LEIGHTON HOUSE 



Nevertheless, there are certain fundamental rules which should 

 guide the impartial critic, certain tests of Tightness and wrongness, 

 which he is bound to apply. But the modern writer on art is 

 not impartial, and he does not apply them ; his are not the senti- 

 ments of the dying Gainsborough when, reconciled at the last 

 to Reynolds, the President, bending over him, caught the 

 murmured words : " We are all going to Heaven, and Vandyck 

 is of the party." He does not seek out what there is of good in 

 that with which he may be personally out of sympathy. He looks 

 only for qualities in which his own little group of painters excel, 

 forgetting that art is compounded of compromises, and that in the 

 attainment of one quality, to him of vital importance, the artist 

 may have had deliberately to sacrifice another, as he had a perfect 

 right to do 1 And this being so, how manifestly unfair the whole 

 system of art criticism is ! To begin with, the lead of the Press 

 to induce the public to take interest in pictures at all, is very weak ; 

 and compared with that given to the drama and music in the course 

 of the year, the space allotted to art is exceedingly small ; and it 

 is therefore to be regretted that men who themselves are mere 

 dilettanti, should be able, either thoughtlessly to make an ephemeral 

 reputation with exaggerated praise, or to slay a well-earned one 

 with a contemptuous word. Possibly they are themselves good 

 amateurs up to a certain point, but clever sketching, is not painting 

 a picture, and they would fail completely if they tried to carry one 

 out from start to finish. If they knew as little practically of science, 

 or of music, as they know practically of Art, they would not venture 

 to comment publicly, on either. 



An author, whose professional status may be no higher than 

 that of a score of painters whose works are ignored or venomously 

 attacked, is usually safe in the hands of his critic, who at least 

 understands the construction of books, who appreciates language, 

 style, and so forth, and who will not fall out with his author as 

 does the art-critic with the artist merely because the opinion 

 voiced, or the manner of the matter, are not to his taste. 



What comfort the artist can draw from the cynical and oft- 

 quoted remark of Lord Beaconsfield " that the critics are the 

 men who have failed in literature or art " he may draw ; but 

 the Press is all-powerful and the painter who belongs to another 

 school than the critics, who could not paint like the men he eulogizes. 



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