ART IN OUR TOWNS.
THE splendid gift of Mr. J. T. Middlemore to Birmingham suggests alike the way in which wealthy men can serve the highest interests of the community and the way in which the community itself may receive the noblest educational in- fluences. Mr. Middlemore has offered to Birmingham some fine pictures of Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Mr. Watts— among greatest English painters since Turner—on condition that the municipality provides a suitable building for their reception. At present the very excellent Municipal Gallery of Birmingham (especially rich in the works of David Cox) is housed in the great public building in the centre of the city, but a large addition to its stores would necessitate much greater space, and a new edifice for the purpose will
be necessary. That the city which has built and sustaine the present gallery, the well-arranged Public Library, an the special Shakespeare Library will respond heartily t Mr. Middlemore's generous promise by providing a cask( for the proffered jewels, there can be little doubt.
We hope the casket will be worthy of the jewels, or, i other words, we trust that the homage paid by Birminghat to the art of painting will not be at the expense of the siste art of architecture. It is not only true that architecture i the basic art, the art of arts, but it is equally true that i exercises a more powerful educational effect than any othe for it impresses itself upon us whether we will or no. Glories as are the pictures at Florence, they have not probably exerte one tithe of the influence on Florentine life that has bee silently exercised through six long centuries by Giotto' Campanile or the soaring tower and noble battlements o the Palazzo Vecchio. At most a few citizens of Birming ham will linger each day before the exquisite creations o Mr. Watts's imagination, but thousands will pass by tb building which contains them, and will be insensibly in pressed by its meanness or its grandeur. As a matte of fact, except in the domain of domestic architecture England has not taken high rank as an architectural nation either in earlier or later times. We omit the beautifn cathedrals which were not so much a special product ()I English genius as the outcome of a noble inspiration whiel poured itself forth over Western Europe, and whose mom ments extend from Trondhjem to Seville. It is in municipa] architecture, above all, that the architectural genius of a people reveals itself, and it must be confessed that, with one or two exceptions, our products in this respect during out earlier history were few and mean. Recall, if you can, the extraordinary sensation produced upon you when you turn from the quaint, narrow street into the spacious piazza in which stands the grand Municipal Palace of Siena, record of genius, piety, and civic greatness, the source of inspiration to the mediasval city, and an object of pride and delight even to the poor inhabitants of to-day, who come to fill their pitchera at the lovely fountain. Think of the Hotel de Ville at Brussels, with its luxuriance of sculpture, the base and root, as Ruskin contends, of all architectural excellence. Think of Florence and Verona, of Ghent and Oudenaard, of that most beautiful structure in the picturesque square at Hildesheim, and then turn to our antique monuments (sucl few as there are), and contrast these with the glorious pro- ducts of Italy, Germany, and Flanders. But it is very little better when we come to modern architecture, by which we mean buildings erected during the last two centuries. 01 these, the earlier are perhaps the meanest structures by whick any country was ever disfigured, while the later, thougt showing improvement, are nevertheless, as a whole, common place. Our largest modern municipal building is probablj the Manchester City Hall, which contains one fine room but which outwardly is solid and useful, but dull and us imaginative. Contrast the cramped, intensely common place Mansion House with the superb Bath-haus of Vienne or Hamburg, the former built in line with noble palaces the latter with its heroic statuary looking on a spaciom square. We should scarcely go to America for example, of really good public architecture, but none of our moden buildings, so far as we can recall them, can be regarde( as so successful as the beautiful white Renaissano palace in which Boston has housed her noble library. I cannot be denied that the mass of our cities and towns presen a commonplace aspect, most of them a depressing aspect, du to the absence of impressive public architecture; there ar exceptions, but that is the rule. Birmingham has done sem
. good work in the centre of the town, and we hope that she inj add to this a still better piece of art work in the shape of a excellent gallery for Mr. Middlemore's noble gifts.
We should say that, so far as modern times are concerne our cities have been regarded too much as mere places to d business in and get out of as soon as business is over: On towns are, therefore, at a disadvantage as compared with th times when merchants lived over their warehouses, and nrei therefore more inspired with the civic feeling. To take purely utilitarian view of a city is fatal to many sides civic life, but it is above all things fatal to civic art. If a tow is nothing but an extended shop or warehouse, why troub about making its architecture noble or attractive P "square box order of architecture," as William Morris called it, is probably the most convenient for business purposes, as the hideous elevated railway is undoubtedly the most con- venient mode of travelling from one end to the other pro- vided you have straight and long streets as in New York and Chicago. And as the business community rushes out of town by suburban trains as soon as its work is over, the tendency has been to leave the city to desolation, and to plant the standard of beauty in the distant suburb, and that in the merely domestic form of a pleasant, often pre- tentious, but sometimes pretty villa. It has been left in London to the new hotels and clubs to supply that element of splendour and solidity in architecture which ought to be supplied by our public edifices. We have, in fact, exactly reversed the dictum of Plato that the citizen should live simply and quietly, and that wealth should be lavished on such buildings as are common property. During the last few years there has, indeed, been a notable reaction against this tendency, which we hasten gladly to recognise ; but what leeway we must make up be- fore our cities generally become what cities ought to be ! No doubt our dense clouds of smoke have spoiled the aspect of even such buildings as we have, and we live in hope that the development of industry on an electric instead of a steam basis may aid in the task of purifying our towns, without which we can have no impressive architecture. We do not expect impossibilities ; we cannot expect Man- chester to become like unto Florence, or Hull to blossom out into a Venice ; it is enough that some dignity of aspect be imparted to such towns suitable to our character and environ- ment as a people.
To return for one moment to the growth of art by means of pictorial exhibition. We can never establish more than a few great centres of pictorial art. We cannot take the master- pieces of Rome, Florence, Vienna, Paris, Dresden, London, Madrid, and dist ibute them among the cities of the world, for it would defeat the very aims of art itself, which in- volves great art centres as a means of educating artists themselves as well as of inspiring those who are not artists. But the modern methods of reproduction have reached such a pitch of perfection that it is now easy for any fair-sized town to stock an art-gallery with photographic reproductions, casts from the antique, engravings, Stc. The New Museum of Berlin, that most admirable and perfectly arranged col- lection of copies, illustrates on a great scale what can be done. Such an institution could be maintained in scores of English cities on a smaller scale, and it would be a perennial source of delight and instruction, growing in interest as the people grow in culture. The renascence of handwork in brass, copper, iron, and textile fabrics among our own people should also be taken advantage of by municipalities in order that each city may not only be a centre of trade and business, but also a nursery of ideas and a home of the noble and the fair. Industry, without art, is, as Mr. Ruskin has said, brutalising. With our huge growth in material luxury let as never forget that.
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