VARIOUS views of an artist's life, and motives for following art are apt to present themselves to those on the threshold of the vast field of its study, but these after all may mostly be summed up in one of the two governing reasons, which may be expressed as follows:

1. The pure love of art.

2. The sake of a livelihood.

(A third, for pastime, sometimes comes in, but may be dismissed as art cannot be studied to any purpose except in a serious spirit.)

In practice it generally comes about that these first two have to be reconciled in some way, and it becomes a pressing question sooner or later as to how to do so, though it is always well to remember that there is no natural connection between love and money in the arts and, indeed, it would be better if all work could be inspired by and done for love. At the same time, under present economic arrangements, the labourer is at least worthy of his hire; and it might also be said that when poverty comes in at the door art—if not love—is apt (though not always) to fly out of the window. The same sequence sometimes happens also with the sudden advent of riches, which also has a way of throwing domestic arrangements out of harmony, so that here, as in other cases, extremes meet, and too much may be as bad as not enough in its effects upon art.

To paint great masterpieces and make fame and fortune is an ambition given to few to realize. The masterpiece at all events must be a labour of love, whether fame or fortune follow or not, and in the history of art it has happened over and over again that masterpieces have not been instantly recognized, and the master usually has had to wait for recognition and reward—if that can be said in any real sense to lie outside the accomplishment of his work. Good art, like virtue, is its own reward. Yet, as a financial character remarks, in a play of Mr. George Moore's, "Man cannot live by virtue alone." Virtue itself indeed requires appropriate conditions for its development and sustenance, just as the artist requires support and sympathy.

The warm breath of appreciation will draw up the sap of creative impulse and it will put forth bud and leaf, blossom and fruit.

This potentiality for art, exists in a rudimentary way though in very varying degrees in perhaps all individuals, but as a general rule skill and facility are only acquired at the price of constant devotion, a devotion spontaneous and sincere. Even great gifts and natural or inherited adaptability require to be strengthened and made supple by study and constant practice and observation. I have alluded to the importance of a sympathetic atmosphere, and it sometimes happens that the germ of artistic impulse has to struggle with adverse circumstances, and it becomes a question of its strength and endurance whether it will survive till more favourable opportunities for its development arrive.

Where from the earliest the student has been surrounded by the tools and implements of art, when he has seen it progressing before his eyes, the gain is enormous over those who take up their studies late, and to whom the world of art is comparatively mysterious and strange. The mere imitative impulse, which appears to be possessed in common by all mankind in a certain degree, will in the first instance gain a certain ease and facility of hand in dealing with tools—say pencil, brush and colour, which itself is a very great advantage to begin with. In fact, the first consideration in studying art is facility of hand. Without it, really nothing can be done since the power of expression is so much dependent upon it.

In this connection I was much struck, while in America, with a method adopted by a teacher (Mr. Liberty Tadd)⁵ in Philadelphia, a city in which very great attention was being paid to all forms of technical instruction. Well, this teacher did not profess to train artists at all. His object was to give facility of hand. He took children of various ages—quite young to begin with—from the ordinary primary schools, and set them to draw on the black board with a piece of chalk in each hand certain figures. Circles to begin with, and certain symmetric forms of ornament as shown in the diagram. The facility they acquired was extraordinary. He then set them to what he called "memorize" these forms and combine them in design as they best could, and to model such designs in clay, and to carve them in wood.

Well, it struck me this might be capable of development. At any rate, clearly, facility of hand could be developed by exercise, just as muscular strength can be.

From such simple exercises a student might advance, and those who developed more faculty or taste in certain directions rather than others—say in modelling rather than drawing, or in carving—might pursue further those particular branches, making them main studies to which other side studies would contribute. The use of colour, and [pg 109-110] the habit of working directly on the paper with the brush, like the Japanese, would again give enormous facility and precision of touch, of great value both to the designer of patterns and also to the pictorial artist. The direct brush method has been, since this was first written, practised in our schools, often with surprising results indicating considerable design faculty in young children. Method is so much a question of habit, and in so many departments of design precision of touch and directness of execution are of such importance—in the preparation of working designs for cotton printing for instance. The india-rubber, I am inclined to think, sometimes is the root (or the sap) of all evil.

It is for this quality of precision and technical adaptability to the conditions of manufacture which has, I believe, induced many manufacturers to seek their designs and working drawings on the continent. From the specimens I have seen however, I cannot say I am impressed with the originality or fertility of the designs, and when, too—though I am by no means of the Jingo persuasion—it came to getting your British lion designed abroad, unicorn and all the rest of the national heraldry, it seemed rather a reductio ad absurdum. Yet after all, of course, we must concede morally our French or German brother has as much right to life as we. Competitive commerce certainly is no respecter of nationality. We must all take our chance in the world market nowadays. We are all chained to the conqueror's car. We want a new Petrarch to write the triumph of commercialism, and a new designer to picture it, as the old triumphs are depicted with every splendour of inventive accessory, and magnificence of decorative effect in those Burgundian tapestries at Hampton Court and South Kensington. Well, I am afraid the modern triumph, such as it is, is pictured for us in the rampant poster, which pursues us in and out of stations, up and down streets, and even along the railway lines, which last vantage ground hitherto has been the prerogative of our American cousins. I do not say the poster has no place in art, and many very able artists have designed posters, and, on the whole, our free popular exhibitions on the hoardings have gained both in interest and printing skill, and decorative effect of late years. Under considerable restraint and chastening it might be possible to make the announcement of useful wares and theatrical events at least inoffensive, perhaps, and it may be that the mere working of competition will produce a demand for more refined productions, since when all shout together no one voice is likely to be heard, and the accepted theory of a poster is that it must shout—but let us keep it out of our scenery. Any way the subject is important since our hoardings are evidently the most obviously public education in pictorial and typographical design. It is, after all, what meets our eyes every day that influences us. It is the surrounding—the set scene of every-day life that affects our artistic sense more than anything. While a visit to a museum or art gallery is only an occasional matter, except for students, the mass of mankind must take their impressions of colour and form from what they see around them.

It is, we know, the persistence and aggregation of small causes that have played the chief part in the modelling of the earth as we see it, and which are continually changing its aspect. In like manner the general sense or sensitiveness to beauty is acted upon unconsciously, I have no doubt, by the aspects of every-day life, by the colours and forms of the street and the market as well as by the pictures and furniture of our domestic interiors. If this theory is correct, it follows that anything which impairs that sensitiveness must injure the faculty of its appreciation and production.

We have been too careless in this matter, and constant toleration and familiarity with hideous surroundings brutalizes and blunts the perceptions, and seeing how largely ugliness of form and colour prevails in at least the externals of modern life, especially of our manufacturing centres, it is perhaps not surprising that a certain cult, a certain worship of the ugly should have obtained a footing even in art.

I do not deny there are certain tragic aspects of industrialism, a certain weird fascination in drifting clouds of smoke, and beauty in the forms of escaping steam, and that graphic representations of the various restless aspects of modern life, have, in proportion to their sincerity, historic value. It is at all events our life and must be recorded, though it leads to the art of the newspaper—but a great deal of clever art can be put into a newspaper. Our newspapers are perhaps getting the better of us; like Chronos the press devours its own children, and no one knows how many geniuses are yearly swallowed up, or how many lives and talents consumed in order that the comfortable world shall have its dish of news and views at the breakfast table, as well as in successive relays, served up like muffins, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the electric light. Well, Art, like literature, may be said to be divided into prose, poetry, and penny-a-lining, or, to find equivalents we might say, the creative, the pictorial, and the pot-boiling kinds. The first two are governed by their own laws and the individual preferences of the artist, the third depends upon fashion, the state of the markets, averages and the laws of supply and demand.

Now it seems quite possible in an artistic life, while preserving an ideal of beauty of design and workmanship in whatever direction without sacrifice of principle, to remain in touch with the ordinary wants of humanity—to realize that that art is not necessarily the highest which is always in the clouds, but, indeed, that all kinds of art gain in character and beauty in proportion as the ideas they express are incarnate as it were—inseparable from the particular materials in which they are embodied. Their peculiar conditions and limitations openly and frankly acknowledged, and so far from being felt in the nature of a bondage, really are aids to distinct and beautiful decoration, as is the case in all the arts and crafts of design, showing that sincerity is the fundamental condition of good design and workmanship, which never pride themselves on imitating qualities which properly belong to other forms of art and other materials.

There are two systems, or methods, or principles of education in art.

i. The Academic or absolute.

ii. The Experimental, or relative, and adaptive.

The one teaching art or design in the abstract on certain cut-and-dried principles and methods, and fixed canons and standards, passing every mind through the same mill, without special reference to any particular conditions of craftsmanship or individual preference.

The other teaching design in concrete forms and in direct relation to tools, methods and materials, with the object of calling out the individual feeling and setting it free to express itself under the natural limitations of art in its own way.

The latter is the method of our new technical and Arts and Crafts schools, so that a student may really acquire a practical working knowledge of the peculiar requirements of design to be reproduced in any process of manufacture, instead of being launched on the world with vague general ideas of drawing and painting, but ignorant of how to apply them.

It of course remains to be proved how far technical schools can really efficiently take the place of the old workshop training under the apprenticeship system, which led to good results in the past, but while one must of course recognize that changed times require new methods, we ought also clearly to realize that efficiency in the use of tools and materials, and adaptability to materials, with the view of bearing on the prosperity of trade and supplying manufacturers with more highly skilled designers and workmen, with increased competition, go to form one aim and ultimate object. Quite another is the like efficiency, governed by the fresh creative impulse of artists and craftsman taking keen pleasure in their work, with leisure for reflection and enjoyment, and the gathering of fresh ideas from no poor, mean or stinted life, and not deprived of the stimulating influences of natural or architectural beauty, or the touch of refinement, and with the stimulating emulation and co-operation of fellowship instead of cut-throat competition.

These are two ideals somewhat distinct. It remains to be seen which goal we shall ultimately reach, but much depends upon which we each individually work for, since individual impulse and action are precipitated in the collective force which finally moves the world.

At present the requirements of artistic ideals are not always identical with the demands of commerce, and sometimes not so in any sense at all. There must be always I should think some particular individual reserve in the artist which must bide its time and the fitting medium and opportunity for its expression. The world is slow to apprehend new manifestations of original talent and will not accept immature masterpieces. It becomes a question therefore for the individual artist how far he can, without casting away or losing sight of his higher ideals and aspirations, associate himself with work of a less ambitious, more immediately serviceable, but not necessarily less artistic kind. It is here that technical knowledge will come in to help him, and there is room for the very best talents and invention in design in the work of the loom, and the printing press, iron, wood, stone, metal, glass, in a thousand materials and forms which contribute to build up the life of ordinary civilized man. When the design and construction of our furniture, and the various patterns and accessories which minister to the daily wants of humanity fall into purely mechanical hands, and artistic craftsmen no longer concern themselves with the unity of use and beauty, the sense of beauty and pleasure in life which comes of the exercise of the artistic faculty and of its appreciation, both are in a fair way to perish of inanition.

It cannot too often be insisted on that the vital springs which nourish the growth of the tree of art to its topmost branches must be looked for in the harmonious character of all things connected with life itself, and since human happiness is bound up with harmonious social arrangements in all ways, the importance of such considerations cannot well be exaggerated.

As in the pursuit of art we advance in the possession and interpretation of beauty and in the power of conferring higher pleasure to the cultivated senses and intellect, so are the forms of art apt to be placed higher in the scale: but High Art can only mean the art which embodies the highest beauty and conveys the most lasting and ennobling pleasure. It is its quality more than its particular form which settles this. Sharp lines of demarcation are often drawn between fine art and decorative, or industrial, art, for instance, which have proved very misleading. A good design is far and away better than a bad picture any day, but the arts are really an equal brotherhood. Excellence in any one branch probably requires as fine capacities as excellence in another. Beauty is of different kinds, but perfect beauty of design and workmanship must be acknowledged to be so, after its kind, whenever we meet with it, and who shall hold the scales between one kind of beauty and another.

If an exquisite work of the loom—say such a Persian carpet as may be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, satisfies the eye with lovely and subtle harmonies of colour, with delicate and beautiful and inventive design, and even suggestions of romance and poetry: can the finest work of the painter give us more? Are threads and dyes necessarily inferior to pigments and palettes, or the loom less a work of ingenious joinery than the easel?

Whatever may be the official and scientific classification of the arts agreed on, there is but one spirit in which to study and practice in any or all of them—sincerity and the love of beauty. "Strive to attain excellence in the things which are themselves excellent" sounds a good dictum but it is thoroughly Academic. Certain things are assumed to be excellent, and then excellence is to be striven for in them and in them alone. But how often in life—in the history of art and humanity has it been that some great artist and inventor has taken some poor despised thing and made it excellent. Think of the wealth of beauty and invention which makes alive the smallest fragment of Gothic carving, and invests every cup and bowl, every bench end and knife-handle of the middle ages with beauty and romance. The commonest weed may contain a fine motive in design, just as, in another way, the whole spirit of Japanese art in its weird, half-supernatural naturalism and magic delicacy of touch, may haunt a tiny ivory button, or be wrought into a sword hilt.

It does not follow that everything should be ornamented. Artistic feeling is shown often as much in the judgement which restrains or forbids ornament as in the fertility of invention from which it springs.

Organic consistency, adaptation to purpose, harmony and relation to surroundings. These are qualities at least as important as ornament.

Yet it seems often to be thought that decorative art means ornamenting something: but the very word decoration must mean something appropriate—fitting, perfectly adapted.

The engineer who borrows cast-iron Roman capitals and mouldings to adorn the iron railing and supports of his gasometer is not necessarily making it more artistic. A wrought-iron screen veiling the cylinder altogether, full of fancy and grace of treatment, might be more artistic—though it might raise the price of gas.

The skeleton has a beauty of its own, "Thou art nor modelled, glazed, or framed," says Tennyson, to his "rough sketch of man." Yet we should not like to live in a world of skeletons, however valuable a knowledge of the bones and mechanism of the joints is to students of the human form.

Engineers are good skeleton makers, but their skeleton structures do not often appeal to the sense of the beautiful—from the Eiffel Tower to the Forth Bridge. They can never be mistaken for architecture, they are triumphs of engineering, but they remain skeletons, and they are too big to be put in the cupboard. Perhaps our engineers are busy devising skeletons for the future to clothe and invest with life and beauty—or to bury! Yet for all that constructive lines—at least, simple ones which the eye can follow are, as a rule, beautiful lines. But I think if the sense of beauty was really a living and effective force, we should consider it a crime to destroy natural or architectural beauty, or to take away the public possession or enjoyment of it by any means, and should insist that the problem of utility was but half solved unless the result was harmonious.

At present the world seems too busy about other matters—dissecting and analysing, experimenting, buying and selling, manufacturing and speculating, to care collectively for beauty, perhaps, and truth is at present too many-sided and composite to be easily reconciled with beauty. All is tumult and conflict, and through the smoke and dust of the commercial competitive battle in which we spend our lives we are not quite sure when the sun is shining, and when we are sure, are perhaps too busy making the proverbial hay to notice the beauty of it. That is only for artists and idlers, and the world has such a horror of idleness that people, not condemned to hard labour, have acquired a habit of being extremely busy about nothing in particular, and it is supposed to be a conclusive argument against Socialism to ask "What will you do with the idle?" which seems a little like raising an objection to eating your dinner because you don't know what you will do when you are not hungry!

Artistic ability and power of design are often talked of as if they were in the nature of conjuring tricks, and their exponents like those automatic machines at the stations which only require "a penny in the slot" to satisfy every ordinary modern human requirement from butter-scotch to green spectacles.

It is not sufficiently realized that the sense of art and the power of its creation is a growth of the mind (as well as facility of hand) which must have its processes of germination and fruition.

Art is not nature. It is a commentary or creative variation upon it, but in the progress of its own development art follows natural laws. Truth and Beauty are true lovers, but the course of true love never did run smooth. While Truth in various disguises is roaming desert places, sometimes like a knight errant fighting with sphinxes and dragons, sometimes, like Thor with his hammer, striking blows, the effects of which are only seen long afterwards; Beauty, like an enchanted princess, is often shut up in gloomy castles closed round with thorny woods or thronging factory chimneys. It is our business to re-discover her, to awaken her, to interpret her afresh to the world—to show that if beauty sleeps, our senses are only half awake, and our lives a meaningless monotony.

5: Mr. Liberty Tadd has since developed his system and has embodied his teaching in a large and fully illustrated work—"New Methods in Education." He has visited this country and given lectures in exposition of his method, a part of which is known as bi-manual training, or ambidexterity, upon which there is an interesting book by Mr. John Jackson, F.E.I.S., with an introduction by Major-General R. S. S. Baden-Powell, C.B., published by Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench and Co.