, until brain fever makes a choice between the two compulsory. But to the average English workman or workwoman the most beautiful tasks of the studio will have less charm than the freedom of the streets, the sociability of the public house.

My conclusions are not founded wholly upon theory, but upon experience. I had at one time not a little to do with art classes opened for public-school teachers, in connection with the School of Industrial Art established by Mr. Leland in Philadelphia. The school was for public-school children, and its idea and objects were admirable. It has been often pointed out that much of the good accomplished by our publicschool system is counterbalanced by the fact that it unfits the younger generation for manual work. Mr. Leland’s school was started to counteract this evil. In it children were taught the minor arts, that they might learn to use their hands, and thus be the better prepared, later, to learn a trade ; and at the same time to have their eyes opened to the fact that manual work, so far from being disgraceful, is always honorable, and often beautiful. Classes, free in every sense of the word, were next begun for the teachers, that they might have the same advantages, and then, having mastered these arts, teach the children under their charge. At first they came in crowds, and for several weeks were regular in attendance. Then they began to fall off in enthusiasm and numbers, until after a few months, just when the children’s school was established on a firm basis, the teachers’ classes were discontinued altogether. The reason was not difficult to find. They had supposed the minor arts, because they were minor, could be learnt in a few lessons, and could almost at once be turned to good use in eking out the too slender school salary. When they discovered, on the contrary, that these arts meant steady application and not immediate pay, the additional work seemed too great a tax upon their leisure, too exhausting after the other labors of the day. If this be true of teachers, whose hours are comparatively short, and whose daily occupation is one that might be expected to make the study of art congenial, is it likely there will be a more satisfactory result when the same experiment is tried with men and women who are shut up many hours every day in mill and factory, shop and warehouse ? So long as decorative art can be made to seem to the working people — I am speaking of the great majority, be it remembered — as no work and all play or pay, it will prove attractive. When experience teaches them the truth, their enthusiasm will, I think, like that of the teachers, be lessened.

This is only as it should be. For if the masses could be taught to look upon it as play, decorative art would lose, and not gain, thereby. It never has been great except when men have made and held it to be their life’s work, and it is therefore reasonable to assert that hard work on the part of those who practice it has been a condition of its greatness. In the East, men and women for so many generations worked in metal, clay, wood, or silks with the unremitting toil of slaves that now their children inherit, not their inventiveness, perhaps, but their designs and facility in the use of tools ; and we exclaim at the marvel, and think for us the work of these children would be but child’s play. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when decorative art reached its greatest originality and perfection, it was looked upon as a trade, as Cellini, the prince of such tradesmen, called it, to be seriously and honestly acquired, and as seriously and honestly followed when the days of apprenticeship were passed. The suggestion that men of other trades could take to it in their lighter moments and hours of relaxation, Cellini and his fellow-workers would have laughed to scorn. It is not easy for English philanthropists to realize this, because just as they have come to expect impossibilities of pictures today, so they have come to believe impossibilities of stone-cutters, wood-carvers, metal-workers, in the past. Because in the decorative work of the Middle Ages are the unmistakable signs of that pleasure in the making or doing without which it would not be good work, it is supposed that to the mediæval artisan the conception of beautiful ornament was always a chance, the execution an unmixed joy. Eloquent writers on art platitudinize about the “ sad sincerity ” with which men worked, until they make us believe that love and faith could guide the commonest workman’s hand to carve the leaves and flowers clustering around the capitals and the misereres, which either shock or delight in Gothic cathedrals; to fill the niches with the statues which, mutilated and defaced as they are by time and vandals, are still so fair to look upon. All the while we never pause to remember that it was not the common workmen, but the master workmen, close students and men of genius, who wrought these wonders. In Italy we know their names; for in Siena, and Orvieto, and Pisa, is it not of the Pisani sculptures we talk ? In Pistoia and Florence, is it not of the Della Robbia bas-reliefs ? And so on, with almost all the lovely ornaments in duomo or palazzo, in busy city or lonely monastery. If this were the case in art-loving Italy, is it likely that in England those who covered with ornament the minsters and abbeys which are still its glory, who carved the figures peeping out from under the foliage in nave and transepts, and looking down from the west front at Wells, or crowning the loveliness of the south door at Lincoln, were common workmen ? No, they were the greatest artists in the land, even though their names are now unknown to fame.

I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not question the advantage of teaching all the arts to all men who wish to learn. There may be, and have been, great amateur as well as professional artists. If the rudiments and principles of decorative art are rightly taught to the children of the present generation, there will be more hope of developing love and true feeling for art in the men of the next. But it seems to me that it should be made distinctly clear that art is serious work. If it be turned into a mere plaything, then will its standard be lowered to the level of those who use it as such, and the second state of art in nineteenth-century England will assuredly be worse than the first. Decoration may be made to accomplish its two purposes as defined by Mr. Morris, and “ give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use,” and in those “ they must perforce make.” But it is dreaming idle dreams and encouraging false hopes to preach a possibility of its giving a pleasure beyond and above this, and becoming a factor to draw the workman, wearied by other labors, out of himself, and reconcile him to a world in which he lives to toil, and toils to live.

Should the religion now held perish, art may make beautiful that which will surely come to take its place, just as when the paganism of Rome was destroyed its services could still be employed by the new worship of Christ. But to think that art can in any way fulfill the functions of religion is to imagine vain things.

Elizabeth Robins Pennell.