In The Education of an Artist, Mr. Lewis Hind invented a new kind of art criticism—a pleasing blend of the Morelli narrative (minus the scientific method) and Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour. He contrives a young man, ignorant like the Russian, Lermoliev, who receives certain artistic impressions, faithfully recorded by Mr. Hind and visualised for the reader in a series of engaging half-tone illustrations. The hero’s name is itself suggestive—Claude Williamson Shaw. By the end of the book he is nearly as learned as Mr. Claude Phillips: he might edit a series of art-books with all the skill of Dr. Williamson, and his power of racy criticism rivals that of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. You can hardly escape the belief that these three immortals came from the north and south, gathered as unto strife, breathed upon his mouth and filled his body—with ideas: Mr. Hind supplying the life. But this is not so: the ideas are all Mr. Hind’s and the godfathers only supplied the name. What a name it is to be sure! It recalls one of Ibsen’s plays: ‘Claude Williamson Shaw was a miner’s son—a Cornish miner’s son, as you know; or perhaps you didn’t know. He was always wanting plein-air.’ Some one ought to say that in the book, but I must say it instead. At all events, Mr. Hind nearly always refers to him by his three names, and every one must think of him in the same way, otherwise side issues will intrude themselves—thoughts of other things and people. ‘O Captain Shaw, type of true love kept under,’ is not inapposite, because Claude Williamson Shaw fell in love with a lady who in a tantalising manner became a religious in one of the strictest Orders, the rules of which were duly set forth in old three-volume novels; that is the only conventional incident in the book. C. W. S., although he trains for painting, is admitted by Mr. Hind to be quite a bad artist. Apart, therefore, from the admirable criticism which is the main feature of the book, it shows great courage on the part of the inventor, great sacrifice, to admit that C. W. S. was a failure as an artist. Bad artists, however, are always nice people. I do not say that the reverse is true; indeed, I know many good and even great artists who are charming; but I never met a thoroughly inferior painter (without any promise of either a future or a past) who was not irresistible socially. This accounts for some of the elections at the Royal Academy, I believe, and for the pictures on the walls of your friends whose taste you know to be impeccable. There is more hearty recognition of bad art in England than the Tate Gallery gives us any idea of.

I know that the Chantrey Trustees were deprived of the only possible excuse for their purchases by the finding of Lord Lytton’s Commission; but I, for one, shall always think of them as kindly men with a fellow-feeling for incompetence, who would have bought a work by Claude Williamson Shaw if the opportunity presented itself. I have sometimes tried to imagine what the pictures of invented artists in fiction or drama were really like—I fear they were all dreadful performances. I used to imagine that Oswald Avling was a sort of Segantini, but something he says in the play convinced me that he was merely another Verboekhoven. Then Thackeray’s Ridley must have been a terrible Philistine—a sort of Sir John Gilbert. Poor Basil Hallward’s death was no great loss to art, I surmise: his portrait of ‘Dorian Grey, Esq.’, from all accounts, resembled the miraculous picture exhibited in Bond Street a short while ago. I am not surprised that its owner, whose taste improved, I suspect, with advancing years, destroyed it in the ordinary course after reading something by Mr. D. S. MacColl. It is distinctly stated that Dorian read the Saturday Review! Frenhofer, Hippolite Schimier, and Leon de Lora were probably chocolate-box painters of the regular second-empire type. Theobald, we know from Mr. Henry James, was a man of ideas who could not carry out his intentions. It must have been an exquisite memory of Theobald’s failures which made Pater, when he wished to contrive an imaginary artistic personality, take Watteau as being some one in whose achievements you can believe. No literary artist can persuade us into admiring pictures which never existed; though an artist can reconstruct from literature a picture which has perished we know, from the ‘Calumny of Apelles’ by Botticelli. It was, therefore, wise to make Claude Williamson Shaw a failure as a painter. In accordance with my rule he was an excellent fellow, nearly as charming as his author, and better company in a picture-gallery it would be difficult to find—and you cannot visit picture-galleries with every friend: you require a sympathetic personality. It is the Claude—the Claude Phillips in him which I like best: the Dr. Williamson I rather suspect. I mean that when he was at Messrs. Chepstow, the publishers, he must have mugged up some of the real Dr. Williamson’s art publications. Whether in the Louvre, or National Gallery, or in Italian towns, he always goes for the right thing; sometimes you wish he would make a mistake. Bad artists, of course, are often excellent judges of old pictures and make excellent dealers, and I am not denying the instinct of C. W. S.; but I cannot think it all came so naturally as Mr. Hind would indicate.

The reason why Claude Williamson Shaw discovered ‘that he would not find a true expression of his temperament’ in painting readers of this ingenious book will discover for themselves. Assuming that he had any innate talent, I do not think he went about the right way to cultivate it. His friend Lund gave him the very worst advice; though we are the gainers. It is quite unnecessary to go out of England and gaze at a lot of pictures of entirely different schools in order to become a painter. Gainsborough and our great Norwich artists evolved themselves without any foreign study. There was no National Gallery in their days. A second-rate Wynants and a doubtful Hobbema seem to have been enough to give them hints. It would be tedious to mention other examples. The fortunate meeting of Zuccarelli and Wilson at Venice is the only instance I know in which foreign travel benefited any English landscape painter. Foreign travel is all very well when the artist has grown up. Paris has been the tomb of many English art students. M. Bordeaux, who gave Mr. Hind’s hero tips in the atelier, seems to have been as ‘convincing’ as the famous barrel of the same name. Far better will the English student be under Mr. Tonks at the Slade; or even at the Royal Academy, where, owing to the doctrine of contraries, out of sheer rebellion he may become an artist. In Paris you learn perfect carpentry, but not art, unless you are a born artist; but in that case you will be one in spite of Paris, not because of it. But if C. W. Shaw had been a real painter he would have seen at Venice certain Tiepolos which seem to have escaped him, and in other parts of Italy certain Caravaggios. Yes, and Correggios and Guido Renis, too hastily passed by. He was doomed to be a connoisseur.

(1906.)