Morning journal and courier., 1890-05-26
FASHION EN- ART.
The Modern Spirit OF London Spring
Views.

Views.
The London art season has now fairly set
in, says the London Standard Already the
Grosvenor and tho New gallery have flung
open their modest portals to the stream Of
gazers. It would be unkind to scrutinize too
closely the motives of those who struggle at
the turnsties and make, coute que coute, the
complete tour of the rooms. To the many
to the majority, perhaps-pieture viewing is
an agreeable variation on the ordained prao-
tice Of looking at shop windows. A pretty
show of bonnets would probably give to
some far more genuine delight, but 1t would
not be 90 decidedly the corrsct thing to do.
We will not go 80 far as to maintain that
there is any one 30 absolutely devoid of the
artistic instinct as to get no pleasure out of
pictures, as pictures. Still, the melancholy
fact remains that thousands are found ready
and eager to bear the fatigue of tho Academy
exhibition, who have mover thought it worth
while to drop in even for half an hour to
look at the masterpieces in the National gall
lery. From this indisputable fact 1t is surely
not uncharitable to infer that IL ia the con-
tagion of fashion, and not the prompting of
individual taste, that pack the galleries In
Bond street and Regent street and Piccadilly.
We do not mean to sneer, still loss to can
sure. We receive the smallest of mercies in
thankful spirit, and confess, with absolute
franknsss, that, sooner than have art left out
OI OuI untlOudL LILO duOA0buoEy VIC 6E0 WILING
that the Philistine1aof society should be
lured into tho annual shows by the pretence
that visit is one of the things that no one
in society ought to leave undone: Nor are
we prepared altogether to deny that there is
something wholesome at the Bottom of the
preference manifested for the feeblest
achievements of the modern brush over
the chefs d'oeuvres of classical times.
1t was Charles Kfngslsy, We believe, who
Y,roteskod aeoinas the paaafon for ruiua The
average Judgment Of those who for some
weeks hence will have tho Academy a. their
principal topic of conversation is In hearty
accord with this unromantio canon. They
like modern art because 1t is living and q
growing thing. There is something human
to them in the work of men who, If they are
fortunate in their cicerones, may eome day
be pointed cut to them in the street, or who
may, at the very moment of the inspection,
be lurking round the oorner In converse with
brother aoademiciaa. They can feel an
honest interest in the price the artist gets for
his pictures, in the number he can-is It
wrong to ssys-manufacturs in tho year.
There is a sense of Satisfaction, and. to some
extent, of superiority, in pitting Sir John
Millais against Mr.. Watts as a portrait
painter; or even In assessing the compare
tive merits of Mr.. Orchardson's glowing
chamber scene this year with that which
won him such frequent mention in salons
Titan, and Rembrandt are dead and gone.
Fame has set Its seal once for all upon their
work. No one, however much he may dstest
Michael Angelo, can knock his image from
the pedestal on which the appreciation Of
ages has placed It. The Roman rabble could
scatter the ashes of the emperor whom the
senate, while he lived, had recognized as
god. But the immortals are beyond the
touch of, at any rate, society criticism. II
in other vitae with cOntamnnraYiaa Evarv
country cousin who is led through the long
ordeal of the May shows, exercises, uncon-
ciously perhaps, but still effectively, the suf-
frsge for or against the innumerable candi-
dates for public favor that mutsly appeal
from the crowded wall space