ART SCHOOL AND AFTER
‘To begin with at your age it is absolutely impossible to foretell what degree of talent you are gifted with. You are full of enthusiasm & feel good for anything – that’s the best possible start but it will not be until you are much older & your art very fully developed technically that you can estimate your true powers.
‘You say you send things to “Scraps”, so did I at your age, though with the realisation of more serious artistic intentions I soon gave it up & devoted my time to the severest education. And that is the best advice I can give you.
‘You might perhaps make a precarious living out of such work for Scraps &c – but after a few years of it, you would feel it cramping debasing hack work, killing the art in you, & robbing you of the joy of true art expression which is, after all, the one & only reason for your being an artist at all. The living from art is a poor one – for only a very few is it better. For numbers it is dismal failure – for some perhaps who appeared in youth to be really talented & who started with the utmost enthusiasm. And the outlook appears to get steadily worse. As a profession it is one to which no parent would be justified in putting a son without being able to give him a permanent income as well. Then, of course, if he fail, he will have something to live upon: I know several such, &, believe me, their bitter disappointment at their professional failure is only just prevented from being misery by the possession of an independent income.
‘The fact that you can earn a little money at it now means very little. The standard of work that ensures a successful professional career is now technically very high and nothing but years of determined study can equip you for equal competition with the rest in the field.
‘So this is my advice: – Stick to your business: go as regularly as you can with enthusiasm to a school of art (at New Cross, or Camberwell the schools are excellent) – among other things you will be associating & measuring yourself with the men who will be your32
