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State of Art in the reign of George II.-Inferiority of native artists-Formation of an English School of Painting-Academies-First Exhibition of Works of English Artists-Exhibition of Sign-paintings-Foundation of the Royal Academy-Early Exhibitions-Reynolds, Gainsborough, Wilson, and West-Engraving-Strange and Woollett-Mezzotint-Mac Ardell, &c.-Boydell and commerce in English engravings-Sculpture-Banks, Bacon, and Flaxman-Architecture-Sir William Chambers-Bridge-building.

A TRANSITION to the Fine Arts from Agriculture and Manufactures, from Spinning Machines and Cotton Mills, from Iron-works and Potteries, from Canals and Steam Engines, is not so abrupt as it may at first appear. In our immediate times, the intimate eonnexion between the Arts of Design and those exercises of industry which have too exclusively been designated as the Useful Arts, has been distinctly recognised. It has been found after a long experience, that Taste is an essential element in the excellence of manufacBut this connexion was tures, and of their consequent commercial value. perceived a century ago, when a society, now more flourishing than ever, founded by a drawing-master, proposed "to promote the arts, manufactures, and commerce of this kingdom, by giving honorary or pecuniary rewards as may be best adapted to the case, for the communication to the Society, and through the Society to the public, of all such useful inventions, discoveries,

VOL. VII.

66

LOW STATE OF ART IN REIGN OF GEORGE II.

[1760-1783. and improvements, as tend to that purpose." The Society of Arts gave medals to Mr. Curwen for agricultural improvements, and he stated that but for this stimulus he should never have been a farmer. The Society of Arts awarded premiums for improvements in dyeing and tanning, in spinning and weaving, in paper-making and lace-making, and may thus have somewhat excited the inventive power which superseded many of the old modes of hand-labour. The Society of Arts gave its modest grants of ten guineas to Banks and Flaxman, for their earliest efforts in sculpture; and probably without this encouragement these eminent artists might never have been sculptors. The mutual dependance existing between the Polite Arts, as the Arts of Painting and Sculpture were then termed, and the humbler industrial arts which form the foundations of the industrial fabric, was never more distinctly asserted than in the proceedings of this comprehensive Association, for the encouragement of seemingly diverging pursuits, but all of which tended to the same development of public prosperity.

In a former chapter we traced the history of Art in England from the Restoration to the reign of George II. At that time English Art was in a very low state. Architecture had greatly declined from the position to which Wren had raised it. Painters and sculptors were numerous and well paid, but the high places of the professions were chiefly filled by Italians, Germans, Flemings and Frenchmen. Even in portrait painting, the branch in which employment was most abundant, the English practitioners were content if they could produce a satisfactory likeness; whilst for everything but the head they trusted to the skill of "drapery painters," whose highest ambition it was so to complete the work, that it might be recognised as in the style of Sir Godfrey Kneller. As a lively French writer said, " Englishmen make their portraits as they make their pins, each passes through several hands, one shapes the head, another the point; it takes as many painters to finish a full-length portrait as it does tradesmen to equip a petit maître." Whenever foreigners referred to the state of art in England it was with a sort of contemptuous pity. There is ample reward, it was said, for the foreign artist who shows even moderate skill, but nothing seems to evoke native talent ; surely there must be something in the soil and climate inimical to artistic genius. Even Englishmen shared the prejudice, or were too diffident of their own judgment to oppose in a matter of taste the acknowledged leaders of European opinion. Yet if there were no living English sculptor or

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* Abbé du Bos-"Reflexions Critiques sur la Poësie et sur la Peinture," Par. 1755, vol. ii. 145-7. Le Blanc-"Lettres d'un Français," Par. 1745; and see the "Discours Préliminaire" to a 5th ed. of these Letters, Lyon, 1758; Rouquet-"L'Etat des Arts en Angleterre," Par. 1755. To the same effect were some remarks of Montesquieu, in his Esprit des Lois," and of the Abbé Winckelmann. From the frequent references made to them by English writers on art for more than half a century, it is clear that these sarcasms were keenly felt by artists, and not without influence on patrons. Barry thought it necessary to write a formal answer to them in his "Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England," 8vo. 1775; and it was in order to refute them practically that he painted his series of pictures in the Great Room of the Society of Arts. (See the Introduction to his "Account of a Series of Pictures," &c.) As late as 1791, the intelligent German, Wendeborn, notes that "it is rather singular that most of those who have excelled in the polite arts in England have been foreigners," and he adds, that though it is no longer exclusively so, among the artists are still many foreigners. Wendeborn-"View of England towards the close of the 18th century," vol. ii. p. 185.

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