The true artist, the Emperor says, needs no advertisement, no press, no patronage. The Emperor is right. The true artist, once he begins to produce first-rate work, will obtain instant recognition, and his work will begin to sell, not perhaps at prices the same kind of work may bring later, but at prices sufficient to support the artist and his family in reasonable comfort. If it does not, he is not producing good work and had better turn his attention to something else. As a matter of fact very few true artists do advertise, use the press, or seek patronage. The artist does not go to the press or the patron, for nowadays, the moment the artist does excellent work, the press and the patron go to him, and, when he is very exceptionally good, he is advertised and patronized until he is sick of both advertisement and patronage.
Naturally it is different in the case of the artist who is not excellently good, but the Emperor was not considering such. These artists too, however, insist on living and must find a market for their wares. It is an age of advertisement, the growth of new economic conditions, for advertisement creates as well as reveals new markets. Hence the vast host of mediocrities, not only in art but in almost every field of human activity, nowadays advertise and seek patronage because only in this way can they find purchasers and live. These artists, often men of talent, dislike having to advertise; they would rather work for art's sake, but having to do so need not hinder them from working for art's sake, since all that is meant by that much misused phrase is that while the artist is working he shall not think of the reward of his work, but simply and solely of how to do the best work he can.
Before leaving the Emperor's speech one is tempted to inquire what should be the attitude of a sovereign towards art and artists. For the Englishman the doctrine of Individualism--the thing he is so apt to make a fetish of--gives an answer, and, it may be, the right one. The Englishman will probably say that if in any one province of life more than in another freedom should be allowed to originality of conception regarding the form as well as the substance, the manner as well as the matter, it is in the province of art, always provided, of course, that the artist is sane and not guilty of indecency. The artist, like the poet, is born not made; you cannot make an artist, you can only make an artisan. The artist, who represents the Creator, the creative faculty, can influence man: man cannot, and should not try to, influence the artist, but can, and should only, offer him the materials for his art, smooth the way for his endeavour, encourage him in it by sympathetic yet candid criticism, and above all, when he can afford it, by buying the result of his endeavour when it is successful.