A NOTE ON NATIONALITY IN ART.
DURING recent years a sustained and no doubt well-intended crusade has been conducted in certain quarters against what is called ' foreign influence' on British art, and the time-honoured warning has been repeated ad nauseam, that the younger painters are wandering towards the wilder- ness of cosmopolitanism. Art must be national, it is said, if it is to be worth anything. This gener- ally means, liowever, that the traditions, good or bad, which sufliced the painters of a former genera- tion, ought to satisfy those of to-day. Without pausing to discuss what constitutes the national quality in any given work of art, we may well inquire whether some special mode of render- ing or translating natural facts by means of colour is invariably peculiar to a particular country. Is it possible, for instance, to distinguish the main cliar- acteristics of English or of Scottish Art ? Are the typical qualities breadth, simplicity, and dignity, or minute elaboration and a loving lingering over details ? In the work of artists of former generations, the greatest dissimilarity prevails. The landscapes of Constable, Turner, Gainsborough, and Wilson dis- play widely different methods of interpreting nature, differences which make it impossible to class them as belonging to a single school, while the portraits of Velasquez, Titian, Rembrandt, Reynolds, and Raeburn show more points of resemblance than are generally seen in the best work of any one country. The bands of nationality are of no avail, when within them we try to restrain the faculty of artistic creation, which demands absolute freedom of ex- pression. Tliis foreign element or characteristic, which so much distresses many critics in England, though in what exactly it consists they seem unable to define, has been undoubtedly in part the outcome of the simple and sound teaching which until lately was only found in the best schools in France, unselfishly open to all-comers. It is sometimes alleged that the attraction of the Parisian ateliers lies in the slurring over of diffi- culties which prevails there, and that what the art critics call ' broad painting, any fool can do with- out taking pains. Let the man who thinks so spend but a few months in any of the best studios in Paris. Very speedy enlightenment will await him. If one learns to draw or paint well more quickly in Paris than at home, it is because study there is more intelligent, and the students as a rule work a great deal harder than is usual in any art school in Great Britain. Seven years is an ordinary estimate at the ]5cole des Beaux- Arts of the period necessary for study before the aspirant may hope to rank among the arrives. During the greater part of that time he draws and paints from the cast or life eight hours daily. Medallists from the academies in this country are frequently turned back to the simplest drawing on proceeding to Paris to complete their education, and they generally soon admit the justice of the decision. For sincerity and thoroughness no schools of art in Europe can comjjare with those in France, and this was still more apparent ten years ago. It was said recently by one who ought to have known better, and the charge has just been repeated in the columns of a contemporary, that jsictures painted by men who have studied abroad are bad, not alone because they are unlike what had been accepted here as national, but because they are simply an echo of certain French artists. That the work of a young man may resemble his master's has been a commonplace since before the time of Raphael and Perugino. It is equally certain that some men will never be more than copyists. Whether they imitate Long or Carolus Duran, Leader or Corot, is very immaterial, save that in each of the last cases the imitation is likely to be less offensive. Even in the training studios in France there is more variety in the work done than is common in our home schools, and little wonder, for the student is there far more constantly and strenuously urged to look at nature for himself. Methods of using materials are regarded as of little account compared with truth of aspect which must be sought with endless pains. It is a libel on the earnest men who have in many cases sacrificed a growing reputation to the necessity they feel for more severe study, to brand their work as mere imitation. The real imitators of French artists are in a majority of cases found among those whose knowledge of their pictures is limited to an occasional visit to the Salon, or at the most to a week spent in Julliens where they find it too hot in more senses than one. The aim to which the best French masters direct their students is the training of the eye to see objects in their true relations of light and shade, and afterwards of colour, and the logical outcome of this education, varying naturally with the idiosyn- cracies of the pupils, has been the development of a
