Studio: international art (19.1900)

Studio- Talk

example, in the trenchant outlining of the muscles
in the rider's legs ? However this may be, the statue
is full of a splendid vigour, and is therefore atvariance
with the over-refinement of style that is common to
so many artists of Mr. Watts's generation.

Some lessons of great importance to English
artists have been brought forcibly to notice by the
winter exhibitions of Flemish Old Masters at the
New Gallery and the Royal Academy. What art
patron can feel quite certain that the colour in his
modern pictures will retain its first freshness, like
that of the early Netherlandish masters ? The
feverish competition of our time has caused many
painters to be careless in their use and choice of
mediums and pigments, nor do they seem to know
that such carelessness is an act of dishonesty, inas-
much as no allowance is made for it when the
pictures are sold. Picture buyers have rarely any
knowledge of the chemistry of colours, and they
buy what pleases them, in the firm belief that its
beauty will endure. To this fact the Flemish art
guilds were keenly alive, and recognising the need
of scrupulous fairness in their business transactions,
they punished any member who did not make use
of tried methods and good materials.

The great value of national traditions in art was
another point of interest brought to notice by the
Flemish pictures at the New Gallery and the Royal
Academy. Three things go to the making of such
traditions : first, an inborn desire to paint; next,
a continuous and wise encouragement of this desire
in a people that is moved by it; and, third, a frank
recognition of the fact that every people in its art-
work should be doggedly true to the best qualities
of its national character, even although its best
qualities be not the highest in the domain of pure
/Estheticism. These three essentials to success in
the formation of national art traditions were found
in the Netherlands from the Van Eycks' time to
the days of Rubens, who borrowed from the
Italians only those things which his Flemish mind
and temperament could assimilate. Rubens and
his predecessors were not ashamed because their
race had not been endowed with the highest gifts
of the imagination; they were content to be true
to themselves, and they were wise. Notice, too,
how in early times the discipline of the guilds
prevented the Netherlandish painters from drifting
into eccentricities of taste. Art grew and changed
with the precepts which the guilds preserved and
matured, each painter's individuality becoming an
integral part of the general character of the school

44

to which he belonged. How different is this from
the undisciplined individualism, the morbid yearn-
ing to be original at any price, which has long
reigned in so many English studios, producing
forms of art which do not give expression to the
life and spirit of the present time. Some of our
painters have tried to be mediaeval Italians, many
have wished to be modern Frenchmen, few have
been painter-children of our own age and country;
and yet the morbid chatter about originality has
never for a moment ceased. Foreigners may well
ask why English artists have not inherited the
wonderful energy of their race, without which
England could not have gemmed the remote seas
with repetitions of herself.

It is pleasant to note, however, that a strong
reaction friendly to vigour and manliness in art has
begun to show itself here and there, as in the
sympathetic criticisms which have recently ap-
peared on "the manly, swaggering Rubens." This
reaction, as might have been expected, has not as

DETAIL OF STATUE " PHYSICAL ENERGY "

BY G. F. WATTS, R.A.