LEIGHTON HOUSE 
Nevertheless, there are certain fundamental rules which should 
guide the impartial critic, certain tests of rightness 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! 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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