Board supported the drawing-master and defended
his system. Not that they thouglit liim the best
possible teacher, but the best for the emergency,
being able to thoroughly interest pupils and their
daily teachers in the work, and to make a beginning
tliat was best under the circumstances. To have
abandoned his defence then would have put an end to
the system and banished drawing from the schools.
Strangely enough the leading artists of the city
were loudest in the outcry against the drawing-
master, and kept up a sharp fusilade against liini,
and against the School Board, in the newspapers.
From their point of view they were right. The
drawing- master was not a Titian, and liis lessons
did not lead up to the studios so much as to the
workshops and factories. But had the direction of
drawing been intrusted to any one of those artists,
even to William Hunt, the experiment would not
have been allowed to continue a year. Drawing, to
be firmly established, needed a broad base, and to
rely as much on patent, practical uses as upon the
higher, more remote, and less tangible results in art
and taste. Artists and art-lovers formed too small
a proportion of the community.
After the lessons had made some progress, it was
wonderful to see the breaking out of the signs of
skill and intelligence in unexpected places. Some
of the pupils in the poorest quarters of the city,
and from the poorest families in those quarters,
came to make copies of casts, ornaments, arabesques,
etc., that were remarkable for force, correctness,.and
delicacy. During the years in which I was a mem-
ber of the Board, I examined many hundreds of the
drawing - books, and often with admiration and
pride. I do not know that any of those pupils
became artists — in my view, that fact is not impor-
tant ; there will be time enough for that — but it is
certain that their exercises moulded their tastes and
refined their perceptions. The result must be felt
in their homes when they come to be men and
women. Tawdry pictures, plaster images, coloured
lithographs, and the like, such as the common
people in most countries are contented with, will
find no favour in their eyes.
If I have dwelt on the practical view of this
subject, it is because the condition of Boston and
Massachusetts demanded it. The thin and stony soil
cannot produce one-half the necessary food, and the
people must be sustained largely by manufactures.
To increase the efficiency of workmen is to increase
the general wealth ; and a carpenter who can make
the plans for his work is worth two men. In how
many trades the same thing applies ! The improve-
ment in the work of mechanics and manufacturers
in recent years is very marked. Stoves, carriages,
harnesses, furniture, carpets, and other articles, once
so coarse and bungling, are now made in what may
be fairly called artistic forms. Designs in printed
cloths, iron castings, chandeliers, and domestic
utensils are noticeably more tasteful and refined.
How much tliis means for the future of the artisan
class it is not necessary to urge. Nor is it necessary
to do more than allude to the fact that the condi-
tion and needs of Scotland are very similar to those
of Massachusetts.
But it must not be supposed that I put tliis
forward as the chief end and aim of instruction in
drawing. The leaf-mould of this season nourishes
the flowers of the next. Out of material needs
finer instincts and aspirations are born. The prac-
tical and the ideal are strangely enlaced and inter-
penetrated, like body and soul. And the workman
who is striving for beauty in the work of his liands,
even for ambitious or sordid motives, is disciplin-
ing his powers for higher things ; and the impaljsable
results — the flowering of mind, the sense, the ideal,
the artistic touch — will come later, either in his
own life or that of his off^spring.
It is not worth while to make a comparison
between the circumstances of modern life and the
state of tilings in which Italian, Spanish, Dutch,
and Flemish schools of art were born. The history
of those scjiools will not be repeated, any more tlian
the life of the bygone centuries. But this is certain,
that the production of great works of art is not to
be looked for except in communities where an
artistic sentiment vitalises the atmosphere. It may
require generations to bring about the favourable
conditions ; and, so far as can be judged, the
brilliant, inquisitive, utilitarian, scientific tendencies
of our age are less friendly to art than those of the
centuries which we are apt to consider ignorant and
credulous. As the church and the nobles are no
longer the sole or even the princijial patrons of
artists, it is to the people they must look ; and if
the people are to become patrons, they must be
educated. So we come to the point from which we
started.
There may have been some rare emanations of
genius in communities destitute of artistic wealtli,
but the rule is otherwise. Out of the abundance of
taste and feeling come new and higher forms of
creative art. To the people that hath shall be
given.
In Scotland there is no superabundance, although
there have been many great artists among her sons.
Painters and sculptors naturally seek the capital of
the kingdom, and therefore the greater effort is
necessary to secure the influence and the results of
art in remote quarters. If that influence is to
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THE SCOTTISH ART REVIEW