Mr. Punch's History of Modern England (Vol. 1-4). Charles L. Graves

      MARIANA IN THE MOATED GRANGE

      But Punch makes the amende most handsomely in 1852:—

       Commercialism in Art

      Before two pictures of Mr. Millais I have spent the happiest hour that I have ever spent in the Royal Academy Exhibition. In those two pictures [Ophelia and The Huguenot] I find more loving observation of Nature, more mastery in the reproduction of her forms and colours, more insight into the sentiment of our greatest poet, a deeper feeling of human emotion, a happier choice of a point of interest, and a more truthful rendering of its appropriate expression, than in all the rest of those eight hundred squares of canvas put together.

      In 1852 Punch singles out, from a wilderness of niggling landscapes and highly-coloured and meretricious upholstery, Watts's "marvellous chalk drawing of Lord John Russell." For the rest,

      Art is more of a trade now, than it was when Raphael's studio had no other name than bottega—in English, shop; and moreover, it is an emasculate and man-milliner sort of a trade, instead of one demanding strong brains, and a brave and believing heart. It is a trade mainly conversant with miserable things and petty aims—with vanity, and ostentation and vulgarity, and sensuality and frivolity—no longer dealing with themes of prayer and praise, with the glories of beatitude, or the horror of damnation, with the perpetuation of family dignities and devotions, the recording of great events, the dignifying of public and national, or the beautifying of private and individual life. It is a trade in ornament, and its Academy is a shop, and its Exhibition a display of rival wares, in which the best hope and the sole aim of the many is to catch the eye of a customer; and he who "colours most highly, is sure to please."

      As a comprehensive indictment of the commercialism and triviality of Victorian art this leaves little to be desired. For an illustration of Punch's altered opinion of the P.R.B.'s it may suffice to quote his palinode in 1853:—

      Will you consider me ridiculous or blind when I assure you, on my honour as a puppet and a public performer, that these young gentlemen have written for me this year four of the sweetest and deepest and most thoughtful books I have read since I laid down Mr. Millais's historical romance of The Huguenot, last year? I am sensible of the omniscience of the daily, and some of the weekly papers, and I am aware that this is an opinion which should not be breathed within ear-shot of places where they take in The Times, and the Morning Post, and the Examiner. But I am a sort of chartered libertine, and nobody will believe anything I say is serious, so I can enjoy the luxury of saying what I feel, having no character to keep up. Then I tell you frankly—not forgetting Edwin Landseer's two grand cantos of his Highland Poem, Night and Morning by the Lochside, or Stanfield's noble paean-picture of the Battered Hull that carries the body of Nelson, like a Viking with his ship for bier—not forgetting these and other picture-books well worth reading—I tell you that Hunt's Claudio and Isabella is to me the book of the collection, though it records in colours what Shakespeare has written in words; and that little, if at all after it, comes Millais's Order of Release, and then the Strayed Sheep and Proscribed Royalist of the same authors. I do not mean to put either after the other, so I bracket them."

      In accepting the principles of the P.R.B.'s Punch shows all the zeal of the convert, as may be gathered from the following discourse published shortly afterwards:—

      Art must adapt itself to the conditions of the time and the life it has to reflect.

      See what follows.

      If pictures are to be hung in rooms instead of churches, and public halls and palaces, they must be small.

      Work on a small scale, being meant for the satisfaction of a close eye, must be highly finished.

      These conditions did not affect the old painters and must affect the moderns, and these conditions my young friends the Pre-Raphaelites appear to be conscious of and to submit to, for which I cannot blame them, but praise them rather, for wisely recognising the necessity of adapting Art to surrounding circumstances.

      What have they recognised besides?

      That the truest representation and grandest creation may and must be combined by the great artist; that as man works in a setting of earth and air, all the beauties and fitness of that setting must be rendered—the more truthfully the better—and that the most accurate rendering of these need not detract from the crowning work—the creation of the central interest which sums itself in human expression.

      The practice of painting hitherto has seemed to challenge the possibility of combining these two things—human expression and accurate representation of inanimate or lower nature. These young men take up the gauntlet, and say, "We are prepared to do this—at least to try and do it." Their first-fruits are before the world, and already it has felt that the undertaking is new and startling and cheerfully courageous: nay, more: that to a certain point—and further than might be expected from such beardless champions—it has already succeeded.

      So God speed these young Luthers of the worn-out Art-faith; they have burnt the Bull of the Painter-Popes of their time. They have still enough work before them, such as their spiritual father before them went through—devils of their own creating to hurl their palettes at, and many mighty magnates to wrestle with, and confute, and put to shame—by trust in their gospel truth that Accurate Representation is the first requisite of Art.

      Enthusiasm of a Convert

      It may be added that when French medals were conferred on English artists in 1855, Punch complained that the newer school, i.e. the P.R.B.'s, had been overlooked in favour of Court painters such as Landseer. As a set-off to these examples of Punch's artistic and aesthetic flair and enlightenment, it must be owned that in 1854 he had expressed high praise for Frith's Ramsgate Sands (which was bought by the Queen) on account of its realism. But it may be accounted to him for righteousness that he supported Lord Stanhope's National Portrait Gallery Bill in 1856, and entered a vigorous protest against the vile "Germanism" of the title "Art Treasures Exhibition" instead of "Treasures of Art" for the show at Manchester in 1857. The more modern and equally vile Germanism "Concert-Direction Smith" or whoever the musical agent may be, has apparently been washed out by the War of 1914.

      With all deductions and limitations Punch's record as a critic of the fine arts acquits him handsomely of the charge of Philistinism.

29. See the protest against "skee-yi," "blee-yew," "kee-yind," "dis-gyee-ise," for "sky," "blue," "kind," "disguise."

30. Madame Lafarge (1816–52) achieved a sinister immortality by the famous poisoning case which bears her name, "one of the most obscure in the annals of French justice" (Larousse). After being imprisoned for twelve years she was released and died in 1852.

31. She had already been twenty-five years on the stage and was a link with Beethoven, having sung the soprano part in both the Ninth Symphony and the Mass in D at the historic production of these great works in Vienna in 1824. Lablache's generous homage to Beethoven's genius on the occasion of his funeral is too well known to need more than a passing word of grateful recognition.

32. Jullien was, we assume, a naturalized British subject, though he appears in Larousse.