but a poor substitute for that quick vital learning-
which comes of delicious moments of rapt entrance-
ment; and though such a mode as this may be
questioned by many as a system of education at all,
yet a consensus of opinion among artists would
assuredly prove this to be the prevailing opinion.
The reasoning that makes the colour of a red rose
pleasant because contrasted with its green leaves,
would not be so cogent or true as the intuition by
the artist of the fact that the beauty of the red lay
in its being some subtle particular tone of red, in-
tensely felt to be beautiful; and the welling-up of
the heart as the loveliness of this colour was per-
ceived would make the painter express it beauti-
fully though there was no complementary green to
balance it. It is just on such points as this, how-
ever, that the painter finds language inadequate to
express his emotions; but when a man puts down,
in form or colour, a mark or tone, and the putting-
down of this is exquisitely enjoyable to him — be the
form or colour learned or unlearned — the thing pro-
duced has the elements of truest art, because it is
Love's sign, and is for ever acceptable. Experience,
practice may cultivate, modify, or amend many of the
mechanical parts that go to make up the whole, but
the meaning expressed, the ' sometliing indefinable '
that is inseparable from this love-product, will not
bear maturing, — it is complete. This may be better
illustrated by comparing the difference felt between
the work of two men working from the same model
— the artist and the non-artist. The one is enrap-
tured with his subject and its fitting translation into
the forms of his art. The other, possibly the better
craftsman, so far as surety of hand and accuracy of
superficial detail go, but colder in his emotions,
makes up with science what he lacks in love; yet,
though he produces a marvel in execution, and, to
the vulgar, a perfection of accomplishment, he has
missed what led him to attempt to reproduce, which
the other following Love would achieve, namely,
that spirit or divinity that owns homage to naught
but Love, and without which true Beauty is impos-
sible.
A. Roche.
ART AT THE GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. SCULPTURE.— II.
IN the general westward progress of art crafts and traditions from their warm birthplaces in the Orient, France has been the last camp. When the torch that lighted the revival in Italy grew dim, it was passed to her, and slowly made to glow again, as it does now, perhaps at its best, and soon to depart further into the ever-widening and opening west. When we remember that the French occupy the first position in the art of sculpture, and that their activity in it is so great as to produce an exhibition annually niuiibering over a thousand pieces, we need not be surprised that the few works here sliown by them surpass, in execution and expression, the rest of the collection. This is the more remarkable in that the examples shown cannot fairly be called representative, and are mostly in the form of piece- mould casts with the quality of artistic surface almost entirely obliterated. The defect of the French School of Sculpture lies in its chief excel- lence. Its followers are craftsmen first — ^poets of the beautiful afterwards, hence their best produc- tions are frequently soulless pieces of perfection. They exhibit the correct canon, and speak by the card only to weary us of their learning. A fair illustration of these things may be seen in Uage de fer — a purely gratuitous title — by A. Lansox, a heroic group of two young men. The workmanship is brilliant and accomplished, but the thought is neither deep nor sincere. Free and effortless, all is on the surface, and the result is a kind of decoration which one feels the sculptor could go on producing ad lib. Although akin in accomplishment, Lc Genie militmre, by Paul Dubois, is a work of very different character. Remarkable for its expression of latent power, strong in the most ideal qualities of fine sculpture, it transcends the School. Taken as a specimen of technical skill and judgment, with every mass and line in its place, it is faultless. Military courage is represented by a young warrior in classic costume, seated. His face with resolute expression looks to the right from under the shadowing helmet. His strong right arm is brought forward, shield-like, and the closed hand rests on the thigh — great seat of physical strength. The right side throughout bespeaks the dauntless front of war, which the straight sword grasped in the left hand tells us could be pitilessly urged. Work of this kind is not a personal outcome, it belongs rather to the culture of the art. The creation of such a thing requires the help of races and ages. We see in it a combination of the best knowledge of the Greeks and of the Italians of the Renaissance. While it is of to-day, and could not have been before, it yet breathes of the Parthenon, and the tomb of the Medici, compelling us to stand, and in considering it, forget the slight things of Uage defer.
