the consideration of beauty, or from a peculiarity in their own notion of the beautiful.
Changes like these determine much of the mode of life of the artist. In landscape-painting, and the accessories of figure-painting, there was nothing like the study formerly that is now the rage. The greatest of our landscape-painters were formerly mannerists, presenting a nobly true general conception, nobly true also in its leading features; but filled up with inborn details, supplied by imagination at home.
At present, the minute study of nature (which will enrich art hereafter as much as it seems to impoverish it now), imposes severe labour of body and mind. To become a painter in any style, at present, requires strength and hardihood of the bodily, as persistence and endurance in the mental frame. It is one thing to lie in bed till noon, in a “simmering” state of thought, or gazing at visionary scenes, and another to be abroad at daybreak, studying the earth and sky, and each day for a life-time, some new feature or fresh product of Nature. It is one thing to represent historical tragedy in painting by means of established symbols as accessories, and quite another to go to the actual scene, and in suffering and privation, with labour and anxiety, under an eastern sun, or an ocean hurricane, investigate what Nature has there to express, and how she there expresses it.
The minor conditions of a painter’s life depend much on his course as a whole. There used to be much talk of the artist’s health in the days when Sir Joshua Reynolds pointed out how much he owed to the practice of always standing at his easel. We have all heard much of the confinement, the smell of the oils, the constant interruptions, when the artist has become eminent, and the more irritating loneliness if he does not become famous. We hear of the fatigues of study, in schools, in the world, and at home; but, above all, of the mortifications arising from want of appreciation, and the cares which must precede success. A good deal is said, too, of the troubles which are always arising in the profession, from jealousy in one quarter or another. These things tell on the health of body and mind. There is no doubt of that. The question is, first, whether these are necessary sufferings, and next, whether the artist considers it worth while to encounter these particular trials for the sake of the privileges of his calling. There have been suicides among painters; there have been paralytics, prostrated by debt and anxiety; there have been maniacs, raving of the jealousy of all the world. But there have been more aged men, serene and genial; and not a few who have paid brethren’s debts, instead of having any of their own, and whose judgment and affections went on improving long after hand and eye refused to express the richest ideas and sentiment of the whole life.
Like all artists, the painter must depend much for success and stimulus, and for professional rewards, on the opinions of others; and his position is one which draws attention to the world’s opinion of him. He must therefore be strong in his love of his art, and in his self-respect, before he commits himself to his career, or he may pass his life in misery, and end it in despair. With a brave spirit, a true love of art, and a power of manly self-discipline, even a painter may live happily on a small measure of success; though such an one is hardly likely to hold a mortifying position as a painter. As for the rest, the painter has the advantage of exemption from the grosser temptations of intemperance, which beset artists of some other classes. He is anxious to preserve the full power of his senses and of his hand. His vocation favours early hours, diversified study of men and Nature, and therefore exercise of the various powers of body and mind. The grand danger is of a growing egotism, less gross but more engrossing than in men of other pursuits. Any one must see this who considers what is comprehended in the exclusive study of beauty and expression, for which a superiority to other people in a special direction is indispensable. It is this fearful snare, lying in the midst of the field of art, which renders moralists so timid, or even hostile, to the pursuit of art as a profession. It is this which gives the physician so many mournful tales to tell of the catastrophe of the artist-life; for the cares and disturbances of egotism wear the brain, like other anxieties and troubles. The danger must be met, if at all successfully, by a diligent use of the ordinary means of health,—exercise of all the faculties in an equable way, bodily activity and temperance, intellectual study, and social energy and benevolence. A hearty love of art will go a long way towards discrediting self in the painter’s imagination; but there is no security from more or less undue consideration of his own needs or merits, except in getting the world, with its praises and censures, under his feet.
The Sculptor is, for the most part, under the same conditions as the painter. His studies, however, are different; his public is a smaller one; and his success is of a somewhat more retired and less material character. So it seems to be in our time, however different it may have been formerly, and may be again. His study of the human frame (and also of the brute) must be of the deepest and most elaborate kind; and so must his study of ancient art, and of every-day Nature. His workings in clay may be paralleled with the painter’s on canvas: but the results arrived at are different. The painter may stand anywhere in a long gradation of ranks; but the sculptor either succeeds greatly or fails. There are always people who will buy paintings of any degree of merit, even to the lowest: but, for so costly a luxury as sculpture, orders are given only to an eminent artist,—whether his eminence be well grounded, or a matter of fashion. The sculptor, therefore, has need, even more than the painter, of an intrepid spirit, and the magnanimity to propose a great stake, and accept his destiny. Without this, he may eat his heart out before his destiny is determined, and the highest success may be rendered injurious to body and mind; for, where there is a lack of magnanimity, any exceptional lot is pretty surely fatal. The brilliant load crushes the bearer: the strong gale overthrows the house upon the sand. The sculptor should, then, have a heart and mind as large and lofty among men as his pursuit is noble