Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/349

 Aprit 26, 1872. THE BUILDING NEWS. 329 THE BUILDING NEWS. eet LONDON, FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1872. FINE ART AT THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF 1872. [pee present century is distinguished from all past time by the multiplication to an unprecedented extent of channels of infor- mation. Learning has been more profound and scholarship has been more polished ; elo- quence and poetry have been more fervid in other ages, and under other conditions than those of the present day ; but the railway, the ‘telegraph, the printing-press, and the photo- graphic camera have brought knowledge within the reach of the million, and are fast obliterating many of the apparently insur- mountable barriers which distance, language, and race oppose to universal intercourse. Before the year 1851 it was essential, in order to know what were the products of a foreign country, to visit that country, travelits length and breadth, learn its language, and slowly master the nature of its soil, manu- factures, arts, and industries. In that year, for the first time, was seen the spectacle, so many times intimated since, but with less bril- liant success, of the products of all nations col- lected side by side under one roof in friendly rivalry. It was very possible to go often to that display and learn little; but it was also possible to gain information there in a few days or even hours, which it would have cost the painful and tedious labour of months to acquire in the country itself. In that Exhibition however, industry, almost to the exclusion of fine art, was to be studied. Subsequent gatherings of this sort have happily embraced the arts in their scope, and in the London Exhibition of ten years ago, and in the two which have taken place in Paris, it was quite possible to review almost all the European schools of painting are represented by a very complete collection of choice examples. We have now aseries of International Ex- hibitions on foot at South Kensington, de- signed to exhibit each year the products of a few industries, as carried on throughout the world; but also embracing an annual exhi- bition of works of art. Jewellery and instru- ments of music will this year take the place which was a year ago occupied by earthen- ware and porcelain. All the endless vavieties of paper manufacture, and the wonderfully varied applications of that material, will also be displayed. Printing and paper-making will oceupy the machinery department where last year woollen fabrics were shown, and we are to see cotton fabrics in place of educa- tional appliances. In this way it is hoped, in the course of ten years, to go through the circle of the industrial arts and bring them one after another before the public. With this part of the scheme we have, how- ever, but little concern at the present moment, the fine art division being what claims our immediate notice. It is, of course, well that the scope and intention of the industrial part of the Exhibition should be understood, and as often as it includes manu- factures or inventions which come within the legitimate scope of the Buitpinc News, our readers may rest assured that their attention shall be directed to it, and that the objects which they may find it profitable or pleasant to examine shall be pointed out. Fine arts, however, are to be exhibited annually, and though by fine arts are meant not only paint- ing, sculpture, and architecture, but all sorts of applications of art to industry, the back bone of the art exhibition is necessarily its oil paintings. Tt is easy for us to see a great deal of artistic work from foreign sources in London show rooms; but, although a con- siderable number of French and Flemish pictures are now annually exhibited, nothing like a good international display of the schools of modern painting had ever been possible in this country till the Exhibition of 1862. The repetition of such a display has heen barely possible in England until this year, and we look forward with great interest to the development of this portion of the Exhibition scheme, which was in 1871 much interfered with by the consequences of the war. In many respects oil painting is, and long has been, the most important of the fine arts of Europe. It holds the place now which fresco once held, and which earlier was occupied by mosaic. ‘To have good speci- mens of the principal schools of Europe accessible through a summer, and to be able to study them, ig to have a means of gaining such information brought to our very dcors as formerly it would have needed long and painful journeys and much time and expense to gain. If the arts are worth any study at all this chance of studying the most popular and important of them, as practised through Kurope, is not to be neglected. Tt is not, however, quite certain that even a painstaking and careful visitor will take in the whole import and meaning of the display if he goes there without some special know- ledge to supplement his general information as to art and pictures. ‘There are many reasons why the collection sent from any one country may fail to represent the art of that country with exactness. It may he excep- tionally good or unusually defective, or it may be tinged by the undue prominence of one exhibitor. Even if it be a thoroughly representative exhibition it is worth while to inquire how the school or country in question has arrived at the position of which the collection exhibited seems to give token, and if its fine arts are rising or on the decline, stationary or rapidly changing. Has it, we may ask, old traditions to go upon; or is its work the result of new growth ? These and many other questions require ; some reply; and we propose, in direct- ing attention to the fine art portions of the International Exhibition of 1872 (painting, sculpture, and architecture), to attempt to supply the answers to at least some of them. In any review of the fine arts, as practised at the present day in Europe, the French school must take a prominent place. France has exerted a very striking influence over the arts of the majority of the countries of Europe. French painters have, by their good technical training, their genius, and their power, placed their school in the front rank of modern art, and, notwithstanding some serious defects to which their artists are liable, they probably aim higher, and succeed oftener than those of any other country. A French painter has always had an excellent training in the use of the palette and the brush ; almost always he has the ad- vantage of forming one of a host of students who frequent the atélier of some prominent master, and in many cases he enjoys a certain amount of State patronage. The greatest defect in his view of his subjects is that he is ‘‘stagey.” The theatre and the opera are too often the sources of his inspiration when painting ideal or even historical subjects, and even his landscape is very apt to resemble scenery rather than areal scene. But when a French painter rises above this, the beset- ting weakness of his countrymen, his power, whether he aims at fire and action, like Vernet, at force and finish, like Geréme or Meissonnier, or at simple pathos, like Frére, is of the highest order. ‘The French school has, perhaps, had greater painters than it at present possesses, and now encourages, or at least, tolerates extravagances which seem to threaten its stability. An audacious treat- ment of the nude, often verging on the indecorous, and an equally audacious manage- ment of colour and grouping, may be men- tioned as among the defects which have been the less to be regretted because of the many high qualities which the school possesses. In all probability the second place, if not an equal rank—for on this opinions are divided and will, perhaps, always remain so— ought to be given to the painters of this country, the rival of France in so many lines of thought and action. Nothing can better illustrate the contrast of the national characcers than the contrast of the two schools of painting. In train- ing, by which we mean the academic technical instruction and drilling, and the atélier work, in which hardly any French painter is deficient, the Englishman fails aj- most invariably, and though there appears from time to time something like a school, in the restricted sense of the word, such as that of the pre-Raphaelites, or that of the Scotch landscape painters, there is little continuance in it, and an intensely strong independence marks the works of English artists. A true eye for nature and a strong love of her, a colouring often happy and rarely forced or unnatural, and a keen relish for national life, are leading characteristics of the English school. History we rarely attempt, and when we try it the works are usually not much raised above the level ef those pictures of incident and character which from Hogarth downward have been the happiest productions of English art. Heroic size is rarely attempted, compared with the large number of life-size composi- tions which a French gallery will display; and no wonder, considering that all the patrons of art in this country are private individuals. In landscape, though Turner and David Cax have left no equals, they have left the tradi- tions of a high reputation ; and the foremost rank in this art would be ungrudgingly ae- corded to our countrymen by most judges. We have not space here to go through the other schools of modern art except in the most cursory manner. Belgium is rich in painters who have obtained for her a high reputation in historical art, and in afar lower walk is equally pre-eminent—for repre- sentations of modern life and manners, flimsy in subject, but treated with extraordinary skill in all technical points. Holland, in many respects closely allied to Belgium, is distinguished by the adherence of many of her painters to the precedents of the old Dutch school; highly finished pictures ef homely scenes, landscapes, and cattle pieces being their chief aim. The countries where the fame of bygone greatness has almost oppressed the painter are Italy and Spain, and it has been cus- tomary to expect little beyond the work of the copyist from the artists of these lands. But in both schools activity is pre- vailing ; new influences are at work, and we shall, in all probability, see that, while the initiative of the French school can be very largely traced, a decided and very promising spirit of progress is manifest in both countries. German (including Austrian and Bavarian) artists, are largely imbued with the spirit of a school of artistic reformers among whom Over- beck and Kaulbach are the most prominent names, and who set themselves to restore the practice of high art in their country. Perhaps the traditions of the eclectic Italian historical painters have been those chiefly preserved in the German school; at any rate, the majority of their historical and sacred subjects are pedantic and academic rather than forcible, aud even the leaders of the school cannot altogether shake off the fetters of this kind of formality, though they are capable of great and masterly compositions. Switzerland, chiefly remarkable for a few powerful and highly finished landscape painters, and the northern schcols of Scandinavia and Russia, close the series. Atmong Scandinavian pictures may be traced a strong affinity to prominent of late years, and they are not| some portions of the work of the English