GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



entirely into the hands of a few, a very few, able men of strong 

 predilections, and stronger prejudices. These men hold, and quite 

 legitimately hold, their own views on the province and practice 

 of the arts both of painting and sculpture, but unfortunately 

 they are partisans rather than critics. Yet I believe that the 

 clever, and very enthusiastic writers who sign their names to articles 

 filled with laudatory passages on this or that leader of some very 

 advanced clique, or who advocate the latest fad or craze brought 

 over from abroad by speculative dealers, honestly feel the admira- 

 tion they express for works which, in spite of their supporters' 

 ubiquitous efforts to convince are not convincing, either to common 

 sense, or to artistic intelligence. 



And remember, no man can be a fair judge of art ; fit, that is, 

 to lead a pliant and uninstructed public the public which, after 

 all, supplies the artist with his bread and cheese who is not sym- 

 pathetic as well as critical who is a special pleader ; who is 

 incapable of laying aside for the moment his own preferences, 

 pet aversions, and pet theories even his personal independent 

 convictions, and of contemplating and judging a work of art from 

 the standpoint of the artist himself. In doing so he may rest assured 

 that the artist is more dissatisfied with it than ever he can be 

 though for different reasons because it is no mere platitude to 

 say that a true artist never attains to his ideal. 



" What is art ? " is a question never yet satisfactorily answered. 

 v And it is one that every fair-minded man whose business it is to 



translate the artist to the public, should ask of himself. For one 

 thing it is a means to the expression of a man's idiosyncrasy ; his 

 mentality, his emotions, his attitude towards nature, and his 

 outlook on life and so varied is this idiosyncrasy, that within 

 certain felt limits beyond which no man may go and call himself 

 artist, men " gang their ain gait," and no man should say them 

 4 nay." The Royal Academy itself has had room at one and the 

 same time for a Tadema and a Brangwin, and outside it might 

 recently be found, almost contemporaneously, men of such diverse 

 aims and practice, as Holman-Hunt and Augustus John, Whistler 

 and Burne-Jones yet each has his place in the firmament of 

 art, although of some of them it may be said that whether they 

 are fixed stars, or passing vaporous meteors, the world is not yet 

 old enough to know. 



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