Fine Art (M.D. Wyatt)/Lecture 1

Mr Vice-Chancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen,

In addressing you for the first time from this Chair it is natural that I should feel a certain amount of embarrassing emotions. Any such emotions are however but in a remote degree of a personal nature, since I regard myself simply as an instrument to carry out the wishes of the Founder of the Chair; and provided I bring to my duties (as I do) an earnest conviction of the importance to you of the subjects upon which I may have to address you, a zealous intention to communicate all I know, which may appear to me in any wise likely to be profitable to you, and in short a hearty goodwill to do my duties, my conscience will be relieved, and I may feel that you will give me credit for more perhaps even than may be the real value of what I may have to say to you.

My emotions rather arise from the fact that it is for the first time, I believe, in the annals of your University, that the Fine Arts will have received that consideration which I believe to be their due: a consideration which may I hope in time remove the reproach, that our leading Uni​versities confer degrees as "Masters of Arts" upon students, from whose course of study almost all reference to the Fine Arts has been as it were sedulously expunged.

A cultivation of those arts ought never, in a highly civilised country, and especially in its Universities which are clearly the "foci" of its civilisation, to be regarded otherwise than as a most important branch of education; important under at least four aspects;—Firstly, from the humanising influence which such studies exert upon the student:—Secondly, from the fact that in proportion to the gravity and preponderance of such studies in the educational scheme of the population of a country, results the greater or less excellence of the works of art produced, either through their agency, or under their correcting judgment;—Thirdly, because it is impossible to study the principles upon which beauty in the Fine Arts depends, without discovering, gathering up, and storing, knowledge of laws, the action of which will be found to extend from the realms of the Fine Arts, over those cognate branches of Literature and Science, which naturally form the staple of every most advanced "curriculum" such as that adopted in your University;—and Fourthly, because one cannot but regard those whom I have the honour of addressing in this room, and such other students as in other places may be favoured with the instructions of my colleagues, as but, as it were, leaven, destined to permeate and influence the general masses of the population of this country, with whatever knowledge of Fine Art they may acquire through the Slade Foundation.

From the great Universities of the land (if the education at those Universities be but made, as it should be, to reflect and supply the intellectual wants most generally felt, corrected by a conservative respect for wisdom, not of the passing hour, but of all time) should to a great extent issue potent influences upon mind and matter specially ​adapted to develope and elevate both. Such influences should mould and fashion succeeding generations to tread boldly and steadily in those arduous paths of scientific investigation, intellectual labour, and the highly refined appreciation of the beautiful, upon which the Finest Art must ever rest; and the importance of which to our prosperity, as a country standing in the van of civilisation, increases from year to year with the intensity of the cumulative competition it has to enter into and sustain with other nations.

In France, in Germany, in Switzerland, in Italy, and even in far-away Russia and other regions of the North, those arts which will specially engage our attention henceforth in Cambridge have long and constantly received due and systematic cultivation.

In England the efforts to induce any such recognition have been more recent and more spasmodic, occasionally strenuous, and then again relaxed; the eccentricities and defalcations (if I may use such expressions) on the part of the teachers, and of the system, or rather want of system, under which they may have hitherto laboured, being partially compensated for only by the peculiar native energy of the British student.

It would be absurd to deny that the English, as a body of artists, do not at this present time stand respectably before the world; but it is rather to that vital energy to which I have alluded, than to any systematic cultivation of their abilities, that they stand indebted for the honourable position they may be held to occupy.

There is, however, left to us the happy reflection that if, with the interjectional and interrupted studies hitherto pursued by English artists, they have attained the position they now occupy as compared with their continental rivals, how much may we not hope will be effected by their talents, when fostered and encouraged, and indeed helped over the ​earliest and perhaps most difficult stages of their studies, by foundations, such as that which has been so nobly endowed by the liberality of the Founder of this Chair?

This naturally leads me, before entering upon the specific subject of my first discourse, to a few words of respectful tribute to the memory of the late Felix Slade. It was my pleasure to know him, and to have learned to recognise that consolation under many trials in his old age, which he derived from his attachment to the studies and tastes of his manhood. The collections of glass, the prints, the books, and minor specimens of the art industries of the past, by which he surrounded himself, became never-failing sources of happy relaxation, when increasing infirmity rendered it difficult for him in his later years to derive the pleasure his hospitable spirit once led him to enjoy in the society of his friends. It would almost seem as though he had determined to assist others to become acquainted with the arts, from the manifestations of which he had himself derived some of his highest intellectual enjoyments, in gratitude for the pleasure and consolation he had found in cognate studies, and the friendships, sympathies, and humanising reflections to which they led him.

Permit me now to remind you of the precise terms used in the definition of the annual duties of a Professor under Mr Slade's bequest. He is bound to "deliver a course of not less than Twelve Lectures on the History, Theory and Practice of the Fine Arts, or of some section or sections of them; and no Lecture shall be twice delivered. The Lectures shall be delivered in full Term, and shall be open to all Members of the University, free of charge."

It appears to me that my first duty should be to explain to you the sense in which I understand that definition of my duties, and the action I hope to cause to result therefrom.

I trust in the course of the present year to be enabled to give from this Chair the following Course of Lectures, ​which will be found I trust to strictly coincide with those prescribed by the Founder.

The first, which I am now engaged in delivering, will be introductory to the Course, and will consist mainly of an attempt to answer three questions concerning the Fine Arts, as a whole; namely, First, what is Fine Art Secondly, why should Fine Art be studied? and Thirdly, how should Fine Art be studied?

My second Lecture will be on the History of Architecture, my third on its Theory, my fourth on its Practice.

I give precedence to Architecture, because, as ministering to man's earliest necessities, it may be held to claim priority in date; and because almost from its birth it began to include and call into being the second, third and fourth branches of the Fine Arts upon which I shall have to dwell.

My fifth Lecture will be on the History of Sculpture, my sixth on its Theory, and my seventh on its Practice.

I have given to Sculpture the second place in the family of the Fine Arts, because its earliest manifestations grew up out of Architecture, and were almost indissolubly associated with it.

My third group of Lectures will treat of that Art, Painting, which is essentially superficial, and which, in its earliest form, consisted of the decoration of surfaces prepared by the Architect and Sculptor to be enriched by the art of the Painter.

My eighth Lecture therefore will be on the History of Painting, my ninth on its Theory, and my tenth on its Practice.

The remaining two Lectures of my Course will be devoted to the Application of the Fine Arts to Industry.

I shall thus hope to pass over a vast space of ground, so vast indeed that I can only touch the most salient features of the great subject. Such light as may emanate from ​my remarks may perhaps feebly illumine the mountain-tops: but it will rest with you to trace out at your leisure the less elevated features of the plateau over which I shall have to conduct you. Into the valleys intersecting these, in such a course of Lectures as this, I can never hope to make any feeble light which may irradiate from me penetrate. You will, in the patient exploration which I may suggest, but cannot lead, find intellectual delights of infinite variety; for you have but to dig deeply into the soil, and as miners you will extract riches incalculable. Ores, you may rely upon it, abound of all but virgin purity. For myself I can only hope, firstly, that you may obtain and enjoy them, and secondly, that with a liberal hand you will dispense of your abundance to all in need thereof. They will be so enriched, and you be none the poorer.

You will find one of the charms of such investigations to be that the character of their results is essentially communistic. They will never lead you to hoard for yourselves. Your greatest enjoyment will be to spread your gains broadcast; you will make your delights the delights of others, and the hand of friendship you stretch out to all fellow-labourers in the field of Art you will find grasped with generous ardour by many.

The sympathies such kindred pursuits bestow are Free-Masonic, and will at once admit you to a fellowship and brotherhood with all who, like yourself, may be led to seek the beautiful; and, having found it, to appreciate it as "a joy for ever."

It has been a doubt and an anxiety with me whether it would be necessary or desirable that this my first course of Lectures should be illustrated by diagrams; and I have come to the conclusion that it will not be well to so illustrate them, for the following reasons: namely, that while I would desire to fix your attention upon what is most perfect in the Fine Arts, it would be impossible for any illustrations I could ​bring you not to fall far short of the standard to which I think your taste should be raised. Further, even supposing my diagrams could be of such excellence as to be worthy of your admiration, the short space of time during which they could be exhibited to you would in that case be inadequate for your deriving equivalent instruction from an inspection of them. Again, it will be well rather, I consider, that your Professor should encourage you to seek out for yourselves in every direction illustrations of the subjects of his discourses. For such purposes it is rather in the Museums and great national depositories of works of Fine Art,—in the churches and country houses strewn broadcast over our land, that I would urge you to trace the abundant illustrations to be readily found therein, of application of the general principles I shall have the privilege of laying before you.

Should my expositions be correct, such studies on your part will only confirm you in what is good; while, if I should be led, as I may naturally be frequently, into error, it is by such studies that you may be best enabled to correct my inaccuracies and to supply my deficiencies.

In lieu of the exhibition to you of diagrams to illustrate the twelve Lectures already referred to, I shall hope to give you one extra or supplemental Lecture, in which I shall endeavour to call your attention specifically to the monuments of Art by which you are surrounded in this town; and to point out to you the local facilities for the study and practice of the Fine Arts, which may I hope be increased in value and importance as your demand for such facilities may become more and more urgent. One indeed of the most precious fruits that could result from Mr Slade's endowment of this Chair would be to stimulate those who may have it in their power to forward the good work, to so clear a recognition of what was, and ever will be, excellent in Art, and what was, and ever will be, bad in Art, as to ensure that, in all which may be done for the encouragement of any ​branch of Art in this great centre of intelligence, the highest standard only may be aimed at, and the loftiest results only attained.

As it has appeared to me that it would be a pity to detach our examination respectively of the History, of the Theory, and of the Practice of any branch of the Fine Arts from one another, by any such interval of time as would allow you to forget the leading features of one discourse before entering upon the consideration of another, I propose to give my discourses on the History, Theory and Practice, of each Art, on three consecutive days; leaving fair intervals of repose between each of these groups of discourses. It being my earnest desire to give the fullest development to the bounteous intentions of the Founder of this Chair, I propose (at any rate experimentally, and subject to the approbation of any authorities upon whom I may be dependent) not only, as I am bound to do, to open the Lectures "to all Members of the University free of charge," but to any ladies or gentlemen of the town or neighbourhood who may honour me with their attendance. I can only hope that among such I may find friends willing to learn, and indulgent to whatever shortcomings they may detect in one, who, while he assumes to teach, is yet profoundly conscious of what he has yet himself to learn.

With these few words of more or less personality, and from this time forward, I shall endeavour as far as possible to forget myself, and to lose individuality altogether in the infinitely more interesting subject which demands our specific attention.

In attempting to answer the question of "what is Fine Art?" it would be unwise and unprofitable to lead you into any metaphysical fogs; and it is preferable to seek a solution of the question in the observation of man's practice, rather than in an investigation of his perceptions and intellectual affinities.

​A comparison of the conditions of more or less savage races in various stages of social progress, has shewn us an inherent tendency on man's part, after the supply of the first and indispensable wants of his nature, to something more than the satisfaction of those necessities. That something more has generally taken the form, originally of Ornament, naturally of a barbaric kind; tattooing in patterns upon his flesh, adorning his person with feathers, flowers, skins, and ultimately with plaited and woven apparel, then of the enrichment by cutting notches, and ultimately patterns, upon his arms, his boat, his dwelling. All such tendencies exhibit the savage as mindful only of to-day. What quickens or makes enjoyable an existence beginning and ending with his short span of life is all the propensity to Fine Art, which, in the first stages of his culture, dawns upon the savage.

His second condition is to note the passage of time by a reference to something beyond his own existence. This tendency to seek a record, for the first time lifts him out of himself. The cairn or mound which marks the burial place, the heap of stones that indicates the site of the battle field, and ultimately the rude temple in which men meet together for worship, however dreadful or barbaric, mark those stages in the cultivation of memory and imagination which ultimately lead to the development of artistic individuality.

Language marches with ideas, and words are found gradually to express more than the first wants and sensations of humanity; epithets enrich language, new substantives are created of epithets; and attentive students of the history of language have been enabled to trace how terms, corresponding with qualities distinctly expressing perceptions of Art, have been gradually incorporated into vocabularies; proving conclusively the development at definite periods of those advanced perceptions, which correspond with the emotions derived from things sublime and beautiful, in Nature first and ultimately in Art.

​Perceiving Art then, in its broadest aspect, to mean something more than necessity demands from primitive man, we have to look to his sense of vision, and its correspondence with his brain, as the especial medium through which he experiences that class of enjoyment which we are in the habit of referring to as derivable from the Fine Arts.

Architecture, as I have already observed, stands first in order of the Fine Arts, and is compounded of man's endeavour to provide himself shelter by rude structure, and that inherent love of ornament which leads him to add to his bare structure something more—which, making it more comfortable, makes it at the same time more beautiful.

It is at this stage of culture that the perception of nature's ever teeming beauties seems to dawn upon the individual. The leaves, and flowers, and wattling, plaited and twisted and overgrown with creepers, that make shade and coolness about the simplest hut, afford materials of decorative grace and beauty; but the very evanescence of such ornamental features, leads man to endeavour to surround himself in his habitation, with beauty in some more permanent form. Hence rude carving of wood and stone, and an attempt to realise by human means, some imitation of the natural forms with which creation has stamped on matter, abundant evidences, which he who runs may read, of Divine origination.

When many combine to create for common use, what in the earliest stages of society each savage made for himself alone, a great stride towards a social system has obviously been made. Such association is the parent of polity, and in polity is to be recognised the nursery of the Fine Arts. The moment man works for the delight of others as well as for his own, he exhibits to the world the commencement of a manifestation of Fine Art, destined to be transmitted, encouraged, corrected, and ultimately carried on traditionally by his fellows. Hence starts that cumulative movement, which, ​corresponding with momentum in mechanics, is a compound of force and matter destined to serve as the foundation of the subsequent continuous movement of mankind.

Through this principle of association creeds become special to races, and the Temple finds its origin; the forms of Temples always varying architecturally with every varying form of creed. As we shall see more fully, when we come to the History of Specific Arts, from the religious sentiment, as embodied in the idol, the tomb, and the Temple, sprang the earliest monuments of architecture, invoking, for their perfect type, Sculpture and Painting.

For those who would desire to enter, in greater and stricter detail, upon the study of the successive stages by which men have realised art perceptions, and the distinctions which separate Technical Arts from Fine Arts, and purely intellectual culture, from culture in which the education of the senses plays the most conspicuous part, I would earnestly recommend a study of the admirable essay on "Beauty in Art," by Mr Fergusson. In that work they will find correctly classified and tabulated, all the almost infinitely variable family of human studies and intellectual perceptions. To Rhetoric, Music, Science, Poetry, and the Fine Arts, their respective places in relation to one another and to all other technical and intellectual studies will be found assigned; and I think it will be also found, that the great and special characteristic, which separates that group of the arts which it is our duty to consider, namely, the Fine Arts, from all the many arts he dwells upon with such enthusiasm and learning, will be found in the fact, that the delight to be derived from them comes to us, primitively, through our admiration, of all we may be able to deem perfect in the works of man's hands, as contra-distinguished from the works of God.

Although the Fine Arts depend for their perfection upon those principles which are found to constitute the perfection ​of beauty in works of God's creation, it is solely with the work of man's hands that those arts have to busy themselves. The closer, in his creations, man can approach to the principles which God has exhibited in his creations, the higher and purer will be the emotions of delight experienced on the sight of man's humble followings in the footsteps of his Creator.

We should imperfectly convey an idea of the nature of Fine Art in anything like a state of high perfection, if we failed to notice the identity of, or at any rate connection between, the class of emotions we derive from an inspection of the noblest monuments of Fine Art, and such moral sentiments as may be derived from the philosophical study of many of the attributes of the Divinity. Those attributes which in some of their highest forms take the shape of good, true, beautiful, enduring, perfect, in the highest degree, are all qualities we recognise and appreciate as most sublime in works of the Fine Arts. Happily, there is, running through all God's works, and all the ideas which spring from the study of His works, so perfect a strain of harmonious relation between the greatest and the smallest, that we cannot but perceive principles of eternal unity in the works of an all-bountiful Deity, which give us, as it were, the keynote to test the harmony of all we would ourselves strive to produce. Man's efforts in creation should be to emulate the purity and excellence of all that God has made, and hence, while we correctly recognise man's Art in striving to originate and perpetuate Beauty as Fine Art, we should recognise God's Art, not as Fine, but as Divine Art.

It is perhaps due to this very principle of concord deduced from the careful study of Divine Art, binding together all the ideas connected with every branch of Æsthetics, that we find our consideration of the nature of Fine Art has already gone far to foreshadow our reply to the question of "why should Fine Art be studied?"

​The first and obvious reason man may, naturally and at once, give for such cultivation, is the sense of delight it yields him. His sense of beauty is one of his first feelings of pleasure. To admire is to enjoy. To enjoy is almost always to long to imitate or create; firstly for himself, and secondly in such wise that his fellows may share his delight. To make a work of art lasting is to perpetuate delight; to cause delight is to win honour; and hence probably sprang artistic emulation, and the desire (through the practice of Fine Art in some higher shape than that in which it had hitherto been practised) to be regarded as a benefactor to mankind, through the enlargement of the circle of permanent human enjoyment.

A second reason why Fine Art should be studied is to be found in that spirit of gentleness and refinement which follows as a sequence of its cultivation. The poets in all ages, I need scarcely remind you, have looked upon the practitioners of the Arts as fashioners of good manners; and wherever in history men have exhibited gentleness in their relations to one another, and especially to women, it has been in periods corresponding with their creation of the highest types of human art. Where exceptions exist, and where the artist in his person fails to display gentleness and refinement, we may be sure that something has gone wrong either in the physical or mental constitution of the individual, and that he is to be regarded as an illustration of an abnormal type.

A third reason why art should be studied is to be found in the fact, that it is in the work of creation, so far as his limited means enable him to create, that man is permitted to most closely approximate to the attributes of Divinity. As Byron says,—

​and I need only appeal to those who have ever felt in any way the almost intoxicating delight of that quickened existence, in which man can alone create forms of beauty, to declare whether they have not found more enjoyment in that state of being, than under the influence of any other source of enjoyment, except perhaps some direct communing, in the temple or the closet, with Divinity itself. As Gibson the sculptor has said, "The beautiful elevates us above the crowd in this world,—the ideal higher,—yet higher still is the celestial beauty, the fountain of all." Socrates said that outward beauty is the sign of inward. In the life of man, as in an image, every part should be beautiful^[1]." Mengs, a better critic than painter, has elegantly expressed a somewhat similar view. "La Bellezza," he says, "consiste nella perfezione della materia, secondo nostre idee. Siccome Iddio solo e perfetto la Bellezza e percio una cosa divina. Quanto piu di bellezza si trova in una cosa, tanto piu essa e spiritosa. La Bellezza e l'anima della materia."

A fourth reason why art should be studied, is to be recognised in the fruits such study bears to our national importance.

We have seen already that the tendency of the culture of the Fine Arts is to refine men. The refined citizen constitutes the best subject. Gentle and peaceful existence to him becomes a necessity; he best represses disorder, greed, tyranny, presumption; he best holds an even and temperate hand when power is entrusted to his care; he best wields the sword of justice whose tendency and cultivation lead him to desire to sheathe it: in short, that country is foremost in the race of nations to reach the goal of general happiness, the constituents of which study with the greatest zeal, energy and discretion, those arts which refine without enfeebling mankind.

I am of course aware that there are heroic stages of a ​nation's progress when it may be great in despite of an almost general neglect of the culture of the Fine Arts. When the hearts of men are throbbing with instincts of self-preservation, or even of national aggrandisement, there may be found few who seek that intellectual peace, and isolation from the current cares of this world, suitable for the engendering of beauty; but it has almost always happened that, as though by a compensating regulation, increased vigour has been given throughout such dark moments to the few who were enabled to isolate themselves in the midst of distraction; and that by such an exceptional increase of vigour, they have been enabled to preserve from entire extinction, the sacred fire it fell to their instincts and charge to maintain unextinguished, when the hurricanes of faction and the storms of war, were raging from every point of the compass, as though bent upon nothing less than "total eclipse."

Before proceeding to the last section of this discourse I would desire to note a fifth inducement to the study of Fine Art.

It is, briefly, that by that study alone we learn how to see. The difference between the world of vision enjoyed by the artist, and that of one who has never directed his earnest attention to an analysis of what he sees, can scarcely be conceived. The former may be said to live in a new, clearer, and more ethereal atmosphere, in which an unaccustomed light brings minute differences of surface, texture and organisation to his consciousness. With these increased powers of vision come increased intellectual activity, and aptitude for the retention of the lessons imprinted without an effort upon the vigorous imagination of youth.

The earlier in life this quickening of organisation takes place, the more easily does the human subject assimilate with, and as it were work up to, his altered conditions of existence; and the more rapidly does he learn to absorb instinctively those infinite lessons of beauty with which nature is ever teeming.

​The artist sees, not only the works of man, but the works of God, with increased delight. As his mind dwells upon the manifestations of Omnipotence upon the one hand, and of man's feeble powers, struggling upwards in the creation of works of beauty, on the other, the man who has been properly educated in Art learns to sympathise with every stage of the artist's effort, and even in the imperfections of his work to be scarcely offended, recollecting the imperfect constitution of its designer. As the artist more justly apprehends the difficulties of his own task, he becomes juster and yet more indulgent to the works of others. He learns to admire perfection, or such a measure of it as man may attain to, more; and to appreciate a struggle even while pitying an obvious defeat.

Before proceeding to the last branch of this discourse, I may be permitted to urge yet one other reason why Art should be studied.

It is from the fact of its universal and perennial interest. Art is a goddess who smiles upon all, though mostly on her votaries, and whose charms are ever young.

Men may perish, thrones may fall, and customs change, but as long as men remain men, the principles of eternal beauty woo the imagination, and repay the student, crowning him, as years roll on, with ever new delights.

The great artists of every age are the true mute, though not inglorious laureates of each age. Crowned themselves with unfading laurels, it is theirs to twine the bays around the poet's brow, to deck the conqueror with all the flushing attributes of victory, to fix the memories of the statesman's triumphs in "perennial brass," or marble scarcely less perennial, to embalm for posterity's admiration noble deeds, noble forms, noble things, doomed but for their intervention ​to "overcome us like a summer's cloud and pass away," and we not know it. It is theirs to "keep honour bright," "to show virtue her own image:" "they shall assist the deeds of justest men," and so work "their country's good, with a respect more tender than their own lives." The honours they confer are reflected on the arts through which those honours are conferred. The great artist who feels that the theme he may select will live in men's memories long after he may "lie in cold obstruction's apathy," cannot but glow with pride, even while he ought in some measure to tremble with a sense of responsibility. He may be potent, for good or for ill, in the measure of the excellence, or the reverse, of the silent teaching of his works; and therefore it is that he should take undeviating care to let "all his ends be God's and his country's."

With equal propriety and elegance that profound archæologist, M. Beulé, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts at Paris, has sketched the happiness which attends the artists to whose care may be confided the creation of monuments of art of all kinds worthy of a great and free country. In an imaginary dialogue between Phidias and Alcamenes, the scene being laid in the studio of the former, he makes him paint in glowing terms the temples and other edifices by the erection of which he proposed that the Greeks should celebrate at once the triumphs of their arts, philosophy, and arms. "Heureux," exclaims Alcamenes to whom his share as a sculptor in the creation of such monuments had not been as yet revealed, "heureux les architectes qui suffiront à peine à tant d'entreprises!" To which Phidias is made to reply, "Non moins heureux les statuaires et les peintres, car c'est pour eux que les architectes travaillent! A mesure que les monuments s'acheveront, vous les couvrirez de sculptures et de couleurs brillants; vous y tracerez l'histoire des hommes et celle des dieux. Plus puissants que les poetes, vous donnerez la vie à tout ce ​qu'Athènes chérit ou vénère. Sur la frise du Parthenon vous représenterez la ville de Minerve celebrant les Panathénées. Tandis que les autres pays consacrent l'image de leurs rois, c'est l'image d'un peuple entier que vous transmettrez à la postérité. Combien est douce la tâche qui nous est tracée! Libres au milieu d'un peuple libre, nous n'avons qu'à produire sans contrainte les œuvres les plus propres à honorer notre patrie." Happy indeed the artists called to such lofty duties! and happy the country worthy of such monuments, and worthy of artists fit for their worthy execution!

In turning practically to the question of how art should be studied, an immediate solution is of course to be derived from a just apprehension of the nature of Fine Art in its several branches.

Two of these differ essentially from the third. Painting and Sculpture are mainly imitative arts, while Architecture may be regarded as one, which,—while deriving all that raises it out of a simply useful into a Fine Art from a profound study of what is beautiful, and therefore delightful, in nature's own, and everlasting principles of construction and combination,—is mainly a conventional art.

The present moment appears to me a fitting one to dwell upon the meaning of these terms, which must naturally frequently recur in the sequel to this discourse. An imitative art is one in which primarily the source of pleasure is conveyed to the spectator in the degree in which the work of art conveys to the spectator's mind the effect produced upon him by any object he may have seen.

In the earliest stages the efforts of the artist will be to imitate directly, or in other terms, to project upon a plane by delineation, or to model a plastic substance, or to carve a hard one, as far as he possibly can, into the absolute image of the object he may desire to represent. But let a number of artists represent the same image, and test the ​effect produced upon the spectator by their various representations, and that artist will be found to produce most effect upon the spectator whose work shall be found to deviate in certain particulars from direct imitation. It is the nature of that deviation, and the propriety of its uses under various circumstances, which constitute the element of conventionalism; which, to produce perfect results, requires to be superadded to or substituted for direct imitation: and more especially is this the case when the object represented is one partly founded upon existing things, and partly an image which may find its existence only in the mind of the artist. As that distinguished critic, whom I have already quoted, M. Beulé, has well said on this subject "la nature ne doit nous offrir qu'un point de départ, et non pas un but. L'art qui la copie est un art servile."

In architecture the primitive idea of structure is the basis upon which all effects must be calculated. The reason for the existence of such an art is not because by its means an artist desires to imitate any existing thing, but because it is essential for him to provide mankind with permanent shelter, and the idea of rendering that shelter beautiful comes to him at a subsequent stage of mental operation. Having found beauty in imitative art revealed to him in his earliest efforts at Painting and Sculpture, he will lavish upon his structure, firstly, those ornamental adjuncts. The taste for beauty so fed and developed will induce him to see deformities in the simple necessities of structure. It will also lead him to convert forms which might otherwise be gross and voiceless, into others which, while strong may be graceful, and while but ordinary stone, wood, or marble, may yet speak to the admirer's eye a powerful language; realising to a certain extent that source of expression which Mr Fergusson has with so much propriety designated as the "phonetic" element in Art.

Perceiving the desire to imitate existing things, or to ​realise by rude representation the idea of things unseen, to constitute the basis and form the stimulant for man's first efforts towards the practice of the Fine Arts, we may fairly conclude that the first quality to cultivate on the part of any one who would aspire to practise those arts with success, is the education of the eye; the next step is unquestionably to provide such an education of the hand as shall allow the tool to follow with facility the will of the workman.

The first efforts necessary for the education of the eye will be to realise the constituent parts of complex form.

The moment attention is concentrated upon the leading forms of any of the most sublime works of nature, the primitive ideas of geometry force themselves upon the attention. As I have elsewhere had occasion to observe, "From Nature's delight in simplicity man probably derived his earliest perception of geometrical figures. The term horizontal at once betrays the source from which our idea of such a line may have been derived. Upon the horizon as a base, endless perpendiculars are erected in every plant that pierces the soil at right angles to its tangent A plain in nature furnishes the idea of a plane in geometry. Every variety of triangle is indicated by the outline of the snow-clad peaks of the loftiest mountains; every kind of cone by their substance. The thin clouds that sweep along the sky at sunset, hanging over the distant blue line of the ocean, form exquisite parallels, and where cut by the lines of trees and plants suggest every variety of square and oblong, rhombus and parallelogram. Where compactness is indispensable, the honey-yielding hexagons abound, and in her endless variety of crystals Nature has furnished us with models of the most exquisite solids. In the rainbow we have her noblest arch; in the parabola at once one of her most graceful curves, and most elegant formulæ of projection."

Such coincidences between the elementary lines and forms which the artist and art-critic are bound to marshal ​and classify in their memories for constant reference as tests, and for constant use in all branches of design, and those grand leading impressions of sublimity most readily gathered from Nature's inexhaustible storehouse of beauty, are of the utmost import, and exercise a marvellous influence upon all human Art. The means by which they do so most directly is through the "association of ideas," giving to forms and lines otherwise expressionless the power of recalling at the artist's will echoes of and reflexions from the emotions of delight experienced in the enjoyment of their original prototypes. When, under the artist's hands these primitive forms are reduced to a tangible existence as abstract forms, the wonderful arithmetical and mathematical properties pertaining to all the leading geometrical forms and figures gradually admit of patient evolution. Pure forms become classified in his recollection by their geometrical conditions and affinities, as well as through their associations with Nature, and the artist's memory so stored is converted into a great bank of deposit upon which he can draw such draughts at will for illimitable amounts of beauty as need fear no dishonour nor exhaustion, while he may always have the great delight of feeling that the more he draws for the more remains behind.

A correct estimate of the mechanical value of the great families of form under varying conditions and aspects, is a fund of knowledge which once arrived at never deserts the artist, and will be found useful to him every day and every hour, when called upon to combine those lines and forms into what we habitually recognize as works of art.

The next stage in the developement of his appreciation of pure form should be his profound study of the various conditions under which the same form may be made to wear different aspects, and convey different ideas, to the spectator. Form in creation is made visible to us by light; but if there were no counterbalancing element to light we should be faint with "excess of light," and the power of vision would convey ​to us no clear perceptions. Shade once introduced restores the equilibrium,—that equilibrium which permits our functions to reassert their powers, and we at once become sensible through its means of every undulation of surface and every variation of contour, in the objects we may examine.

As fulness of light is cheering and elevating to the spirits, so is its opposite conducive to repose, and, in a yet higher degree, to gloom, to tragedy, and through tragedy to sublimity.

It is the study of the maintenance of just balance under varying circumstances between light and shade, and of so using both as to make them subservient to the perfect expression of form, which artists generally understand as the study of chiaro-scuro; and this study will be found of equal importance whether the student's attention is specifically directed to architecture, to sculpture, or to painting.

Another quality abundantly possessed by nature, and manifested in all her noblest works, is variety. Its study will be of infinite value, either to those who are called upon to design—the minority—or to those who hereafter, in wandering away from the domains of art, may be able to give but little specific attention to the riches her realms contain—the majority—but who may yet be the chief users and causers of the artist's inventions and works.

When either class study that endless variety which pervades every work of the Creator, they will find that such variety is in nowise the result of heedlessness, and is in nowise causeless. Its basis will be found to rest upon the endless variety of function which each object in nature has to fulfil. Strong and compact substances in nature will assume one class of form, while fragile and yielding substances will assume another. In vegetation the supporter in all cases asserts its verticality with, as it were, a strong and vigorous bound from the soil which creates it. The climber winds around it in sinuous undulations, falling, where support fails, ​in graceful festoons, and rearing itself aloft by a series of coiling springs; while the supporter continues its upward course of perpendicularity with vigour; such perpendicularity being only the measure of its strength enforced by the contrast with it of the growth of the limbs and boughs. Even in the very form of the attachment of these to their parent stem, variety will be found at every stage. As the bough is young, or as it seeks the light, its upward direction is asserted with apparent feebleness. As it gathers wood and strength, and other and higher stems spring above from it, its attachment to the parent trunk becomes more vigorous, and is asserted by an angle more clearly and definitely marked.

From the observation of such changes of form, coincident with changes of necessity in nature, the artist will learn that it is incumbent upon him to vary his creations to infinity; but in all cases to make those variations correspond with some definite laws based upon the purpose which may have to be effected by the creation of his fancy. Supply in art, as in commerce, he will find, should be made to correspond with demand, not in quantity only, but in the most judicious union of utility with beauty. Useless beauty constitutes the most perfect idea of waste: useful beauty is at once delightful and philosophical.

The next province in nature's vast domains which the artist should explore with zeal is that boundless and most fruitful garden of colour. Take that happy quality from nature, and only conceive how blank the world would be. All its joy and gladness would seem to be spent, and one of its greatest powers of speaking to the heart would be lost. The lovely blue of the sky, the tender pink upon the cheek of beauty, the fervid glow of ruddy sunset, the rosy tint of incense-breathing morn, the deepening purple of the thundercloud, the soft green glades of spring, the full-toned browns of autumn, with all their associations of peace and plenty, poetry and joy, would find no living echoes in our hearts, to stir and ​move us with their deep and spontaneous throbbings of gratitude and delight.

Such being some of the principal directions in which the student who would cultivate the fine arts successfully must be continually lifting an anxious and inquiring gaze, I would now advert to one other way in which the question of "how art should be studied," may be fittingly answered. To such a question may we not reply, Unceasingly, laboriously, unselfishly, comprehensively? The old maxim, Ars longa Vita brevis est, will at once occur to your recollection, an adage which should never be out of the true artist's memory. If you shrink from "love's labour," recoil from wooing so exclusive and jealous a mistress as, if you once don her livery, or wear her colours, you will find Art to be. If she would be won, you must bear in mind that it is only by devoted "suit and service" that her heart of hearts is to be reached. She only grants her fullest measure of favour to those whose constancy approves itself as equal to their zeal. "She must be wooed, and not unsought be won." Art must be studied unceasingly, because to stand still is infallibly to go back upon the only path which can lead to excellence. It must be worked at laboriously, or life will be spent in possibly learning to do, and never doing. The fruit may set, but will never ripen. It must be practised unselfishly, or all its purity will be tarnished, and in lieu of "thrice-refined gold," the treasury of your fancies will but hold in store base metal, "which not enricheth you," and leaves the world of art, so far as you can be regarded as its benefactor, "poor indeed." Art must be studied comprehensively on account of her own universality. Practise if you will her specialities,—devote yourself, if you will, to excel in one or more of her departments, but learn to know her as a whole. Theoretically to sever with her is to destroy. Regard her as you would any animated body to every limb and member of which a distinct function is allotted, but which exists only by virtue of the ​instant and therefore simultaneous response of every member to the calls made upon them for action by the dominant will,—the life,—which pervades them all. Art, as a reflex of intelligence, has a vitality of her own, endangered if any of her various members are long neglected, or suffered to decay or mortify through injury or misuse. As human life can only be sustained by constant nourishment, so must the life of Art be kept up by an incessant supply of art-making food. As the tree withers which is not constantly watered and manured, either by man's or heaven's ministrations, so we may never hope to repose under the goodly shadow of the far-stretching branches of the tree of art planted in the midst of us; or to gather its refreshing and abundant fruits, unless we tend it heedfully, not in its leaves, and in its twigs, not in its buds and in its blossoms only, but in its stem and in its roots, in its soil, and in its nurture, in its planting, its grafting, and, if need be, its pruning. Think of the end and heed no trouble. Work even in a good cause may be hard at first, but ultimately a true solace and enjoyment. "The labour we delight in physics pain."

Time warns me to dwell no longer upon the tempting theme of "how art should be studied," a subject which might very fitly demand a whole Lecture to itself; but I must pass on rapidly to urge upon you the necessity of losing no opportunity for the cultivation of your taste, and a concurrent training of the eye to appreciate noble works of art; to which I would, if possible, desire to add the acquisition of a power to delineate what you see, with correctness, if not artistic grace. Train, and do not waste, the powers with which nature may have endowed you with liberality. Such education must be both mechanical and intellectual to have any value. Keep a just balance between the head and the hand. Remember, as Shakspeare tells us, "Men's eyes were made to look;" and as man must both look, and by labour and the sweat of his brow earn his title to existence, it may be profitable, ​not only to himself, but to his fellows, to convert his looks intuitively into looks of gladness, his works into works of beauty.

This is only to be done by practically studying the Fine Arts after an earnest and systematic fashion. Do you only your best, and permit me to assure you that so long as I have the honour to occupy this Chair, such assistance as a Slade Professor may be enabled to give you shall never be wanting on my part.

Let me, before we separate upon this our first meeting, urge upon you as strongly as my poor words may suffice to do, that we should, and shall, but ill study human arts if we fail to be raised by such studies to stretch forward to a higher and more extended apprehension of the perfection of "Heavenly Beauty." All will no doubt be right with us, if we can but bring to our studies the fervour and humility of the true Poet, and devout Christian, the worshipper alike of Nature and of Art, the sweet-voiced Spenser, the spirit of whose most apt supplication in his Hymn to Heavenly Beauty, I cannot do better than commend for your admiration and adoption. Let each one of you, say with him—