Studio: international art (2.1894)

E

English Art and M. Femand Khnopff

-\ NGLISH ART AND M. FER- "strikes," and the life i„ every alley and street
NAND KHNOPFF. BY W. and the exhaustless source of artistic inspiration
SHAW SPARROW. that exists in all our industrial centres, from the

So long as the highest function of art C°1Uery' the shWard> and the slate-quarry, to the
was to inspire worship, there were no unsuccessful

painters. Even
those of inferior
abilities influenced
the illiterate mind,
for they were em-
ployed by the
clergy of poor dis-
tricts ; while such
unfortunate men
of real genius, as
Giacomo Cava-
done, who died of
grief and hunger,
" had something of the force of a gospel," You
will say, perhaps, that the power wielded by the
religious painters of the Renaissance is a power
which can never emanate from any profane art.
You may be right: and yet ■ I venture to believe
that every clever young artist of to-day may make
an irresistible appeal to the heart and the mind of
the people at large, by showing us "the very age * e°oi-i-late ("ex libris ") by nre and khnopff

and body of the time, his form and pressure." foundry, the forge, and the furnace. In these mints

Let him think no more of his very pretty land- of England's wealth, as I have said elsewhere

scapes, his over-dressed babies, his lean Breton there is a religious art of the best kind—the art of

peasants, masquerading Venetian girls, and the the religion of daily toil ; and when I think of it





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^-T\ " IMPUTANTUR

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from a drawing by fernand khnoi'ff

smiling maidens of Timbuctoo. And let him and of the admired little paintings to be seen in
forget that many volumes of pretentious criticism our exhibitions, I see no reason why the purblind
have been written in praise of these dainty, successful artist should not be added to Mr. Louis
trivial subjects. Then let him remember; our Stevenson's unsuccessful painter.

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