1844.1 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



345 



ROYAL ACADEMY. No. II. 



" A NEGLECT to provide qualified persons," says Sir Joshua, " is a 

 neglect of qualifications;" and never was this principle so exquisitely 

 illustrated as in the case of this militia officer. A youth of great pro- 

 mise, who had gone regularly through the construction of the human 

 figure, and knew every part of it, made the most beautiful drawing of 

 the Discobolon at the Museum, which had ever been — he went to the 

 gallant officer, Keeper of the Royal Academy, with the drawing, and 

 a letter, for admission as a probationer, to draw for his ticket; the 

 Keeper, with that profound investigation of look for which he is cele- 

 brated, after a minute or two, said, with a tone of superior sagacity, 

 " You know nothing of outline." At that time, a copper outline had 

 been introduced into the school, and the young men were all making 

 a line round their figures the eighth of an inch thick at least ; as the 

 youth had been carefully instructed, to define one object's boundary by 

 another, and not by a line, that he might learn to paint whilst he was 

 drawing, he retired, wondering what the gallant Keeper could mean; 

 on hearing this, his master Haydon, immediately wrote the gallant 

 Keeper, "his refusal to admit the youth on such grounds was addi- 

 tional proof, if any were wanting, of his (the Keeper's) total incom- 

 petence for the important duties of his station." 



In the drawing presented, there was not a single incorrectness. The 

 boy had made separate studies of head, hands, and feet, and the draw- 

 ing was finer than any Wilkie, Haydon, Mulready, or Collins, made 

 for admission as students. The public shall see the drawing in due 

 time, but the boy came from Haydon, — that was the want of outline, 

 and the politic Keeper knew he could not please the party, who put 

 him where he is, more, than by insulting his pupil. 



Disgusted at such infamous injustice, which was likely to affect, 

 and did affect, the prosperity of the youth, Haydon applied to the late 

 W. Seguier, who admitted him at once into the National Gallery, and 

 there immediately he made a beautiful cartoon, the size of life, from 

 Augustino Caracci's Galatea, so beautiful that it attracted the applause 

 of the nobility, who considered it, what it was, a wonder for a boy of 

 sixteen, and there, under the very eyes of the Keeper, who watched him 

 daily, this youth proved his power of hand, his knowledge of construc- 

 tion, till at last the gallant Keeper used to slink by and not look at it at 

 all ! Worthy successor of Fuseli and Hilton I — gallant Ensign ! — great 

 painter of battles, where the dead and wounded are kept out of the 

 way, that the lapdogs might not be frightened. 



Every accusation against bodies, or individuals, should be substan- 

 tiated by facts. Here there is a fact of unquestionable authority. To 

 put, for a moment, the illustrious Jones' knowledge of the figure 

 against the boy he disdained would setthe Art in a roar of derision; 

 at the same time every allowance must be made for the condition of 

 the keeper's mind; what coidd a militia officer know of design? Con- 

 scious of his utter unfitness for his position ; knowing himself to he 

 the merest tool, to spare the eminent artist from the bore of teaching 

 boys, yet exactly as be knew his own ignorance, ought he to have 

 been diffident of wounding the feelings of a very talented youth, by a 

 pompous display of what he was ignorant of. 



Far be it from me to reproach any human creature with weakness 

 of understanding; it is in God's awful power, in one moment, to 

 strike the most gifted with raving madness, and hurl him to the earth, 

 as . I warning to |>resumi)lion ! but when a man was found too weak 

 in mind for the duties of a militia regiment, and took refuge in paint- 

 ing as the least eftbrt of the two ; when a nobleman, who had 

 himself risen, by the most obsequious servility to the minister of the 

 day, from ignorance of the understanding required to be an artist, 

 mistook this man's abject flattery, for genius in art, and backed his 

 elevation to the honours of the profession, which made even Wilkie 

 forget his prudence and policy, at the corruption he witnessed on his 

 election ; when, by the same injustice to superior men, this creature, 

 as imbecile as he is vain, is pushed into a position of power, to spare 

 the laziness of more able men, it is a duty to shave its head, to draw 

 its teeth, to cut its nails, and brand noodle on its vacant brow, that its 

 tricks in future may be as harmless as its pictures. 



Sir Robert, with not the best breeding in the world, told Mr. Hume 

 he was a good judge of impudence. Surely Sir Robert must have 

 forgotten for the time who sat in the President's diair! who con- 

 sidered himself the illustrious successor of Reynolds ? what ? Hume 

 acknowledged to the impudence of the devil himself ; but surely, to 

 witness the lowest artist in Europe, considering himself a fit inheritor 

 of Reynold's honours, is a specimen of human audacity and impudence 

 from which the devil himself would have shrank! 



It is perfectly ludicrous to suppose the Academy will long be able 

 to resist the spirit of the time, if it do much longer, it will be buried 

 in its overwhelming pressure. Two great crtuses of its beijig atsle to 



do so so long, is that, first, it has no aplomb as a national body ; and 

 next, the vent it so annually uftords to the vanity and affections of high 

 life. 



The public and the press b;\vr alarmed it lately into better elec- 

 tions, but mediocrity is only on the watch for its (ipportunity, they 

 have not yet extirpated the bad blood of 176S, when they received 

 with open arms, to fill up their number, the expelled Directors of the 

 Chartered Society, who being found to have torn out their minutes to 

 conceal their corruption, ami brokrn their words of honour to the 

 Attorney-General to abide by his decision, were turned out by the 

 disgusted Societv, and einbracid with r:ipture by the Royal Academy. 

 The filthy slime of those crawlers stunk on the walls of Somerset 

 House for more than sixty years, the smell was carried to Trafalgar 

 Square, the slime itself is discovered now and then ; yet 1 trust before 

 I die to see the healthy and sweet blood of youth and genius entirely 

 obliterate both. 



Still there is a greater cause of its continued renovation and ex- 

 istence, and that is, I regret to say, the continued treachery of its 

 greatest men. 



1. Fuseli, on his return from Italy, wanted Prince Hoare and North- 

 cote, to swear a solem oath iievrr to belong to the Academy, they re- 

 fused — and Fuseli was the first to go in. 



2. Barry, hating and detesting the system, and swearing in his 

 Correspondence, academies always brought art into contempt, suffered 

 himself to be seduced by Sir Joshua to come in, and, muttering curses 

 as he took his diploma, got expelled as he deservedl Then came 

 Wilkie, gifted, modest, selfish, timid; he, too, affirmed, without being 

 asked, the Academy was nothing to him, he, too, again and again de- 

 clared, he would never belong to it, would uever ask a vote if he did, 

 and when the time came, he got into a fright, hurried to Haydon to 

 ask what he should do, who, seeing his real motive, turned his back ; 

 terrified at insinuations he ought to have defied — he begged — he got 

 in — was kicked and spat on, and died as complete a victim to disap- 

 pointed ambition, as the art can afford. Now Chantrey appeared on 

 the scene, proud, haughty, talented, money-getting and illiterate ; 

 hating poverty in proportion as the remembrance of his former strug- 

 gles stung his ]jride ; adoring wealth as he felt the station money 

 gave him ; envious of rising genius iusculpture, if it showed symptoms 

 of poetry of conception, which he possessed not ; detesting the Aca- 

 demy, because he foresaw before he could share its insolence, he 

 must bend to its despotism ; spitting with disgust on the shadow of 

 an Academician's figure in the streets ; applauding Haydon's attack 

 to the very echo, folluwing his footsteps to Spring Gardens, taking 

 away a group in anger from the Acadeiuy to send it where Solomon 

 had hung, threatening to throw his diploma for associate into the 

 fire, when intreated to accept it, if not made Academician the next 

 year — uttering vengeance if they placed liiui with the singers at the 

 dinner — and affirming, if they did, he would leave the room. Laugh- 

 ing at, sneering at, ridiculing and calumniating the whole body to his 

 friends ; suddenly, in a morning's walk to Lord Ravensworth's, to see 

 his bronzes with Haydon, he altered his whole tone. He kindly lec- 

 tured Haydon on the injustice of his principles, he said he must re- 

 linquish them, and hoped Haydon would follow his example. In he 

 went, and joined the men he despised — and ended by leaving them 

 his vast fortune, that the Institution he had decried, because it would 

 not reform, might be able to defy that very reform, he had all his pre- 

 vious life declared was essential. 



Never was such an awful hit, of solemn sarcasm, at human consis- 

 tency! Lastly comes the most amiable of God's creatures — too 

 unconscious of his own great position, to feel its height, after beating 

 the cursed monopoly on its own ground, and signing for ever its death 

 warrant for exclusive employment; Ae consented to tear off the seal, 

 erase the signature, and under the belief he could influence their de- 

 cisions to be more in union with public duty, melted his individual 

 eminence into their leaden mass, and resigned the very power of doing 

 the very good he aimed at, by descending from his exalted height, 

 from which alone he could have accomplished the public good he so 

 naturally disired. 



It is by this treachery of the human heart to principle, throughout 

 the history of the species, man, that humanity has endured so much. 

 What keeps the worst government so long in existence after their 

 iniquity is acknowdedged, but the instinctive treachery of the crea- 

 tures to each other who wish to overthrow it. 



Nothing could have kept the Academy so long tyrannising over the 

 profession, but the treachery of those who panted for its reform. 



Mediocrity bears genius a nausea from birth ; it will lick the feet, 

 kiss the chains, and hug the serfism of the tyranny it abhors and 

 crouches under, rather than a leader of talent should extricate it from 

 its slavery, and be afforded a chance of proving his own genius. 



Mankind never bend to genius, but when tbeir property or eusteace 



