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036 - A 'Jolly' Art Critic · Reviews

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  Speaker 1: Section thirty five of reviews by Oscar Wilde. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by John Rose, Reviews by Oscar Wilde, edited by
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  Speaker 1: Robert Ross, Section thirty five A Jolly art critic Pall
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  Speaker 1: Mall Gazette, November eighteenth, eighteen eighty six. There is a
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  Speaker 1: healthy bank holiday atmosphere about this book, which is extremely pleasant.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Quilter is entirely free from affectation of any kind.
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  Speaker 1: He rolics through art with the recklessness of the tourists
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  Speaker 1: and describes his beauties with the enthusiasm of the auctioneer.
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  Speaker 1: To many, no doubt he will seem to be somewhat
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  Speaker 1: blatant and bumptious, but we prefer to regard him as
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  Speaker 1: being simply British. Mister is the apostle of the middle classes,
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  Speaker 1: and we are glad to welcome his gospel. After listening
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  Speaker 1: so long to the don Quixote of art, to listen
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  Speaker 1: once to Sancho Panza is both salutary and refreshing. As
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  Speaker 1: for his sententie, they differ very widely in character and subject.
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  Speaker 1: Some of them are ethical, such as humility may be
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  Speaker 1: carried too far, some literary, as for one frowd there
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  Speaker 1: are a thousand missus Markhams, and some scientific as objects
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  Speaker 1: which are near display more detail than those which are
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  Speaker 1: further off. Some again breathe a fine spirit of optimism,
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  Speaker 1: as picturesqueness is the birthright of the bargee. Others are
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  Speaker 1: jubilant as paint firm and be jolly, and many are
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  Speaker 1: purely autobiographical, such as number ninety seven. Few of us
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  Speaker 1: understand what it is that we mean by art, nor
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  Speaker 1: is mister Quilter's manner less interesting than his matter. He
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  Speaker 1: tells us that at this festive season of the year,
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  Speaker 1: with Christmas and roast beef looming before us, similes drawn
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  Speaker 1: from eating and its results occur most readily to the mind.
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  Speaker 1: So he announces that subject is the diet of painting,
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  Speaker 1: that perspective is the bread of art, and that beauty
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  Speaker 1: is in some way like jam. Drawings, he points out,
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  Speaker 1: are not made by recipes like puddings, nor is art
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  Speaker 1: composed of suet raisins and candied peel. Though mister Cecil
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  Speaker 1: Lawson's landscapes dou smack of indigestion. Occasionally, it is true
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  Speaker 1: he makes daring excursions into other realms of fans, as
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  Speaker 1: when he says that in the best of Reynolds's landscapes,
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  Speaker 1: one seems to smell the sawdust, or that advance in
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  Speaker 1: art is of a kangaroo character. But on the whole
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  Speaker 1: he is happiest in his eating similes, and the secret
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  Speaker 1: of his style is evidently la mettafur villante en monngent
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  Speaker 1: about artists and their work, mister Quilter has, of course
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  Speaker 1: a great deal to say. Sculpture he regards as paintings
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  Speaker 1: poorer relation, So, with the exception of a jaunty allusion
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  Speaker 1: to the rough modeling of Tanagra figurines, he hardly refers
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  Speaker 1: at all to the plastic arts. But on painters he
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  Speaker 1: writes with much vigor and joviality. Holbein's wonderful court portraits
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  Speaker 1: naturally do not give him much pleasure. In fact, he
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  Speaker 1: compares them as works of art to the sham series
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  Speaker 1: of Scottish kings at Holyrood. But doray, he tells us
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  Speaker 1: head a wife imaginative range in all subjects were the
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  Speaker 1: gloomy and the terrible played leading parts than probably any
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  Speaker 1: artist who ever lived, and may be called the Carlisle
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  Speaker 1: of artists. In Gainsborough, he sees a plainness almost amounting
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  Speaker 1: to brutality, while vulgarity and snobbishness are the chief qualities
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  Speaker 1: he finds in Sir Joshua Reynolds. He has grave doubts
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  Speaker 1: whether Sir Frederic Layton's work is Greek after all, and
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  Speaker 1: can discover in it but little of Rocky Ithaca. Mister Pointer, however,
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  Speaker 1: is a carthorse compared to the President, and Frederic Walker
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  Speaker 1: was a dull Greek because he had no sympathy with poetry.
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  Speaker 1: Linnell's pictures are a sort of Upguards and Adam paintings,
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  Speaker 1: and Mason's exquisite idols are as national as a Jingo poem.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Brickett Foster's landscapes smile at one much in the
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  Speaker 1: same way that mister Carker used to flash his teeth,
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  Speaker 1: and mister John Collier gives consider a cheerful slap on
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  Speaker 1: the back before he says, like a shampoo in a
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  Speaker 1: Turkish bath. Next man, mister Herkimer's art is, if not
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  Speaker 1: a catchpenny art at all events, a catch many pounds art,
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  Speaker 1: and mister W. B. Richmond is a clever trifler who
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  Speaker 1: might do really good work if he would employ his
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  Speaker 1: time in learning to paint. It is obviously unnecessary for
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  Speaker 1: us to point out how luminous these criticisms are, how
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  Speaker 1: delicate an expression. The remarks on Sir Joshua Reynolds alone
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  Speaker 1: exemplify the truth of sentention of a nineteen from a picture.
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  Speaker 1: We gain but little more than we bring on the
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  Speaker 1: general principles of art. Mister Quilter writes with equal lucidity
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  Speaker 1: that there is a difference between color and colors that
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  Speaker 1: an artist, be he portrait painter or dramatist, always reveals
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  Speaker 1: himself in his manner or ideas that can hardly be
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  Speaker 1: said to occur to him. But mister Quilter really does
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  Speaker 1: his best and bravely faces every difficulty in modern art,
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  Speaker 1: with the exception of mister Whistler. Painting, he tells us,
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  Speaker 1: is of a different quality to mathematics and finish in
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  Speaker 1: art is adding more fact, portrait painting is a bad
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  Speaker 1: pursuit for an emotional artist, as it destroys his personality
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  Speaker 1: and his sympathy. However, even for the emotional artist. There
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  Speaker 1: is hope as a portrait can be converted into a
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  Speaker 1: picture by adding to the likeness of the sitter some
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  Speaker 1: dramatic interest, or some picturesque adjunct. As for etchings, they
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  Speaker 1: are of two kinds, British and foreign. The latter fail
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  Speaker 1: in propriety, yet really fine etching is as free and
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  Speaker 1: easy as is the chat between old chums at midnight
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  Speaker 1: over a smoking room fire. Consonant with these rollicking views
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  Speaker 1: of art is mister Quilter's healthy admiration for the three
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  Speaker 1: primary colors, red, blue, and yellow. Anyone, he points out,
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  Speaker 1: can paint in good tone who paints only in black
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  Speaker 1: and white? And the great sign of a good decorator
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  Speaker 1: is his capability of doing without neutral tints. Indeed, on decoration,
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  Speaker 1: mister Quilter is almost eloquent. He laments most bitterly the
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  Speaker 1: divorce that has been made between decorative art and what
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  Speaker 1: we usually call pictures. Makes a customary appeal to the
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  Speaker 1: last judgment and reminds us that in the great days
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  Speaker 1: of art, Michelangelo was the furnishing upholsterer. With the present
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  Speaker 1: tendencies of decorative art in England. Mister Quilker consequently has
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  Speaker 1: but little sympathy, and he makes a gallant appeal to
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  Speaker 1: the British householder to stand no more nonsense. Let the
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  Speaker 1: honest fellow, he says, on his return from his counting house,
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  Speaker 1: tear down the Persian hangings, put a chop on the
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  Speaker 1: Anatolian plate, mix some toddy in the Venetian glass, and
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  Speaker 1: carry his wife off to the National Gallery to look
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  Speaker 1: at our own mulready. And then the picture he draws
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  Speaker 1: of the ideal home, where everything, though ugly, is hallowed
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  Speaker 1: by domestic memories, and where beauty appeals not to the
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  Speaker 1: heartles's eye, but the family affections. Baby's chair there, and
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  Speaker 1: the mother's work basket near the fire, and the ornaments
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  Speaker 1: Fred brought home from India on the mental board. It
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  Speaker 1: is really impossible not to be touched by so charming
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  Speaker 1: a description, how valuable. Also in connection with house decoration
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  Speaker 1: is sentention number three hundred fifty one. There is nothing
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  Speaker 1: furnishes a room like a bookcase, and plenty of books
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  Speaker 1: in it. How cultivated the mind that thus raises literature
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  Speaker 1: to the position of upholstery, and puts thought on a
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  Speaker 1: level with the atimacasser. And finally, for the young workers
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  Speaker 1: in art. Mister Quilter has loud words of encouragement with
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  Speaker 1: a sympathy that is absolutely reckless of grammar. He knows
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  Speaker 1: from experience what an amount of study and mental strain
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  Speaker 1: are involved in painting a bad picture. Honestly, he exhorts
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  Speaker 1: them Sentention number two hundred sixty seven to go on
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  Speaker 1: quite bravely and sincerely, making miss after miss from nature,
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  Speaker 1: and while sternly warning them that there is something wrong
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  Speaker 1: if they do not feel washed out after each drawing,
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  Speaker 1: he still urges them to put a new piece of
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  Speaker 1: goods in the window every morning. In fact, he is
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  Speaker 1: quite severe on mister Ruskin for not recognizing that a
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  Speaker 1: picture should denote the frailty of man, and remarks, with
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  Speaker 1: pleasing courtesy in pelicitous grace, that many phases of feeling
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  Speaker 1: are as much a dead letter to this great art
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  Speaker 1: teacher as Sanskrit to an Islington cabman. Nor is mister
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  Speaker 1: Quilter one of those who fails to practice what he preaches.
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  Speaker 1: Far from it, he goes on quite bravely and sincerely,
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  Speaker 1: making miss after mess from literature and Shakespeare Wordsworth offered
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  Speaker 1: to miss it. Mister Matthew Arnold, mister Swinburne, and mister
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  Speaker 1: Fitzgerald's rubayet in strict accordance with Sentention number two fifty one,
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  Speaker 1: which tells us that work must be abominable if it
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  Speaker 1: is ever going to be good. Only unfortunately, his own
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  Speaker 1: work never does get good. Not content with his misquotations,
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  Speaker 1: he misspells the names of such well known painters as
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  Speaker 1: Maddox Brown, Bastian Lapage, and Missonnier, hesitates between Angre and Andree,
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  Speaker 1: talks of mister Milly and mister Linton, alludes to mister
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  Speaker 1: Frank Hall simply as Hall, speaks with easy familiarity of
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  Speaker 1: mister Burne, Jones as Jones, and writes the artist whom
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  Speaker 1: he calls old Chrome with an affection that reminds us
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  Speaker 1: of mister Tulliver's love for Jeremy Taylor. On the whole
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  Speaker 1: the book will not do. We fully admit that it
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  Speaker 1: is extremely immune using, and no doubt mister Quilter is
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  Speaker 1: quite earnest in his endeavors to elevate art to the
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  Speaker 1: dignity of manual labor. But the extraordinary vulgarity of the
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  Speaker 1: style alone will always be sufficient to prevent these cententially
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  Speaker 1: artists from being anything more than curiosities of literature. Mister
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  Speaker 1: Quilter has missed his chance, for he has failed even
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  Speaker 1: to make himself the tupper of painting Centenially Artists. First
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  Speaker 1: Principles of Art for Painters and Picture Lovers by Harry Quilter, M. A.
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  Speaker 1: Is Bister. A reply to this review appeared on November
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  Speaker 1: twenty three, end of section thirty five. A jolly art
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  Speaker 1: critic