The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-07 00:00:00

Sir John Pakingtnn on Art Education.
The annual meeting of the Kidderminster School
of Art was held on Wednesday in the Music
Hall, Kidderminster. Sir John Pakington, M.P.,
presided. •

The report, which read by Mr. J. Brinton, the
secretary, was of a highly encouraging character,
and showed the effect of the operation of the new
Revised Code had been an increase in the aggregate
number of children under instruction from 382 to
1,041, while during the past year the number of
schools taught by the art masters had been increased
from two to fifteen. The total number of prizes and
certificates Of success in examination had increased
from 108 in 1863 to 195 in 1864, while the school
had reaped a substantial advantage in the shape of
grants from the department of casts and examples.
The report having been adopted,
Sir J. PAKINGTON, after expressing the pleasure
he felt in acceding to the request of the committee
that he would preside on that occasion, said that he
did not do so without some feeling of hesitation, re-
membering that that was a very young institution
__only, he believed, in its third year—and that at
the two former public distributions of prizes the
Earl of Dudley occupied the seat which he now
had the honour to fill. He (Sir John Pakington)
certainly must acknowledge that he felt himself
a very unworthy successor of the noble earl.
Re thought he might say of the Earl of
Dudley that his lordship was a great lover of art,
that he was a very good judge of art, and that he
was, as they all knew by experience, a most muni-
ficent patron of art ; and he (the president) might
also say, although he could not pretend to have any
intimate knowledge of what might have fallen from
Lord Dudley on the two previous occasions, that as
regarded the advice his lordship gave to that infant
institution and the encouragement he offered to it,
he (Sir John) could not take safer ground than to
say he entirely agreed with whatever the noble earl
told them. But there was one thing which he might
say better, perhaps, for himself than Lord Dudley
or anyone else could say for him, and that was to
express the great pleasure it gave him to find on all
sides of Worcestershire—and not only in that county
but in all part of the country—those schools of art
were springing into existence in all our populous
towns, and were generally attended with very great
success. Their importance was of course far greater
in towns such, for instance, as Worcester and Kid-
derminster, in which manufactures are carried on
requiring both taste and artistic skill for their cul-
tiVation. He was not one of those, as they were well
aware, who were very enthusiastic admirers of the
Committee of Council on Education. He never liked
the constitution of that committee, never liked the
mode in which they acted. He never approved and
could not approve the partial and imperfect manner
in which they carried out the great and important
functions which the Legislature of this country had
intrusted to them. But at the same time, he must
admit that he thought the encouragement which the
department of the Committee of Council intrusted
with the conduct and management of schools of art
had given to the cultivation of art in this country
was highly commendable ; and he could not help
thinking that, although there might be some defects,
yet on the whole the management of the Science
and Art Department had been such as to give a
great stimulus to the cultivation of art in this coun-
try. (Cheers.) As they were aware, there had been
schools of art in different parts of England for a
great number of years, but in the course of, compa-
ratively speaking, the last few years public attention
had been more than ever directed to the necessity of
encouraginggeneral education, and as a much greater
stimulus had been given to general education than
formerly, so had that been eminently the case with
regard to that particular part of education, namely,
the cultivation among the middle and lower classes
of a taste for art. (Hear, hear.) Some persons
believed that was more especially attributable to the
effects of the International Exhibitions which had
taken place in this country at the suggestion of the
late lamented Prince Consort. When the produc-
tions of different nations and the arts of different
nations were brought together in these Exhibitions,
a general feeling existed that England did not stand
so high in comparison with other countries, and es-
pecially in comparison with France, as they all natu-
rally desired it should do. The effects of the Great
Exhibition of 1851, he believed, more than the effect
of any other cause, was to give a great stimulus to
that cultivation, and at the same time the manufac-
tures of this country had greatly improved. The
importance of our manufactures could not be over-
rated, and he might go so far as to say that, the re-
sult of that Exhibition, and the stimulus so given,
and the encouragement so given to local schools of
art, had established this fact—that, whatever
might hitherto have been the superiority of the
French in all matters of taste, there was no differ-
ence in the characteristics of the two nations which
should at all forbid the hope that the day was not
far distant, if, indeed, -it had not already arrived,
when the English people would be found as fertile
in good taste and in the art of design as the French
people, and that we in England could combine the
taste of the Frenchman with the substantialities
which have so long and deservedly marked the Eng-
lish character. (Cheers.) Since he had been in that
room a gentleman had placed in his hands a copy of
the Times of that day, in which he found reported a
speech of an honourable and distinguished friend of
his (Sir Stafford S. Northcote, M.P.), who had just
been addressing the School of Art at Exeter, under
circumstances similar to those under which he had
the honour of now addressing them. In glancing
somewhat cursorily over the speech, he (Sir John)
found with very greut satisfaction that Sir Stafford
Northcote alluded to that very question upon which
he had himself ventured to touch—namely, was
there, or was there not, any real distinction of cha-
racter between the Englishman and the French-
man of such a nature as to prevent the Englishman
being as accomplished in art as his neighbour across
the water? He was very glad to see that Sir Staf-
ford Northcote, who was a very high authority on
such subjects, had come to exactly the same conclu-
sion as he had. As an authority in these matters,
Sir S. Northcote might be estimated from the fact
that he moved for and presided over a committee of
the House of Commons in the last session upon that
very subject. He regretted that the honour he (Sir
J. Pakington) had of addressing that meeting had
not been reserved for a few days later ; had it been
so he should have been able to do that which he was
sorry to say he was now unable to do--namely, to
tell them that which must be interesting to every
school of art, what was the nature of the report of
the committee over which, in the last Session of
Parliament, Sir Stafford Northcote presided. He
was sorry to say that report, although it was now
public, had only just been made public, and he (the
speaker) had not yet had an opportunity of seeing
it, and, therefore, it was impossible for him to know
anything about it, excepting such information as he
had hastily gleaned from the speech of his hon.
friend to which he had alluded. But he was glad
to see that Sir Stafford
Northcote intimated
probably it would be found .n that
would shortly be new regulationsthe report that there
issued, and also stated that tbehaerdtantdicyloe tendency y e
noefo importanceoamg encourage
of these regulations would
the provincial schools of art,
greater freedom so to act
upon the principle of giving
masters. (Cheers.) Sir Stafford reedoin to
Northcote also
touched upon that which had been the subjecta of
complaint, and which he (Sir John Pakington) had
good authority for saying was not altogether un
founded—that under the system by which the
schools of art in this country are being conducted
an undue proportion of the grant which Parliament,
with great liberality, gives annually had been ap-
propriated to the school of art in the metropolis,
and that justice had hardly been done to the local
schools. In conclusion, the right hon. baronet con-
gratulated the school on its great success, and, after
expressing a hope that it would profit by the change
which '.would be proposed by the Parliamentary
Committee, said he doubted whether it would be
able to make more rapid progress than it had done,
whatever those changes might be. As to the Re-
vised Code, to the action of which he had hitherto,
obstinately perhaps, attributed nothing but mischief
and misfortune, he confessed it had been the cause
of a great increase in the number of art pupils, but