The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-05-10 00:00:00

TriE ROYAL ACADEMY BANQUET.

The anniversary banquet of the Royal Academy,
was held in London on Saturday evening at Burling-
ton House, when the president and council entertained
a large and distinguished company. Before the
entrance in the courtyard was drawn up a guard of
honour, furnished, as usual, by the Artists' Corps of
volunteers. The chair was taken by Sir F. Leighton,
P.R A.

The president, in proposing the first toast, said:
Deep respect, gratitude, loyal devotion, these are the
feelings with which we as Englishmen, and as mem-
bers of the Royal Academy, are wont to drink here the
toast which has precedence over all others, and it
is primarily to the
_Sovereign and to the Royal head
of this body that our thoughts are turned as we
drink it. On this occasion it is otherwise ; it is not
first to the Sovereign on her throne, but to the
stricken mother in the shadow of her grief that our
hearts go forth to-night. It would not be seemly to
dwell upon the wounds from which she bleeds—these
merciful times alone may touch with soothing hands.
For well-nigh fifty years the sympathy of our Queen
has gone out in an unfaltering stream towards the
sorrowing amongst her subjects of high and low
degree. May the memory of all the loving gratitude
which that sympathy has evoked fall now, and rest a
healing dew upfa her bowed and aching spirit, and
may the auspicious event which has for a time drawn
her Majesty away from the scene of her mourning
temper with bright thoughts and hopes the sad re-
membrance of the past. "The Queen."
The toast was drunk with tie usual honours.
The President, in giving the toast of the " Prince
and Princess of Wales, and the rest of the Royal
Family," referred in sympathetic terms to the death
of the Duke of Albany. "We shall remember him,"
he said, "as a courteous Prince in whom a mind
happy in varied gifts harmoniously ordered and a
taste singularly delicate had been ripened, young
though he was, by culture and observation, and who,
undeterred by a fragile frame and fickle health, had
placed the outcome of that culture at the service of

paths of that most enlightened Prince, his father.
He could have had no nobler aim."

The toasts of "The Army and Navy and Reserve
Forces," were responded to by the Duke of Cam-
bridge and Sir A. Cooper Bey.
The President, in proposing "The Health of her
Majesty's Ministers," said: In the presence of the
eminent men to whom this title belongs, the Royal
Academy proclaims its fealty year by year without
shadow of political bias to the great ideas of authority
and order. It will be a great regret to all that for the
third successive year the voice the great statesman
and unmatched orator, in who3e mouth response to
this toast would naturally lie, will not be heard
amongst us to-night, and the more that his absence is
due to the strict injunction of his medical adviser.
If any voice can cause us to forget our loss, it is cer-
tainly that which has already charmed us on a
like occasion—that of the Right hon. the Earl
Granville, whose name I am allowed to couple with
our toast.

Earl Granville, who was received with cheers, in
the course of his response, said: One of the surprises
which I find in old age is this—and I suppose it will
last as long as understanding remains—it is that ad-
vancing years do not prevent us, every day if we
choose, taking a lesson and learning something new;
and one of the feelings which I have stronger than
others as I grow older is that we laymen more and
more feel the obligations under which we labour to
art and artists. In saying this Ido not merely refer
to the pleasure which we derive from the works
of the artist's pencil, or the sculptor's chisel, or the
designs of the architect; there are other indirect
obligations under which we labour, as I have
found myself, and my opinion has been con-
firmed by my contemporaries. I remember my
friend Richard Doyle telling me a short time
before his death how he was surprised to find that
although he had been an artist all his life, yet every
year he discovered new beauties in the most familiar
objects. I have, however, little doubt that as we
advance in age the pleasures of looking at beautiful
scenery and the interest in observing nature increases
and does not diminish. I, however, often ask myself
when deriving pleasure from the contemplation of the
expression of a clever man, or the form and colouring
of a beautiful woman, or even the pleasures derived
from looking at a little dirty beggar boy, whether the
pleasure is really derived fro the object itself, or is
reflected from those associations connected with the
images of those objects which have been produced
by the great artists of the present and past
ages. There are other lessons, too, which I have
learnt in old age. I have been always aware
that this is an art-loving country, and it is a fine
country, and I have always known that all of us,
lawyers and clergymen, soldiers and sailors—l am
almost tempted to say tinkers and tailors—have
the privilege of expressing, in the most authoritative
manner, their judgment of the things of art, and lay-
inn. down canons of taste. But it is only within a
resent perion tnat i nave iearnm iiuu Ui--,--
tions to this rule, and I am sorry in this place to say
that I have learnt the lesson that the President of
this Academy, and the great majority of the Royal
Academy, are the only people in England who are
not capable of giving opinions on matters of taste or
expressing the slightest judgment on matters con-
nected with the fine arts. Now I know that, although
I have learnt these lessons, I am afraid that I have
not taken them completely to heart, and I own that
if I was a little puzzled about a question of paint-
ing, or sculpture, or architecture, or decoration—
say it in all deference—l think from a trace
of old habit—l should be more inclined to take
advice from you, Mr. President, than from the
judgment of the political associates with whom I am
now sitting. lam not altogether discouraged by
your known ignorance of sculpture from asking you
whether I am entirely wrong in thinking, from the
general character of the exhibition, that thero are
some remarkable examples in the gallery of sculpture
and the progress of English art. Not discouraged by.
your complete want of knowledge of pictures or the
art of exhibiting them, I venture to boast on the part
of the Government that my right hon. friend has
Lately signed a contract for the beginning of an addition
to the National Gallery, which at last will enable us to
provide not only a fair entrance and a good staircase,
but will enable the trustees and directors of that re-
markable gallery to exhibit all those treasures of art
which at this moment are so carefully concealed in
the cellars and caves of that establishment. I re-
member one or two years ago, in one of your remark-
able speeches, you gave advice to the contributors to
the treasures of these walls, and you advised a certain
mercy as to the amount of space, and you pointed out
that, although the site gave dignity, yet that certain
bodies in painting were even better represented in
small dimensions than in large. Ido not venture to
give any opinion on this as applied to pictures; but it
is certainly an admirable principle applied to after-
dinner speeches. I therefore conclude by expressing
my sincere and warm thanks on the part of the
Government for the honour which you have done
them.

The President next gave the toast of "Science ana
Literature," coupled with Sir J. Lister and the Vener-
able Archdeacon Farrar, who responded.

The Archbishop of Canterbury responded for the
guests, and proposed "The health of the President of
the Royal Academy."

The President, after referring in pathetic language
to the death of Francis Holl, A.R.A., the engraver,
described the enlarged space which in future years
would be at the disposal of the academy. He went
on: These are goodly additions, and will enable us
to hang many a work of more than average merit
which would else have been returned from the sheer
impossibility of placing it. Ido not persuade myself,
indeed, nor would I lead others to believe, that all ,4
wounds will be healed in the new order of things;
sorrow and heartburnings are inseparably bound up
with the ordeal of public exhibition. Those—and
they must ever be many—in whose eyes not to be
chosen • to be treated with injustice, will still burn
in the ' elief of a wrong sustained, and to me, to
whose ~ars so many plaintive or angry murmurs
reach, that April month will still be the saddest season
of the year. But this at least I believe, that the cases
will henceforth be very rare, if there be any, in which
a work deemed by the Council really worthy of the
standard of our exhibition will remain without a place
upon its walls. And here a word of caution may be
useful. I cannot forecast what the Council of the
coming year may decree—l cannot commit it to any
course; but this commends itself to reason: For the
greater extent of labour in hanging a corresponding
extension of time should be needed—and, indeed, not
a few of us think that for the selection itself among
the yearly increasing number of works submitted to
us present arrangements are inadequate. I would,
therefore, hint to ray brother artists here and abroad,
with the confidential privacy which appertains to
these banquets, that they may not impossibly be asked
next spring to knock at our doors some days earlier
than heretofore. But extension of our buildings does
not affect our galleries alone. It will also largely
benefit our schools, of which, in the greater rumour
and publicity which attend our exhibitions, it is too
readily forgotten or ignored outside these walls that
they are our chief care and involve our gravest
responsibility. I think that if we embrace the whole
field of artistic activity, both beyond and within our
precincts—to which our sympathies are not narrowly.
bowed down—we may look very hopefully on the
young English school. Traces, indeed, it shows too
often, on the one hand, of that feverish haste and
that thirst to dazzle by dexterity:which is not the taint
of art alone, with loss, I think, of dignity both of
matter and of manner; traces, on the other hand, of
a tendency to associate imagination with extrava-
gance, and to think nobility inseparable from archaic
forms—a lack of balance, or, shall I say, a lack of
older heads on young shoulders. Perhaps we must
see in theGe various extremes the doubts and hesita-
tions of an epoch as yet uncertain of itself; and gifts
and vitality being visible on all hands we may look,
no doubt, with a trusting expectation to the day when
these extremes shall not indeed merge, but draw
nearer together, not to the effacement of individuality,
which would be the death of art, but to their common
La and mutual strengthening in an atmosphere of
oraer, sympathy, and more chastened taste.