reformers who were not unwilling to be represented in the annual exhibitions; and it has, without seeming to yield to clamour, responded perceptibly to the pressure of professional opinion. In so doing, though it has not checked the progress of the changing fashion by which the popular liking for pictorial art has been diverted into other channels, it has kept its hold upon the public, and has not to any appreciable extent weakened its position of authority.
It is doubtful whether a more definite participation by the Academy in the controversies of the period would have been of Changed Condtions of British any use as a means of prolonging the former good relations between artists and the collectors of works of art. The change is the result of something more than the failure of one art society to fulfil its entire mission. The steady falling off in the demand for modern pictures has been due to a combination of causes which have been powerful enough to alter nearly all the conditions under which British painters have to work. For example, the older collectors, who had for some years anterior to 1875 bought up eagerly most of the more important canvases which came within their reach, could find no more room in their galleries for further additions; again, artists, with the idea of profiting to the utmost by the keenness of the competition among the buyers, had forced up their prices to the highest limits. But the most active of all causes was that the younger generation of collectors did not show the same inclination that had swayed their predecessors to limit their attention to modern pictorial art. They turned more and more from pictures to other forms of artistic effort. They built themselves houses in which the possibility of hanging large canvases was not contemplated, and they began to call upon the craftsman and the decorator to supply them with what was necessary for the adornment of their homes. At first this modification in the popular taste was scarcely perceptible, but with every successive year it became more marked in its effect.
Latterly more money has been spent by one class of collectors upon pictures than was available even in the best of the times which have passed away; but this lavish expenditure has been devoted not to the acquisition of works by modern men, but to the purchase of examples of the old masters. Herein may often be recognized the wish to become possessed of objects which have a fictitious value in consequence of their rarity, or which are " sound investments." Evidence of the existence of this spirit among collectors is seen in the prevailing eagerness to acquire works which inadequately represent some famous master, or are even ascribed to him on grounds not always credible. The productions of minor men, such as Henry Morland, who had never been ranked among the masters, have received an amount of attention quite out of proportion to what merits they possess, if only they can be proved to be scarce examples, or historically notorious. All this implies in the creed of the art patron a change which has necessarily reacted on living painters and on the conditions of their art production.
These, then, are the conclusions to which we are led by a comparison of the movements which affected the British school Portraiture between 1875 and the beginning of the 20th century. To a wide appreciation of all types of pictorial art succeeded a grudging and careless estimate of the value of the bulk of artistic endeavour. Only a few branches of production are still encouraged by anything approaching an efficient demand. Portraiture is the mainstay of the majority of the figure painters; it has never lost its popularity, and may be said to have maintained satisfactorily its hold upon all classes of society, for the desire to possess personal records is very general and is independent of any art fashion. It has persisted through all the changes of view which have been increasingly active in recent years. Episodical art, illustrating sentimental Episodical Art. motives or incidents with some touch of dramatic action, has remained popular, because it has some degree of literary interest; but imaginative works and pictures which have been produced chiefly as expressions of an original regard for nature, or of some unusual conviction as to technical details, have found comparatively few admirers. The designers, however, and the workers in the decorative arts have found opportunities which formerly were denied to Decorative Art them. They have had more scope for the display of their ingenuity and more inducement to exercise their powers of invention. A vigorous and influential school of design developed which promised to evolve work of originality and excellence. British designers gained a hearing abroad, and earned emphatic approval in countries where a sound decorative tradition had been maintained for centuries.
The one dominant influence, that of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which in the fifties was altering the whole complexion Wane of Pre Raphelitism and Rise of French Influence. of British art, had begun to wane early in the seventies, and it was rapidly being replaced by another scarcely less distinctive. The younger generation of artists had weaned, even before 1875, of the pre-Raphaelite precision, and were impatient of the restrictions imposed upon their freedom of technical expression by a method of practice which required laborious application and unquestioning obedience to a rather formal code of regulations. They yearned for greater freedom and boldness, and for a better chance of asserting their individual capacities. So they gave way to a strong reaction against the creed of their immediate predecessors, and cut themselves deliberately adrift.
With the craving of young artists for new forms of technique came also the idea that the " old-master traditions " were opposed to the exact interpretation of nature, and were based too much upon convention to be adapted for the needs of men who believed that absolute reahsm was the one thing worth aiming at in picture-production. So Paris instead of Rome became the educational centre. There was to British students, dissatisfied with the half-hearted and imperfect systems of teaching with which they were tantalized at home, a peculiarly exhilarating atmosphere in the French studios — an amount of enthusiasm and a love of art for its own sake without parallel elsewhere. They saw in operation principles which led by the right sequence of stages to sure and certain results. In these circumstances they allowed their sympathies with French methods to become rather exaggerated, and were somewhat reckless in their adoption of both the good and bad qualities of so attractive a school.
At first the results of this breaking away from all the older educational customs were not wholly satisfactory. British students came back from France better craftsmen, stronger and sounder draughtsmen, more skilful manipulators, and with an infinitely more correct appreciation of refinements of tone management than they had ever possessed before; but they brought back also a disproportionate amount of French mannerism and a number of affectations which sat awkwardly upon them. In the first flush of their conversion they went further than was wise or necessary, for they changed their motives as well as their methods. The quietness of subject and reserve of manner which had been hitherto eminently characteristic of the British school were abandoned for foreign sensationalism and exaggeration of effect. An affectation of extreme vivacity, a liking for theatrical suggestion, even an inclination towards coarse presentation of unpleasant incidents from modern life — all of which could be found in the paintings of the French artists who were then recognized as leaders — must be noted as importations from the Paris studios. They were the source of a distinct degeneration in the artistic taste, and they introduced into British pictorial practice certain unnatural tendencies. Scarcely less evident was the depreciation in the instinctive colour-sense of British painters, which was brought about by the adoption of the French habit of regarding strict accuracy of tone-relation as the one important thing to aim at. Before this there had been a preference for rich and sumptuous harmonies and for chromatic effects which were rather compromises with, than exact renderings of, nature; but as the foreign influence grew more active, these pleasant adaptations, inspired
