Studio: international art (6.1896)

The Herkomer School

the face of tradition and experience, and as such fringe the village street. This is but the nursery

predestined to fail. All the plain men were of the colony, the workshop in which the promising

gathered together at once to see the downfall of raw material is moulded into the proper shape,

the new school, prepared to sit exultingly on its It is essential as the basis of the scheme ; it is of

ruins and shout in chorus "We told you so ! " the highest importance as the training place in

And yet after twelve years they which the future member of the

are still waiting for the downfall colony is made fit for the work

to commence and still hunting which he has to do afterwards;

for a few practicable ruins on ' but it is nothing more than a
which to perch. Bushey mean- training place. The chief influ-
while has seen the failure of no ence of the school begins to
part of the Herkomer experi- appear when the pupil starts to
ment. The school has, on the produce original work. In the
contrary, gone through a series class-rooms he has done what all
of progressive developments, and ._-t^0^' ^s fellows have been doing ; he
has grown from the small begin- "", '• has done it in his own way and
nings of class-rooms and practice with whatever individuality of
studios into the maturity of an //fflS^lp^ style and performance the neces-
art colony. The class-rooms /' £ r.J^^^f.. sary restrictions of the school
remain, and serve as feeders for 'V"V'*T' routine have permitted him ; but
the colony ; but the real work of * he has not been allowed to assert
the place is being done by the his individuality at the expense
constantly increasing group of . ' t . , I of properly ordered knowledge
artists whose school days are „an<^ *n sucn a manner that he
over and whose study in class has been prevented from acquir-
has been exchanged for far more ^ •-. . ing that needful basis of corn-
exacting and responsible labours mon-sense discrimination without
in their own studios. The art I which the most promising student
student, as he exists elsewhere, • ;' Mm 's aPt w after-life to drift to
has certainly been eliminated I ff hopeless shipwreck. He has, in
from the school, and the plod £ffwfm fact, been taught technique, not
ding person who lacks the mechanically and in accordance
capacity to do anything but win with a kind of rigid machine-
useless prizes is not to be found made pattern, but instead with
in Bushey. The student who is elasticity and adaptability so that
in favour there is the one who he can express his own personal
possesses what Professor Her- convictions by the aid of the
komer calls " the necessary •■ symbols that have for centuries
natural capacity for success," \ jflp past served the purposes of artists
who studies, works, and develops all the world over,
simply because it is in him to do * With this technique at his
so. He grows instead of being fingers' ends his study at Bushey
manufactured, and all that the » T**- really begins. He has learned
"school" means to him is a A-\ . • his letters and now he has to
place where he is kept from combine them into words and
running riot, and where his study of drapery phrases, to read the books of
various stages of development by d. a. wehrschmidt Nature and Art, and to write
are supervised by some one of down his own ideas with such
experience greater than his. intelligibility that other people can understand his
With such a type of student and with such meaning. This is the most critical stage of his
principles of practice it is, perhaps, obvious that it student life. He has the mechanical skill which is
is hopeless to discuss the Bushey institution as if necessary for the practice of his profession, and he
it began and ended within the walls of the quaint has the whole world before him as a hunting-
building which stands among the cottages that ground in which to seek the subjects that will give
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