FINE ARTS SECTION OF THE PARIS EXHIBITION.
Grand displays of universal industry, such as that of which England gave-the example in 1851, and that which makes Paris the present centre of attraction, may be expected to recur more frequently than collections of fine art organized on the enormous scale of the one which completes the circle of human endeavour represented in the French Exhibition, and whose memory will long continue to render that illustrious. Unique hitherto, this collection can hardly fail to remain so for years to come. The painters, sculptors, architects, and engravers of our day, and the possessors of their works, have here made such an effort as the present generation even may not live to see repeated ; and some of the masters have assembled their masterpieces so copiously that to do the like within a brief interval would be to reexhibit the same works. For another competition so striking at once by excellence and by largeness we may have to wait until the seniors now before us in the arena shall have passed away, the young men become the old men, and aspirants yet un- tried replaced them.
In our present glance at the contents, we shall endeavour to elicit some standard of art, and to characterize the several schools in their varying relation to it ; to ascertain their point of contact ; and to take a lesson from the mighty show.
First, the statistics merit a word of comment. France contributes 2628 works, of which 1832 are paintings ; England 783, a number exceeding by about 150 that of all the German states collectively. Belgium comes next with 251. Turkey is the smallest contributor, being represented by one painting and two architectural subjects. As regards France, it is not to be forgotten, whether we look to the quantity or to the quality of her productions, that she stands here in an exceptional position. Other na- tions have drawn upon their previous stores; France sends not only the approved works of her past, but those, yet untested, of the present,— the annual exhibitions of 1854 and 1855 being merged into this Great Fixhibition. Hence a first appearance of artistic fertility altogether dis- proportionate to that of other countries—greater even than the really vast activity of the nation in this line, or the other circumstances of the competition, would account for ; and hence also, it may be, a more mis- cellaneous assemblage than the French would have desired to get together as examples of their mature powers. On this latter point, however, the candid observer will admit either that extreme stringency must have been exercised in the exclusion of mediocre works from the section pertaining to the last two years, or that the average of French talent is far ahead of that of other nations: and, without discrediting the first cause, we be- lieve that the second has been quite as potent in its operation.
Herein, indeed, appears to us to lie the great distinction of French art from the rest—it is beyond rivalry the most competent. The average French artist is a highly efficient man, and not a blunderer like the ave- rage artist of other countries. He may not intrinsically be any better than his neighbours—may not boast any more imagination, or fancy, or invention, or feeling, or elevation, or understanding of nature ; but he knows himself and his profession better. He has, in the first place, a distinct apprehension of what it is that he aims at doing whether his-
tory, genre, landscape, or animal life, his subject at once assumes shape, consistency, and intelligibility. As for the means of realizing what he wants, he has them at his fingers'-ends. The result may be, and mostly is, cold, violent, affected, or even offensive ; but it is seldom down- right stupid or incapable. Often a failure in regard to its subject, the work is not a failure in regard to the artist's conception of the sub- ject ; as far as he has seen into that, he enables others to see it through his rendering. What he knows, that he performs. However much his energies may in the abstract have been misdirected they have still, in a limited view of immediate cause and effect, been judiciously husbanded and applied ; for the upshot is on the whole what he intended it to be. According to this view, the French school must be pronounced the leading technical school of Europe at the present day ; and that conclu- sion we feel no hesitation in adopting. There is such an organization among the French, such clearness, readiness, and activity, such famili- arity with old forms and methods, and such ease in applying the know- ledge to the production of works of whatever scale or character, as to place the nation at the head of art considered in the light of a system of processes and expedients. An accepted dictum among English artists is the insensibility of the French to grace of execution. The technical mastery is admitted ; but it is held to be displayed without feeling or eubtilty, without that delight which lingers over the task and dwells with kindness upon its de- lieacies and minuter passages. There is truth in the censure, although it has been applied more broadly than the facts will warrant. It is rather to the confessed grandees of the French historical schools, men who be- long in some measure to the past, that the objection reaches, than to the younger schools of landscape or cabinet subjects. Breadth, however, is undoubtedly one main quality of the French art, to which hardly any of its approved practitioners fail to direct their study. Breadth, one may readily concede, is more conspicuous throughout the school than fineness of execution,—a sombre, dose, confined tone of oolour, more than air, fancy, or brilliancy ; and, while eminent skill exists in characterizing whatever object may be represented, a certain uniform handling, often flat and heavy and regardless of texture, is to be regretted. Admitting therefore, and for the moment even without reservation, that the French is not a school of executive beauty, we have to consider how far such an admission is compatible with the leadership of technical excellence which we claim for it. At first sight, it should appear that the eminently technical school must be the eminently executive as a consequence : end so it is in efficiency, but not in tone and scope. The technical ability, being possessed in rich measure, is ueed as a means, not cherished as an aim ; it is wielded with precision, sureness, and quickness, not elabo- rated with affection and ingenuous pleasure; and, having served its turn as a method of expression, it is laid aside at the point where its intrinsic virtues would make it delightful for its own sake. And here we come to the paramount question, "What is the ea- Bence and legitimate function of formative and pictorial art ? " Ac- knowledging in its fullest sense the axiom that the greatest artist is he who embodies the greatest ideas, we have still to ask, What are those ideas to be ? We would answer—Ideas of form, colour, and expression.
The man who has observed most in nature, who has the most deeply and nobly felt what he has observed, and renders that with the most exquisite and absolute intensity, he is the greatest man in high art. This no teach- ing, no learning, from any so-called school of art, can supply. It is based only on the most single-hearted devotion to nature, and comes straight from the inmost vitals of her explorer ; it constitutes his very being, per- ception, and self. And thus a head or a drapery of Titian, a sky of Turner, a tint of Giorgione, or a stone surface of Veronese, a background of Durer, or a foreground of Van Eyck, a contour of Phidias, or an expres- sion of Giotto, Angelico, or Raphael, is more completely and perfectly high art than the best-invented and best-told story of an Italian or French master, or all the philosophy of history and religion which a modern German, much seeking and much cogitating, promulgates in strict form and chastised colour ex cathedia. Fine art is the profound perception of a visible truth communicated by the percipient ; and the invention which
forms its highest element unites the perceiving faculty BO intimately with the conceiving, that it may almost be termed the directest and *cutest act of perception—possible in its fulness to how few men, one here and one there, in a generation !
It is on these grounds that we regard the English school as a true and a hopeful one—the most hopeful in Europe in reference to its future pos- sibilities. Of invention, indeed, it has little to boast ; of systematized knowledge, little. But, of all existing schools, it is the most open to new impressions—the most free in receiving, the least fettered by dogma or preconception in applying them. Small in sphere, loose in manner, unin- tellectual in tendency, it yet maintains a certain independence, and looks round, not through authorized spectacles, but with clear eyes. If hardly original, it is nevertheless, on the whole, unsectarian, and willing to trust its own impulses, and to learn of nature through the eye rather than re- ceive traditions of her through the ear. It would rather, generally speak- ing, not construct theories of form or colour, but paint as it sees—often feebly, often negligently, but still not perversely. And the result makes itself manifestly apparent in the Paris Exhibition ; where to pass from the Germanic and French schools to the British, is to pass from dim woolliness or smoothness, and from louring half-tint, to something that hints of air, daylight., and emancipation.
These, in fact—the French, the German, and the English—constitute the three great divisions of living art, to one or other of which all the contributing nations may broadly be assigned. France, supreme above all followers, leads Belgium, Spain, Italy. The art of the United States is mongrel, that of the Netherlands little beyond the drains of its past peculiar eminence : but they lean to France rather than to either of the other countries. The French school has two main branches, the his- toric and the picturesque ; the first distinguished by reflective power and comprehensive ability, the second by breadth, 'vigour, movement, and a striking grasp of effects realized with the 131111111111111 of labour. In its special quality of picturesqueness it is altogether unrivalled, and any British works to which that attribute may be ascribed seem child's play and mummery in comparison. Germany, herself composed of so many dis- tinct states, has her following in Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway ; although some of the best works, especially from the two latter countries, exhibit more of the French influence. Her characteristics are intellectual effort and observation in domestic life ; both, however, deve- loped under conditions rather negative than otherwise man artistic sense.
England stands alone, a power, but without satellites; the nearest ap- proach to a literal resemblance to her being perhaps observable where one would hardly have expected it-in the tone of Spanish colouring; which, in the untempered clearness of some of its specimens, possesses a certain superficial look of the British principle. Spite, however, of national differences and the hinderance of academic tradition and example, there appears a common and growing tendency in the entire aggregate of the schools. This tendency is distinctly towards Realism-as the thing, less easily defined than apprehended, is now called in France. It takes the special form, in France, of singular vigour and massive breadth ; earnest observation and rapid seizing of natural effects in landscape; motion, power, and animal impulse in man-life and brute- life ; to which is added, in extreme instances, a preference of subjects ordinary even to insignificance, and an obvious avoidance of accepted rules of composition. In England, the Prreraphaelite movement need but be named. In Germany, the movement likewise so-called Pros- raphaelite has taken a quite different direction ; but here too some share iii a similar influence is indicated, though more faintly, in a frequently overdone introduction of detail, together with the truthfulness and good humour whichAsomewhat chilly as they may be, distinguish the domestic
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Of the:building which encloses the great Parisian muster of the fine arts little need be said, except that, temporary in its purpose, it is eminently well adapted for it. Long external chambers lead inwards into vast saloons, all crowded with paintings ; France, Great Britain, and Austria, have distinct apartments for the display of their sculpture; and a single upper gallery receives, with occasional oil-pictures, the water-colours, pastels, engravings, and architectural drawings. Clear, equal, and ample light falls over the whole from windows in the ceiling.
The first impression produced upon the mind by an art-collection so vast is one chiefly of bewilderment. Gradually this subsides. Countries which you hardly knew as occupying any station in art succeed each other,-none, or scarcely any, altogether without merit, some display- ing even a high degree of technical attainment ; the greater lights come before you, full of endeavour, of talent, of novelty, or what strikes at first as novelty through being at all events less familiar than the form of art subsisting at home. How huge an amount of human toil, aspiration, ability, and observation, is represented by these works You feel tolerant-liberal : faults indeed and shortcomings abound, but almost everything has its worth, expresses something clearly, strongly, or agree- ably, and claims consideration for one reason or another. This mood also changes. The first things that become absolutely insufferable are pre- tentious religious or historical works : smooth landscapes, commonplace subjects from life, French cleverness and display, German hardness and quietism, English emptiness and namby-pamby, follow in their wake at a rapidly increasing rate. Then arises the question-These roods and acres of psunted canvass, these tons of chipped stone, what is to become of them ? Does the world want them ? How long will it endure to give them warehouse-room ? New hundreds year by year enter upon the pur- suit of art; paint pictures, carve statues, gain prizes, win applause, realize money-but to what use ? What does it all mean-these brawny fighting men, these nymphs of a dead mythology, green trees, foolish con- ceits, pruriences, and makebelieves ?
Before you have got half way through the exhibition, tolerance is clean gone. You perceive with sufficient distinctness that a clever fellow, if he is nothing more than that, has no title whatever to perpetuate his cleverness on canvass or in stone. The inevitable and salutary necessity becomes palpable that an enormous amount of talent applied to art, unless highly original, singularly complete, or religiously faithful, should die into oblivion generation after generation. Such is one chief lesson of the Maks des Beaux Arts. You digest at the refreshment-table, with a brioche and a glass of limonade gazeuze, the conviction that third-rate art is an unmitigated nuisance ; and, by the time of stepping out into the Champs Elysees, you are more than half minded to include the second- rate in the same verdict.
But the first-rate and the strikingly individual shine forth more and more richly as the others sink; and to these we shall return at a future opportunity.
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