January lo, 1918 
LAND & WATER - 
Only a Painter 
By Charles Marriott 
19 
SOMEBODY asked Rossetti if he were Mr. Rossetti 
tlie pre-Rapluulite, and he said ; " I am not an 'ite 
of any sort: I am only a painter." This did not mean 
that Rossetti disclaimed sympathy with the Brother- 
hood, but only that lie objected to being labelled out of his 
trade. There" was a touch of pathos in the reply, because 
Rossetti was never master of the painter's trade as he was of 
the writer's ; but it siiowed that he took the right view of it 
as a dignified occupation. 
With even more justice on the technical side, because witli 
less imagination than Rossetti he is more a master of his job, 
.Mr. Augustus John might make the same reply. More 
nonsense has bi-eii 
talked about him tlian 
a))' ut most artists, and 
nuKt of it misses the 
point of his real dis- 
tinction. He is not. to 
judge from his work, a 
man of great intellect 
or deep insight or un- 
usually strong imagina- 
tion ; though he has 
more of all three than 
most living painters ; 
• iMit from the painter's 
[X)int of view they are 
as irrelevant as they 
would be from the 
carpenter's or black- 
smith's point of view. 
Whenever 1 hear people 
talking about the truth 
or poetry or imagina- 
tion of this or that 
painter, I am reminded 
of Dean Ramsav's story 
of the aristocratic but 
plain spoken old Scots- 
woman to whom some- 
biKly recommended a 
cook as "a very decent 
body." ^he said : 
" Damn her decency ! 
("iin she cook collops ? 
Not that vou get any 
nearer to defining Mr. 
John bv making a false 
d i s t i n c tion between 
" painter" and "artist." 
It is quite common, 
]) ;• r t i c u 1 a rly among 
aitists, to hear it said : 
" Oh, so-aid-so may 
not be much of a painter 
or writer or singer 
iir actor — but he is a 
true artist " ; meaning 
lint the subject has 
good taste or " nice " 
ideas ; or " So-and-so 
is a first-rate painter 
but he isn't an artist " ; 
meaning that he paints 
matter-of-fact subjects 
in a matter-of-fact way. 
This use of the word 
" artist " is a modern 
^ uigarism with a lot of bad aisthetics behind it. The only 
respectable meaning of the word is the old one of master- 
( raftsman- in any trade from cooking or hair-dressing to 
painting or poetry — and the only real distinction between 
artist and painter is that between a generic and a specific title. 
.\othing has done more to confuse the general pubhc and, 
incidentally, to obscure the real importance of such a painter 
a-. Mr. John, than the false distinction. In practice it works 
out in a verv odd and interesting way. It is commonly said 
that the ordinary person, particularly the ordinary Knglish- 
man or Englishwoman, mav like pictures, but has little 
appreciation of painting. The truth is that the ordinary 
jxTson particularly the ordinary Englishman or English- 
woman, very often has a keen appreciation of painting- -of 
craftsmanship in general, indeed — but does not apply it to 
pictures because he or she has be^n taught to regard crafts- 
The Fat Artilleryman 
manship and art as different things. A good rough-and- 
readv proof is the discrepancy between the furniture and 
decorations and the pictures in the ordinary home. Almost 
invariably the furniture and decorations are much better 
artistically than the pictures ; the reason being that the 
iormer represent the personal taste and judgment of the 
owner while the latter have been taken on trust from t'le 
dealer or at the instigation of newspapers. Like the man 
who talked — or was it wrote ? — prose without knowing it, 
the ordinary person makes use of real artistic taste and judg- 
ment in choosing wall-papers, carpets and curtains, and 
" makes up his mind " in choosing pictures in the same way 
as h6 will often " make 
up his voice " in reading 
poetry — under the de- 
lusion that literature 
is something different 
from good writing. If 
he could only be 
brought to understand 
that, granting i\s fuller 
capacity for expression 
a picture is good or bad 
artistically in exactly 
the same way as a 
carved cabinet or 
painted screen is good 
or bad artistically and 
that painting pictures 
is only a more subtle 
form of house-painting, 
the future of art in 
this country would be 
assured. The amount 
of iiarm that has been 
done to art and litera- 
ture and architecture — 
and through them to 
life — by regarding them 
as something distinct 
from painting and 
writing and building is 
simply incalcidable. 
The importance OT 
Mr. John is that being 
^o specifically a painter 
and at the same time 
>o obviou-ly an artist, 
he helps to abolish the 
ialse distinction be- 
tween painting and art. 
.'\t his exhibition at the 
.Alpine Club Gallery, 
almost anybody can 
see that his pictures, 
with all their merits of 
design and execution, 
are examples of the 
same human exercise 
that is to be seen in 
its elementary forms 
on gipsy caravans, 
canal barges and ice- 
cream barrows. Only a 
great painter could bear 
this comparison or 
illustrate its truth. A 
great deal of what is 
called " art " is concealment of origin as contemptible, 
though probably unconscious, as concealment of ancestry in 
the human sense of the word ; and the artist who disowns his 
kinship with the house-painter is as truly a snob as the man 
who is ashamed of his grandfather. It would be extremely 
interesting to know when and why the snobbish views of art 
first came into being. OfP-hand one is inclined to put it down 
to the Renaissance ; to the conscious and deliberate revival 
by cultured people of what had been done hitherto as all in 
the day's work ; to preoccupation with ideas and theories 
instead" of with craftsmanship The earlier painters do not 
seem to have bothered about ideas ; they painted what they 
were told to paint, and the same man who produced the 
masterpiece that we house in the National Gallery sent in his 
bill for gilding angels' wings or freshening up the flames of 
Hell. Ihave beside me a Portuguese book on the Royal 
By pirmhiion of the Chenil Galleries 
