Studio: international art (16.1899)

Artistic Copyright

term suggested by the Royal Commission of 1878
as suitable and fair, being that accorded to literary
works, It should prove a benefit to widows and
children of artists whose works during their life
are not valued for reproductions, but afterwards
may become so. (b) Artistic works are not now
protected against infringement until they are com-
pleted (except by common law). We have estab-
lished protection from the very commencement of
the execution. This may not be necessary with
literary works, but with ours the case is very dif-
ferent : what pirate could in, say, five minutes,
make any really serious crib from the main plot of
an unfinished manuscript of a book ?—at most some
details could be absorbed ; yet we know well that
during two minutes' inspection by a skilled pirate
of an unfinished picture the whole main intention
of the artist can be taken in for imitation.

Re 2. Thirty years is suggested by Royal Com-
mission, and we consider it ample for business
purposes. " Works from designs of another hav-
ing thirty years." I find my artist friends do not
understand how small a class comes under this
heading. It is only in cases such as where an
engraving is made from an old master, or from a
work in which no British copyright exists, that it
applies. When the engraving is from the original
work of another artist alive, or not thirty years
dead, that engraving would be made and published
only by the exercise of the copyright of the original
work, and its duration could run, as might be
agreed, up to the life and thirty years of the author
of the original.

Re 3. Upon this question we differ entirely from
the Royal Commissioners, who, although acknow-
ledging that artists unanimously felt that the copy-
right in their works, until expressly assigned, should
belong to them ; yet those gentlemen, owing to
difficulties re portraits and because they could see
no solution of this question, recommended (I see
they were not unanimous about it, only a majority
thought so) that copyright should in all cases pass
to the buyer of work where no document to the
contrary is made. They evidently felt that it might
be fair to let copyright in general works of art
remain with the author, but they would not allow
it in the case of portraits, and to separate the two
cases they considered impossible owing to the
difficulties of deciding where portraiture ends.
They argued—if of persons, then why not include
also an animal, or a pack of hounds, a house or a
room, and so on ? And therefore we artists were
always to suffer loss of copyright ! We frankly
acknowledge that a man has a right to be protected
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against reproductions being made of a portrait of,
say, his wife or daughter, without his permission :
that is a natural objection. But with a portrait of
his dog there can be no such legitimate objection ;
if he does not pay for the copyright, why should
the artist not be able to use it ?

Now, we claim to have solved the difficulty fairly
by defining a portrait. "Any work shall be con-
sidered a portrait whose principal object is the
representation in any form of art of any person."
And then (although keeping to our principle that
the author retains copyright) our Bill provides :
" In case any work the subject of copyright under
this Act shall be a portrait made on the request of
any person for valuable consideration, though the
copyright remain in the author or his assigns, no
person, whether the author or his assigns or not,
shall be entitled to make a copy of such work, or
to sell, distribute, let for hire, or exhibit such work
or any copy thereof without the consent in writing
of the owner of such portrait for the time being."

If the Royal Commissioners' suggestion became
law, i.e., that copyright should always pass to the
buyer of a work, it would be most unfair to sculptors,
depriving them of an old-standing right and one which
is even more important to them than to a painter.
For whereas a picture cannot be multiplied by any
copies so exactly in facsimile (except by the artist
himself) as to be passed off to an expert as
original, yet sculpture in metal, bas-reliefs especially,
could be so closely copied by casting, and in un-
limited numbers, that even the sculptor himself
might have difficulty in identifying the original.

4. Re Registration. This is a question on which
there are arguments for and against; but we
decided in favour of it, believing it would be in
the interests of both author and public that
there should be some established record of all
dealing with copyrights. One exception only has
been made in the Bill to this—viz., the person
who gives a commission for a work to be executed,
such as a drawing for an illustration (with the
knowledge of the person employed that it is for
publication in some definite form), then in such a
case the employer is to have the sole license to
reproduce that work in the understood form only,
without having to register such transfer of license.
This is provided to facilitate such transactions as
between publishers of daily illustrated papers and
artists, where time is a great consideration and the
labour of registering each drawing would be con-
siderable.

5. Not only are the original works themselves
put upon the same basis, but with two exceptions