DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.870#0021
11
even the extreme of ugliness and deformity becomes less disgusting by familiarity, so is it with
works of art of the above description, and hence that vitiation of taste and feeling which is so
much and so often to be deplored. The works of the Duteh and Flemish schools are, however,
the most numerous, and hence it becomes the interest of those traders in old pictures who infest and
obstruct the avenues to modern art, to hold them up as models of perfection on the one hand, and to
decry all modern productions on the other.
From causes like these it arises that there is but a certain extent in art to which the judgment of
the majority of spectators is capable of reaching, and, on this account, all efforts on the part of the
artist to go beyond that particular point, are rendered fruitless by the want of sufficient knowledge
and true taste in the public, (except in some few instances) to estimate his merit and to distinguish
his superiority. It is moreover this want of judgment on the part of the public which has occasioned
that lamentable increase in the number of those young men who are consigned, whether qualified or
not, to the pursuit of art. Every idle boy who can scrawl a few lines with a pencil is considered
a. genius, and his mistaken parents and friends, instead of devoting him to some useful employment,
encourage him in a pursuit which can lead to nothing but poverty and disappointment.*
The career of these victims to a foolish misconception of their own talents, is generally attended
with a total neglect of literary education, and, shut out by this deficiency and their native obscurity
from intercourse with the higher classes of society, their minds must, of necessity, be little else than
• It would be well if the parents of these boys would attend in this case to Ovid's observation on the pursuit of poetry,
" Saepe pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas?"
C 2
even the extreme of ugliness and deformity becomes less disgusting by familiarity, so is it with
works of art of the above description, and hence that vitiation of taste and feeling which is so
much and so often to be deplored. The works of the Duteh and Flemish schools are, however,
the most numerous, and hence it becomes the interest of those traders in old pictures who infest and
obstruct the avenues to modern art, to hold them up as models of perfection on the one hand, and to
decry all modern productions on the other.
From causes like these it arises that there is but a certain extent in art to which the judgment of
the majority of spectators is capable of reaching, and, on this account, all efforts on the part of the
artist to go beyond that particular point, are rendered fruitless by the want of sufficient knowledge
and true taste in the public, (except in some few instances) to estimate his merit and to distinguish
his superiority. It is moreover this want of judgment on the part of the public which has occasioned
that lamentable increase in the number of those young men who are consigned, whether qualified or
not, to the pursuit of art. Every idle boy who can scrawl a few lines with a pencil is considered
a. genius, and his mistaken parents and friends, instead of devoting him to some useful employment,
encourage him in a pursuit which can lead to nothing but poverty and disappointment.*
The career of these victims to a foolish misconception of their own talents, is generally attended
with a total neglect of literary education, and, shut out by this deficiency and their native obscurity
from intercourse with the higher classes of society, their minds must, of necessity, be little else than
• It would be well if the parents of these boys would attend in this case to Ovid's observation on the pursuit of poetry,
" Saepe pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas?"
C 2