SECOND LETTER TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL ON SIR MARTIN SHEE'S PRIVATELY CIRCULATED ADDRESS TO HIS LORDSHIP.
My Loan—Permit me to ask you if any proceeding ever gave such proof of the mean, dark, underhand tendencies of the Academy, as the mode of printing and circulating this petty production? if their cause be the cause of sound art and tiuth, as my opposition has ever been, why was not a manly appeal nude to the nation ? They go about in the dark, insinuating that the people are coalheavers and rabble, and then affect in public and before a Committee to have the greatest regard for their taste ! Why ?—because, my Lord, while a dirty by-path is within reach, an Academician never can, never did, and never will walk boldly up the Queen's highway. A pretty compliment they pay yout Lordship in taking it for granted that your acute intellect would be Influenced by such a course !
Sir MARTIN SUER declares the evidence of WAAGEN and the architect of the Pinacotheca at Munich to be a farrago of impudence, ignorance, and conceit, as well as the evidence of the rest, in fact of all. I pronounce the Evidence and Report, and can prove it, to be the moat masterly state of the question yet put forth in Europe. It contains a mass of information; and if the Englishman of fashion would read it as lie ought, he would not be now, as he is, at the mercy of our Royal Academicians, and the least informed in art of any men of fashion in Europe. First, my Lord, it proves clearly the value of design to mantifartore second, it proves decidedly the want of a master inlaid to -direst-sin inansfar; turer, of which they all complain ; third, it proves irrefutably the want of national schools to instruct the manufacturer like the artist,—not like Mr. PouxErr THOMSON'S school, where, by the advice of the worthy Academi. cian, the manufacturer is instructed as if he was an inferior animal, and the human figure omitted. As to art, it ellows, first, the fatal consequences a the base intrigue on which the Academy can be proved to have been founded ; second, it lays open the pernicious effects of doubling the power of the portraitpainters, as HOGARTH predicted ; and, third, the absolute necessity of state interference to save high art from decay.
Thus far as to national art; and now, my Lord, for the tribunals who direct
and encourage it. In the fiat place, it lays open the insignificance of all committees and tribunal's hitherto, from whore joint concoction proceeded the beautiful National Scullery at Charing Cross; second, it points out the vast value of a competent tribunal, as in Greece ; third, it lays open to us all, that there can be no hope till the Academy be reduced, and each portion remodelled. I say this Evidence, and its admirable arrangement—each topic regularly classed under its proper head—contains more solid knowledge of the subject than was ever given to Europe before. It is conclusive on the value of schools of design for manufacture ; it is conclusive on the want of support for high art ; it is conclusive on the value of a tribunal ; it is fatal to the reign of the portrait.painters ; it is fatal to their despotism ; and it settles for ever their infamous betrayal of the trust confided ignorantly to them by GEORGE the Third for the benefit of the nation.
I refer your Lordship to the Evidence itself to bear out my character of it : and this is the evidence, given by some of the first men in Europe, that SHEF, an obscure artist till obtruded on the town as President of the Academy front the very negation of his ability, with talents only to fit him for vice.chairman of a debating club, presumes to tell Lord JOHN RUSSELL is " a farrago of ignorance, impudence, and conceit." Why, my Lord, a shout of derision, that should split open the North-west Passage, would not be half loud enough or contemptuous enuugb to express ley utter scorn of this low scurnlity. Alas, my Lord, he only establishes for ever his brazen impudence in the face of his country, to the disgrace of the body he has so wretchedly misdirected ; for it is owieg to his folly, his vanity, and his chatter, that the Academy has been brought into its present miserable contempt. " We do not want genius at our bead," said the body, when, the morning after SIIEE'S election, they were frightened at their own deed ; " we don't want genius." Allow me to congratulate Sir MARTIN on the sympathy of his brethren, and the flattering principles on which he was preferred to Sir DAVID WILKIE. Indeed, this body is composed of the greatest anomalies in moral philosophy to be met with in the world. As private individuals the members are amiable and honourable—" bons peres, buns muds; " as Academicians (without wishing to be personal) they are the very reverse. They form a species between the washed journeyman and the drtssed gentleman ; you at once distinguish them from the crowd. If they talk among themselves, it is planning how to thwart a rival. If you want to shake hands, they offer a cold, clammy, heartless forefinger. They never think but to devise some mode of giving pain ; never speak but to mortify ; never praise but to damn faintly ; and when their feelings boil up and become uncontrullable, so that they damn outright, it is because the talent they wish to destroy is too powerful to be undermined by ineinuation. And these are the men, my Lord, in whose hands have ignorantly been placed the destinies of British art, her taste in manufactures, and her prolific genius for seventy years. These are the men whom the venerable Earl GREY, in spite of reason and warning, installed in a National Gallery ; uttelly mis. taking the nature and objects of such an institution. These are the DIEU the Chancellor of the Exchequer determined to carry through all opposition, and did carry through, under pretence of the occupation of the building by the Academy being only temporary, though the walls were then actually erecting far a permanent residence: and SHEE tells us that he was assured, on competent authority, that the exchange nes to be on the same tenure as Somerset House. Really, my Loud, one's blood boils to see the way in which this selfish body has contrived to blast the fairest prospects in art a nation ever had. To think of their hindering the Cartoons (that admirable school for the taste of a nation) being lodged before the people's daily eyes ! For it was the perpetual pretences they thrust on the Chancellor of the Exchequer that taught him what excuse to make for the Cartoons not being placed in the National Gallery, when he was questioned privately or publicly ID the
House on this point. Surely, my Lord, neither your Lordship nor your colleagues can be aware of the nature of the despotism you have got to deal with— a despotism that renders the black eunuchs of the seraglio more manly, more independent, than the poor, eneakiug, praying, begging slave of an artist, who is condemned, before he can hope to obtain bread, to lick the dust from the feet of this Juggernaut, and swear the filth he swallows is like 11Iahornet's spittle— holy and sweet. Such a system engenders the bitterest and most malignant passions, and stifles every noble and generous feeling in a mean and abject subserviency. What is the consolation of the degraded man under such tyranny ? My Lord, it is this : he looks forward to inflicting on his brethren the humiliations he has himself been made to endure.
Sir MARTIN says the Academy will submit to any thing rather than open their dooms. Will they? that is extremely amiable. Therefore, as they are 3 private society, let them retire from the Gallery, taking with them their 40.000/. and their 7,000/. of this year, wherewith to build themselves an Academy. If, my Lord, they decline this; if the Queen and the Government consent that the Royal Academy—considering that it has cotne out so unsullied from the fire—considering its sound art and its high character in Europe—should receive money still, and that the people, being so much instructed by its annual "expo. sition " of tiptoes, ought to pay even twice, viz, first 50,000/. for a building, and then 7,000/. a year for seeing what is in it,-1 say, if her Majesty and her Government so decide, we, my Lord, will continue to pay ; only we may as well just hint (and there could be no criminality in such a proposal) it would not be very injurious, if, after out of this 7,000/. annual receipt, every expellee, pension, and necessity were paid, the surplus should be invested in the name of the nation, so that a fund be accumulated, and when it has reached a certaia sum, (say 10,000/0 that commissions should be g■ven and pictures bought in that style least supported. Such a plan, if properly managed, might prove in the end beneficial. Dues your Lordship suppose they will approve it ?—let their previous conduct, on all occasions when the encouragement of high art was proposed, answer for them. What has been their course as regards the late roily? They have declared their conviction before the Committee, that the Committee had no power to summon them—that they attended by leave of their Sovereign, and not by order of the Committee—that it wasjust to exclude six hundred artists, and to benefit by their labours, on retouching.thqs—that if forty members were enough sixty years ago, when there were not five hundred artists, forty was enough now when there were two thousand—that there was not an accusation proved against them—that they came away from the examination with the iespect and affection of all parties, by their tiiumphaut yin. dication. From such minds what can your Lordship hope? It is not wished to interfere with the 40,000/. accumulated under another understanding ; but surely, now that the Academicians have, under the direction of their able leader, suffered themselves to give up a building presented by the King—which rendered them in a:great degree independent of the public ; and with true nobleness of nature, placed themselves at the mercy of the People's
Representatives, they must submit to be controlled thereby, like other bodies, who benefit by public money. Surely, my Lad, nothing can be fairer than the proposition of accumulating a fund, for the benefit of art generally, out of the profits of the labours of six hundred artiste and sixty members—forty Academicians and twenty Associates—and thin sileociag the perpetual complaint of the neglect of high art, and relieving the Government of a reproach. This year 7,000/. has been received at the door of the Academy: 2,000/. of that might be laid aside as the nucleus of a fund to purchase fine works as they appear. I only suggest thia, supposing Sir Mawris's lamentation should pierce the heart of statesmen and royalty, and that out of compassion for the creatures the people are still content to pay their shillings.
To conclude, my Lord, one of two courses ought to he adopted : either the Academy should open its doors freely to the public, as in France—the nation incurring the annual expense of the exhibition—and the affainof the society be managed by a body elected by the artists and responsible to the Government ; or else the Academy should retire from a building which, after all, they only occupy on sufferance and pro tempore, and build themselves a gallery to exhibit as a private society. It is the anomalous character of this institution that works so much mischief. In their pretencledeharacter of a public corporation, they grant and withhold honours, claim precedence and privilege, rule with absolute sway over the rest of their brethren, and pocket the money paid from the public to see the works of such other artists as they please to exhibit in a national building; while their real character as a private society of individuals is put forward as an answer to any accusation of unfairness, as a bar to in. gutty, and a denial of the right to call in question their proceedings. They set themselves above the law, above public opinion, above the common call to act fairly, and plead the royal sanction for this monstrous usurpation of despotic power. My Lord, is this to be tolerated ? Will Queen VIcTORIA countenance such a flagrant abuse of her royal grandsire's good intentions, and of her own fair name? I humbly, but confidently, trust not. Let but the case of the artists and the public be fairly submitted to her Majesty, and justice will be done to the art and its professors.
I am, my Lord, your admirer and servant, B. R. HAVDON.
Previous page
