of recent British paintings in the Manchester Exhibition will be disposed to question the substantial truth of M. Chesneavrs observation. Our ' naturalism ' of to-day is distinctly of a different type to that of Gainsborough or Constable ; it is freer, more independent, more experimental in character. How original, how personal is the art of the acknowledged leaders of our present school ! Take the example of landscape. How little trace there is of the influence of men like Turner, Constable, or Cox
on the landscapists of our own day ! Or take portraiture. If we compare Mr. Ouless, Mr. George
Reid, and Mr. Holl with their predecessors of the
school of Reynolds and Gainsborough, what a
contrast we find between the strongly-marked male
heads of the former, and the broad and facile studies
of the smooth features of womanhood and youth
characteristic of the older school ! All were im-
pressed last year in the galleries at Manchester by
the brilliant gifts of the Victorian painters, but who
could succeed in grouping them into schools, or in
tracing, save in some instances of direct imitation,
the relationship of this or that individual artist to
liis predecessors or contemporaries ? The British
art of to-day is thus practically independent of what
lias gone before, while the art of our earlier masters
still looked back with reverence to older models.
Such a complete break with the past involves
necessarily something of loss as well as of gain to a
school. Our new art, which has developed since
the middle of this century, is in danger of losing on
the one side more than it has gained on the other.
If it has gained in freshness and variety of interest,
it has lost the support of that tradition upon which
the great naturalists of the past — the Gainsboroughs,
the Constables, the Millets — were always well con-
tent to lean. The result is unmistakable ; it is
apparent when we compare recent British art with
that of the past, and apparent too when we compare
it with what is being done in other lands, where
there has been less break in the continuity of artistic
history. Wherein then does our weakness lie ?
Our freedom and independence too often result
in restlessness and in inequality of work. We have
lost that ease of manner, that simplicity in means
employed, which give the impression of quiet, self-
contained power to ancient masterpieces. We have
lost, too, that evenness in work which belongs to
the old masters. No artist, of course, is always
equal to his best self, but a very large body of
really first-rate work was left by each of the fore-
most men of bygone days. For a contrast look at
the careers of some of our gifted moderns. ^Vllat
are they giving to us ? One or two brilliant achieve-
ments, and afterwards little or nothing that is great.
The truth is that there can be no great art except
among painters who are ambitious for the best kind
of artistic success. We have in the present day in
our exhibitions a good deal of what may be called
drawing-room art — trivial or merely popular works,
to which honoured names are sometimes attached.
There are features about the artistic world of our
time, especially in the great metropolitan centre,
which make the single-hearted and strenuous effort
from which alone proceeds work of true value, more
and more difficult to the successful painter. In this
respect the artists of Scotland have an advantage
over their brethren in the larger London sphere.
There fashion has taken art under its wing, and
demands in return a sacrifice of that austerity of
purpose which rules in some of the foremost schools
of the Continent, where there is not so much tempta-
tion for an artist to be a man of the world first
and an artist only in the second place.
Though British artists have, no doubt, points of
advantage over their neighbours, yet they lack some-
thing of their virile strength. If we look across the
Channel, while we may find not a little to condemn,
we yet note the self-sacrificing labour bestowed by
leading French artists on the education of their pupils,
and the generous artistic ambition of the young
workers, who toil for journeymen's wages or for fame
alone. There is, again, a more purely artistic atmo-
sphere in some Continental centres, such as Munich
and The Hague, than fills our more commercial
world. Art is better understood there by the
educated public ; there is a more sensitive artistic
honour among the workers themselves, who are
proud to acknowledge a tradition at their back
which they must not discredit. This tradition is
an inheritance from the seventeenth century, and its living influence on the work of the leading masters of the German and Dutch schools is a matter for surprise to those who have grown up in this country, in artistic surroundings where tradition is entirely ignored.
The men of the past, not only the old masters properly so called, but their more recent followers, rested greatly on this inheritance from their fathers, and sustained themselves by active fellowship with their contemporaries of like aims and attainments. They formed, that is to say, what do not exist in the Britain of to-day. Artistic Schools. Such bonds of union, drawing artists closely together around some presiding genius, need not repress artistic individuality in the lesser men. We see this in the case of the school of Rembrandt. Rembrandfs personality in art was most powerful, and few men have imposed so distinct and individual a form upon their artistic productions. Yet the men who drew their manner
