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THE

ALDINE MAGAZINE

OF

Biography, Bibliography, Criticism, and the Arts.

PATRONAGE OF THE ARTS.

"THE encouragement extended to the genius of a single living artist in the higher classes of art, though it may produce but one original work, adds more to the celebrity of a people than all the collections of accumulated foreign productions." REYNOLDS.

"WHAT expense can be more gracious-more becoming more popular? can tend more directly to bless him that giveth and him who receiveth,' than that which is directed to adorn and dignify our country,-which does honour to her valour and her virtue,-which calls forth the energies of her genius, and directs them to the celebration of her fame?" SHEE.

As the Royal Academy's annual season of exhibition will commence a few days after the publication of the present number of THE ALDINE MAGAZINE, we are not aware of any better mode in which we can occupy three or four of its pages than by devoting them to a subject of great national interest. We the more readily determine thus to devote them, because an ignorant, reckless, and profligate spirit of pseudo-criticism has long been abroad; a spirit which, with reference to the fine arts, and to the asserted influence of the Royal Academy over those arts and their professors, is ever, like its prototype, the Prince of Darkness, roaming about, and seeking whom it may devour.

time, the institution has uniformly been, and continues to be, in a progressively flourishing state. It affords every requisite facility to youthful aspirants at home-it enables them to pursue their studies abroad; and we not only believe, but know, that it benevolently appropriates its surplus funds to the relief of unfortunate and decayed artists and their families. One instancethe case of the late Mr. Rossi, the sculptor,

of the latter description was placed upon record by us, no longer than a month since. The number of subjects-productions of art

which the Royal Academy annually exhibits, averages from twelve to fourteen hundred; thus opening a rich source of gratification to the public, and of fame and profit of the artists. What emulation has not this excited? Besides chance exhibitions, the production and property of individuals, which of late years have been both numerous and important, four distinct

What are the main objects of the Royal Academy? If to excite a spirit of emulation and competition be to open the broad path to excellence, the retrospect of a moment ought to satisfy the most sceptical, that the Royal Academy (for the foundation of which the nation is indebted to the grand-national establishments may be said to have father of Her Majesty, Victoria,) has accomplished this desirable object, to an extent that could never have been anticipated. What did the Association of Artists, in existence seventy or eighty years ago, achieve? Nothing. It could hardly fill a moderate sized room with pictures for its annual exhibition. Eight years afterwards -in 1768, scarcely more than seventy years ago-His Majesty, George III. was pleased to sanction and patronise a plan for the establishment of a Royal Academy. From that VOL. I. MAY, 1839.

arisen out of the Royal Academy: the British Institution, in Pall Mall, to which, as forming an admirable school for design and colouring, through its yearly assemblage of the productions of the old masters, as well as an annual exhibition and sale of the works of native artists, we lately noticed; * the Society of British Artists, in Suffolk Street;-the Society of Painters in Water Colours, in Pall Mall East;-and the New

* Vide pp. 188 and 237.

Ꮓ

Society of Painters in Water Colours, in Pall | kindness-as the sordid commerce of mechanics Mall. Moreover, there are similar establish- from the liberal intercourse of gentlemen. ments in Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol, Norwich, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and several other provincial towns; not one of which would have been in existence, had it been practicable for Somerset House to contain, and to display to advantage, all the pictures that were annually transmitted for the enrichment of its walls. And yet the cry is "The Academy has done nothing!" And yet the cry is "There is no encouragement to painters—at least, to historic painters."-Why, if artists will devote two or three years at a stretch to the production of single pictures, twenty or thirty feet square, and are then unable to find patrons with purses weighty enough to reward them for their labours, or with mansions sufficiently large for their reception-is the Academy to blame? Haydon's assertion is correct, that historic painting can never be adequately patronised in this country, unless our churches and other public buildings become privileged receptacles of works of art; for, as it has been well observed, the painter, or the sculptor, cannot execute works to rank with those of the Vatican or the Parthenon, unless a Vatican or a Parthenon be given him by patronage to adorn. Sir M. A. Shee, the enlightened and accomplished president of the Royal Academy, well understood this, when, more than thirty years ago, he thus expressed himself:

"Wherever the fine arts have been carried to

any extraordinary degree of perfection, we find ancients or the moderns, in Greece, in Italy, or these observations corroborated. Amongst the in France under Louis XIV., it was neither the agency of the commercial spirit, nor even the more congenial operation of private patronage, that kindled those lights of genius which irradiate with such splendour the hemisphere of Taste. The spark was struck by a collision more exalted. The impulse was given from above-from all that was powerful in the state, respecting all that was ingenious in the time; attending with solicitude to the birth of Ability, fostering and invigorating the first struggles of his weakness,-stimulating and rewarding the utmost exertions of his strength-setting an him from the ever ready contumely of vulgar example of homage to Genius which rescued greatness, and taught him to respect himself.

"This is the true handicraft consideration of the subject the warehouse wisdom of a dealer and chapman, who would make the artist a manufacturer, and measure his works by the yard. The arts treated commercially,-intrusted to that vulgar and inadequate impression of their importance, which is to be found in the mass of society, never did, and never can flourish in any country. The principle of trade, and the principle of the arts, are not only dissimilar, but incompatible. Profit is the impelling power of the one-praise, of the other. Employment is the pabulum vita of the firstencouragement, of the last. These terms are synonymous in the ordinary avocations of life; but in the pursuits of taste and genius, they differ as widely in meaning as coldness from

"Noble and national objects are not to be effected by common and contracted means: the stimulus must ever be in proportion to the exertion required; and they must be themselves honoured, who are expected to do honour to from the desponding struggles of genius in a their country. What results can be looked for, state which shews such disregard to the cultivation of her arts, as not to employ a thought on their influence, or even hazard an experiment for their protection."

Further:

"It is the policy of a great nation to be liberal and magnificent; to be free of her rewards, splendid in her establishments, and gorgeous in her public works. These are not the expenses that sap and mine the foundations of public prosperity; that break in upon the capital, or lay waste the income of a state: they may be said to arise in her most enlightened views of general advantage; to be amongst her best and most profitable speculations: they produce large returns of respect and consideration from our neighbours and competitors of patriotic exultation amongst ourselves; they make men proud of their country, and from priding in it-prompt in its defence: they play upon all the chords of generous feeling-elevate us above the animal and the machine, and make us triumph in the powers and attributes of man.

"The examples of her taste and genius,—the monuments of her power and glory—all the memorials of her magnificence, are, to a great state, what his dress and equipage are to a great man,-necessary to his rank and becoming his dignity; but amongst the more trifling charges of his establishment."

Animated, as it might have been presumed, by the spirit of his royal father, scarcely had his late Majesty, William IV., commenced his reign, than he was pleased