We shall devote this evening to the general subject of Art – of which Architecture is an important branch.

If in our mind’s eye we look backward over the long perspective of human affairs – back to the dim horizon where the comparatively solid ground of real history blends with the region of speculation and surmise, even there, upon the haze which bounds our view, we see streaks of that light which radiates from the mind of man through all his generations, occasionally mollifying by its sweet influences his domestic conditions, elevating his thoughts to the worship of the Deity, and even imparting a grandeur to the “pomp and circumstance” of horrid war. Wherever a man rests he seeks to surround himself with what is pleasant. His idea of Heaven is of a place of eternal rest, where form, color, and sound blend and combine into the most delightful harmonies. He endeavours to bring all his external surroundings into consonance with his mental conceptions – so he becomes an artist. His clothing, his domestic utensils, his furniture, his home, everything that belongs to him then bears some mark of his attention, some reflection of the inner life, some vague recollection of the bliss of Paradise, some ardent endeavour to realise the glories of Heaven. His knowledge generally outruns his skill; and as civilisation advances, and the advantages of the division of labor come to be recognised, the professional artist makes his appearance – devoting his whole time heart and soul, to the study of Art, separating it from the routine of ordinary business, and raising it to a position of honorable distinction amongst the higher efforts of the intellectual powers. Three things are necessary to success in the pursuit of any great undertaking – a good motive, a clear understanding of what we mean to do, and an earnest, energetic, persevering endeavour to do our duty. The artist has especial need of these. He must sound and search the depths of his own heart; he must soar into the region of imagination; he must strive to penetrate the purposes of God in nature, and, by constant practice, he must acquire that degree of skill which will enable him to set before his fellow-men some sensible realisation of his labors, some bunches of the grapes of Eschol, that they also may be induced to seek after these things to elevate their desires, and to bring their hearts and minds into tune with the divine harmonies of the Universe. It must therefore be important to all who care for such things to enquire what is Art? The question has given rise to much discussion, and various answers have been proposed for its solution. Two views or theories stand prominently above the rest, and to which it is necessary that we give particular and serious consideration. These are what are termed the objective and the subjective theories of Art.

The first asserts that Art consists in the representation or imitation of what we see with our eyes.

The second, that it is the orderly or harmonious expression of what we feel in our hearts or conceive in our imaginations.

The one would restrict the term Art to painting and sculpture, the other would extend its application to the expression of our conceptions of the great and beautiful by whatever means these can be conveyed from one mind to another, and would therefore include, along with painting and sculpture, poetic, rhetorical, dramatic, and musical composition and representation, architectural and ornamental design, and other efforts of genius. For the present we shall restrict ourselves chiefly to Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and what are termed the Arts of Design.

The objective theory assumes that the Creator being beyond question perfect, all His works must be perfect, that everything in Nature is beautiful, that to think otherwise would be impious, and would imply a setting up of ourselves in judgment against God. It tells us that every thought of man is vain, and that the sole business of the artist is to record the facts of Nature as he finds them, and that faithfulness to fact is the true test of excellence.

There are two words commonly used as synonymous terms which aptly represent the two theories of Art – the words fact and truth. The word Fact should be used to signify things as they are, whether right or wrong, permanent or accidental. The word Truth should be applied to designate things as they ought to be – the right as opposed to the wrong, the permanent as opposed to the accidental – such as the types of nature, the laws of the universe. Fact is the thing as apprehended by the senses; Truth is the essence or nature of the thing as recognised by the reason or inner sense. If we were required to describe some event that we had witnessed, it would be regarded as altogether absurd – even if it were possible – to narrate in detail every impression made upon each of our senses during the rise, progress, and final result of the event. Such a process would be utterly subversive of the desired purpose; for, instead of presenting an intelligible view of the matter, an inextricably chaotic sense of confusion would be produced upon the minds of our auditors.

It would appear, then, that the thought of man, so far from being vain, is the very thing that is needed in such a case. For it is necessary that a selection should be made – and, by the joint action of the imagination and the judgment, the leading incidents of the event are seized upon and arranged according to their relative importance, and condensed into a form such as may be laid up in the memory, or reproduced for the information of others. Indeed, with the exception of the stage, there is no mode of representation capable of addressing all the senses simultaneously, as in the original event. And so, besides exercising our judgment in selecting incidents, we are under the necessity of choosing some particular sense as the medium through which our representation shall be communicated to the minds of others. Thus the painter in representing an event must select only such incidents as come within the reach of the eye. But it is impossible for him to paint everything he sees, and every separate part as he sees it, so he wisely overlooks minute and insignificant details and takes an aggregate view of his subject. He represents the foliage of the trees, the hair or fur of animals, the texture of the human skin, woven fabrics, and the like, not by carefully imitating the details of these things, but by certain modes of manifestation calculated to reproduce their appearance. The natural landscape is composed of trees and other objects, some rounded, some angular, standing apart at various distances upon a more or less horizontal surface, whereas a picture is painted upon a perfectly even and vertical surface, without any actual space between the objects in the foreground and those in the distance – all are alike near, all alike flat. The effect of rotundity, of angularity, and of distance is produced by the exercise of man’s thought in a series of most wonderful artistic contrivances resulting from the accumulated skill and experience of many generations.

To the majority of men thinking is so extremely irksome that they are ready to resort to any subterfuge, to undergo any amount of labor, rather than encounter it, and so there is a general and constant demand for infallible rules by which things may be done, and for fixed standards by which things may be tested – and all to avoid thought. Hence the avidity with which the objective theory is adopted by a certain class of artists, and their grand recipe for making works of Art is to copy Nature; for, say they, all things in Nature are beautiful. In a certain sense this is quite true. But when the assertion is made for the purpose of having it understood that there is nothing of a merely common-place character in Nature that all things are alike beautiful, that all things are equally worthy of the attention of the pencil of the artist, we are compelled to meet it with a flat denial. There is the common ground-color of green grass covering the face of the earth, which we admire in a general way; and amongst it, here and there, are flowers which for beauty of form, color, or expression, attract our more particular admiration as emanating apparently from the purer and more precious essences of Nature. But there are also rank weeds; springing from the grosser humours, not merely unlovable, but quite repulsive. There is the sweet-smelling rose and the stinking fungus. And consider the tender emotion, the almost sacred awe, with which we gaze at the redbreast’s exquisitely-beautiful eggs, four or five in number, lying softly together in the cosy wee nest, modestly, as well as cunningly, concealed beneath the braken-bush, as compared with the aversive shudder with which we turn from the conglomerated masses of frog-spawn in the stagnant pool, left there to its luck to be hatched by the sun, or to perish by the drying up of the water – and indeed there is little else to fear, for I know not any creature so mean as to prey upon that loathsome substance. Observe that cold-blooded, stupid-looking frog, moved only by abject selfish fear, as it flops and sprawls through the weeds and mud, until it gets out of sight, and into fancied security beneath a cloud of its own ova. On the other hand, look at that little bird – it did not fly from its nest the moment it saw you, it retired with some degree of decorum; and there it sits, six paces off, bobbing upon one of the outmost twigs of the flowering thorn. There is an expression of gentle, yet earnest, pleading in the bright little eye, an appeal to common sympathies, and scarcely any alarm in the low chirp which she utters at intervals; she feels almost sure that – you will not break a mother’s heart by robbing her little sanctuary of its holy things.

There is indeed no grosser or more mischievous error than to regard the material creation as the only source of Art and test of its excellence. It is neither the one nor the other, for, while there is much beauty in Nature, there is also, as we have shown, much that is not beautiful – many things in Nature in which the element of beauty (as it is generally understood) is altogether absent – many things, in short, that are positively disgusting, and, at the same time, quite consistent with the all-wise purposes of the Creator. And again, besides the different degrees of beauty proper to different kinds of objects, everyone knows that an accidental disturbance of the laws of development may result in a very inferior degree of beauty, or it may be absolute deformity, in individual objects, which otherwise would have been very beautiful. Nevertheless, and in spite of these plain facts, the majority of those who assume to be instructors in matters pertaining to Art constantly reiterate that the practice of copying Nature is the only legitimate course for the artist to pursue, and that the product of his labor is Art, good or bad, according as he copies more or less accurately.

There is no writer on Art half so well known as is Mr. Ruskin, no one more eloquent or more amiable, no one who has said more good and true things about Art, who has a more loving regard for the beauties of Nature, or a more sincere reverence for the God of Nature, no one who can so readily, so pleasantly, and so instructively translate what he sees in Nature and Art into plain language, so that all men may read and thereby become sharers with him in those pure and noble pleasures which his sensitive and exquisitely refined mind seems to imbibe from all the springs of truth. And yet I know no one who has done more to mislead the public mind in matters of Art than he. When he writes just as he feels, he is most truly instructive; when he intends to be instructive, he is very often erroneous. His power of appreciation seems much better than his power of reasoning. He, more than all others, insists upon artists taking Nature as they find it. There is, therefore, no wonder that his books were hailed by a large class of artists and lovers of Art as a setting forth of a most soul-satisfying gospel, a way of escape from the tiresome necessity of learning what the experience of the past had to teach of the laws and principles of Art, a complete immunity from the duty of thinking, and putting in its place the duty of not thinking – nothing to do but sit down at the first bit of Nature you come to, and paint whatever you see there, without presuming to consider whether it is better or worse than any other bit of Nature a little further away. For although there are statements without number throughout Mr. Ruskin’s works quite inconsistent and at variance with this, yet the tendency of his teaching is generally in this direction, and in this sense it has generally been accepted.

His books present admirable fields for the study of truth, rich in beauty as the flowery wilderness; but the paths are most devious and perplexing, and lead to no harbor of rest. He says, for example:

“The law which it has been my effort chiefly to illustrate is the dependence of all noble design of any kind on the sculpture or painting of Organic Forms.” [2]

This passage occurs in the first paragraph of the preface to one of his most popular books, and is expressed with force, so as to call attention to its meaning. We may therefore assume that it represents his deliberate opinion, and observe that there is no qualification as to the degrees of nobility which different organic forms exhibit. In another passage of the same work he says:

“Art, devoted humbly and self-forgetfully to the clear statement and record of the facts of the universe, is always helpful and beneficial to mankind, full of comfort, strength, and salvation.” [3]

But, in regard to a certain conventional style, which he affirms to be the best of its kind, he says of it and its artists, that

“it never represents a natural fact … nothing to read, nothing to dwell upon, but that imagination of the thoughts of their hearts, of which we are told that it is only evil, and that continually.” [4]

If there is no noble design but in the sculpture or painting of organic forms, then are we to understand that there is no nobility except in organic forms – are the higher powers of our nature called into activity by these alone; is there nothing gladdening in sunlight, or solemnising in darkness, do the mere aspects of Nature – the green earth, the blue sky, the firmament of stars – exercise no influence for good upon our minds? On the contrary, we are often strongly moved, and even raised to ecstasy by circumstances remark able by the very reason that the ordinary sources of pleasurable emotion are temporarily withdrawn. To illustrate this, let us suppose an example. We shall lay the scene in the Highlands – at midwinter – at the dead hour of night. Several weeks of intense frost have turned all water into ice as solid as the rocks; the snow, which had been falling all day, has now ceased; a solitary pedestrian is toiling up the slippery steep, striving bravely against the drowsiness and stupefaction which are often experienced in such circumstances. But he has reached the summit and pauses to recover breath; and as he stands, he gazes with wonder at the strange scene around him. The moon has set, but through the clear cold air myriads of stars, in all degrees of brightness, from the blazing planet to the tiniest sparkle in the milky-way, look down upon him in radiant beauty. There is neither light nor shade, mere whiteness as far as the eye can follow into distance the peaky forms of the receding hills. There is no sound of waterfall, or tinkling rill, or whispering breeze; no moving thing; no sight of man or beast, of house, of fold, or road; no track of any kind, except his own. A painful feeling of oppression, deepening into fear, creeps over his senses from the deathlike stillness which reigns around him. But this gives place to something else – an indescribable strange consciousness, which every instant becomes more intense, that he is standing there alone, the only living thing before God. And the poor cowering spirit, in terror at the awful presence, seeks to hide itself, but where or how to flee it knows not; on every side what seemed complete negation now becomes instinct with thoughtfulness; the air is fluid life, he feels it throbbing unnerved and overpowered, he stands and trembles. But at length a blessed influence subdues his fears; a gush of adoration fills his soul; his heart surcharged finds a vent at first in sighs and broken sentences of prayer; some old familiar song of praise bursts from his quivering lips; his terror melts into ecstatic joy; and now exulting in the love of God, he finds new strength, and passes on his way. Although all this could not be painted, much of it might, and some artists excel in rendering what may be called the qualities of Nature rather than in delineating objects. Pictures representing the mere effects of air and distance, the brightness of noon, the gloom of night, the twilight of morning and evening, must be familiar to all. Indeed it is remarkable that Mr. Ruskin’s hero, Turner, is distinguished above all others for producing pictures of this kind, in many of which organic forms are either altogether absent or introduced for quite secondary purposes. Of this class of pictures Mr. Ruskin very happily says, although in direct opposition to his favorite theory: “They are not pictures but souls of pictures.” This is the character of Turner’s later works. He seems to have regarded delineation with ever-decreasing favor, for, as he increased in knowledge and experience, he threw his whole power into the expression of pure thought in color alone without the aid of material forms.

Flaxman is at once the nearest and most opposite to Turner – the most opposite in means, the nearest in results. Each aimed at expressing the purest artistic thought with the least possible amount of material aid. What Turner did with color Flaxman accomplished by delineation. He professed to be a sculptor, and in that branch of Art has left some noble works; but before he had got many opportunities of showing his power in marble or bronze, he had, by his wonderful designs in outline6 established for himself an honorable position in the world of Art.

I do not wish you to think that I set little value on facts – far otherwise. Facts are the statistics on which our knowledge of truth rests; and by carefully weighing the evidence of facts we arrive at the truth. An artist, by repeated and minute observation and comparison of many specimens of some organic form, may be enabled to distinguish between those features and characteristics which are accidental and those that are permanent, and so bring out the true type. But we are not merely required to know truths of this kind, but to be careful that we select such subjects for investigation as shall yield an amount of truth proportionate to our labor. Man is constantly called upon to exercise his judgment on whatever is presented to his desires or adapted to his wants, whether physical or mental. He is bound not merely to reject what is bad and choose what is good; but when he has performed this simple duty, his instincts prompt him to advance yet farther, and select what is best of its kind. Nor does he stop there. He finds that even those things that are good of their kind are not entirely good, but contain much that is useless or impure – that, in short, he rarely or never meets with unmixed good. He reduces things to their elements, and, after careful examination, accepts only those parts which are most suitable to his purpose, casting aside the remainder as mere refuse. By cultivation he makes what is good better, and in many instances changes what is positively bad into something that is most excellent and useful. Think of the many products of the vegetable kingdom which have been rendered serviceable to man by a course of selection and culture, the animals which man has brought under his yoke, the mighty powers of Nature which he has trained to obey the slightest motion of his hand. He separates the metal from the ore, the fibre from the flax, he shears the wool from the sheep’s back, and unwinds the cocoon of the silkworm. These, and many other substances, he fabricates into innumerable forms, and applies them to purposes altogether new and artificial. Even his own passions and desires, however natural, must be brought under subjection; his talents must not only be put to usury, but be actively employed so as to produce profit and give increase to wealth.

To show the absurdity of the doctrines of those teachers of Art who hold that because Nature is the work of God it must therefore be perfect, and that it is impious for man to presume that he may begin where the Creator has left off, let us suppose one of those gentlemen asking for food, and that the person to whom he makes the request should, from a discreet deference to his peculiar views, place before him a bunch of grass. In answer to the enquiring stare of the theorist, the purveyor informs him that this grass in a cultivated state is called wheat, which, when the small grains are beaten out of the straw, the chaff blown away, and the husks ground off, yields the farina of which bread is made; but as all these processes might be considered sinful, he has presented it in its least degraded form, as the most acceptable to a lofty mind and a tender conscience. Certainly, what is duty to the agriculturist and the manufacturer cannot be sin to the artist. To a far greater extent, and in a much higher sense, it is the duty of the artist and the philosopher not only to separate truth from false hood, but to extract truth from the mass of facts and commonplace with which it is associated and encumbered, and to exhibit it in its purest and most beneficial forms.

We are constantly hearing of the great importance of Art in refining and elevating the public mind, but it is evident from the aimless character of most of the works which we see in our Exhibitions, and from the degree of commendation bestowed upon them, that the true function of Art is very imperfectly understood, or for the most part disregarded. In the painting of a patch of ordinary Nature we may derive a certain kind of pleasure from the correctness of the artist’s observation, and the cleverness of his manipulation; but what good do we get from the picture that we would not get from the patch of Nature itself? Mere feats of dexterity may astonish or amuse us; they do not elevate our minds.

There is one very important purpose which Art really serves, but which has not received that attention which it merits, that is, the furnishing of our minds with correct images. Language is said to be made up of faded metaphors. To one who is familiar with the forms of Nature, the mention of the names of any of them recalls its image to his mind, and with it the expression of the quality for which it is distinguished. By this means the poet and the orator, in what is termed figurative language, communicate their thoughts to their fellow-men. It will be seen, therefore, that in order to understand their meaning properly it is necessary that our minds be stored with the best and truest images of those objects and aspects which express, and are therefore used to represent, the various qualities of mind and matter. The poet speaks of the outward creation as “the Elder Scriptures writ by God’s own hand,” [5] but to the casual observer these Scriptures are more or less obscure. It may be that they have lost something of their primitive purity and power. The record of the various influences and accidents to which they have been exposed through successive ages has been written, as it were, across the original text, or it may be that for the same wise purpose for which it is ordained that man shall labor that he may live, these Scriptures yield instruction only to the diligent student. Artists should regard themselves as a ministry whose duty it is to explain as it were, the truths contained in these “Elder Scriptures;” to separate what is beautiful and rare from the crude and common elements which surround them, and to restore to pristine purity of form and color that which has become obscured by external influences. When we look at creation and consider the very small amount of matter, animate or inanimate, which is convertible to what are termed useful purposes, as compared with that which is addressed to our minds, we must be impressed to conviction with the fact that there is some momentous intention in all this, we must feel that the Creator has not clothed with beauty the world which he has given us for a habitation, or filled the Heavens over our heads with glory, without also imposing upon us the duty of pondering over these things and laying them to heart. In so far as man is an epitome of his Maker, he will in like measure realise His meaning, and enjoy communion with Him more or less intimate. Every expression of Nature has its corresponding echo in the soul of man. The mountain suggests to him power, majesty, immutable duration, the sea and sky unlimited space; the valley and the lake, glowing in the splendour of the setting sun, speak to him of tranquillity and peace; the melody of the groves is to him the voice of joy and praise, and the sighing of the breeze mingled with the sound of running waters, steals over his heart like the low rapturous whisperings of devotion. This aspect of intelligence, which we meet with everywhere in Nature, has impressed the minds of men in all ages with a sense of the mysterious, and of a presence of something superior to themselves. Amongst the ancients certain localities were supposed to be inhabited, or frequently occupied, by their gods and other supernatural beings, differing in their characteristics according to the peculiar nature and complexion of the particular scene. And in our own land the same circumstances gave rise to a variety of interesting superstitions which the light of modern knowledge has entirely dissipated and generally without putting anything better in their room. The clear-headed man of to-day looks down into the crater of Etna where of old Vulcan forged the thunderbolts of Jove, and sees nothing in it but a great hole with a little smoke – for all such phenomena are the results of natural causes. But woe to us when we cease to wonder. To the uninformed, mystery generally produces terror, or something akin to it – a dread that some evil spirit is lurking near; to the intelligent man it is an incitement to reverent enquiry – he knows that all things work together for good, and he desires to recognise the purposes of the Creator, to comprehend the law by which such-and-such things are brought about, and to learn to what they tend.

But to speak more definitely. The subjective theory of Art – as I have already said – is the orderly or harmonious expression of what we feel in our hearts or conceive in our imaginations. But it is not to be inferred that we should cease to use our eyes. Quite otherwise. It is necessary that we should not only look but see with our eyes, and have the sight impressed upon our minds; for it is a fact that we may look at a thing without being conscious of seeing it – we may be conscious of seeing it, and even be able curiously to make out its parts in detail – it may be clearly recognised by what we call the perceptive faculty – and yet with out any impression being conveyed to what is called the emotional part of our nature, or to the reason. Mr. Ruskin has told us of the great and persevering effort which he has put forth in order to impress upon us the fact “that all noble design depends upon the paintings or sculpturing of organic forms,” and that faith fully to record the facts of nature is the pre-eminent duty of the artist. Now, I would humbly recommend to artists, and to all who look to Art as a source of mental enjoyment or a means of improvement, a quite different course. I would remind you that all organic forms are not equally beautiful or noble – that some are neither the one nor the other. I wish to impress upon you that forms of any kind are of quite secondary importance – that forms are the mere media through which facts, emotions, thoughts, or ideas may be recognised or expressed – that forms are more or less important as they are more or less suitable for this purpose – and that these facts, emotions, thoughts, and ideas are themselves only of relative importance according as they are calculated to exercise a more or less beneficial influence upon our minds. Unquestionably, the one great and sole object of the artist is to express what he knows or feels about things beautiful or noble by whatever means he may find most suitable for his purpose. To record the facts of Nature is quite as legitimate an exercise of the pencil as of the pen. Indeed, the function of the pencil is becoming more and more regarded as a necessary means for conveying information as to the form and appearance of things – such as in portraiture, topographical representations of scenery illustrations of natural history, or as aiding the periodical press in delineating passing events in pictorial form, instead of describing them wholly in ordinary language. Such representations correspond to the prose of literature; they may contain more or less of the artistic quality, as prose writings may sometimes from the nature of the subject become poetic. But the merits of such delineations do not consist in their being artistic, but in being accurate representations of fact which may be turned to account for whatever purpose they may be found applicable, and may even be used as material or data for the composition of works of Art. From carelessness, or the want of definite terms, we do not sufficiently distinguish between those indiscriminate representations and works of Art. But in reality the two things are quite different, and thus there are many people very fond of pictures who neither know nor care anything about Art. But although so different in their respective characters their qualities are so intermingled in the works of Nature that we cannot always draw a line between them. For, we find that some things most useful have a certain expression of beauty about them which we regard as the smile of kindness accompanying the gift of God. On the other hand, we find that things most beautiful have often a certain amount of the useful element; and there are also many things in which the beautiful is alone apparent.

Our British word Beauty does not satisfactorily express all that we require of it; for it is used both in a general and in a particular sense, and is thus apt to lead to confusion. Burke used the words, the sublime and the beautiful, to designate the more general sense whilst they properly expressed only two branches of his subject.[6] Alison entitled his work “An Essay on Taste”, but this word taste is applicable only to the power, whether natural to all men, or merely acquired by some through mental culture, which recognises the sublime and the beautiful. As we acquire definite ideas about things we find definite words to express them, and so we have adopted the word æsthetic, derived from the Greek, which is meant to express all that is comprehended within the sphere of taste – thus we speak of the æsthetic element, and the æsthetic faculty. I have already alluded to the small amount of matter in the material creation which is applicable to what are termed useful purposes, or to our animal wants, as compared with that which is presented to our mental perception. And amongst the elements of Nature be longing to the latter class none are more remarkable than the æsthetic. Indeed, if we were to judge of its importance to us, or of the degree of attention which we ought to bestow upon it from the very prominent place which the Creator has assigned it in His work, we might be disposed to consider whether the present arrangement of human affairs is quite in accordance with the divine order of the universe. As we increase in knowledge and refinement we certainly give a correspondingly larger share of our attention to this subject and it is matter of fact that the Greeks, who carried mental culture to a much higher degree than any other people, devoted their best energies to the study of æsthetics and to the development of the æsthetic faculty. It is impossible to estimate the extent to which we unconsciously depend upon it for our enjoyment, or how much we might increase our enjoyment by laying ourselves open to its influence, or by deliberately using means to acquire more extensive and more accurate knowledge of its nature and purposes.

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We should give time and good heed to those communications that come to us in our quieter moments, that we may lay them up in our hearts amongst our most precious things. The more we think of this the more wonderful, the more exquisitely delightful, the more ennobling does it become. It leads us quite beyond the region of the material, and brings us face to face with the spiritual world. What is the use of it? We cannot eat it – we cannot drink it – we cannot wrap it round us to keep out the rain and the cold. Yet it may control these operations, and confer upon them a dignity which they have not in themselves. And yet more, apart from these, it feeds an appetite in man which when fairly awakened cannot be appeased, and for which the abundance of provision is altogether incomprehensible. When we consider that this element existed before man with that appetite was created, that it exists where man never sees it, that it is found to prevail in excessive luxuriance where man, if at all present, is in the condition of a brutalised savage, quite insensible to the forms of brightness and beauty which shut in his view, obstruct him while in pursuit of his prey, and at last poison him with their gases during the process of decomposition – when we consider these things, we are driven to inquire whether it is addressed to man alone, and, if we answer no, then we must ask to whom else? A flower, a tree, a mountain, a lake, the sea, the sky – each of these has a look of intelligence, yet no one thinks of attributing to them any intelligent power, any means of social intercourse or communion of sentiment; they do not hear or see each other, but, so far as we can judge, they are altogether unconscious of their own charms, and insensible of the great attractions of their nearest neighbours. Whence, then, is this look of intelligence? If it does not come from themselves, it must have been put into them by their Creator. Yet, it is not the mere evidence of the Master’s hand; it is a distinct element, having manifestly some greater purpose to serve.

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Those of us who would devote our lives to the practice of any branch of Fine Art should use every available means for acquiring a knowledge of the true nature of the subject; should examine ourselves carefully in order to ascertain whether we have the requisite qualifications for the work; should come to a proper understanding with ourselves as to our motives, to see that they are thoroughly good and sound; and then set about acquiring the necessary skill to realise our purposes.

Painting and Sculpture are called the imitative Arts. I have said that imitation is not Art, but nevertheless a certain amount of imitation is necessary as a groundwork upon which the Art of the painter and sculptor may be exhibited. Before a painter can express thought he must be able to draw and to mix colours; and to acquire skill in these operations is an important step towards becoming an Artist. I believe, indeed, that a student of Art can do no better in the earlier stages of his training than follow the directions of the teachers of the objective school, and learn to copy what he sees with as much accuracy as possible. If he succeed in this he has attained a position of usefulness and respectability, even if he should get no further. For I quite agree with Mr. Ruskin in the passage I have already quoted, in which he says:

“The clear statement and record of the facts of the universe is always helpful and beneficial to mankind.”

And, if the recorder has caught the spirit as well as the letter of his subject, he is so far an artist, and we might be justified in applying to his work the remainder of Mr. Ruskin’s sentence, by saving “that it is full of comfort, strength, and salvation.” In short, herein lies the difference between the two theories. If a landscape, for instance, is painted to represent only its topographical features, if the hand has been guided solely by the ordinary perceptive faculty, or, as we say, by the eye, we may have a very accurate picture, but it should not be called a work of Art, and certainly not a work of Fine Art. A picture to merit being called a work of Fine Art should have a pretty large share of the æsthetic faculty in its production -– and just in proportion to the clearness and force with which the æsthetic element is recognised and expressed will the work take rank among the achievements of Art. Thus we have pictures which we value as conveying to our minds accurate representations of the forms, colors, and other natural properties which go to make up the general appearance of external objects, and which it may be very useful for us to know. On the other hand, we have such pictures as Turner painted and as Flaxman drew, and in which none of the material properties of the objects represented are allowed to appear, except in so far as they arc necessary or helpful to the artist in conveying to us his thought or conception of the spiritual or aesthetic meaning contained in the object. Between these two kinds of pictures is the great wide field of common-place, in which landscape occupies by far the largest space. Correct drawing is not considered necessary on the part of the artists who indulge in it, or much critical knowledge on the part of those who talk about it; it constitutes the soft green food of the Art-loving public, and may be consumed in vast quantities without yielding much æsthetic nourishment. Then we have figure-subjects, representing familiar scenes and occurrences; others exhibiting the forms, colors, and textures of quaint costumes, furniture, and the like. This class of Art has no higher aim than to please or amuse, and, if assisted by gilt frames, to give an air of comfort to our parlours and dining-rooms. It corresponds with the light literature of the day, and is not expected to possess that kind of beauty which “is a joy for ever,” but excites merely a passing interest. Besides this commonplace sort of Art, and still lying within the extremes of material representation and spiritual expression, we have various kinds and degrees of legitimate Art, partaking more or less of both – on the one hand, presenting as much of the external resemblance to the object as is required for recognition, and to secure the advantage of such interesting associations as may be attached to it on the other, adding as much dignity or grace from the æsthetic element as the probabilities of the case will admit of. I will merely allude to the higher class of landscape and to historical painting, without for the present considering them in detail, as that might lead us beyond due bounds. Portraiture is a branch of Art, about which there is a good deal of misunderstanding. I shall read a few lines from Tennyson, in which he describes Elaine thinking of Sir Launcelot:–

“And all night long his face before her lived,
As when a painter poring on a face
Divinely through all hindrance finds the man
Behind it, and so paints him that his face,
The shape and color of a mind and life,
Lives for his children ever at its best
And fullest.” [7]

This, I think, is an admirably true description of what artistic portraiture should be. A man’s face seldom at one time expresses all that he is capable of, and, if we would fairly represent him, it should be done after ample observation and mature deliberation.

I have often been struck with the change which takes place upon the whole countenance and bearing of young men coming from the country and passing through a course of university education. They are at first coarse and loutish; but as their minds are brought under cultivation, the face and figure assume an air of refinement and dignity, and an expression of intelligence which could scarcely be expected from their first appearance, and yet the material lineaments of the face, and the form of the figure are substantially the same. There are many painters able to portray the features of a face with some degree of accuracy who cannot paint the mind and life of which it is at once the record and the index; few who can realise what that mind and life are capable of. Such realisation is the highest style of portraiture, the kind which, like a judicious biography, retains what is most worthy of being preserved, leaving the less significant points unnoticed. Portraits of this kind are both interesting and edifying to us, although we know nothing of the original besides what the picture represents.

The real and the ideal are terms often used with the same meaning as the terms objective and subjective, but more frequently applied to sculpture than to painting.

I believe that on a careful review of the history or progress of Art the æsthetic or ornamental will be found first in order, and exhibited in the painting and tattooing of the body by savage nations, the decoration of their robes, their weapons of war and of the chase, the social bowl and the funereal urn. Then come object or figure writing, hieroglyphics, and narrative pictures and sculptures, in which the æsthetic quality is kept in strict abeyance to the literal, and yet in this we observe a process going on similar in kind to idealisation. In the Egyptian form of these we see the utmost simplicity in the delineation of objects, with the most admirable precision in the expression of character. The best of the Egyptian statuary was rudimentary and uncouth in the extreme, and yet the sublime aspect of eternal composure which some of the faces dis play has never been surpassed and rarely equalled, showing how unessential the accurate copying of Nature is to true Art.

The aesthetic faculty appears to serve three purposes – the perceptive, the selective, and the creative. The first acts as a sort of appetite which recognises and enjoys the beautiful in a general and almost passive way. The second acts like a palate or conscience, distinguishing and discriminating between what is truly and purely beautiful from what is not so, or what is intermingled with other elements, and also between different degrees of the beautiful. And in this we perceive a very mysterious power, something that lies deeper than sense and reason – the idealising faculty, “the divinity that stirs within us.” Suppose several beautiful objects of the same kind – say flowers or animals – are placed before us: we can select the best, and not only so, but we may conceive a better than any of those before us, or than we have ever seen. And, by the exercise of this faculty, the Greek sculptures are admitted to be more beautiful than the natural objects which they resemble. We have no remains of Greek painting of the best period of Art. Indeed, the only examples we have are those upon vases, generally in one or two simple colors, and those on the walls of Pompeii, which belong to a period five hundred years after the best period of sculpture and architecture. But in their sculptures we perceive a careful avoidance of everything vulgar or common-place, and a refining and ennobling of everything beautiful, which has made them the test and pattern of excellence ever since. I may here remark an excessively stupid opinion which prevails regarding Greek sculptures and Greek Art in general, even amongst men who ought to know better, and which can only be accounted for on Canova’s theory “that we see with our ears.” Ordinary people cannot see more than they already know, and we often find that increase of knowledge only adds to the mental blindness. Somebody has said that in Greek Art we see the perfection of outward form, the cold and lifeless abstractions of the human intellect. After many years of earnest and honest study, I long since came to the conclusion that, if ever thought or being was embodied by man’s art in any shape whatever, it is to be found in those glorious Greek sculptures. The Greek sculptors were not contented with a sort of something like their ideal; they hewed and rasped and smoothed until they had got quit of the last particle of extraneous matter, and nothing remained but the perfect reflex of the artist’s mental conception. Not a mere face, however expressive, surmounting a mass of drapery under which a figure is more or less traceable or to be accounted for, but an entire being, soul and body in the most perfect harmony, every member capable of fulfilling the purposes of life, and that not such an every-day homely life as ordinary people might rub shoulders with on familiar, companionable terms – in short not a representation of the natural form and life, but of the super natural; that noble kind of life which the Jews, as representing humanity, could not tolerate, but treated with such hatred that when on a memorable occasion He who had no sin was presented to them, they cried, “Not this man, but Barabbas.” It is characteristic of the vulgar and ungenerous that they cannot venerate what is high, or love what is holy. Looking at virtue from a distance, or perhaps from some opposite eminence, it seems cold and repulsive; but on closer acquaintance, and in the humble heart, it glows with a loving sympathy for all that is good and true.

But there is yet a third function of the æsthetic faculty – the creative. Some say that man can never get beyond his experience. Whence then come Music and Architecture? There is nothing in Nature like either; for, although they may have been slow of growth, the fact is before us that they are something that by man or through his agency has been added to the work of God, and that not presumptuously or sinfully, as some would tell us, but by destiny and duty; for, being made in the image of God, man was made partaker of the divine nature so far as to become a fellow-worker with God – in however humble a sense, a co-Creator.

The subject of the succeeding lectures will show how far man has succeeded in this department of duty.

1. A series of four lectures on ‘Art and Architecture’ were given by Alexander Thomson to the Glasgow School of Art and Haldane Academy in the Corporation Buildings in Sauchiehall Street, which housed the School of Art, on Friday evenings in March and April 1874. The full text was first printed in seven numbers of The British Architect – for 1st May, 5th June, 24th July, 7th August, 30th October, 6th November and 20th November, 1874 – and then re-printed by John Hardman of Manchester as a pamphlet. A copy of this, bearing Thomson’s own corrections, was given to the Mitchell Library by Thomas Gildard and is the basis of the text printed here. Another copy, with the same corrections, was given to the library of the Royal Institute of British Architects by Thomson’s sometime partner, John Baird, in 1877. The original manuscript for his second Haldane Lecture survives in the possession of his great grand-daughter, Catherine Rentoul.

Thomson’s second lecture, on Egyptian architecture, was delivered on 27th March and in the review in the Glasgow Herald three days later it was noted that it had been “copiously illustrated by large-scale drawings, made by students – some of them coloured as to show the Egyptian manner of decoration – and by a large perspective of the Hall of Karnak, painted especially for the lecture by [James] Sellars.” The drawings were executed under the direction of Robert Greenlees, headmaster of the School of Art, at the expense of the Haldane Trustees, who donated £40–50 for this; Hugh Ferguson, in Glasgow School of Art. The History (Glasgow 1995), recorded Ronald McFadzean’s recollection that lecture diagrams, including one of the Pantheon, survived in the School of Art until at least 1971, together with a list of the illustrations used in the Haldane Lectures, but no trace of these can now be found. Further illustrations were made from the plates in Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s Architecture of Ancient Egypt (see below). For this and other books which Thomson may have consulted, see James Macaulay’s essay on ‘“Greek” Thomson’s Literary and Pictorial Sources’ in ‘Greek’ Thomson, edited by Stamp & McKinstry (Edinburgh 1994).

2. “The law which is has been my effort chiefly to illustrate...” is quoted from the preface to John Ruskin’s The Two Paths published in 1859 – library edition of The Works of John Ruskin edited by E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 1905, vol.xvi, p.251.

3. “Art, devoted humbly..” is quoted from John Ruskin’s first lecture, on ‘The Deteriorative Power of Conventional Art over Nations,’ in The Two Paths, op. cit., library edition, vol. xvi, p. 268

4. “it never represents a natural fact...” is again quoted from The Two Paths, pp.265-266, in which Ruskin, with crude prejudice inflamed by the events of the Mutiny of 1857, condemned the “delicate and refined” art of India, whose liking for “distorted and monstrous form… indicates that the people who practice it are cut off from all possible sources of healthy knowledge or natural delight; that they have wilfully siezed up and put aside the entire volume of the world, and have got nothing to read, nothing to dwell upon...”

5. From Night Thoughts by Edward Young, 1742–45.

6. Edmund Burke’s Enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful was published in 1756; An Essay on the Nature and Principles of Taste by the Revd Archibald Alison was published in 1790.

7. Alfred Tennyson’s poem, ‘Lancelot and Elaine’ was published in 1842 but his book, Idylls of the King, only appeared in 1859; themes taken from this were painted by Hugh Cameron and applied to the walls of the drawing room at Holmwood House soon after.