LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:
It is with great hesitation and much misgiving that I appear before you, in the character of The Preacher.
If timidity be at all allied to the virtue modesty, and can find favour in your eyes, I pray you, for the sake of that virtue, accord me your utmost indulgence.
I would plead for my want of habit, did it not seem preposterous, judging from precedent, that aught save the most efficient effrontery could be ever expected in connection with my subjectâfor I will not conceal from you that I mean to talk about Art. Yes, Artâthat has of late become, as far as much discussion and writing can make it, a sort of common topic for the tea-table.
Art is upon the Town !âto be chucked under the chin by the passing gallantâto be enticed within the gates of the householderâto be coaxed into company, as a proof of culture and refinement.
If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Artâor what is currently taken for itâhas been brought to its lowest stage of intimacy.
The people have been harassed with Art in every guise, and vexed with many methods as to its endurance. They have been told how they shall love Art, and live with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls covered with paper, their very dress taken to taskâuntil, roused at last, bewildered and filled with the doubts and discomforts of senseless suggestion, they resent such intrusion, and cast forth the false prophets, who have brought the very name of the beautiful into disrepute, and derision upon themselves.
Alas! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned. She has naught in common with such practices. She is a goddess of dainty thoughtâreticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others.
She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection onlyâhaving no desire to teachâseeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times, as did her high priest Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jewsâ quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks.
As did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, among the Venetians, while not halting to change the brocaded silks for the classic draperies of Athens.
As did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez, whose Infantas, clad in inĂŚsthetic hoops, are, as works of Art, of the same quality as the Elgin marbles.
No reformers were these great menâno improvers of the way of others! Their productions alone were their occupation, and, filled with the poetry of their science, they required not to alter their surroundings
âfor, as the laws of their Art were revealed to them they saw, in the development of their work, that real beauty which, to them, was as much a matter of certainty and triumph as is to the astronomer the verification of the result, foreseen with the light given to him alone. In all this, their world was completely severed from that of their fellow-creatures with whom sentiment is mistaken for poetry; and for whom there is no perfect work that shall not be explained by the benefit conferred upon themselves.
Humanity takes the place of Art, and Godâs creations are excused by their usefulness. Beauty is confounded with virtue, and, before a work of Art, it is asked: âWhat good shall it do? â
Hence it is that nobility of action, in this life, is hopelessly linked with the merit of the work that portrays it, and thus the people have acquired the habit of looking, as who should say, not at a picture, but through it, at some human fact, that shall, or shall not, from a social point of view, better their mental or moral state. So we have come to hear of the painting that elevates, and of the duty of the painterâof the picture that is full of thought, and of the panel that merely decorates.
A favourite faith, dear to those who teach, is that certain periods were especially artistic, and that nations, readily named, were notably lovers of Art.
So we are told that the Greeks were, as a people, worshippers of the beautiful, and that in the fifteenth century Art was engrained in the multitude.
That the great masters lived in common understanding with their patronsâthat the early Italians were artistsâallâand that the demand for the lovely thing produced it.
That we, of to-day, in gross contrast to this Arcadian purity, call for the ungainly, and obtain the ugly.
That, could we but change our habits and climate âwere we willing to wander in grovesâcould we be roasted out of broadclothâwere we to do without haste, and journey without speed, we should again require the spoon of Queen Anne, and pick at our peas with the fork of two prongs. And so, for the flock, little hamlets grow near Hammersmith, and the steam horse is scorned.
Useless! quite hopeless and false is the effort !âbuilt upon fable, and all because âa wise man has uttered a vain thing and filled his belly with the East wind.â
Listen! There never was an artistic period.
There never was an Art-loving nation.
In the beginning, man went forth each dayâsome to do battle, some to the chase; others, again, to dig and to delve in the fieldâall that they might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd.
This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethrenâwho cared not for conquest, and fretted in the fieldâthis designer of quaint patternsâthis deviser of the beautifulâwho perceived in Nature about him curious curvings, as faces are seen in the fireâthis dreamer apart, was the first artist.
And when, from the field and from afar, there came back the people, they took the gourdâand drank from out of it.
And presently there came to this man anotherâand, in time, othersâof like nature, chosen by the Godsâand so they worked together; and soon they fashioned, from the moistened earth, forms resembling the gourd. And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently they went beyond the slovenly suggestion of Nature, and the first vase was born, in beautiful proportion.
And the toilers tilled, and were athirst; and the heroes returned from fresh victories, to rejoice and to feast; and all drank alike from the artistsâ goblets, fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the craftsmanâs pride, and understanding not his glory in his work; drinking at the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was none other!
And time, with more state, brought more capacity for luxury, and it became well that men should dwell in large houses, and rest upon couches, and eat at tables; whereupon the artist, with his artificers, built palaces, and filled them with furniture, beautiful in proportion and lovely to look upon.
And the people lived in marvels of artâand ate and drank out of masterpiecesâfor there was nothing else to eat and to drink out of, and no bad building to live in; no article of daily life, of luxury, or of necessity, that had not been handed down from the design of the master, and made by his workmen.
And the people questioned not, and had nothing to say in the matter.
So Greece was in its splendour, and Art reigned supremeâby force of fact, not by electionâand there was no meddling from the outsider. The mighty warrior would no more have ventured to offer a design for the temple of Pallas Athene than would the sacred poet have proffered a plan for constructing the catapult.
And the Amateur was unknownâand the Dilettante undreamed of!
And history wrote on, and conquest accompanied civilisation, and Art spread, or rather its products were carried by the victors among the vanquished from one country to another. And the customs of cultivation covered the face of the earth, so that all peoples continued to use what the artist alone produced.
And centuries passed in this using, and the world was flooded with all that was beautiful, until there arose a new class, who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of the sham.
Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the gewgaw.
The taste of the tradesman supplanted the science of the artist, and what was born of the million went back to them, and charmed them, for it was after their own heart; and the great and the small, the statesman and the slave, took to themselves the abomination that was tendered, and preferred itâand have lived with it ever since!
And the artistâs occupation was gone, and the manufacturer and the huckster took his place.
And now the heroes filled from the jugs and drank f...