DOI issue:
No. 54 (August, 1901)
DOI article:On some decorative flower and plant studies drawn by Miss J. Foord
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22775#0160
Flower and Plant Studies
‘ Come let us make a description ! Having drunk
the liquor, come let us eat the glass ! ’ ” This was
long quite true. In whatever capacity an artist
laboured, whether as painter, poet, or novelist, he
was usually affected and self-conscious in his study
of external Nature; often, too, he was flagrantly
sentimental and mawkish. It was against this that
Carlyle protested. But, fortunately, the truth of
his sarcasm is much less evident to-day than it was
in the years 1833-34, when “Sartor Resartus ”
decreased the circulation of “ Fraser’s Magazine.”
Many moods and changes have passed over the
aesthetic world since then, and the arts of the
present generation are but rarely enfeebled by a
sentimentalism akin to that of “ Werter,” or by
such an isle-of-dreams passion for Nature as
flourished for a time in the dainty greenhouse
known as pre-Raphaelitism. Nature in all her
manifestations is eagerly studied, but her devotees
are ceasing to be bores—are becoming year by
year less self-conscious in their earnestness, less
obtrusive, more workmanlike; there are but few
among them who now seem to believe that superfine
theories of delicacy in art ought to stay the evolu-
tion of society, and be of practical use to all who
are private soldiers in the rude war of daily life.
And it is worth while thus to linger for a moment
or two over the wholesome change that is taking
place in “ nature-study,” for it is a change that
finds useful and pleasing expression in the quiet
attention now so freely given to the study and
representation of plants and flowers, not only by
such young artists of real merit as Mr. Rex Vicat
Cole, Mr. William Shackleton, and Miss J. Foord,
but also by many hundreds of British children,
both in public and in private schools. As late as
twenty-five years ago or thereabouts, this encourag-
ing fact would have been seized upon by “ the
nympholepts of art” as a thing of Utopian promise;
to-day, on the other hand, it is allowed to do its
good work almost unnoticed by the public, and
certainly undisturbed either by influential crotchets
of false sentiment or by theories based on fads.
Only a few cranks on the subject of education
speak of it in a strain of fussy enthusiasm ; no one
112
‘ Come let us make a description ! Having drunk
the liquor, come let us eat the glass ! ’ ” This was
long quite true. In whatever capacity an artist
laboured, whether as painter, poet, or novelist, he
was usually affected and self-conscious in his study
of external Nature; often, too, he was flagrantly
sentimental and mawkish. It was against this that
Carlyle protested. But, fortunately, the truth of
his sarcasm is much less evident to-day than it was
in the years 1833-34, when “Sartor Resartus ”
decreased the circulation of “ Fraser’s Magazine.”
Many moods and changes have passed over the
aesthetic world since then, and the arts of the
present generation are but rarely enfeebled by a
sentimentalism akin to that of “ Werter,” or by
such an isle-of-dreams passion for Nature as
flourished for a time in the dainty greenhouse
known as pre-Raphaelitism. Nature in all her
manifestations is eagerly studied, but her devotees
are ceasing to be bores—are becoming year by
year less self-conscious in their earnestness, less
obtrusive, more workmanlike; there are but few
among them who now seem to believe that superfine
theories of delicacy in art ought to stay the evolu-
tion of society, and be of practical use to all who
are private soldiers in the rude war of daily life.
And it is worth while thus to linger for a moment
or two over the wholesome change that is taking
place in “ nature-study,” for it is a change that
finds useful and pleasing expression in the quiet
attention now so freely given to the study and
representation of plants and flowers, not only by
such young artists of real merit as Mr. Rex Vicat
Cole, Mr. William Shackleton, and Miss J. Foord,
but also by many hundreds of British children,
both in public and in private schools. As late as
twenty-five years ago or thereabouts, this encourag-
ing fact would have been seized upon by “ the
nympholepts of art” as a thing of Utopian promise;
to-day, on the other hand, it is allowed to do its
good work almost unnoticed by the public, and
certainly undisturbed either by influential crotchets
of false sentiment or by theories based on fads.
Only a few cranks on the subject of education
speak of it in a strain of fussy enthusiasm ; no one
112