ART.
SCHOLARSHIP IN PAINTING.
THERE are several ways of dealing with paintings by the Old Masters. One way is to call attention to the most beautiful, with an attempt to define the predominant quality of their beauty, taking the label of the picture for granted, if it is not too absurd. That is the simple method followed in these columns, the writer of which has no pretensions to exact con- noisseurship. The discussion of the label is for the connoisseur, but its confirmation or contradiction does nothing to confirm or contradict an cesthetic judgment about the picture. This is surely an elementary proposition, and one would have thought it was also a proposition too elementary to be amplified on every occasion, that pictures, like architecture, depend for their most fundamental beauty on proportion and spacing, on that playing and composing with forms and masses which may be reasonably and shortly called the "music of spaces." But "C. R." being apparently without the sense for pictorial proportion, just as others are without an ear for the other music, thinks he can get rid of this esoteric nonsense about the music of spaces by discrediting the label, as who should set out to prove that honey was not sweet because the jar was labelled with the name of a manufacturer of salt. To arrive at this conclusion, possible only to one of his palate, he uses all the methods of the connoisseur, in a manner possible only to one of his logic. First, there was the method of documents. The critic of the Times had said the picture was "a wreck"—that is to say, the jar was said to have been smashed, therefore the honey wasn't sweet. The author of the article in the ninth edition of the Encyclopxdia hadn't mentioned the existence of this jar, therefore, &c. Supplied with fresh documents, the recondite pages of Kugler and Morelli, which asserted that the label was right enough, "C. R." fell back on the method of the comparative study of forms, making the amazing discovery that the figures in the two pictures labelled Melozzo in the National Gallery, are nearer one another than those in the Academy picture. He now, therefore, views documents with a suspicious eye, and is prepared to misapply a more advanced method, and with a smouldering resentment against the nonsense about the "music of spaces" he tries the fresh weapon. Two of the pictures are 5 ft. 11 in. in height by 3 ft. 4i in. in breadth, while that in the Academy is 51 in. by 83 in. How can the honey be sweet if the jars are not the same size ?
In the camp-following of the connoisseurs there is apt to be a considerable number of people with less simplicity and more pretension than "C. R." ready, on the strength of a volume of Morelli, and of a few mechanical tests, Leonardo's shading from left to right, the square nails of Botticelli, the long ears of somebody else, to dogmatise about the authorship of pictures. But it is a pity that the incompetent camp-follower should throw discredit on real research and knowledge, and an exhibition like the present splendid collection of Italian Art at the New Gallery points to the desirability of this research and knowledge being taken more seriously in England. Here is an exhibition which might, by arrange- ment and labelling according to knowledge, have been of double the educational value it is now, both to. the artistic
and scientific student of painting. As it is, it appears that the general level of knowledge or conscience is still so little influenced by those who do know, that the owners of pictures can refuse to have them catalogued under probable names. How different it would have been if some competent specialist like Dr. Richter had been invited to give reasonable attri- butions to the pictures, and to exclude or stamp copies and forgeries. But the vanity or cupidity of owners will not submit to this till the existence of expert knowledge on the subject is more fully recognised. One inconvenience of such a state of things all students of art would admit. How often it has happened to us all in extreme youth to suffer a bitter bewilderment over some work of art which was labelled with a great name, and in which it was impossible to discover the qualities that authority assigned to the name. Think of one's mixed sensations before the" cartoons of Raphael," for instance. That is an unfortunate obstruction in the way of the beginner, even more puzzling than when a work of art, rightly assigned, is praised for the wrong qualities. How bewildered must the trustful beginner be who goes through the New Gallery with his catalogue, and sadly scrutinises the things called Leonardo or Raphael !
Every artist who is frank would probably admit so much, but would doubtless add that he very quickly came to neglect names and attributions and critical authorities, and to de- pend upon his own admiration. And one finds that artists generally take up an attitude of disbelief or contempt to- wards the science of the connoisseur, which is partly justified by their experience, but which is not altogether reasonable. Their feelings may be expressed in three propositions :— (1.) That the knowledge is not real.
(2.) That, if real, it is worthless.
(3.) That, if not worthless to every one, it is worthless to artists.
The first position cannot be very seriously maintained. The reality of knowledge is most convincingly proved by feats in the reconstruction of fragmentary works of art. Thus, suppose a specialist on Greek art set down before a little heap of fragments of a painted vase. He finds among these fragments the curly tail of a sow and the shoulders of a human body with a bull's head. He knows at once that he has to do with the labours of Theseus, and by comparison with other examples illustrating that story he can determine the order, position, and significance of the various fragmentary figures. The problems for the student of painting are not of quite the same nature, but by means of a picture he can establish a connection between a number of scattered draw- ings and determine the authorship of one or the other, and in many similar ways determine facts with a degree of certainty that varies with the evidence. It is knowledge of this kind that is slowly affecting the arrangement and the cataloguing of our public galleries. The old slump-names- Raphael, Titian, Bellini, are being ielieved of imitators and disciples, and these discriminated one from another by a knowledge of their certainly authentic work.
The connoisseurs, then, can make out a good case for the pos- session of real knowledge and for their scientific use of evidence to arrive at probable or certain conclusions. But, says the artist, all this knowledge is worthless. It cannot prove a picture good or bad. That is a matter of direct tasting, and the connoisseur is frequently without a palate. This is to ignore the fact that there are people to whom a scientific interest is as much as an artistic to him. It is to object to the chemist analysing sugar, because analysing cannot prove or disprove it sweet. That is not what the analyst proposes. He is so made that it is a pleasure to him to find out the relations and connections of things, to establish links, to trace the history of ideas. All this study has a right to exist for its own sake, and is only out of place if by a confusion of thought the analyst draws an msthetic conclusion from scientific premises. And yet he might not be so very far out, because to trace back the lines of artistic production is to return to the Masters; the anatomy and skeleton of history in a broad review proclaims them ; where the bees haunt most, upon their tracks and thoroughfares, there, it may be argued, lies the honey.
But if this knowledge is interesting to the scientific student, is it of any use to the artist It is like asking whether the labours of the textual critic, the grammarian, the scholiast, are of any value to the reader of the classics as litera- ture. Is it nothing to have the classics of painting collected, arranged in historical perspective, the forgeries that dull a reputation detected, glosses noted, frag- ments piously edited ? After all, there is a middle term between painter and connoisseur, and that is scholar. In literature, we applaud the artist who, though not a scholar technically, has the scholarly sense and habit of language. In painting it were to be wished that such a habit and sense were more often apparent. It is true that the word " scholarly " is often in the months of critics. It is used indifferently with "learned," to denote the painting of antiquity. This is like calling Mark Twain scholarly because he describes the Pyramids. Or it is used of those who are scholars of their art as understood by the Academy of the last fifty years. It is necessary to go further back ; and anything that incites and encourages to a discrimination of style, and a close attention to the ways that the Masters have taken and avoided, must be good for the painters of our time. It is amazing how little such knowledge and attention are common, and it is glaring how desirable they are. Scholar.. ship, then—the knowledge and culture of the art—is the common ground on which painter and connoisseur may meet to mutual advantage, and without too much misunder- standing; for the artist is no better for being without the knowledge which the connoisseur makes easier for him, and the first-rate connoisseurs cannot be without taste.
There is a practical point related to this subject that is also raised by a great historical collection like that at the New Gallery. Such a collection is usually commemorated by an expensive publication containing reproductions of a few pictures. Of these, perhaps one or two are desired, whether by the student or the artist. How much better would be some contrivance by which cheap photographs of all the important pictures could be obtained separately. It is curious how little this immense aid to study has been organised. It is possible now, at South Kensington, to obtain the photo- graphs of Alinari, after buildings and sculpture, at Gd. each. But for some reason, neither Alinari's photographs after Florentine, nor Naya's after Venetian, pictures, nor the corresponding collections at Siena, &c., obtainable for 5d. each in Italy, are to be had. In the interests of scholarship, photograph libraries ought to be organised, at which cheap reproductions alike of pictures and drawings might be bought. An album of photographs is more to the artist
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