Taste in Art. 121 



when such a picture would have been the protest of reformers 

 against the coarse cruelty of imperial savagery, he would have 

 had his justification upon moral grounds; but why rake up 

 disgusting materials, which time has benevolently buried? 

 Better surely to see the beauty of the present, than the ugliness 

 of the past. 



In our own country the appreciation of the beautiful in art 

 has wonderfully progressed within the last ten years, and al- 

 though we should like to see public bodies sufficiently intelligent 

 to create a demand for high class works adapted to galleries and 

 halls, we rejoice at the domestic character which our best pic- 

 tures assume. As a rule our artists endeavour to produce paint- 

 ings calculated to adorn a home, and if in this effort the majority 

 tend towards conventionality, tameness, and commonplace, occa- 

 sionally varied by slap-dash violence, the fault lies more with 

 society than with themselves. Few people will take the trouble 

 to understand anything that requires study, and the same men- 

 tal indolence which prevents thousands from mastering the 

 elements of science, condemns them to perpetual childhood in 

 respect to literature and art. 



What direction French popular taste will take as the pro- 

 gress of industry enlarges the class of private buyers, may be 

 somewhat difficult to tell, but there are evidences of a growing* 

 fondness for scenes of domestic and humble life. The battle 

 pieces which their artists delineate with a skill that no others 

 attain, are not natural results of national demand. Successive 

 governments have seen their interest in demoralizing the people 

 by an everlasting parade of the circumstances of war. In this 

 way they have successfully touched a chord of national weakness, 

 which we, who take the victories we are obliged to win, with 

 Quaker-like quietness, can scarcely understand • but pictures 

 like those of Edouard Frere and Henriette Brown show that our 

 neighbours can see and enjoy aspects of life better worth con- 

 templating than deeds of arms. As the people grow in intellec- 

 tual and social importance their domestic incidents have more 

 value in their own eyes ; and though we laud the Belgians for 

 their historical recollections, we praise the Norwegians still more 

 for the thoroughly human and humanizing efforts in which Tide- 

 mand's pencil is engaged. Peasant life as shown in his pictures 

 is a great thing in its way. It struggles with poverty., but is 

 not ground down. It has its variety of thought and emotion — 

 manly individuality, if not much female grace. Above all it has, 

 for Englishmen, the attractions of foreign travel. You forget 

 all about London, and seem inside the Norwegian hut. The 

 pastor may be too tough and stohd to enter much into the grief 

 of the receipients of the holy rites which he mechanically ad- 

 ministers • we might like a greater charm of colour, or brilliancy 



