The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-24 00:00:00

Siteratart.

Letters on Connoisseurship ; or, the Anatomy of
a Picture. With some Remarks on National
Galleries, and the Mission of the Modern
Artist. By William Noy Wilkins. London :
Chapman and Hall.
EVERYBODY at some time or other has met
with that variety of the class of bores which
is known as "the man nith a grievance."
Mr. Wilkins is, we are sorry to say, in a
literary point of view that which the indi-
vidual we have indicated is in a social one.
He attracts us with a disquisition on art,
scientifically distributed and not destitute of
merit ; and having baited for us in this man-
ner, lets us feel in our jaws the sharp hook
of his personal grievance—the establishment
of artistic schools under the superintendence
of the Board of Trade. Most people are
painfully aware of the intense ugliness of
almost every article of English manufacture,
and having heard that they " manage these
things better in France" by the help of
schools of design and other similar training,
are not sorry to learn that Government has
turned its attention to the same point, and
teaches the science of ornamentation to those
who chocse to learn it, for a moderate pay.
ment, and under competent instructors. They
think, also, that if among the rising genera-
tion there should perchance be an inglorious
Raphael or Turner, he will through these
schools be enabled to acquire that preliminary
and indispensable teaching which the strug-
gles of poverty too frequently deny to early
and unacknowledged geni:ts. Mr. Wilkins,
however, thinks eh.berwise .
The Board of Trade, by the establ v-liment of schools
of art, where all branches are professed to be taught at
the cost of a few pence each lesson, with the chance of re-
ceiving a mastership, aided by that status which a Govern-
ment appointment gives in the eyes of the million, has
not only put private academies out of all reasonable
means of support, but has created hosts of draughtsmen
arid non-naturally qualified parsons, who, backed by the
Government salary and prestige, thus absorb that patron-
age which should fall to those who are naturally gifted (or
rather cursed) with genius, and who, in their early strug-
gles for art, have borne the heat and brunt of the day.
For it is not only mechanics and the humble who attend
these schools, but " ladies" and " gentlemen "—the sons
and daughters of physicians and barristers living in our
principal squares and terraces—some to learn accomplish-
ments cheaply, others to swell that very competition
which is thrown in the teeth of the rising artist by the
very class who take every possible means to increase it.
Surely, if the Board of Trade will step out of its course
to encourage the practice of art among the people ( who
need other instruction) by the reward of a pound a week
and a mastership, it should extend its patronage to the
struggling painter. But no, "it does not want Nature's
artists," though it does its best to grow them ! Yet, when
the artist is driven to these schools by a combination of
those circumstances to which I have already alluded, he
is met with a routine course applicable only to stone-
masons and doorplate engravers.
• • • •

Why, then, estimate the poet—the true designer of
Nature's making—by the mechanic of trade manufacture ?
Why shut out the struggling self-taught painter from all
participation in the management of these schools ? I
might perhaps answer why ; but I have said enough—not
too much, however, for one who has been, and is still, a
sufferer in common with others by these academies, as well
as through other enactments of a still more arbitrary
natnre.
We might ask, if the establishment of these
schools is so objectionable, wher3 is the con-
sistency of asking that the " struggling self-
taught painter," or any one else, should be al-
-10 wed to manage them? But Mr. Wilkins is too
angry to be very logical. The broad principle,
on which he never seems to have reflected, is,
that schools, academies, and universities are des-
tined and of use to only the average bulk of
mankind. In his preface he says ;
No! genius is not so common, though her counterfeit,
taot with talent, is; and the " Department of Science and
Art " may congratnlate itself if, in twenty years' time, it
creates one poet-painter or original designer, even though
at the cost of those true ones of Nature's making which
its unjust competition will have destroyed.
quite a mistake, Mr Wilkins. The " Depart-
ment of Science and Art" does not expect
to create geniuses. Real genius is neither
created by a good system nor stilled by a bad
one. It may have its path smoothed or
roughened according to circumstances; but,
if it minuet walk to LUPO) witltout boiling
I,ta peas, it is pot genius,