Between fifty and sixty years ago John Pye, the engraver of Turner, wrote a book which he called "The Patronage of British Art." In this he gave a history of "the rise and progress of art and artists" up to, and during part of, his own time. The word "patronage" is now repugnant to the artist, who prefers to take his stand upon the more healthy basis of demand and supply which rules other branches of work. But, if we substi. tute the word "demand" for that of "patronage," we may perhaps with some advantage follow up this enquiry begun by John Pye, and try to take stock of the progress of art in this country up to the present time. We may also try to forecast its probable future from the signs of to-day-signs which, in some respects, do not look very propitious.

We English are not perhaps what is called an artistic people, but there is a large leaven among us exceedingly susceptible to artistic impressions. It is to these that we must look for the sustaining force of material support and appreciation without which the individual artist, and still more the artistic profession as a whole, cannot continue to exist. The vital question for British art and artists to-day is whether this national body of art-lovers is increasing or decreasing; whether the art of to-day is maintaining its hold upon the people and increasing its constituency, or whether, on the contrary, it is not in danger of becoming only the cult and shibboleth of a few, and those few themselves out of touch with the large body of their fellow-countrymen. Any one who has watched the progress of British art from this point of view must be impressed by the fact that it does not now excite so wide an

interest in England as it did some thirty years ago. If it has not lost, it certainly seems to be losing its grasp of the mind and heart of the people. It is of little avail for the newspaper critics to write up this or that technical excellence, and to tell us that salvation can only be won by "art for art's sake." Even when we are told that so penetrating an eye as Millais saw that "much modern work is technically so good that it requires a very clever fellow to do anything better," there is still the seed of failure in it if it has no national basis in the love and appreciation of the people. Without this it must still be an exotic, and, like all exotics, will fade away and die as soon as the fostering warmth of its own immediate surroundings happens to fail.

By art which has a national basis we mean something which, to a considerable degree, has been evolved from the instincts, sentiments, and beliefs common to all, and which endeavors to answer some of those unspoken questionings inherent in all imaginative natures. Such art should illustrate life in its fullest sense, and those universal truths which belong to human nature, and are not only beautiful in themselves but are essential to it; which fashion does not change, but which remain the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. If art does not to some extent attempt to do this, it cannot be called national or popular, because it will not appeal widely to human nature; and, if it be not national in this sense, its hours are numbered. A people may live, perhaps a somewhat stunted and incompetent life, without art; but art itself cannot live without the people, nor can it develope into its highest and fullest vi

If we consider on what basis popular belief in and love of art have generally rested, the answer may tell us why these are not so strong among us as we should wish them to be at the present day. Whatever the artist and the art-expert may think upon this question, there can be little doubt that this belief in and love of art have never rested entirely, or even chiefly, upon its purely technical qualities. "What is this about?" "What does it mean?" "What idea is it intended to' embody?"-such are the questions asked by your Englishman when he looks at a work of art. If the art critic tells him that it is "an able rendering of certain relations of tones," or "an impression of a face in a few masterly touches," or "a sonata in brush-work," he says, "I have never seen anything in nature like this; and it has not the beauty or elevation of ideas that I crave in a work of art which professes to be something more than the mere record of a natural fact. It is neither nature as I see it, with its beauty, its subtlety, its exquisiteness of finish, nor does it contain any thought or idea to stir my imagination. Let your experts adore it; I will have none of it."

It is a trite definition of a picture that it is something between a thing and a thought. The tendency of today, fostered by some modern criticism, has been to regard only the thing, and to ignore and disregard the thought. This is the tendency of so-called, but (as we think) falsely socalled "realism," because in no true work of art can the intellectual and the material be separated. The bias of modern criticism towards so-called realism has had the same effect upon pictures as upon some branches of literature, and has resulted in a grad

ually developed distrust of what is beautiful or imaginative, for fear it should not harmonize with what it is pleased to call the truth. The consequence is that modern art of this type is not even truly realistic, because with all its cleverness-and much of it is wonderfully clever-it is seldom charming, and often ugly.

Now nature is very seldom ugly and nearly always charming. This ugliness is an inevitable result of the abandonment of the ideal, or what we may call the "end," and the over-estimation of the "means" or expression of it. If we were compelled to decide whether, in art, the means or the end had produced the greater effect upon mankind, we should, I think, be obliged to confess that the end has it. But can there ever be a divorce of these two, the end and the means, without irreparable loss to art itself? If it is to be of an enduring kind, must it not invariably be the expression of an idea in the best possible manner? We can, of course, never afford to be indifferent to the means; on the other hand, a great danger to true art lurks in the creed which binds us only to the means. It is natural that the means alone should have a preponderating influence with the painter, since his whole life is absorbed in trying to master technique, and he alone knows its real difficulty; but why should the critic also fall into the same trap and put forward technique of this or that fashion as the single goal of art?

In literature what would be thought of the critic who even hinted at such a principle as this, namely, that a writer who has nothing whatever to say is worthy of admiration if he says it in sonorous words and well-balanced periods? As Jowett says in his preface to the "Phædrus,"

would not a great painter such as Michael Angelo, or a great poet such as

Shakespeare, returning to earth, courteously rebuke us? Would he not say that we are putting in the place of Art the preliminaries of Art, confusing Art, the expression of mind and truth, with Art, the composition of colors and forms? Perhaps he might more severely chastise some of us for trying to invent "a new shudder" instead of bringing to the birth living and healthy creations.

To the expert this kind of achievement may give some pleasure, but this pleasure will be limited to the expert; and, if he be also a true critic, it will only satisfy one side of him.

This principle applies also to what is only the fusion into an artistic and symmetrical whole of any natural object or combination of objects, however able that combination may be. If there be nothing in a work of art beyond this it will only appeal to the expert; yet it seems that towards this end we are driving. Those who know say nothing; and those who do not know are content to believe that art is after all not such an object of interest as they were taught to believe when they were young. Certainly art, as the expression of thoughts and ideas, has not now the hold upon the public which it had thirty or forty years ago. No doubt there are many causes for this. It would take too long to state them all, but some at least of them are not far to seek.

In the first place the artist, however strong his individuality, cannot escape from the influence of his environment. The fashion of his chief contemporaries, however much he may hereafter try to change and remould it by his own originality, will give a certain bent to his own work. The art-student is always singularly impressionable to the particular style and form of art in Vogue among his successful seniors. To-day, the great traditions of the past are of little moment to him. He does not often enquire how it came about

that his older contemporaries adopted this or that particular style. It is enough for him that the modern masters of technique have adopted it, and that certain writers in the press say that this is the only true and capable art of the day. He at once decides that he will adopt it too.

Again, in spite of the ridiculous cant preached by some, that an artist should never think about working for a livelihood, the young artist will fear that, if he ignores the art-fashion of his day as set by his successful seniors and the critics, and does only what his own fancy and judgment may prompt him to do, he may not even touch material success. This is a natural though, of course, a very obvious fallacy, because if the young artist has convictions and is strong enough to persist, he will in the end convert the critic, and become himself a fashion. Such men, however, are few and far between; and many years, which might be beneficially employed in the cause of national art, may be wasted before such a one comes to set the balance right again.

That this struggle between what the artist himself desires to do and what the fashion of the day demands, is one that requires remarkable staying powers on the part of the artist, might be proved by a very simple instance, viz. by the large number of modern subject-painters, who (in some cases, no doubt, unwillingly) have been forced into portrait-painting, and have been obliged practically to abandon that branch of art for which they originally entered the profession. Circumstances have been too strong for them; and it is probable that, if no change in public opinion takes place in the next few years, we may see still larger secessions from that important class of artists which bases its claims to reputation and interest upon the oldworld belief that a work of art should

express ideas as well as things. This conveys no stricture on the noble art of portraiture, which rests upon such strong foundations that no true lover of art would or could attack it; but it is no treason to confess that, though a fine portrait is to an expert one of the most fascinating achievements of the painter's art, the art which is to capture, hold, and delight people of all classes, and therefore become national, must contain something which a portrait, except in very rare cases, cannot possess. The portrait will interest the few; what is called the subject-picture will interest the many; and a preponderance of this class of art over the former will always mean a larger art constituency and a wider demand for works of art. When the portrait is entirely in the ascendant, this demand lessens; in the same ratio the art constituency decreases.

A remarkable proof of this rule is afforded by present art conditions compared with those existing in England thirty or forty years ago, when the subject-picture held the lead, and portraiture only a subordinate position. It may also be illustrated by a comparison between our own period and the last half of the eighteenth century, the portraiture of which has recently enjoyed a veritable "boom," accompanied by a corresponding fall in the demand for modern works of art.

In the seventies of the last century the eager competition among private collectors of modern pictures exceeded anything known before, and culminated in what is still known at Christie's as the "golden period." No doubt many works of a second and third-rate character fetched in that period prices far beyond their merits; and subsequent sales may have brought this fact into somewhat prominent notice, and shaken the faith of that most objectionable of all collectors or dabblers in works of art, the man who buys

solely "for the rise." But it might be well for those who deride that period and its high prices to turn an equally critical eye upon the picture-market of to-day. It is not difficult to perceive that the present "boom" of the portraiture of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, based no doubt, at first, upon the genuine greatness of much of the art then produced, has degenerated into a condition of things quite as dangerous as anything which existed in the so-called "golden period." One of the results of the winter exhibitions at Burlington House has been to open up a new mine of art wealth, both to the seller and the buyer, in the works of Reynolds and Gainsborough and their contemporaries. The fame of the best works of that time has given an artificial notoriety and inflated price to far inferior productions of the same period; and there are those among us who may live to see some of these inferior works fall in value from their thousands to their hundreds and even tens of pounds. The real masterpieces of either period will meanwhile remain equally valuable since, in their way, they are practically priceless.

But, apart from the question of mere pecuniary value, there are other distinctions which may be drawn between the two periods, in regard, firstly, to the public estimation of and interest in art which they respectively displayed, and secondly, to the class of picturebuyer involved.

We have endeavored to show that the present is chiefly a portrait period, and have gladly accepted the high place universally claimed for this branch of art; but we have also ventured to point out its limitations as an artistic influ

ence among the people, and the decrease of the art constituency pari passu with its growth. It is not too much to say that, except where a portrait, in addition to its own excellence

as a picture, happens to portray some well-known character, and thus becomes in a sense historical, it fails to stir the imagination of the uninstructed in art. It is true that it is a representation of a human being, but it brings with it so little of the narrative of human life, its deeds, its passions, and its sorrows, that, outside the mere excellence of its technique, a book of cabinet-photographs will equally satisfy the imagination of the ordinary spectator.

Photography, in its most recent development, is a rival power which must be reckoned with by artists; and the art made fashionable by the modern critic, i.e. portraiture, competes with photography upon its own ground and does not care to accept points by using those gifts of imagination, or of stirring narrative and romance, over which photography has no power whatever. The lay mind has not been slow to realize this, though it may not understand the cause. It finds that modern photography gives such an exact transcript of nature itself, even to its extreme of delicacy and finish, and gives this so easily and so cheaply, that it is satisfied with it. The more so because it finds itself snubbed by the modern art-expert when it looks for something beyond this in art, and asks for some expression of sentiment, story, subject, i.e. the ideal. These, the outsider is told, have properly nothing to do with art. People bow to this because they suppose that the expert ought to know, but they do so with a mental reservation. They say to themselves, "If sentiment, story, subject, and the ideal have nothing to do with art, then art can have nothing to do with us, and we do not want it." This competition with the photograph on its own ground has led to the weakening or abandonment of many important qualities proper to art. So powerful has been the influence of the

photograph that even in color the extreme modern painter, with the extreme modern critic behind him, who talks of nothing but Whistler-we too take off our hat to Whistler, but only because he represents a remarkable though limited phase of art, not be cause he represents art itself has almost abandoned rich and brilliant color, and tries to harmonize his work as much as possible with the monotone of the photograph, so that neither in subject nor in color does he follow nature, as the artist sees nature when his eye is still open to healthy impressions.

But there is a still more serious disadvantage under which the modern artist suffers in the eyes of the people whose appreciation should foster a national art; and this is that he has abandoned what used to be called completeness-that is to say, beauty of surface, truth of detail, in fact, finish, that crown of all the best art of the past. He has abandoned this for a rough and powerful method of rapid impressionism, clever to a degree, a most brilliant compromise, but a compromise which really satisfies the expert only, because, on the one hand, it does not bring out the imaginative and romantic quality in art, and, on the other, does not present nature itself as the majority of people sec her. The delicacy, completeness, and wealth of detail displayed by nature are, if possible, more impressive to an ordinary eye than the mere aspect or strong impression of a fact a fact, moreover, which must not be looked into too closely.

But there is still another quality which used to be called the chief aim of art, and which it is now the fashion to ignore-beauty. This is an inevitable result of photographic competition, because, when the ideal is proscribed, the eclectic must go with it; and beauty in art, whether it be evolved from within or without, is