LECTURES ON ART.*

THERE are some books, as there are some sculptures and some pictures, which miss their mark in a manner which is at first incomprehensible. With all the qualities that "deserve suc- cess," these works fail utterly to " command it ;" and it must be ' remembered that we here speak not of the success estimated by popular favour, but that of the far more certain kind which is recognised. in the merit of the work by the few who are capable and desirous of appreciating it. These failures would be incom- prehensible, were it not that our every-day life supplies us with a parallel to them. Who has not kuown one at least of those unfortunate people who, with every desire to say the right thing, and possessed of every educational and social advantage to enable theta to discover what the right thing is, yet con- sistently manage to wounil their hearers' feelings, to arouse every pettiness of auger or vanity, to irritate when they would soothe, depress when they would encourage, and mock when they would console ! Have we not all known them, these good, well- meaning, but oh ! how vexatious people; and has it not been the least annoying part of their character that they have been kind and careful husbands, dutiful sous, loving and obedient daughters P Blameless as they are in every relation of life, we straggle to make their good qualities dear to us, we repeat con- stantly to ourselves that they are good and kind, and after all, we take every opportunity of escaping from their presence, and avoiding their advice.

Such, we say, is the parallel that life offers us to these books, which, beiug written with adequate pains and strong sense of duty, by authors who, as we have every reason to believe, are devoted to their subjects, end who are supposed to be fully acquainted with them, yet fail to win even a passing gratitude jot their industry and, their earnest- ness, which s6'etn, somehow, always to say the wrong thing in the wrong manner, of which the humour is more dreary than another's pathos, and the knowlege loss instructive than another's ignorance. Of such books, the most typical example is now before us, The lectures of the late Mr, Henry Weekes, MN., Professor of Sculpture in the Royal Academy, are those delivered to the students of that institution during the Professor's term of offi.ce, and touch, in name at least, upon all the most important points to be considered in the practice of sculpture. "Composition," "Beauty," "Taste," " Style," "Ideal- ism and Realism," " Colour in Sculpture," "Education," " Por- traiture," such are came& the titles of the more prominent essays. We are a little doubtful its to which of these essays is best illustrative of our author's excellencies and defects ; but let us. choose the one on " Bounty," as that is, after all, the great test, by his ideas npon which a sculptor must be judged. If we can gain even some slight notion of what beauty is, or is not, from Mr, IvIreckes's words, we have undoubtedly a sufficient excuse for this republication of his lecture. If, on the other hand, he fails to make this great quality of Art any clearer to his readers ; if he only involves in further obscurity a matter already suf- ficiently obscure, we ellen be justified, we think, in wishing that the worthy sculptor's utterances had boot left to die that Lecturra aro AO. By Henry Wookm London Bioken and Bait.

natural and easy death which is the fate of most profeesional lectures.

To begin with, our author modestly tells his hearers that he is not certain that he shall " be able to lay before them a theory that shall be altogether unexceptionable. Many objec- tions can be raised against it—objections that may at first appear insurmountable, but which, I fancy, when viewed in a broader light, will be found to be mere sophistry, the quibblings of a narrow-minded arguer who looks at things through the shadow of his own personal prejudices."

Then, after glancing at the Greek notion that phyeical beauty was indicative of moral excellence, NS e have, on the fifth

page of the essay, the candid question put and. answered,- " What is Beauty P Beauty is utility P" The method by which our author endeavours to establish the above conclusion is as follows :—He takes a man as illustration, and then tells us " to examine him from head to foot, and. we shall find the two, Beauty and. Utility, running hand. in hand all through. His head is on high, above that of all other creatures, so that he may look out straight forward on the world; his features are corn- pact, contained within the smallest possible compass, that none may be liable to injury. His eyes, deeply set uuder his brow to protect thorn from the light, and. that they, again, may he exposed as little as possible to danger ; his nose, for the same reason, may be said to be most beautiful when, like that of the Greek statues, it is perpendicular, with little or no projection, and so less exposed to injury," &a, throughout the body.

But surely, not to mention other matter, this argument con- demns itself. If berafty alai utility arc one, surely a man would be more beautiful if he had eyes in the back of his head as well as the front, or was able to screw his head, round over his back-bone, like a cock-robin. If his nose is most beautiful when it is least exposed to injury, we must all confess an inferiority in loveliness to our hairy ancestor, the orang-outang, who, practically, has no nose at ; and even in the matter of eyes, the simian tribe would have us frequently at a disadvan- tage. Surely, if the deep-sunken eye is safer, andhence more beauti- ful, than a moderately prominent one, all sculptors, artists, and indeed mankind, in general, have been mistaken during the whole of history.

Bat not to dwell upon the self-contradiction of the theory, and the argnment advanced in support of it, let Us ask our-

selves what is its exact meaniug,—what use is it, offered, as it is, to students ? Here our author helps us, foe he puts hie theory into words applicable to sculpture, and tells the students that the 'beauty of their work must lie in the representing all the organs of the living being in the state most suited to the use they are intended for," Carefully analysed, this means simply that the beauty of a sculptor's work lies in representing the organs of the body in a healthy condition. Why, of course it does, in as far as a healthy condition is opposed to an unhealthy one,—but no farther. No. one supposee, or ever did suppose, or ever (we hope) will suppose, that an organ in disease is in a state of beauty, other things being equal,

though there. are certain indications of disease, such as the

flush of the consumptive cheek and the glitter of the ex- cited eye, which have an intense beauty of their own, independent of, and, indeed, quite opposed to, their utility.

But be tell young sculptors that beauty lies in depicting healthy organs, is much the same thing as to toll an author that Shakespeare's knowledge and Shelley's charm lie in correct

grammatical phraseology ! It is quite certain that an un- grammatical Shakespeare or Shelley would lose much, if not

all, of his beauty, but not for that reason does the beauty lie in the grammar. Beauty and utility go together often enough, like good grammar and good. thought ; but the one is by no means an invariable accompaniment to the other, much less is it the other in another form,—

" Ortlo%N, Ns . ihnt, uses shall we put the wild weed flower, that simply b Amid is there ally moral shut within the bosom of the rose m ? Yet any man that walks the mead, in bud, or blade, or bloom, may fi According as his humours load, a moaning suited to his mind; And liberal adaptations lie in Art, as Nature, dearest friend ; So %wore to cramp its worth, if I (or Mr. Weekea) Should hook it

to some useful end,"

Beauty is utility I How, on such a theory, are the "lines of sunset" lovelier than the grey rain-cloud, or why do we enjoy the dash of the breakers almost in proportion to their de- structiveness? Beauty is utility ! And yet the "Tatocoon"

has stood writhing in eternal agony and perfect beauty for hundreds of years, and the " Venus " of Milo, with no arms or feet, and a body chipped by bullets and pick- axes, still moves us beyond all the completed statues with perfect organs of all time. Indeed, upon this theory our author condemns himself, by his art, no less than his words,—for look at his ideal statue' of Cleopatra, a photograph of which is in this work, and the disposition of the drapery therein. What- ever it be intended for, it is not for utility, for not only does it leave half the body bare, but is so disposed that at the least movement it would all tumble off.

Mr. Week-es goes on for several pages, but, as may be imagined, gets no farther than a restatement, in other words, of the theory we have been discussing. Is it necessary for us to show wherein his great error lay P It was evidently that he was confounding in his own mind the beauty of propriety of ges- ture and fitness of form with the wholly different matter of grace or loveliness, or, as he calls it, beauty. A man. may be perfectly built for running, and yet not be a runner ; and in the same way, the propriety of gesture and fitness of form may be all there, and fail to give the total impression which we call beauty. As far as utility goes, Mr. Frith's " Tenby Shrimp- women " are more perfect than Fred Walker's "Peasant Girls;" but will any one say that they are more beautiful? It is quite true that in a statue the power of effecting the given purpose and the healthy development of the body goes a good way towards producing beauty, but it does not go far enough; a certain amount of ideal feeling, of passion, and of thought,—all seem to be required in a great statue, though how these manage to pass into the lifeless marble from the sculptor's hands is a great mystery. Great sculpture, like great painting,

must always have its chiefest merit uncatalogued and -un- cataloguable,—it must always be that which Emerson hints at,

when he says of the ancient sculptor and architect,—

" The passive master lent hi s hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned.

Himself from God he could not free ; He builded better than he knew ; The conscious stone to beauty grew."

It is just the want of this which condemns this work ; it says the -wrong thing in the wrong place, because the author was the wrong man in the wrong place. A respectable, praiseworthy, con- scientious, hard-working, good man is this,—yet he was nothing less than he was an artist, and so his lectures lack that one first requisite of good lectures,—that is, interest. On every page we .do justice to the hard work and good intentions of the author, and yet on every page he bores Us steadily and continuously. If a sculptor could have been made by steady work under such .a master as Chantrey, no doubt Weekes would have accomplished ; but such an effect could hardly be hoped. for, and as a matter of fact, the highest word of praise which can be truly given to our author's artistic work is that damning one,—

4' respectable." The same word may be applied to this series of lectures, which we must consider it to have been a mistake

to republish in a collected form.