commonly understood, entails upon the artist, was
clearly exemplified here, for Mr. Holl was seldom
able to surmount the difficulty of combining the
necessity for likeness with that artistic instinct
which is a primary essential of all art production.
To the development of this instinct there is nothing
more fatal than mere mechanical repetition, which
is but a sorry substitute for original impulse. Such
repetition, however, seems well-nigh unavoidable to
the portrait-painter who aspires to have a large
practice. For the allurements of popularity and
commercialism presented by the career of a prosper-
ous likeness-painter are inimical to the preservation
of artistic virtue in its integrity.
Mr. Holl himself felt this. He showed really
wonderful ability in maintaining certain strong quali-
ties on a stinted artistic diet. But even this could
not remove the yoke which he had allowed circum-
stances to impose on him, and under which it is
well known he grew restive. Notwithstanding this
ability, the influence of mere repetition was only
too manifest in the history of his work. His por-
trait of the late Mr. Cousins was remarkable for
the skill with which a dignified motive was treated.
It was the first, and the most artistically complete
of Mr. Holl's portraits, but the reserve that con-
tributed so much to its completeness gave way in
many of his later works to a certain habit of
melodramatic presentation, in which the painter
apparently contented himself with endeavouring
to reproduce the effect of flesh seen under a
crude light, and set against a meaninglessly dark
background — a platitude which was repeated
with so little reference to the subject in hand,
that the result became as tiresome as it was
irritating.
The works of the masters show us that the Art,
of which their sitters were the occasions, was itself the
real motive of their portraits. That art having been
infinitely varied in their hands to fitly express the
different impressions produced by variations of tjrpe
in their sitters, each master has left us a heritage of
variety which embodies a series of artistic ideas, but
does not suggest, like Mr. HolPs, the automatic
reproduction of a pattern.
While, however, Mr. HolPs work cannot be ranked with the best of his time, it was certainly entitled to the position it earned from the Royal Academy, for it not only appealed to the public, but gained a measure of respect from artists which unfortunately can be accorded to few things in the annual exhibitions of that august body. By the deatli of Mr. Holl the Royal Academy suffers from the loss of one of its most competent members, while personal friends will miss one whose strength of character and untiring energy commanded their loving admiration.
OLD AND NEW IN ART.
OLD, black, rubbed out and dirty canvases take the place of God's own works,' ex- claimed Constable in one of his indignant letters some sixty years ago, and his complaint against the spurious antique in art has just been repeated in a different form by a living English artist, who will stand with Constable as one of the foremost figures of the British school. Strip off the coat of varnish which makes the old master like Sir George Beau- mont's old Cremona fiddle ; efface the mellowing touch of time, and dissolve the veil of poetry which clings to the productions of days of old, and what remains.? Excellent work remains no doubt, says Sir John Millais, but work not differing in kind or quality from good work of to-day ; for ' the best art of modern times is as good as any of its kind that has gone before.'^ We may admit with pleasure the truth of our great painter's wholesome dictum, ' To say that the old alone is good betrays great lack ' Sir John Millais in the Magazine of Art, July iS88. of judgment,' but a few moments may profitably be spent in examining this question of Old and New in art which has tlius been brought forward into pro- minence.
Constable's protest against what he termed 'perished pictures at 1000 guineas each, cart-grease, tar, and snuff of candle,' was the protest of an avowed 'natural painter,' and it is in the names of truth and nature that warning voices are raised in our own time against a conventional adulation of the models of the past. Yet we have to note here a most important distinction. The term 'natural' applies to Constable as a painter just as it applies to many of the leaders of the British school of today, but his 'naturalism' was, as we shall see, markedly different from theirs, and his estimate of old art in its relation to new would by no means coincide with that of living representatives of the school of nature. It is true that he abhorred a slavish dependence on the convention of art, was
