STATE ENCOURAGEMENT OF ART.
THE English have caught some notion that art is an influence useful to civilization, and they are very desirous of securing its aid. Their aspiration, and their utter ignorance how to set about its fulfilment, are displayed in random efforts more violent than well-informed. "The finest site in the world" is wasted on the National Gallery and the fountains of Trafalgar Square ; trading competition is invoked to lodge the merchants of the i City n that ornate toy the Exchange ; a palace is raised in Westminster, whose vastness, inscriptions in unintelligible old English, and redundant gilding, are conceived on the principle of the "appropriate." Bad statues record, at prominent places, not more the inefficiency of our sculptors than the desire of the public to possess sculpture, for the credit of the thing. Members of the aristocracy and wealthier dilettanti are incorporated in divers committees to foster art. Pains are taken to muster a "national gallery," whose newest acquisition, ostentatiously dis- played, is one of Mr. Turner's eccentric efforts to make a finished oil-painting caricature a water-colour sketch. The pensive public take to art as gossips accept medical nostrums, not because they thoroughly understand the properties of the thing or feel its in- fluence, but because they are told that it is good for them, and they have a laudable desire to do what they ought. But the oddest of all sallies in this direction is the alliance between the Government of the State and the lotteries called Art. Unions.
The alliance has been enlivened by that frequent incident of official patronage a squabble; conducted, however, we are as- sured, on the most amicable terms. When Government inter- posed to relieve Art-Unions from the laws against gambling in lotteries, a right of official interference was allowed ; and the Board of Trade—the body that has been appropriately deputed to watch the development of art .1—has sought to impose new regulations on the Art-Union of London. The Council of the Art-Union resists ; the matter is still under negotiation ; the affair gets talked of abroad, and the Times puts forth an authenticated statement of the facts.
The Board proposed alterations in the mode of selecting pic- tures, in the distribution of engravings, and in the formation of public galleries. The two latter points are not explained by the Times; but it has been stated, we believe, that the Board pro- posed to extend the choice of subjects for engraving to works not the produce of our own time or country, on the plea that it is de- sirable to familiarize the public with good works. Of course, the "native talent" interest was up in arms at such a suggestion. As to the selection of prize-pictures, the point is thus explained— "The system of selection actually proposed by the Board of Trade was, that the Council, or a Committee, should in the first instance select the works of art to be distributed, and tha the prizeholders should select from this collection ac- cording to the order of their prizes. This is the system to which the Select Com- mittee (Report, p. xxxviii.) give the preference. The advantages which it is sup- posed to combine are the following—
"1. It confides the twat of making the preliminary selection to persons who may be presumed to be chosen for the office on account of their fitness for it.
"2. It enables those persons to purchase the best pictures of the year, and to give the prizeholders a chance of obtaining them; whereas at present they can only choose from among those which remain unsold at the opening of the exhibi- tions, which are comparatively few. " 3. It diverts the attention of the prizeholder from the money value' of his prize, and thus tends to repress the gambling spirit. 4. It calls on the prizeholder to exercise his own taste in the selection, restrict- ing him from making a very bad choice, and preserving him from the interested counsels of persons who are anxious to procure the sale of particular works of art, since under such a system no one can have any interest in inducing him to select one work rather than another, and advice, if given at all, must be honest. In tins respect it has the advantage over the present London system. "5. It enables ithn to choose a work suited to his taste and circumstances-' and in this respect has the advantage over the Scotch, Irish, and German systems.° The absurdity of official intervention in such a matter is not fully displayed until we come to these details ; but how ludicrous is it to see the officers of State watching over the prizeholder in a lottery—guarding his choice—" diverting his attention," in a motherly way, from naughty foolish objects—allowing him a little tether of taste, but bridling him against a "very bad choice"! The next thing will be that we shall see the Board of Trade send- ing Mr. Lefevre or Mr. Fonblanque to children's parties, to watch over the distribution of the objects of art hung upon every German tree. The system which betrays the officers of State into this paltry sort of false position must in itself be thoroughly false.
And so it is. You cannot teach taste didactically, nor in de- tail. The nation can only acquire an intelligent love of art ac- cording to its own natural bent and its own good-will. If on didactic grounds you substitute good engravings for bad, the bad still being the popular kind, you will retain no result but to arrest the distribution of engravings. Before discriminating taste, you must have appetite: that grows by what it feeds upon ; and dis- crimination follows upon experience opportunity, and the prac- tice of selection. The limitation Which it is proposed to place upon the choice of pictures may save Art-Unions the discredit of such very scandalously absurd selections as we have seen,_ but it will go little way to amend the real taste of the public ; while the meddling of the State can only serve to bring ridicule upon its officers. It is not by operating on the individual minds of waver- ing prizeholders, or by dictating the prizes in a lottery, that the State can "encourage art." The true process is the very reverse. The Government that is desirous of advancing the national capacity for art can well do so by finding fit occasions for its exercise. Let it meddle lees in the details of trading competition between trading artists. A true sense of art will suggest, that on the erection of every pub- lic building, fitness and beauty should be essential elements of the structure, each after its kind ; and every artist of approved capa- city might in turn be employed. In this plan the State would lead the public taste by two methods,—by supplying the best ob- jects of contemplation ; and by setting an example in the selec- tion of workmen—an example only too certain to be followed. The works so obtained would be the best that the country could produce, the best that the public could appreciate; and the State would not have stepped, beneath its office, to mingle with the gos- sips of Art-Unions and be a didactic guide among a labyrinth of commonplaces.
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