have produced very beautiful work, but painting has something
more to give us than the mere visible aspect of things. The lofty
spiritual visions of William Blake, and the marvellous romance of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, can find their perfect expression in painting; every
mood has its colour and every dream has its form. The chief quality of
Mr. Image's lecture was its absolute fairness, but this was, to a certain
portion of the audience, its chief defect. 'Sweet reasonableness,' said
one, 'is always admirable in a spectator, but from a leader we want
something more.' 'It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools
of art,' said another; while a third sighed over what he called 'the
fatal sterility of the judicial mind,' and expressed a perfectly
groundless fear that the Century Guild was becoming rational. For, with
a courtesy and a generosity that we strongly recommend to other
lecturers, Mr. Image provided refreshments for his audience after his
address was over, and it was extremely interesting to listen to the
various opinions expressed by the great Five-o'clock-tea School of
Criticism which was largely represented. For our own part, we found Mr.
Image's lecture extremely suggestive. It was sometimes difficult to
understand in what exact sense he was using the word 'literary,' and we
do not think that a course of drawing from the plaster cast of the Dying
Gaul would in the slightest degree improve the ordinary art critic. The
true unity of the arts is to be found, not in any resemblance of one art
to another, but in the fact that to the really artistic nature all the
arts have the same message and speak the same language though with
different tongues. No amount of daubing on a cellar wall will make a man
understand the mystery of Michael Angelo's Sybils, nor is it necessary to
write a blank verse drama before one can appreciate the beauty of Hamlet.
It is essential that an art critic should have a nature receptive of
beautiful impressions, and sufficient intuition to recognise style when
he meets with it, and truth when it is shown to him; but, if he does not
possess these qualities, a reckless career of water-colour painting will
not give them to him, for, if from the incompetent critic all things be
hidden, to the bad painter nothing shall be revealed.

ART AT WILLIS'S ROOMS

(Sunday Times, December 25, 1887.)

Accepting a suggestion made by a friendly critic last week, Mr. Selwyn
Image b