330 IDENTIFICATIOX OF THE ARTISAN AND ARTIST. 



versy tlieu tliau I am at tlie present moment; and it was pleasing, 

 therefore, to see that there was no feeling on the subject which could 

 make it be apprehended as unpleasant for those young men to come to 

 us. Bodies of those young men used to come to St. Mary's with letters 

 from their principal, couched in the most courteous terms, asking, as a 

 favor, that his students might be allowed to attend the establishment, 

 which could have very little other merit to many than as it was filled 

 with works of art ; and on one occasion he informed me that, when any 

 of the students of his house were particularly well-conducted, and had 

 esi)ecially distinguished themselves, the best reward he could give them 

 was to send them with a letter to us, to come and see Oscott College. 

 Now, it will give you all pleasure to know that this generous, liberal, and 

 gentlemanly-minded individual, the head of that neighboring college, 

 was — the Rev. Prince Lee. 



One thing more, I will observe, is important^ — that we must not nar- 

 row the sphere of art. There is a tendency to do so in this practical scheme 

 of education. I observed in the late report, which may be considered 

 as a programme of the department of practical art, that there are 

 prizes proposed for artistic designs in three different departments — for 

 printed garments, fabrics for carpets, and for paper-hangings. Now, 

 one of the conditions of the four drawings to be sent in to compete for 

 the prize in all three instances is this : "the designs to be flat, not imita- 

 tive, but conventional, without relief, shadow, or perspective." Now, 

 that is the mediaival i)rinciple, and cannot apply to other styles of art; 

 and you arc narrowing the sphere of art if you dictate, as a necessary rule 

 of all designs in those three departments of productive art, that there 

 shall not be relief or perspective in the painting; that the flowers must 

 all be of one color, and that there must be no shadow, and no attempt 

 to copy nature, but that the forms must be all "conventional," that is, 

 such as a rose spread out into four parts, with a point between them, 

 and the lily changed into a fleur-de-lis, and no natural forms to be truly 

 imitated. Now, it is folly to think of competing with French art if our 

 artisans are to be educated- on that princii)le, because the beauty of de- 

 sign where nature is copied — where the flower glows in its own colors — 

 will carry the taste of the public, and I think rightly, in preference to a 

 series of flat and unshaped designs. I think it is a wrong principle; and 

 why? Artists will tell you that the carpet is nothing more than a back- 

 ground for the furniture; that the hanging of a wall, paper or whatever 

 it may be, is nothing but a background for the furniture ; and therefore 

 that these must be quiet and of a lower tint, with nothing brilliant, and 

 no attempt at the representation of natural objects. Now, I deny this 

 principle; they are not background. The i^apering of the wall is in the 

 place of the ancient painting on the wall ; and I do not see why, if you 

 only avoid whatever may offend the eye — such as false perspective — 

 there should not be all the beauty and glow of natural objects given to 

 the ])ictured papering of the wall. If we are to collect museums, to put 

 before our young artists specimens from the paintings of Pompeii, and 



