Page:Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day.djvu/196

 At the present day there are many competent writers on art topics who furnish the critiques on recent exhibitions to the papers and magazines; but a quarter of a century ago ignorance of the principles and practice of art seems to have been a passport to the post of art-critic.

On a most influential North-of-England paper, furnished for many years with independent reports on all matters of importance, this post of art-critic—being, as it was thought, easy and desirable—went by seniority: the oldest reporter got it. And we well remember hearing an anecdote of a respectable parliamentary reporter of the paper to whom the post of art and theatrical critic was offered. He accepted it as a matter of course. Being conscientious, he thought a little knowledge necessary, and asked a friend a few days after, 'What does' (naming a great musician) 'charge a lesson, do you know?' 'Good dear me, F—, why, at your time of life, you are never going to learn the fiddle!' 'No,' was the reply; 'but I've got to do the music and so on for the "—— Guardian," and I mean to take two or three lessons, for I know no more of music than a cow.'

We believe that the London papers of thirty or forty years ago were dealt with in much the same way; and a number of intelligent and honest gentlemen, who knew no more of painting than a cow, 'did' the criticisms. And nothing is easier than to parade the jargon of art language—to talk of light, shade, and effect, chiaroscuro, distance, colour, hardness, softness, tint, and so on through the critic's vocabulary.

How differently Ruskin went to work! He studied hard: learned to paint under J. D. Harding and Copley Fielding, and then, when he was familiar with the methods by which effects are produced—in a word, an artist himself—he wrote about art.

How carefully he laboured to acquire knowledge in his favourite pursuit may be illustrated by this simple confession. The winter,' he says, 'was spent mainly in trying to get at the mind of Titian—not a light winter's task; of which the issue, being in many ways very unexpected to me, necessitated my going in the spring to Berlin to see Titian's portrait of Lavinia there, and to Dresden to see "The Tribute Money," the elder Lavinia, and Girl in White with the flag fan. Another portrait at Dresden of a lady in a dress of rose and gold—by me unheard of before—and one