Art. A man in the savage state is one whose whole time is of necessity occupied in getting and retaining the things barely needed to keep him alive. When a society is able to supply its needs without using up, to that end, all the time of all its members, leisure arises, and some or all of them are enabled to devote part or even the whole of their time to occupations other than the support and protection of life. All such occupations have pleasure for their aim, and are included in the domain of art in its widest sense. The earliest forms of art were naturally methods of decoration applied to objects of daily use. Prehistoric man is known to have developed several kinds of decoration. Innumerable decorated objects of every kind have been dug up, the like of which are often actually found in use among little developed races in our own day. Every work of art, says Mr Ruskin, 'either states a true thing, or adorns a serviceable one.' The earliest existing 'statement of truth' in the form of art is probably to be found amongst the engraved bones which the cave-dwellers have left behind them. Some of these bones have first been formed into convenient shape for handles and the like, and afterwards roughly sculptured into the likeness of an animal's head. Others have been used as so much paper to draw upon, without any visible intention of applying them afterwards to purposes of utility. Beasts of the chase formed the subjects which these prehistoric artists scratched with the point of a flint upon the bones. One engraved outline of a mammoth has been found, and many of stags knee-deep in the long grass. Not impossibly this early study of animal life was connected with those rudimentary beliefs which, in the form of fetishism, seem to have been universal in all the least-developed peoples. Animal life, again, is the subject of the best work of Egyptian and Chaldean artists.
In ordinary speech the intonation of the voice already provides the materials for song. Passionate speech approximates to song still more closely. Musical notes can be gained from shaped pieces of wood, stone, and other simple contrivances. Thus rude forms of music could and doubtless did arise very early, generally in connection with the dance or with some kind of mimetic performance out of which the drama was in time destined to arise.
Civilisation seems to have first arisen in three great river-basins—those of the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, and the Yang-tse-kiang. About early Chinese art we as yet know next to nothing. Chaldæa does not come within the range of history till very much later than Egypt; nevertheless, the civilisations of the two countries probably arose independently, and at about the same time. In Egypt, animal-worship always retained its hold upon the people down to the latest times, but it was coupled with ancestor-worship. The art of Egypt arose chiefly out of the latter part of the religion. The preservation of the body or the likeness of the dead was essential in the estimation of every Egyptian. Hence arose mummification; hence also portrait sculpture for burial, and monumental sculpture for display. It was likewise essential to preserve the aspect of the ordinary occupations of life, because, by the intervention of Osiris, such representations were believed to be made real for the souls of the dead. Hence the number of incidents of everyday life depicted on the walls of Egyptian tombs, often with great skill, especially in the rendering of animal forms, the traditions of the treatment of which may have descended from a remote antiquity. The monumental architecture of Egypt was likewise encouraged by the same desire for permanence. In its earliest known forms (the pyramids, mastabas, &c.), it was essentially an architecture of the tomb. The quantity of the harder rocks readily available, helped to determine the nature of Egyptian art. Chaldæa is a stoneless country. Its arts chiefly depended upon the nature of clay for their forms. The Chaldæans (proto-Babylonians) wrote upon clay tablets, which were afterwards baked. They built with bricks, chiefly sun-dried. They invented the potter's wheel at an early date, and they found out how to enamel. Their chief buildings were covered with enamelled bricks. They imported stone, which they sculptured well (the statues from Tello in the Louvre), treating it as a precious thing. They were great magicians, believers in the power of many spirits capable of being represented by natural objects—a belief at first not far removed from fetishism. They therefore studied the motions of the heavenly bodies; and their temples were solid staged towers of sun-dried brick, raised above the mists of the plains. They invented the forms of winged men and animals to represent certain demons and spirits; the figures of angels also come to us from Chaldæa. The dome and the proto-Ionic capital were Chaldæan inventions. The Assyrians borrowed their arts and sciences from the Chaldæans, but they infused their own fierce spirit into the more subtle ideals of their neighbours. The Hittites, whose empire in Asia Minor and Syria was probably contemporary with the rise of Assyrian power, would owe their culture to Assyria. The Phœnicians, whose power in the Levant culminated later, borrowed their arts partly from Egypt, partly from Assyria. Their trading ships traversed all parts of the Mediterranean. An inartistic people themselves, they yet produced a most important effect in the development of art, for it was by their commerce that the artistic and other products of different countries were exchanged. The Greeks were thus brought in contact with works of art made by the Egyptians and the peoples of the East. Assyrian traditions likewise reached them overland through Asia Minor. The influences of Egypt and Assyria are clearly perceptible in early Greek works and legends. Greek art developed very slowly at first. It was only under the influence of the passionate struggle of Greece against the Persian hosts, that the Hellenic ideal took perfect form. It may be called an Ideal of Reserve. In architecture and sculpture alike this ideal reigns, culminating in the age of Pericles. Gods are represented in perfect human shape, without exaggeration of form or posture, and with little expression beyond an aspect of benevolent calm and satisfaction. After the Peloponnesian war, the purity of this ideal passed away. Sculpture tended to become theatrical or portrait-like, and portraiture became the leading art. In Italy there was little native art, except that which the Etruscans cultivated, and of which they seem to have derived the origins from the Phœnicians. The only known remnants of it are objects found in tombs. The Greek influence was next powerfully felt, especially in those parts which were colonised by Greek settlements. After the conquest of Greece by Rome, the Hellenic influence in art became supreme. Roman artists, in the time of the empire, developed in architecture a style founded upon that of the Greeks, with certain oriental elements added. The dome and the semi-dome were very much employed by Roman architects. Fresco and mosaic were likewise much used. Portrait sculpture flourished. When the capital of the empire was removed to Byzantium, oriental influences became stronger, and Greek traditions gradually lost predominance. The ancient traditions still lingered on in Italy, but new influences from Byzantium changed the ideals there also.
The adoption of Christianity had not at first much effect upon the style of art. Roman influences had for a long time pervaded all Western Europe. When the barbarian invasions commenced, and the western empire fell, art was for a time completely paralysed. Ireland alone was practically untouched. Celtic art seems to have been a local product, influenced at some early date by Byzantine-Greek traditions brought over perhaps by early missionaries. As order slowly emerged out of the chaos that followed the fall of the Roman empire, local styles of art began to arise here and there. In these, Roman and barbarian traditions were mingled. Irish missionaries laid the foundation of Anglo-Saxon art, and carried the Celtic style to various parts of Europe. The influences of Byzantium and of the old traditions still lingering in parts of Italy, were likewise felt from time to time. Under the Merovingian kings, local revivals of art were effected. Charles the Great made the first really successful attempt at an organised revival, in which he was assisted by workmen trained at Byzantium. A promising revival likewise took place in Italy under the Lombards. Every revival in the north of Europe was, however, nipped by a return of warfare and disorder.
It was not till after the year 1000 A.D. that the tendencies towards a permanent revival became fixed. Then arose in North Germany and along the Rhine the Romanesque style. Many fine churches built in this style in the 11th and 12th centuries are still in existence. Under the direction of Bishop Bernward, the school of Hildesheim reached great excellence. Fine churches were built, excellent metal-work done, manuscripts beautifully illuminated, and wall-paintings executed in a very noble style. The Romanesque style owed little to Byzantium, but much to Italy. The crusades, by bringing East and West in contact, helped to quicken the new life. The ancient art of Chaldea, handed over to the Persians, modified by Egyptian and Greek influences, altered in its ideals by the rise of Mohammedanism, had waxed in power, and become in the hands of the Saracens thoroughly different in style and aims from the arts of Europe. Its chief centres were Bagdad, Cairo, and Spain. Sicily very early experienced the influence of this school. Its decorative principles spreading throughout Western Europe in conjunction with Byzantine influences, created the great style of Gothic art (which had nothing to do with the Goths). Gothic art was especially cultivated in the feudal countries. It was different in France from what it was in England, but in both countries it reached its perfection in the first half of the 13th century, and then gradually declined. When Gothic art was culminating in the north of Europe, Italy was in a backward condition. Some fine buildings were raised, but the amount of artistic production was small.
The religious revival brought about by Francis of Assisi in the 13th century rapidly changed this state of things, and an intellectual revival followed. Fresco-painting improved under the hands of Cimabue, Giotto, and their followers at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries, who worked chiefly for Franciscan patrons. The Dominican revival soon succeeded, and then, in the 15th century, fine schools of art of all kinds flourished in various parts of Italy. The revival of classical study gave a new impetus to art. Ancient sculptures and buildings were studied and imitated, and about the commencement of the 16th century the culmination of this epoch of art was reached. Meantime, in the north of Europe, in the 15th century, painting had been cultivated with great success, whilst Gothic traditions were everywhere losing power. Under the influence of the mystic preachers, a beautiful school of painting arose in the Rhine Valley in the 14th century, Meister Wilhelm and Meister Stephan of Cologne being its leading artists. At the beginning of the 15th century, the centre of art-life in the North shifted to the Low Countries. There the Van Eycks made technical improvements in the method of painting, besides introducing the study of nature as the chief aim of their art. The Flemish school influenced all Germany, and generated the schools of Nuremberg, Augsburg, and other towns. When the classical revival spread north of the Alps, Gothic art ceased, and the so-called Renaissance reigned everywhere.
The Reformation came, and for a time ruined the arts (with the exception of music) which had grown up in the service of the medieval church. In some parts of Europe, the old traditions lingered on longer than elsewhere. Portraiture survived longer than other forms of art, and indeed culminated in excellence when ideal painting was already on the decline. The life of the 16th century was a life of action, and the art of action (drama) was naturally the one most cultivated. Painting, then, was succeeded by drama, the age of Raphael by that of Shakespeare. A school of painting, however, flourished in the Low Countries when the art was practically dead everywhere else. Under the protection of drama, music also developed until that art in turn reached the highest level. Meantime the art of painting had also revived, and schools of a new character arose in different countries. These schools have developed in different directions, and felt the influence of the contemporary literary and scientific movements which have gone on about them. The Romanticists of Germany and the Pre-Raphaelites of England have been thus produced. It will be for future generations to estimate the value of these and similar modern schools.
In the preceding historical sketch, the arts of the East have been but slightly referred to. The Chinese school probably arose spontaneously, and may afterwards have been affected by Chaldean influences conveyed through Persia, and thence overland. The Japanese school is merely an offshoot of the Chinese. Median and Persian intermediaries likewise conveyed to India some dim traditions of the arts of the Semitic and Greek peoples. Under the influence of the Buddhist movement a national Indian art was created, and some of its finest monuments are to be found in the interior of Ceylon. Chaldean traditions have been the foundation of all the arts of Western Asia.
The English style of painting was practically founded by Van Dyck, in the reign of Charles I. He was succeeded by Sir Peter Lely, and he in turn by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Richardson, Hudson, and other mediocre painters followed, the mass of their work consisting of portraits. In the 18th century, a revival was effected by Hogarth, Reynolds, and Gainsborough. Wilson painted landscapes in the classical style; Gainsborough introduced into the rendering of landscape a broader rendering of country scenes. Turner's art was primarily founded upon the classical style, but he united with that a direct appeal to nature, and by unbounded study he attained a skill of handling and a minute knowledge of nature in every mood, such as has never before or since been attained. Constable carried on the traditions of Gainsborough, and strongly influenced the landscape painters of France. The decline of landscape art in the present day is marked by increasing triviality on the one hand, and slovenliness on the other.
The impulse to decorate a useful object is one common to all mankind. It is merely to continue a little further the labour of simple manufacture. With this instinct is involved the equally natural impulse which drives men to imitate the objects seen about them, and by which they are chiefly interested. Landscape-painting, for example, is suggested by the desire to fix upon some portable surface the image of a view which pleases or interests the draughtsman. But out of this effort at imitation arises a new desire—that of creation. The artist is not satisfied merely with attempting to copy what he sees. The study of nature fills his mind with thoughts of beauty; he conceives persons and scenes which he has never beheld, and the impulse arises in him to give visible form to such conceptions. Works produced in this spirit are new creations, and take rank as the highest form of art. Their excellence is determined by a twofold test. Is the thought itself fine? has it been duly expressed? In the works of early schools of art, we often meet with the finest thoughts expressed by very undeveloped means, and yet completely. In works of a declining school, the expressive power of the artists is generally great, but their thought feeble or mean. Complete powers of expression, themselves beautiful, and fullness of lovely and ennobling thought, are the marks of a culminating school. Every school of art arises in the wake of some new ideal which it endeavours to express. Some ideals are best expressed in monumental buildings, like the ideal of Persistence of the Egyptians. The Greek ideal of Reserve found its clearest expression in perfect sculpture. Each ideal exercises a formative power, and directs at once the desires and the hands of men. It wins for itself, step by step, clearer and nobler expression, and enjoys a brief time of perfect life. Then a decadence sets in, and after a longer or shorter period of transition or barrenness, another ideal arises to produce a new art. Such a transition can best be watched taking place in the 14th century, between the medieval ideal, which produced chivalry, feudalism, and Gothic architecture, and the Renaissance ideal, which produced the study of antiquity, the revival of learning, a tendency towards despotism in government, and the great schools of painting in Germany and Italy. It follows from this, that in every epoch there is one dominant art to which the rest are subsidiary. In the 13th century, architecture ruled. Painting and all the minor arts derived their forms from those developed in the service of architecture. The very binding of books was decorated with bas-reliefs. Ivory carvings were like little buildings.
It is impossible to draw a sharp line of division between fine and decorative art. Sculpture primarily intended to decorate a building, may be (as in the case of Notre Dame at Paris) amongst the finest, considered as pure sculpture. In a time of artistic culmination, almost everything that is made is endowed with something of the splendour of the supreme art. Nevertheless, one law can be stated to which all art, primarily decorative, must conform. Decoration must not interfere with the utility of the object decorated, but must rather express, or at all events be conformable (in spirit as in shape) to that utility. Giving to this same principle a wider application, we may deduce from it the law, applicable to all art whatsoever, that the material in which a work of art is executed must to some extent govern the style of the work. There is one style suitable for sculpture in granite, another for sculpture in marble, another for metal, another for wood. A figure rightly carved in the one substance would be wrong if copied into another. Again, the process of working has also to be taken into consideration in the design. A cartoon for a painting would not be suitable for translation into a stained-glass window, a tapestry, or a mosaic. Hence all mosaics copied from pictures are fundamentally wrong as works of art. In line-engraving, the lines are ploughed into a copperplate by the direct application of the strength of the engraver's arm. In etching, the copperplate is first covered with varnish, and then the varnish is scratched off in fine lines by the point of a needle. The lines are afterwards bitten in by the chemical action of an acid. The artist's hand acts in the one case deliberately and with force, in the other swiftly and lightly. What, therefore, is suitable treatment in line-engraving is unsuitable in etching, and vice versa. In pen-and-ink drawing, the pen lays black lines on a white surface. In wood-engraving, the white spaces are cut out, and what is to print black is left standing in relief. A good pen-and-ink drawing, therefore, will make a bad woodcut.
All the decorative and many of the creative arts may likewise be considered as 'glorified handicrafts.' As long as an object is only intended for use, it is not a work of art. An object made purely for use may indeed be beautiful. If, like a ship or a water-wheel, it is made to be as it were used by the forces of nature, its forms are then as much dictated by the action of the forces of nature as the forms of a cloud or a hill, and it shares the beauty of all natural objects; but it is not a work of art. It is only when the workman goes beyond what is necessary for use, and consciously aims at giving also pleasure by his work, that he becomes an artist. Weaving is not an art, but tapestry-making is; it is the glorified handicraft of weaving.
Much has been written about the artistic or inartistic nature of certain peoples. Thus the ancient Greeks are considered an artistic race, the Romans inartistic. In all probability there is an artistic potentiality in every people. The ideal of the Greeks was representable, and their circumstances were at the time favourable to its representation. The Romans were chiefly employed in the government and administration of a large empire. Their ideal was not representable, and their energies were fully occupied in developing it in other than artistic directions. It is not the natural gifts so much as the condition and circumstances of a people at a given date that determine whether it shall be artistic or not. The French in the 13th century were the most artistic people in Europe. In the 15th century, the French produced relatively little of supreme excellence, whilst the Italians had in the meantime gone to the front. Art is primarily an expression of happiness, and a product of passion in leisure. When the passions of a race are fully occupied in the business of life, art languishes. It grows strong when a strong race is enabled by circumstances to devote its strength to joy. The passion of life in the present day is chiefly enlisted in scientific discovery. Art, therefore, is not the first thing in the life of any existing nation, and no supremely great school is at present culminating.
The bibliography of art is vast; but for the history of ancient art the reader may consult the works of Chippiez and Perrot; Fergusson's History of Architecture; Murray's Greek Sculpture (1880); Lord Lindsay's Christian Art (1847); Woltmann and Woermann's History of Painting (trans. by Colvin, 1880); Lübbe's History of Art; Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art; the South Kensington Universal Catalogue of Works on Art; the present writer's Early Flemish Artists, and Ruskin's works. And see the articles ÆSTHETICS, ANTHROPOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, DRAMA, ENGRAVING, IMPRESSIONISM, MUSIC, NOVELS, PAINTING, POETRY, REALISM, RENAISSANCE, ROMANCES, ROMANTICISM, SCULPTURE.
ART INSTRUCTION has to secure the power of outlining correctly in pencil from a copy, and after this has been attained, the pupil proceeds to add light and shade to his previous work in outline. The next step is to draw—or, if a sculptor is being trained, to model in clay—from the object itself, and for this purpose plaster casts of fruit, flowers, and leafage, and afterwards casts of statues, form the most convenient models. When sufficient power has been gained by these exercises, the pupil enters the life-school, and works from the draped and the undraped human figure; if a sculptor, modelling the subject in clay; if a painter, rendering it in light and shade, and afterwards in colour. On leaving the life-class he is free to choose his own special department of art, but for the landscape-painter, and even for the decorative designer, as for the sculptor and the figure-painter, the fittest preparation and the most searching training lies in study from the human figure, though the latter require a knowledge of anatomy which is unnecessary in the case of the former. The training of the painter includes instruction in the various technical processes of oil and water-colour painting, as that of the sculptor includes instruction in the qualities and capabilities of the marble and other materials with which he works; while the architect requires a wider scientific knowledge, and a full acquaintance with the laws of mechanical construction.
In the early times of art the painter or sculptor was trained like any other craftsman. He entered the studio of some recognised practitioner of the art to which he meant to devote himself; and began, if under a painter, to prepare colours and to ground canvases, learning all that his master had to teach him; and finally he took part in the production of the monumental frescoes and even of the easel-pictures which were given to the public under the master's name. Gradually, however, the fine arts began to separate themselves more sharply from the other crafts. Their professors assumed a higher status than formerly. It became more and more the custom that an artist should finish with his own hand every portion of each work which issued from his studio. Academies of art were formed, and, in connection with them, art training was conducted by certified instructors. Thus a class of art-teachers, as distinct from artists, arose, a change not altogether favourable in its influence upon the future of art.
In England, one of the first efforts in the direction of systematic art training was made by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who in 1711 founded an institution for giving professional instruction in design. In 1724 Sir James Thornhill established a similar academy in his own residence; but several students seceded from his class, headed by John Vanderbank, who started a short-lived academy, in which study from the life was introduced. This was followed by the well-known St Martin's Lane Academy, founded by William Shipley, where for thirty years those who afterwards became the leading artists of the time received their training. It was superseded by the schools instituted by the Royal Academy after its foundation in 1768.
The establishment of the South Kensington Department of Science and Art marks an important epoch in the history of art instruction in England. It may be said to have arisen out of the report of a select committee of the House of Commons appointed in 1835 'to inquire into the best means of extending a knowledge of the arts and principles of design among the people (especially the manufacturing population) of the country.' On the recommendation of this committee a sum of £1500 was devoted to the establishment of a Normal School of Design, with a museum and lectures. The school was opened in 1837, and by 1851-52 the government grant for this school and its various branches throughout the country had attained the amount of £15,055. In 1852, in accordance with a report of a select committee, the scheme was reconstructed, and a 'Department of Practical Art' created, with Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B., as superintendent; and a Science Department was added in 1853. It was under the management of the Board of Trade till 1856, when it passed under the control of the Lord President and the Vice- president of Council on Education. In 1886 the number of schools and branch schools under the Science and Art Department throughout Great Britain was 226, in which a total of 40,134 students were being trained. The South Kensington Museum, founded in 1851, has played an important part in the art education of the country.
In 1869 a great stimulus to art education was given by the foundation, through the bequest of £45,000 by Felix Slade, of the 'Slade Art Professorships' in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London. These chairs have been held by Mr Ruskin and other persons of the highest eminence, and it is impossible to overestimate the good which may be expected to result from this effort to improve the taste and knowledge of the wealthier classes, in whose hands the patronage and direction of art in our country mainly rests.
In Scotland, a remarkable effort in the direction of art instruction was made by Robert Foulis, the well-known printer. In 1751 he visited the Continent, engaged drawing-masters, and purchased pictures, casts, and engravings; and on his return to Glasgow in 1753 he started a school of art. The classes were continued till about 1776, and were far from a pecuniary success; but they afforded training to such excellent artists as David Allan and James Tassie, and exercised a most important and beneficial influence upon Scottish art. In 1760 the Board of Manufactures in Scotland founded a school of art in Edinburgh which is still in active operation, and which, under the name of 'The Trustees' Academy,' has afforded instruction to almost every Scottish painter of distinction for more than a century and a quarter. In 1858 this school was affiliated with the South Kensington Science and Art Department, and it serves not only for the instruction of art-craftsmen in design, but also as a school for painters and sculptors preparatory to the life-class of the Royal Scottish Academy. In 1880 art instruction was brought within the scope of the Scottish university curriculum by the establishment of the Watson-Gordon chair of Fine Art in the University of Edinburgh, in memory of Sir John Watson-Gordon, P.R.S.A., through the bequest of a sum of about £12,000 by his brother and sister.
In Ireland there are classes in connection with the Royal Hibernian Academy for study from the antique and the life; and the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art is under the South Kensington Department.
Various continental schools, especially those of Munich and Antwerp, have attained celebrity; but Paris is now the great centre of art instruction, in which many British and American students have been trained. Since the time of J. L. David—who, when in exile, also influenced the school of Belgium—the French have been celebrated for their command over form; and, in recent years, their power as colourists has greatly increased. The Parisian method of study is admirably adapted for giving its pupils a certain technical dexterity. The Prix de Rome of the French Academy is a much-coveted distinction, insuring a residence for study in the Villa Medici, Rome.
ART UNIONS are the subject of a separate article; see page 469.