F

must devote all his energies to Art if he wants to prove himself even competent at his profession. Yet competence alone will not save him from starvation. How, then, is it possible for him to make a living? To whom must he look for patronage?

Now, there is a certain type of artist who does not consider the question of patronage at all. One may call him the ideal artist, using 'ideal' in the Platonic sense. The main function of the artist consists in discovering from the whole world of sight those elements

- in it that are beautiful. The ideal artist exists solely for this purpose, Art in its purest form being simply the sense of the beautiful. But this purpose demands rare qualities from him who would fulfil it. If every artist is to produce in his work some aspect of the world that is beautiful and has not before been seen, he must needs possess an originality of outlook such as few throughout the history of Art have been proved by their works to possess. And even if he may possess it, he will not necessarily be saved thereby from starving, as Rembrandt starved, as Constable would have starved if he had not married money, and Whistler, if his wit had not kept him on the right side of his creditors. Seeing this is so, it is to be wondered at that parents ever allow their sons to adopt Art as a career; and certain is it that none possessed of any sanity would do so, if it were not that there are other types of artist in existence besides the ideal artist, and other ways of earning a living by Art than the lonely and narrow way which the ideal artist tries passionately to pursue.

1

Let us first consider what chances there are for the young artist possessing some degree of originality. During recent years Sir Joseph Duveen has added to his long list of benefactions to Art the institution of a recurring series of exhibitions of the work of the younger and less-known artists. Exhibitions of this kind have been held and will be held in London and the Provinces, in Ireland, and on the Continent. The Daily Express' with commendable enterprise is following Sir Joseph Duveen's lead and holding exhibitions of similar character.

These endeavours to bring modern work to the notice of prospective buyers contrast favourably with the Vol. 250.-No. 496.

Y

inane 'stunt' which induced 'The Daily Mail' to buy from the Academy of 1927 one second-rate picture by an artist already well-known-a prize which was immediately rushed over to America, and is now back again in its native land, doomed, like a freak in a circus, to spend weeks, months, and years under the casual gaze of now this, now that group of good honest provincial Englishmen, bewildered that such things can be. But leaving 'The Daily Mail' out of account, one may doubt whether even the efforts of Sir Joseph Duveen and 'The Daily Express' have done much for the young artist of to-day. It may be that popular interest in modern Art is increasing; it is a definite fact that the percentage of sold pictures to unsold in exhibitions is not. And popular interest alone adds little weight to the artist's pocket. The young artist is quite aware of this depressing fact; he may hope to make a living out of his studio work; however shrewd he be, he will have his dreams of success. But no profession depends solely on the vague personal ambitions of its members; and, fortunately for the artist, the profession of Art has more to offer its industrious apprentices than dim visions of Burlington House, an exultant press, and Bond Street dealers in respectful attendance.

There are the posts in art schools. To-day there are hundreds of art schools up and down the country, and in each one are hundreds of students wanting to become artists. It is in these schools that the skilled hand can find employment. Art schools are sometimes held up to ridicule. Certainly, as one can only lead a horse to the water, so one can only show students the difference between a good drawing and a bad. But they will have learnt much in learning even that. The knowledge may not enable them to paint masterpieces, but it will enable them to enjoy masterpieces, and to look with keener judgment at pictures of all ages and styles. It may be said, therefore, that the art school has a purpose apart from the training of artists, has in fact two other distinct purposes: to enlarge the ordinary man's knowledge of Art, and to give the artist exactly the kind and the amount of employment he needs to save him from having to depend entirely on the charity of those rare philanthropists who regard the protection of the young artist

as an object as expedient and laudable as the protection of performing animals.

When, therefore, parents allow a son to enter the profession of Art, they do so knowing that if he shows reasonable diligence during his training there will be an opening for him as a teacher. It is not an instance of those who can, doing, and those who can't, teaching. The man who obtains a post on the staff of an art school teaches and paints also. In this democratic age, the art school is the artist's chief patron. We should have reason to be proud of this system, if by it all forms of art were practised and encouraged. But this is far from being so. One goes to an art school to learn how to paint pictures. One can learn other things there-in modelling, wood-carving, and metal-working, but these are side issues. The life-blood of the school flows through the drawing and painting departments.

Now, it may be argued that it is necessary for the meanest craftsman to know how to draw, because only by learning how to draw will he learn how to make his hand follow his mind's sense of form and design. There is much to be said for this contention, but nothing at all for what is sometimes considered its corollary-that if the student's mind has a sense of form and design and if his hand has learnt to answer its control, he must look upon the drawing and painting of pictures as the only profession in which there are any prospects for him. For the painting of pictures is only one form of art, and to-day a relatively unimportant form. Once, in the glorious spring of Western Art, the artist painted for the love of God. The Venetians gave us the pomps and ceremonies of their world; the Dutch, their love of home, their pride in all the minute subtleties of their work. The satire of Hogarth followed logically the voluptuous sentimentalism of Guido Reni. Constable, Crome, and Turner gave us each an Englishman's passion for the country; and the Impressionists analysed that passion with Gallic sympathy and intelligence. Since the beginning of painting, every age has in some special manner interpreted the sensual world: every age, that is, but the present. We have to-day a number of clever men and a number of cranks; but the art of to-day is without character, and, like a man without character, is at one time sententious, at another cynical, at another inane; always attempting something new and in its successive regenerations seldom worth more than a moment's regard.

People in general are sometimes blamed by artists for spending money on reproductions of famous masterpieces rather than on works by living artists. But in truth the trouble is that people in general are not to-day buying pictures at all, and for that they cannot be blamed. The fashion in house decoration has turned against pictures. The modern decorator allows in his schemes only one or two pictures in each room, or may even recommend that there be none at all; while thousands more pictures are painted every year in Chelsea alone than any one ever wants. The art of to-day is aimless because the painter's possible patrons have dwindled until they are practically negligible. It is as if a man were preaching and his congregation got up one by one and went out and left him there, preaching to pillars and empty pews. The laymen have gone; the artists remain in pathetic isolation; and as the inhabitants of a certain famous island kept themselves alive by taking in each other's washing, so they keep alive their artistic aspirations by criticising each other's pictures and writing about them in the press. Artists have given up painting to please the ordinary man. They paint now to please their brother artists. That is why so many of the pictures exhibited at the present time are crude and unfinished, and incomprehensible to all but practising artists, who find in them certain subtleties which the layman takes for granted in the work of the Old Masters.

Yet the pictorial artist need not despair absolutely. He has in the publicity agent an ideal patron, a patron intelligent, imaginative, self-effacing, and anxious to encourage those personal traits which distinguish the artist from the hack-draughtsman. Moreover, he is insatiable. He is always demanding something more, always giving the artist chances for wit and ingenuity. It is hardly to be wondered at that even the greatest artists have been ready to put themselves thus at the service of trade. But it must be remembered that while famous artists condescend often to do so, despite the

30

α

:

コ

sneers of lesser men, the greater the reputation of the artist, the less does he condescend. And the reason for this is that publicity work affords an artist practically no scope for self-expression.

Self-expression is an instinct, and one of the many less reputable instincts whose indulgence is to-day condoned or even actively encouraged. It starts forth rampant from the canvases of Van Gogh and Gauguin. It emerges grimly from Georges Rouault's studies in nude female obesity, and comically from the efforts of a hundred other modern Parisian tricksters. One may or may not admit that the selves thus expressed are i adequately expressed; one can have no hesitation in asserting that the painters responsible for such enormities had much better have kept their selves to themselves. If self-expression, were itself Art, were, as some would have us believe, the whole of Art, the ravings of delirium would be as great in Art, because as genuine and intense, as the greatest feats of oratory. When the self that is expressed is the self of Beethoven, we do not deplore the revolt of personality against the polished elegance of Haydn or Mozart; but when the self is the self of a knave or a nincompoop, one may well wish that the supply of canvas would cease from the earth, and pray that artists may lose themselves and find themselves in the many other jobs that can bring them bread. I do not mean such obviously uncongenial jobs as they might be offered in a bank or a restaurant, though as clerks and waiters they could feel they were of service to society. As painters of pictures they must often feel they are not of the slightest use to anybody, and it is this feeling which leads them to despair, to the belief that society has no use for Art.

It may be so, if by Art is implied merely the production of paintings, prints, and sculpture. And if it is so, it is so. The artist must accept the facts. If the fashion has turned from the use of pictures as walldecoration, if people prefer to hang a mirror or a rug of perfect design where he would have had them hang his rendering of summer twilight, still life, or the state of his own soul, it is not for him to complain. If he paints these things because he loves them, let him go on painting them. If he is a true artist he will, whether he can