Imitation as a fine art—Economic substitution—European imitativeness—Parallels in English craftsmanship—Early plating—Silver platers at Sheffield.

Imitation is no new thing in art. Indeed it may be advanced as an axiom that no art worthy of the name has ever come into being without inheriting the traditions and technique of some preceding motifs. Bizarre movements have at one time and another seized artists and craftsmen, they have become anarchist in regard to all previous art postulates, and produced somewhat chaotic and formless results. The fantastic jazz in art circles known as L'Art Nouveau some years ago, temporarily upset the balance of the younger generation of designers, spent its force in unchecked licence, and ended so ignominiously that it is now entirely forgotten, nor has it left any permanent impression upon succeeding schools.

Now and again imitation has been resorted to by well-known masters to flagellate the taste of their own day. Embittered by constant praise of old works they have made imitations of old masters' styles and foisted them on their critics until at such moment they divulged their authorship and pricked the bubble of the undue adoration of the ancients. Pierre Mignard fabricated a Magdalen and through the complicity of a dealer it was sold as a newly discovered Guido to the Chevalier de Clairville. Presently it was noised about that the painting was by Mignard. Le Brun, the great painter, pronounced it to be a Guido and in his best manner. The jest had gone far enough, the owner, Mignard, Le Brun, and the critics met to settle the affair. Le Brun and the critics adhered to their belief in its authenticity. Mignard protested otherwise, and said he had painted the work over the portrait of a cardinal, and as proof dipped a brush in oil and disclosed the cardinal's hat. Le Brun, bursting with anger, satirically exclaimed, "Always paint Guido but never Mignard." But the canvases of Mignard and Le Brun both hang together in the leading galleries of Europe.

Nor is this a solitary instance of the pique of artists for lack of discernment in contemporary criticism. Goltzius, that masterly exponent of strongly graved lines on the copper, produced and published six prints in the style of Albert DÜrer, Lucas van Leyden and others, and one, the Circumcision, was sold as one of DÜrer's finest achievements. These six engravings of Goltzius are known among his work as the "masterpieces." They are certainly masterly imitations, and he executed them to show his critics that though his was a new style, yet he could if he chose slavishly follow the manner of the old masters. These are instances of imitation used ironically as a weapon to pour scorn on the mediocrity and want of knowledge of critics.

In pictures there have been whole generations of imitators and copyists. The continent in the eighteenth century was flooded with sham Correggios, Claudes, Poussins, and Cuyps, and many English painters, afterwards well known, did not disdain to make copies for the dealers of old masters' pictures. David Allan, called the "Scottish Hogarth," was an adept in copying chalk drawings from the old masters; and many artists eked out a pitiable existence as copyists while waiting for the public to acclaim their original work. John Jackson copied the head of Reynolds for Chantrey which could have passed for the original by Sir Joshua. A Rubens he painted in the presence of the students of the Royal Academy was acclaimed as faithful to the original. He was unequalled in such facsimile imitations. Henry Liverseege, in the early days of the nineteenth century, copied Vandyck, Rubens, and Teniers with such skill that few could say which was the original and which the copy. Two pictures, one by Sir Edwin Landseer, and the other a copy, were to be sold on successive days at auction. The painter, strolling in to the auction room on the day before the copy was sold, mistook it for his own work.

At the galleries of the Fine Art Society, in Bond Street in 1875, an exhibition was held of a series of facsimiles of Turner drawings in the National Gallery lent by Ruskin and executed for him by Mr. Ward. Of these replicas, Ruskin said in a note: "I have given my best attention during upwards of ten years to train a copyist to perfect fidelity in rendering the works of Turner, and have now succeeded in enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas—facsimiles which I must sign with my own name to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes."

Economic Substitution.—But imitation has many phases. Modern photography in copying the great works of old masters has made it possible to study their works with exactitude in the dimensions of black and white, and if the work is an etching or an engraving the reproduction claims a closer relationship with the original. The art of engraving from painters' work is imitative to the extent that it depicts the same subject and takes its initial inspiration from the painted canvas. But it claims a much higher regard—the great school of interpretative engravers translated painting into terms of black and white.

Economically, therefore, it will be seen that there is a real reason why imitative art, on whatever plane it finds itself, should hold its place. In a broad sense it has had a mission. It is true, as Goethe said, that "There are many echoes but few voices"; but the echoes have their value too until they reverberate into nothingness and new voices arise. As a substitute, therefore, for unattainable works of art any medium that will so successfully simulate the original as to convey the lines and the grace, the colour and the harmony, though in a lesser degree than the original, is to be welcomed for its own sake.

There are many occasions when sacrifices have had to be made and when prototypes have been destroyed and substitutes have arisen which have artistically filled the hiatus, if only for the time being. For instance, the extravagance of Louis XIV in regard to sumptuous silver passed all bounds. At a fÊte at Versailles in 1668 on each side of the royal buffet was elevated on a portico ten feet high a grand silver guÉridon bearing a massive silver girandole which lighted the buffet, accompanied by numerous large silver vases. On the table and steps of the buffet, which reached the height of twenty-five feet, were arranged twenty-four massive bowls of fine workmanship—these were separated by as many large vases, cassolettes and girandoles of great beauty. There were on the table twenty-four large silver jardiniÈres full of flowers, in front was a great silver cistern shaped like a shell, at the two extremities were four guÉridons, six feet high, surmounted by silver girandoles. Two other tables for the ladies were similarly equipped with masterpieces of the silversmiths' art.

In 1688 the Grande Monarque needed money to carry on his wars, and he issued an edict forbidding the manufacture of such massive silver, and sent all his plate to the Mint. So all this fine work, designed, made by Claude Ballin, Pierre Germain, Montars and other celebrated craftsmen after designs by Le Brun, was melted down; happily the pieces were first drawn by the artist goldsmith Delaunay and their forms are preserved. The king made it compulsory that the fine plate of the nobility should be sacrificed too, and in consequence most of the fine old silver was melted down.

But here comes the imitative note. The age of sumptuous silversmiths' work was followed by an age of fine pottery. Beautifully decorated earthenware and porcelain became fashionable. Rouen made a special service for Louis XIV, and a great impetus was given to the art of the factories of Moustiers, Marseilles and Nevers, and thus the nobles of France had their banquets from the clay of the potter instead of from the vessels of the silversmith.

As will be shown later the relationship between the art of the potter and that of the silversmith has always been somewhat closely allied. The designs of the one have, although not necessarily adapted to a differing technique, been boldly taken and assimilated in results that leave their note of incongruity to be criticized by collectors and connoisseurs to-day.

European Imitativeness.—In order to arrive at a closer appreciation of the niceties of imitation, perhaps it would be better to commence by attempting to understand what is originality and where it can be found. But that would entail a great amount of study. In porcelain one would have to follow the attempts of the Dutch school of potters and bow down in admiration to Meissen, where the first true porcelain was made in Europe. All else is imitative, including SÈvres and Wedgwood and Worcester. Nor does imitation stand arrested at technique, it follows slavishly the oriental prototype in design. We find pagodas and Chinese landscapes, and little figures which meant so much in a language of symbolism, scattered promiscuously on Delft beakers and on Bow cups. Wedgwood, in his Portland Vase, copied a prototype of blue glass. In his classic subjects in relief on his vases and his cameos he builded on the reputation of Greek and Roman types translated through the brain of John Flaxman, and there was a school of potters who came second-hand after Wedgwood and imitatively carried on his classic style.

The whole of the school of decorating furniture in lac is imitated from the East, and a poor imitation at best.

What the glass-worker did at Venice was copied over the Alps in Germany. It suffered in translation and finally became something new. The bulbous appendages to German glass were the crescendo note of the Italian more reticent ornament. When the Murano glass-worker added the tiny griffin-like symbolized version of the small sea-horse found in the Adriatic to the handles of his tazzas, he added a touch of grace and beauty. But the German developed these into chimerical beasts.

In an examination of European art one wonders where imitation ends and where originality begins. Originality unfortunately often begins just at that point when the original touch of genius is lost sight of and when banal excrescences are added, meaningless and offensive.

But originality and fertility of design often begin when experimentalists set out to produce one thing and realized another, and commenced a new technique and became original in so doing. The search for the philosopher's stone was futile, the old alchymists in their laboratories, though they never found the means of transmuting baser metals into gold, made experiments which begat the results of modern science.

Impulses are carried out in various countries in accordance with national limitations. The East African negro who patiently covers a gin bottle with bead-work, proudly displayed as native art by a missionary society in London, is obeying the instinct to embellish and add his own genius to that of the alien. He knows the value the white man puts on the spirit bottle, and he worships afar off at the same shrine.

Parallels in English Craftsmanship.—In regard to Sheffield plated ware, if it be advanced that it was imitative of old silver and therefore negligible, we must claim as a parallel old English earthenware, where, although the technique differed from that of the potting of porcelain, it did simulate porcelain, and examples of the one are found in replica of the other. As to production the reason for imitativeness is often to effect economy. Nor should this be anathema in art. Undoubtedly Staffordshire and all its products struck hard at the English porcelain factories. But, in spite of its initial imitativeness and its wary regard for competitive lines, it did win a path of its own. There the parallel ceases because earthenware was made in England prior to porcelain.

Imitativeness in various arts is common enough. The glass-worker and the potter copied the silversmith. The cabinet-maker was indebted to both and vice versa. We find acanthus ornament in wood and in metal, the strapwork of the Tudor carver on wood and on silver. The cupid in metal on the Stuart clock case is duplicated in the stretcher of the chair carved in walnut, and is found in stone at Hampton Court and St. Paul's in similar ornament. Wedgwood snatched the topographical designs from copper-plate engravings to decorate his service for Catherine II of Russia, depicting English country seats and views. Chippendale borrowed from the Chinese, and echoed Marot, the French designer, in his original designs which burst upon the town in his Director.

Nor does it seem to trouble the collector of china overmuch that Worcester copied oriental models and even used a spurious Chinese mark, that Bow boldly proclaimed itself as "New Canton," and copied Worcester, and that Lowestoft copied both. The invention of transfer printing upon china is claimed by Worcester, by Liverpool and by Battersea, and all three employed designs which were not original. The whole school of designs transfer-printed upon china is imitative, many of them had already appeared as illustrations to books.

Take another art, that of stipple engraving printed in colours. Here indeed is an imitative art. An engraving in black and white is a translation of a subject in colours. When printed in colours it sets out to be imitative of another art. But collectors have not been shy to give as much as four figures for some of these eighteenth century colour prints, greater prices even than the original paintings would bring under the hammer. The subject is illimitable and provocative of much argument.