DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68516#0037
I
ART-HISTORY AS AN ACADEMIC STUDY
ALTHOUGH the University of Cambridge has shown such
Z-A goodwill to a former pupil as to appoint me Professor of Fine
2 JL Art under the Slade Foundation, I am anxious not to presume
upon my position. Although I am a Professor, I am still somewhat of an
outsider. For one thing I am a Professor without a Tripos, a fox without
a tail. Now greatly as I appreciate the freedom which the absence of
that appendage confers upon me, I am so far from wishing to persuade
other Professors to have theirs amputated that I am tempted to put in a
plea that one should be attached—not indeed to my own person—I am
not likely to hold this post long enough to survive the operation—but
to the person, or perhaps the office, of one of my successors.
It may be that the vision which I have conjured up in your minds of a
Professor of Fine Art trailing after him a Tripos and all its impedi-
menta is far from enchanting you. Let me say at once how much I
sympathize with your apprehensions—you probably imagine some
undergraduate with a journalistic gift gaining first class honours
because, without doing any solid work, he has picked up the latest
fashionable gossip about Sur-realism and the Russian Ballet. You
imagine questions the answers to which depend upon flattering the
examiner’s personal tastes.
It is possible that you may have had some such qualms before decid-
ing to institute the English Literature Tripos—I am not sure that they
have altogether subsided—-but you probably feel that this is a far more
perilous suggestion. Literature of one kind or another has always had
an Academic status, but Art is a very different matter. Even more than
English literature Art must appear to you to be a ‘fancy’ subject.
FLL
< I >
ART-HISTORY AS AN ACADEMIC STUDY
ALTHOUGH the University of Cambridge has shown such
Z-A goodwill to a former pupil as to appoint me Professor of Fine
2 JL Art under the Slade Foundation, I am anxious not to presume
upon my position. Although I am a Professor, I am still somewhat of an
outsider. For one thing I am a Professor without a Tripos, a fox without
a tail. Now greatly as I appreciate the freedom which the absence of
that appendage confers upon me, I am so far from wishing to persuade
other Professors to have theirs amputated that I am tempted to put in a
plea that one should be attached—not indeed to my own person—I am
not likely to hold this post long enough to survive the operation—but
to the person, or perhaps the office, of one of my successors.
It may be that the vision which I have conjured up in your minds of a
Professor of Fine Art trailing after him a Tripos and all its impedi-
menta is far from enchanting you. Let me say at once how much I
sympathize with your apprehensions—you probably imagine some
undergraduate with a journalistic gift gaining first class honours
because, without doing any solid work, he has picked up the latest
fashionable gossip about Sur-realism and the Russian Ballet. You
imagine questions the answers to which depend upon flattering the
examiner’s personal tastes.
It is possible that you may have had some such qualms before decid-
ing to institute the English Literature Tripos—I am not sure that they
have altogether subsided—-but you probably feel that this is a far more
perilous suggestion. Literature of one kind or another has always had
an Academic status, but Art is a very different matter. Even more than
English literature Art must appear to you to be a ‘fancy’ subject.
FLL
< I >