Some Modern Artists [pp. 178-181]

SOME MODERN ARTISTS.
MILLAIS.
WITH regard to Millais, I am in doubt wheth er I can make my readers clearly understand, in
a few words, the extraordinary merits and de fects of his work. Every one knows what his
early work was; every one remembers the
" Ophelia" and "The Huguenots," and perhaps
some have even seen the " Apple Blossoms," the
most typical works of this painter in his younger
days. Many of my readers are probably also
readers of Anthony Trollope's works, and if they
will take the trouble to turn to "Framley Parson age " or" The Small House at Allington," or, best
of all, "Orley Farm," they will be in a position to
judge of what Millais might have done, as well as
what he has done. In those early pre-Raphael ite days (Millais was one of the three original
"Brethren ") there were three things that Millais
did better than they had ever been done before.
The first, and the greatest, was the expression
of emotion; the second was the power of invest ing the most simple incidents with a grace and
beauty which have only been equaled by one
man (Fred Walker), whose work I will speak of
directly; the third was the reproduction of animal and inanimate nature faithfully, and yet in
perfect combination and subordination to his
chief subject. Had he continued as he'began,
had he lent to the pre-Raphaelite school the influence of his keen sense of beauty, both of emotion and nature, it is impossible to say what the
English school might not have been at the present time. I do not judge of any man's motives,
and I will not raise the question here, but, from
one cause or another, Millais forsook his old ways,
gradually turned his attention to portrait and
landscape painting, became fashionable, and
threw his influence mainly against the school he
had once belonged to. When I think of the
"Ophelia" and "The Huguenots," and then of
the series of pictures called "Yes," "No," and
"Yes or No," the change seems to me almost
pathetic-that a painter should begin his work
with the noblest deeds of self-sacrifice and heroism he can find for subjects, and end by painting a " brown ulster" and a beef-eater's uniform,
for those are practically the chief subjects of the
two last large figure paintings of this artist! The
realism is still there, my readers will perhaps say.
Yes; that is just the whole point of the question.
That is what I want to lead my readers to see
clearly, if I may, in this article-that realism is
not noble in itself, if it have no higher object.
Realizing an inkstand or an ulster will not give
you a picture; what you want to realize is the
beauty which dwells in nature, and also the relative degree in which various natural objects possess it; and you can not stop even there-that
will give you beauty, but only that of death. The
next step is the all-important one, the one which
can only be taken by one man in a thousand,
and which he must take, unless he is false to his
art and himself. This is simply the connection
of material beauty with immaterial thought. I
wish I had space to dwell longer upon this. I
should like to try and show how all nature really
depends for its chief interest on humanity; how
dead and cold it becomes the instant all trace of
man's thought, interest, and emotion is removed
from it. I once tried to show this (in an article
devoted to the purpose) to the readers of the
" Spectator," and straightway a lot of wiseacres
thought I wanted a man in the foreground of
every picture, and set to and abused me for so
doing. So it is with fear and trembling that I
let this sentence stand-that the simple copying
of nature, no matter how minute or skillful, will
never make a great picture, or a great artist. An
artist must not only see more clearly than other
people-he must also see morie,- he must, if he is
to be an artist in anything but name, see those
hidden significances in commonplace things,
that poetry of the ordinary which, in another
form, is revealed to us by the poet. Like him,
too, his work must be
....'bravely furnished all abroad to fling
The winged shafts of truth;
To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring
Of Hope and Youth.
-THE GREEK ARTISTS OF ENGLAND.
BY Greek artists I mean those who follow,
either in subject or theory, Greek art. They are
five in number-Watts, Leighton, Poynter, AlmaTadema,* and Albert Moore. Now, of these, the
first and perhaps the last are Greek in spirit; the
other three only in form. For instance, let us
take Leighton's "Music-Lesson " -a mother
teaching her child to play some stringed instrument. I am not going to say a word against the
beauty of this picture; as a specimen of skillful
painting, and as a piece of delicate color, it is a
perfect feast for the eye; that the delicacy of the
skin and its transparency of tint are too great to
be natural is, I conceive, exactly what the artist
intended-his reading of the fact that what the
Greeks sought in art was beauty. But is this the
right interpretation of what the Greeks meant by
"beauty"? Do these soft robes of palest seagreen and blue, with their golden embroideries,
harmonize with what we know or imagine of the
stern simplicity of Greek art? This waxen rose * So long domiciled in England and so well known,
that I mention him here, though I believe he is French
by birth.
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