Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/52

44 is his Cologne at Sunset; look at it, for the picture will fade before your eyes, and you will stand looking at the golden glow of evening over the church towers, and the gleaming river of the ancient city.

With the growth of Turner's power, and the commencement of a better period of public taste and feeling, as marked not only in Art, but in letters, the study of Nature became more manifest in the English school. In different directions, and with different degrees of success, many artists, but generally with more or less faltering, broke away from the old system. Wilkie, Etty, Constable, Collins, and others, often painted simple and sincere pictures, pictures that showed careful study and real love of Nature. All these artists may be seen to advantage here. But in looking at the mass of the collection, one sees that the true principles of Art have not even as yet been generally recognized by the majority of English artists. The last hall of the gallery, which is devoted to the works of living artists, gives especial proof of this fact. But at the same time, it gives proof of the rise of a spirit among a small body of the younger painters, whose influence promises to be of strong and beneficial effect. The artists among whom this spirit exists are the Pre-Raphaelites.

Great misconception exists with regard to the works and to the principles of Art of this school. The name by which it is known has in part occasioned this misconception. It was not happily chosen; for these Pre-Raphaelites, instead of being three centuries behind their times, are fully up with the day in which they live. Pre-Raphaelitism was not intended to mean, as it might seem to imply, the going back to worn-out and obsolete methods of painting, the resort to past modes of representation; it does not mean the adoption of the artistic forms, traditions, or rules of the old painters; it does not mean the seeking of inspiration from the works of any other men; but, in theory at least, it means the pursuit of Art in that spirit which the painters before Raphael possessed, the spirit which united Art with Religion; it means the pursuit of Art with the humility of learners, with the faith of apostles. It does not mean the reproduction of the quaintnesses, and awkwardnesses, and limitations of the early artists, more than it means the adoption of the errors of their creed as exhibited in their paintings; but it means that as those artists broke loose from the bondage of Byzantine captivity, and found in Nature the source of all true inspiration, the exhaustless fountain from which their imaginations might draw perpetual refreshment,—so these artists who took this name would free themselves from whatever they could discern to be false in the teaching and practice of Art in our times, and give themselves to the study of that beauty and that truth which are to be found in God's world to-day, whether in external nature or in human hearts, actions, and lives. Truth was to be their device; Nature was to be their mistress. And in the ardor of youth, they set forth for the conquest of new and untravelled lands.

It is greatly to be regretted that there should be but an inconsiderable number of pictures in this last hall of the English gallery by Pre-Raphaelite artists. A little private exhibition of seventy-two pictures and drawings, by some twenty artists of this school, which was held in a small house in London, during the month of June, gave a far better view of what had been already accomplished by them, of the practical working out of their principles of Art, and of their present tendencies. Three men stand as the prominent leaders of the movement,—Rosetti, Hunt, and Millais. There is not a single picture by Rosetti at Manchester; but two (if we remember rightly) by Millais; and although there are several by Hunt, there are none of his latest works, nor the most powerful and beautiful of his comparatively early ones, the well-known Light of the World. Rosetti has never, we believe, exhibited in public. But