1844.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



415 



THE ART BLISTER. 

 No. I. 



The George Jones and Martin Sliee principle of election in the 

 Academy has, I am happy to see, been slielved for the present. Two 

 artists have been elected, both creditable, both talented, yet the 

 sculptor of infinitely a sounder taste than tlie painter. 



Every man must have observed of late years, since the German 

 school revived, a strong tendency to introduce into British Art the 

 wild childishness of the leaders of that eminent renovation. Munich 

 is so much nearer than Rome, that young men have continually swept 

 through Paris to Munich, and returning during Autumn through Ger- 

 many to London again, brought back more vicious taste than they car- 

 ried out, and certainly in their practice proved they believed rigidity 

 was beauty — distraction of effect, simplicity — flatness, angelic — and 

 gold grounds and glaring colours the ve plus ultra oi elevated thought. 



To keep what is acknowledged to be good, and add vfliat is defec- 

 tive ought to be the basis of all reforms, politically, religiously, poeti- 

 callv, or pictorially ; — but will it ever be so, or has it ever been so ? 

 In all reforms men go to excess, and therefore a Royal Academy ought 

 to be very cautious in sanctioning any men who give evidence, or have 

 given it, of being bitten by a false taste. 



The Academy has one talented man of this species already, who 

 has done more to ruin the art, and the youth in it, than any one who 

 ever took the lead in the most corrupt times of corrupt art ; to elect 

 another to help him is to add to the danger instead of stemming it, and 

 to whatever lamentable condition the art may shortly sink, the Aca- 

 demy will be in a great measure answerable for the eft'ect produced 

 on the public taste, by the puffing and the prominence with which 

 they obtruded his productions, at the expense of their own repute, 

 their own sagacity, and their own decided conviction they were doing 

 wrong, or ever enquiring with themselves, what would Reynolds have 

 thought ? 



The painter they Lave now selected is an accomplished and amiable 

 man, but of the same taste as the other alluded to ; compelled to 

 resign his situation as Master of the School of Design, which he had 

 not sense to conduct, and which he nearly ruined, his powerful friends, 

 of whom he is the pet, procured him to be elected as Member of the 

 Council which controls the Master, though he had given evidence he 

 was totally unfit to be the Master himself; and alter having misled 

 all the students he directed in London, he was dispatched to inspect 

 the country schools, because he had proved he was totally unfit to 

 conduct the London one! Ignorant of fresco, in reality, from the evi- 

 dence he gave before the Committee, he is one of the selected to de- 

 corate the Lords, and lastly, the Academy has given its sanction to 

 this tissue of absurdities, by preferring him to better men on their list. 

 To get out of so many scrapes, with such tact, shews great diplomatic 

 skill, and let the Academy beware they have no occasion to repent 

 their decision hereafter. At any rate, however, any men are prefer- 

 able to incompetent men, for let the Academy be assured, that it is a 

 great mistake to elect inferior men, under the notion they will become 

 useful as tools for the dirty work of the institution ; there should be 

 no dirty work, the official situations should be all rendered worthy 

 men of genius, by the yearly income, and not fit only for fools as a re- 

 fuge from destitution ; the consequence given to mediocrity by many 

 of their elections has been fatal to the dignity of genius in t'ae body, 

 from the impulse they have given to the most incompetent out of it. 



Let the Academy remember, what disgrace, what turmoil, what loss 

 of character, ensued from the admission of Farrington and his clique. 

 They very nearly destroyed the art, they kept it in one perpetual 

 contest of intrigue, and violence, and recrimination, and insult, till at 

 last the interest of the students, the honour of the sovereign, the ad- 

 vance of design, were utterly sunk in the squabbling and vulgarity of 

 a benefit club, to the disgrace of all breeding and taste. 



I know it is difficult always to keep 40 men in a right direction ; 

 influences will be used, and put in practice totally inconsistent with 

 the known interests of the institution; but the quicksands always to 

 keep in view are men of intriguing mediocrity, creatures whose very 

 want of fame or of power leave them leisure, first to make themselves 

 useful, and then necessary, till at last, the members of genius, for the 

 sake of relieving themselves of the trouble of a duty, resign their 

 liberties to those whose only chance of distinction and importance at 

 all is the trouble they are always ready to take olf the shoulders of 

 their superiors. 



No man can deny that sometimes men of mediocre talents in art can 

 be useful to a body, for instance Martin Shee, he came in when me- 

 diocrity was in full bloom, and he has kept it blooming ever since, ard 

 really he can be justly called "the distinguished head of all the me- 

 diocrity in Europe;" but such gifts of Nature are rare, and let the 



Academy not risk diluting the body by any future experiments of the 

 like nature, for out of the thousands cf painters throughout Europe of 

 the exact calibre of the worthy President, not two perhaps have his 

 fluency of speech, to conceal poverty of thinking, or his activity in 

 common business, to make amends for his wretchedness in Art. Per- 

 haps Shee is unique as an example of a man being placed at the head 

 of a profession on the principle of being the most incompetent man 

 in it. 



Never had any country such a crop of reigning mediocrity, as since 

 the elevation of Sir Martin ; and yet his whole life is one continued 

 illustration of opposite principles. An upholder of the dignity due to 

 authority for its own sake, now, to the v^ry marrow, he once wrote a 

 tragedy so finely radical in rebellion against its power that the Lord 

 Chamberlain forbad its coming out. Formerly maintaining that Genius 

 all over Europe had preceded Academies, and that none had appeared 

 since, he is now ready to die in asserting that no Genius can ever come 

 without them! Swelling with ambition, and yet cursed with impo- 

 tence; hating the genius he can never equal, yet thirsting for the dis- 

 tinction he feels is its inherent right ; cunning, designing, talkative, 

 and intriguing; never more deeply plotting than when most artlessly 

 affecting to be open ; frank, to conceal an intrigue ; bustling, to be- 

 wilder suspicion; eloquent, when he wants to distract, and humane 

 and compassionate for those he detests, when pity may lead to con- 

 tempt for their condition ; by flattering the vanity, pandering to the 

 weaknesses, and soothing the appetites of the herd he despises, he 

 elevated himself and elevated them, and in baffling the Genius who 

 opposed him (Wilkie), bestowed a boon on all those who cursed his 

 great talents, feared his private worth, and abhorred, with the grovelling 

 baseness of degraded spirits, his illustrious and immortal name. 



The most popular man in the Art is the President, because in him 

 the mediocrity of the Art is represented ; and every man who aspires 

 to immortality by daubing for an Art-Union patron, when no other can 

 be had, feels his breast swell with delight as he remembers the inhe- 

 rent tact of Sir Martin for snubbing genius by tickling impotence, and 

 making every fool at a fund dinner believe he may one day be as great 

 as himself! The immediate danger to British Art, however, is the 

 tendency to Germanism by the introduction of fresco, we have three 

 men of talent that way most fiercely inclined ; because fresco is to be 

 chosen, the patrons seem to believe it is contrary to sound taste to 

 carry the beauties of the school into that species of decoration, as if 

 the defects hitherto endured were not an accidental omission, but an 

 inherent concomitant of the material and the style ; as if clearness, 

 touch, execution, tone, colour, softness, were not to be attempted, but 

 banished ; as if, because light is more required than shadow in deco- 

 ration, the light must be crude and the shadow black. This ridiculous 

 absurdity has got into the heads of every member of the Royal Com- 

 mission, and, being agreeable to German theory, the eminent Secretary 

 is too delicate to explain to the Prince what ought to be, must be, and 

 will be the doctrine of British decoration. 



We will not have and endure the lime illuminations of Munich 

 walls; in all the graces of colour, light and shadow, irapasta, execu- 

 tion, and simplicity of expression without imbecility of look, we are 

 the masters of the Germans, and will remain so ; what the British are 

 defective in can be added ; what they have, if they lose, they will 

 never regain ; and I call on every eminent British artist, and every 

 budding student, to resolve, in the contest next year and the one the. 

 year after, to keep, in all their attempts in oil, fresco, or cartoons, the 

 great beauties of British Art, whilst they add knowledge of construc- 

 tion and correctness of form without hardness, light and shadow with- 

 out sootiness, colour without gaudiuess, and touch of the brush without 

 being brassy or brittle. 



For the honour of Old England let them beat down the bastard 

 theories of foreign travel — 



" I'd have our English Mounseers know, 

 A man may yet be wise and never see the Louvre." 



TiMON. 



Railway Tdnnei.ung. — At a meeting of persons interested in the South 

 Wales Railway, at Cardiff', on Friday, Mr. Brunei stated, that ihe Box Tun- 

 nel of the Great Western liadway cost lOO;. per yard; the White Ball Tun- 

 nel on the Eseter Railway, cost but 53/. ; the CTieltenham Tunnel, in con- 

 nexion with the Great Western Railway, was estimated at 136?. per yard — it 

 cost but 34/. per yard ; and to show the reduction in this department alone, 

 he mentioned, that within the lust three weeks he had contracted for tun- 

 nelling at 28/. per yard. 



35* 



