DOI issue:
No. 314 (May 1919)
DOI article:Sir Aston Webb, P.R.A.
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21357#0146
Sir Aston Webb, P.R.A.
can it carry on its work and actively intervene
in the affairs of the art world, because it is only
while it is in touch with the sentiment of the
moment that it can hope to affect the trend of
public opinion and to guide the movements to
which the artists are inclined. If it were to
decide now to rest upon its traditions, and to
try to prevent the effervescence of the future
by imposing the restrictions of the somnolent
past, it would soon be supplanted by some
association with more energy and a better con-
ception of the duty it had to fulfil.
That the Academy has no intention of putting
itself out of commission in any way seems to be
suggested by its choice of the man who is to
preside over its affairs in these times of stress.
For one thing it has acted up to its title as an
Academy of Arts by electing an architect
instead of a painter, as has hitherto been its
almost unbroken custom, and for another it has
in the person of Sir Aston Webb fixed upon a
President who has a distinguished reputation
as an energetic reformer and administrator. He
has conceived and carried out many great
artistic schemes which demanded exceptional
largeness of view and thoroughness of practical
contrivance ; he has filled many offices of wide
responsibility ; he has identified himself with
a number of movements which aimed at the
betterment of mankind by enlarging the aesthetic
understanding of the people ; and he has proved
repeatedly the sincerity of his belief that art
can be and should be counted as one of the
essential factors in the rightly devised plan of
human existence. With any proj ect put forward
within the Academy to raise the standard of
accomplishment in art he would be instinctively
in sympathy, and he would bring to the shaping
of it trained experience and sound executive
capacity. Any idea coming from outside which
might promise satisfying results he would be
the first to endorse, and he would be ready, it
can well be imagined, to advise the Academy
to give it official countenance.
It is fortunate, indeed, that the Academy
should have available now for the presidentship
a man with so marked a personality, because of
all our art institutions it is the one which most
HOUSE AT BROOKE, ISLE OF WIGHT SIR ASTON WEBB, P.R.A , ARCHITECT
T30
can it carry on its work and actively intervene
in the affairs of the art world, because it is only
while it is in touch with the sentiment of the
moment that it can hope to affect the trend of
public opinion and to guide the movements to
which the artists are inclined. If it were to
decide now to rest upon its traditions, and to
try to prevent the effervescence of the future
by imposing the restrictions of the somnolent
past, it would soon be supplanted by some
association with more energy and a better con-
ception of the duty it had to fulfil.
That the Academy has no intention of putting
itself out of commission in any way seems to be
suggested by its choice of the man who is to
preside over its affairs in these times of stress.
For one thing it has acted up to its title as an
Academy of Arts by electing an architect
instead of a painter, as has hitherto been its
almost unbroken custom, and for another it has
in the person of Sir Aston Webb fixed upon a
President who has a distinguished reputation
as an energetic reformer and administrator. He
has conceived and carried out many great
artistic schemes which demanded exceptional
largeness of view and thoroughness of practical
contrivance ; he has filled many offices of wide
responsibility ; he has identified himself with
a number of movements which aimed at the
betterment of mankind by enlarging the aesthetic
understanding of the people ; and he has proved
repeatedly the sincerity of his belief that art
can be and should be counted as one of the
essential factors in the rightly devised plan of
human existence. With any proj ect put forward
within the Academy to raise the standard of
accomplishment in art he would be instinctively
in sympathy, and he would bring to the shaping
of it trained experience and sound executive
capacity. Any idea coming from outside which
might promise satisfying results he would be
the first to endorse, and he would be ready, it
can well be imagined, to advise the Academy
to give it official countenance.
It is fortunate, indeed, that the Academy
should have available now for the presidentship
a man with so marked a personality, because of
all our art institutions it is the one which most
HOUSE AT BROOKE, ISLE OF WIGHT SIR ASTON WEBB, P.R.A , ARCHITECT
T30