This should be the attitude of both monarch and Maecenas: it is an attitude of benevolent neutrality. "I know," such a Maecenas might say to the artist,
"that your artistic faculties move in an atmosphere above as well as on the earth, as I know that above the atmosphere of oxygen and hydrogen which envelops the earth there is an ethereal, a rarefied atmosphere, which stretches to worlds of which all we know is that they exist. If your spirit can soar above this earthly atmosphere, well and good. I, for one, shall do nothing to limit or hinder it: I shall only welcome and applaud and reward whatever effort you make to bring our inner being a step, long or short, nearer to the source of celestial light. Consequently, I offer you no instructions and put no fetters on your imagination."
It takes all sorts of art to make an artistic world, as it takes all sorts of people to make the human world: a world with only classic art in it would be as uninteresting and unthinkable as a world in which every one was of the same character, occupation, and dress.
But it is time to consider the Emperor a little more in detail in relation to his connexion with the arts. If he were not a first-rate monarch he would probably be a first-rate artist. He said once that if he were to be an artist, he would be a sculptor. But if he is not a professional artist he is a connoisseur, a dilettante in the right sense, a lover of the arts, an art-loving prince. The painter Salzmann tells us how he used to go to the Villa Liegnitz in Potsdam to give Prince William lessons, and how the Empress, then Princess William, used to sit with the pupil and his teacher, discussing technical and art questions. A result of the teaching, in addition to the pictures mentioned elsewhere, was an oil-painting, a sea-fight, which still hangs in the Ravene Gallery in Berlin.
In the spring of 1886 the Prince sent his teacher a sketch for criticism. Salzmann wired his opinion to Potsdam, and a telegram came back, "What does 'wind too anxious' mean? is it so stormily painted that you shuddered at it, or is it not stormy enough?" Salzmann is also authority for the statement that the Prince sent in a sea-piece to the annual Berlin Art Exhibition. It was placed ready to be judged, but suddenly disappeared. The Emperor William, it appeared, had decided that it would not do for a future Emperor to compete with professional artists or run the risk of sarcastic public criticism. Naturally since he came to the throne the Emperor has never had time to cultivate his talent as a painter, but has always fed his eyes and mind on the best kind of painting, and brings his sense of form and colour to bear on everything he does or has a voice in.