The Royal Academy, 1894. ~ 1

 

ARTIST
Sir Frederic Leighton

SKETCH
Study for Fatidica

By M. H. SPIELMANN

The cloud of adversity which has hung for so long a time over trade and commerce, and which, as is its wont, bas reflected its darkest shadows on the community of artists, has lifted but little since the Academy last closed its doors.

The consequence of this heavy gloom is obvious. It cannot be expected that the exhibition of 1894 will be overrich in what are commonly known as “ambitious works,” especially from men whose position, commercially speaking, is not absolutely assured. With unfavourable prospects of sale-while such collectors as the financial crises have yet left to fix their eyes Christie's and its bargains rather than on the galleries, and their ablest contributors ~ the painter's  enthusiasm is chilled, or his enterprise, at the least, stifled by prudence; for without the wings of prosperity and encouragement, Pegasus will not fly. On the other hand, the winter has been almost uninterruptedly fine; few logs have come to baulk the painter, or tricks of light to defeat his efforts. In these circumstances, colour should be better than usual; and as portraits must be painted, statues commissioned, houses built, and black-and-white work demanded by the publishers, sufficient is forthcoming to constitute a collection of high quality of execution, even though elaborateness of composition, elevation of subject, and “importance” in size , be absent, But even though there were nothing but “potboilers” in the exhibition, the public would have no right to complain, seeing how little they do nowadays to keep the pot a-boiling for the artist without his special solicitude. It may, possibly, be declared that the exhibition is “only an average Academy;” just as people have sagely affirmed every succeeding year from its second volume that “Punch is no longer what it was.” Seventy years ago, as recorded by Hazlitt, Northcote remarked, in explanation of this annual verdict, “They say the exhibition is worse every year, though. it is just the same; there are the same subjects, and the same painters. Admiration is a forced tribute, and to extort it from mankind; they must be taken unawares;” to which his friend, acquiescing, replied, “It is the same with books; if an author is only equal to himself, he is said to have fallen off. The blow to make the same impression must be doubled.”