The Press.
London, England, 1858-11-20 00:00:00

fittraturt.

Geschichte der bildenden Kiinste im 19-ten Jahr-
hundert (History of the Fine Arts in the

Nineteenth Century). By Dr. Anton Springer.

London : Nutt.

ARE we of this most positive age really "assist-
ing" (as our % ivacious neighbours vivaciously
express it) at a third meridian era of Art ? Does
Manchester under Sir John Potter represent the
cyclic prototype of Florence under the Medici?
Ought J. W. R. Turner to rank as the greatest
artistic genius the world has ever produced—
chrome yellow as an essential element of the
sublime—and John Ruskin as sublimity's heaven-
anointed expounder ? To these questions we
confess ourselves disposed to return rather a ne-
gative than a positive answer. That contempo-
rary art, with multiplied germs of vitality, pos-
sesses increased chances of progress, we do not
dispute. But we doubt that this progress has
yet taken its place among the things that are.
To us it seems still, even in Art's transcendental
element, to be groping in semi-darkness—pain-
fully struggling towards the light. And if we
come to the practical question—if we take man
for man and picture for picture—may we not
pronounce him passably bold who shall assert
that the nineteenth century can ever trump such
hands as our own Hogarths, Reynoldses, Gains
boroughs, and Wilsons, or France's Vernets,
Greuzes, Guerins, and Drouais ?

Dr. Anton Springer seems little less sceptical
than ourselves in th above particular. His book
opens with a doubt, and closes with a doubt :

If we consider (he says in his Introduction) what
actually lies finished before as, we must certainly admit
that it would be just as well to recommend a more mode-
rate estimate of the importance of modern art, and a less
pompons exaltation of the present over the past. That
our (7 German) artists produce better things than their
pieifecessors of the eighteenth, and in part of the seven-
teenth century also—that our feeling fit form has under-
gone a wholesome purification—and that the position of
the time arts is becoming daily higher and better—no un-
prejn,lioell person will deny But we cannot see any suf-
ficient ground for the assertion that a new artistic era falls
in o it day, and that future art-history must place in these
times the expiration of one of its epochs and the com-
mencement of another.

And again, in his less complimentary perora-
tion :

The men who is acquainted with human nature feels no
anxiety ah Int the future of Art, because c nivince,l of th
perennial vitality of Art's source, the Imagination. Ae
greater misgiving assails us when we think of the artists of
the present day, who oftentimes, Heaven pity them !
cherish scarcely a higher estimate of their vocation than
the grossest of its despisers, and who, by their igno-
r ince both of the true character of the age and of the true
essence of that vocation, protract beyond measure the
critical and vacillatiti, conditinn of modern art.

It will be seen, from these brief extracts, that
Dr. Springer has the merit of being neither a
pessimist nor an optimist. His book, indeed, is
distinguished by its judicious moderation, and
would, if only a little more free from the national
nebulosity of thought and language, be a really
and practically valuable contribution to the
esthetic literature of the day.
When a foreign work of this comprehensive
class falls into our hands, there are two sections
of it which always claim from us special atten-
tion: that in which the author treats of his own
country, and that in which he appreciates ours.
In the one we have a right to look for copious-
ness and accuracy of information; in the other
for impartiality of judgment. To expect both
these qualifications in either case, is to expect
much; but, of the two, their combination is
certainly more easily found in the latter than in
the former.

Modern German art holds up two names in
pre-eminent conspicuousness—the names of Over-
beck and of Cornelius. Each of these men is the
founder of a school: overbeck, of the " _Naza-
renes "—closely allied to our Pre-Raphaelites;
Cornelius, of the " Idealists."
Theoretically speaking, the Nazarenes and the
Idealists start from opposite premises, although in
practice they arrive at many similar conclusions.
The former hold that Art should be the exclusive
handmaiden of Religion. For then the medieval
works of Beato Angelico and his contemporaries
present the embodied esthetic ideal. Hence (as
must ever be the case where we embody the
ideal) all independence of creation is denounced