Jan. 5, 1883.] 



KNO^A/LEDGE • 



THE BELT CASE. 

 By Richard A. Proctor. 



OF the personal relations involved in tliis trial I have 

 nothing to say ; they are outside Knowledge, as 

 they are outside my personal knowledge. But certain 

 highly important general principles are in^olved which 

 fall within our lield ; and of these I propose briefly to 

 speak. 



In the first place, it is to be noted that the office dis- 

 charged by Vanitij Fair, in publicly announcing what was 

 widely whispered in artistic circles, and wluit it believed 

 to be true, fell undeniably within the dutiesof such a journal 

 -not among the pleasautest duties, and therefore requiring 

 prompt and ready discharge. In expressing its own belief 

 in the rumours referred to, our contemporary most carefully 

 spoke of them as rumours only, and based all that was 

 said in the way of censure, on the condition that the 

 rumours being true could be substantiated if challenged. 

 I take it that the existence of these rumours was a far 

 more serious matter for Mr. Belt than such public reference 

 to them as gave him opportunity to deny them point-blank 

 and challenge any man to substantiate them. Had this been 

 done, and the challenge either suffered to pass unmet, or, 

 being met, successfully sustained, Mr. Belt would, I 

 conceive, have owed a debt of gratitude to Vanity Fair, for 

 giving to " things unsubstantial " such form as would 

 permit of their being grappled with and overcome. 



!My main point, however, relates to the views advanced hy 

 Baron Huddleston respecting the validity of artistic criti- 

 cism. The opinion of Aristotle respecting the relative worth 

 of public and artistic opinion as to the general value of a 

 work of art, is doubtless sound. Apart from the 

 reasons given by Aristotle, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Froudc, 

 and others, works of art are made for the public, and must 

 be judged by the public. Neither, on the one hand, can 

 self-esteem or the friendly feeling of a brother-artist force 

 on the public as good what the general taste (not neces- 

 sarily sound) rejects as unsatisfying ; nor, on the other, 

 will the criticism of censorious, perliaps rival, artists cause 

 the public to reject as unpleasing what it has accepted with 

 approval. But it is also true that the public, unbiassed by 

 personal feelings, is apt to form a sounder general judg- 

 ment, despite the absence of artistic training, than rival or 

 brother artists. 



Besides, the opinion of what may call the artistic 

 public, is generally based on wider considerations than 

 those that guide the artist himself. A man of cultured 

 mind brings to his judgment of a painting or a statue 

 (half unconsciously perhaps) not only a wide study of many 

 paintings and many statues in many different schools (the 

 painter or sculptor being usually a specialist in a single 

 school), but the influence of artistic and literary studies 

 outside mere painting or sculpture. Poetry, history, travel, 

 even music and science, have their influence on his judg- 

 ment. Yet even here, where Aristotle's opinion is sound 

 enough, it must be admitted that the general public needs 

 artistic training to improve and purify its taste in matters 

 artistic. It is among the niisfortunes of art in our day 

 that it too often follows instead of leading the public mind. 



But Baron Huddleston went altogether beyond what 

 Aristotle, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others have said on 

 the subject of professional vrsus public judgment. A rnan 

 of culture may form a sounder opinion of the general 

 qualities of a work of art than the artist himself, just as 

 I can form a better opinion of the table at which I am 

 writing than upholsterers or cabinet-makers. He may 

 even give the artist useful hints in matters belonging to 



his art, just as I might (for instance) tell a table-maker 

 tliat his custom of putting sharp angles to table-legs 

 at the level of the knees is an outrage on common sense, 

 and more provocative of theological remarks (absurd as 

 applied to tables) than any known upholstery practice on 

 the face of the earth. But the man of sense accepts 

 artistic criticism unhesitatingly in such ujatters as tech- 

 nique, style, quality of work in details, and so forth. 1 

 am shown a painting which pleasingly presents a noble 

 landscape ; I see that effects of light and shade, distance 

 and nearness, are truly given, the forms correct, the air, the 

 sky, the rocks, and trees, and streams, justly and efl'ectivcly 

 rendered. It does not trouble me if Mr. Envy (though 

 perhaps an R.A., or A.R.A) says : "It would be a charming 

 picture if the fellow knew how to paint." But if Mr. 

 Experience tells mo of defects of execution which must 

 cause the picture before long to deteriorate, finds the 

 painting thin, the method of attaining efl'ects im- 

 perfect, shows nic that the picture will not bear to 

 be looked at in certain aspects, and so forth, I 

 must accept his judgment, just as I must accept 

 the judgment of a furniture maker who shows that a 

 piece of furniture is untit for certain purposes which it 

 ought to subserve. And if this is so of such points, much 

 more is it the case in such matters as were submitted to 

 artistic opinion during the Belt trial. To set the opinion 

 of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, cleric, legal, medical, or 

 perhaps mercantile, on questions of touch and style in 

 painting or sculpture, against the judgment of men who 

 have given the best part of their time for years to w-ork 

 involving constant practice in deciding such questions, is 

 surely as absurd as it would be to ask a painter to 

 settle a scientific cruj: (Mr. Brett, for instance, to tell 

 us about the atmosphere of Venus), or to take the 

 opinion of literary guests as to the make of 

 the china on your table, against the verdict of half- 

 a dozen dealers in china who pronounced it the work 

 of such and such a Arm or factory. Any one who knows 

 wliat modelling in the clay is, will see that the way in 

 which the unanimous verdict of eminent sculptors during 

 the recent trial was finally dealt with, involved an even 

 greater absurdity. A clay bust shall be worked at for 

 hours before your eyes by a tyro, and then the master, 

 passing his fingers lightly over it, will, with a touch here 

 and there, a trifling manipulation of this feature or that 

 surface, give light and life to what before was dull and 

 dead, and every trace of his masterly hand shall be as plain 

 to the practised eye as though he had traced his name 

 upon the clay. Yet Baron Huddleston dealt with this par- 

 ticular point as if the liours during which unpractised eyes 

 saw the work of modelling in progress, removed of them- 

 selves " all doubt " about retouching (which often means 

 creatiiH)) even against the united opinion of all the prac- 

 tised eyes invited to decide the question. 



I write without any feeling one way or the other as to 

 the personal matters involved. Mr. Belt or Mr. Lawes 

 may have been grievously wronged or wholly in the right, 

 for aught I personally care, who know neither — (I had 

 almost said for aught I know, but that would not be strictly 

 true). But all who love art, all who appreciate the 

 excellence which great artists give to their work, are in- 

 terested in rejecting a general rule which is not only 

 opposed to all sound principles of criticism, but to common 

 sense. If Baron Huddleston had told us that Je siris 

 ijagiie is good French for " I have gained," and because 

 he had "no doubt" that Verheyden ought to know 

 French, had rejected the opinion of twenty French 

 writers who asserted the contrary, he would not, to my 

 thinking, have gone more directly counter to sound rules 



