“My dear Mr Vane,” replied the buffoon, “there often is a gospel wrapped up in a howling joke. My long experience at the Tivoli and other Music Halls taught me my Catechism more exhaustively than my early attendance at Sunday Schools.”
“Somerville is mounting the platform,” remarked George Murray to a group of Royal Academicians Silence soon reigned, enabling the clear, ringing voice of the lecturer to be heard.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a new plan to submit to you.” (“Hear! hear!”) “A plan which suggested itself to me after my first visit, this season, to the Royal Academy. I was struck by the attitude of the public, and noticed group after group passing scornfully in front of portraits, historical subjects, and war pictures. In fact, very few were the pictures that attracted any attention at all. Then I observed that landscapes aroused a good deal of attention on the part of the dissatisfied crowds, and that pictures representing the human form in its Edenic attire were the object of their closest observation. I was filled with wonderment at the evolution of a public who the preceding year had rushed to gaze at pictures by Sargent, Orchardson, Collier, Alma Tadema, and the rest. As I strolled through the rooms I saw many a woman blushing as she came in front of a portrait of an over-dressed woman; men with downcast eyes hurried away from the pictures of our so-called great men in their military uniforms or in any other garments. My first determination on leaving the place was to have my portrait removed; and, strange to say, the committee did not in any way oppose my wish, as many had thought fit, like me, to have their likenesses taken away. This is a great sign of the present evolution towards true art. I do not for one moment expect our artists—who have already made their names—to approve at once of my reform; but in time they may come to see their past errors, as already one step towards the reform of art has been taken by closing the doors of the Royal Academy.” (Here there were murmurs amongst the minority of malcontents.) “Yes, I heard this very morning that this would be the last day of the exhibition; the President having resolved to take this ominous resolution to punish the public, and teach them a lesson. We must, all of us, bear this well in mind: that art cannot any longer, in our new mode of life, be the means of obtaining wealth or position, and that nature is the sole guide and model which is to lead the artist to artistic eminence. As to painting garments from memory, the mere notion of such a sartorial nightmare ought to make the true artist shudder with horror. I therefore propose that a committee should be organised, similar to the one appointed for the reform of public monuments, to judge of the pictures which, in future, shall be sent to the Academy. The name of the artist would only be submitted to the committee after the picture had been accepted or rejected. The name of the person who had sat for the portrait would equally remain unknown, until the majority of the members on the committee should have recognised whom it was. The subject of an historical picture would likewise remain unrevealed, until the majority of members had been able to guess the subject when they looked at the picture—I see a few R.A.’s at the end of the hall, laughing and whispering. I quite understand their mirth, for they are looking forward to mystifying the committee, whose members are often sadly lacking in historical knowledge. I can only advise those gentlemen at the end of the hall to develop a keener sense of discrimination in the choice of their subjects, before they attempt to represent on wood, or copper—for there is no canvas—an historical incident, without the aid of local colour or garments. Our stage was reformed the day that Nature held up her mirror and showed man as God had made him; fiction said her last word when the high pressure of our abnormal civilisation suddenly collapsed, and allowed man and woman to look into each other’s eyes, and for the first time realise the abnormal condition of their former lives. The same evolution awaits plastic art and the painter’s avocation, for if a committee cannot tell, by looking at a picture, what the subject is, they will have to retire so as to learn how to observe and how to remember. Likewise, if an artist is unable to paint his subject without the trapping of garment, the sooner such an exponent of art takes to some other means of expressing his thoughts, the better. The aim of art, in our present civilisation, is to be useful, either in the material or the abstract world; and to be useful one must be clear and true—I hear someone saying that I am limiting art most shamefully; I think it is Mr Vane.