Pre-Raphaelitism and the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood . ndent course and initiate a purifying influence, and helpto mould the nations thoughts, affections, and may be rich and accomplished in power, and of greatperfection as to technique, but delusive in sentiment, and itsexcellence will all the more seduce the mind of its admirers,and lead them to forget the certain consequences of un-restraint—certain, not at all the less, if the work of artbe cultivated in aesthetic manipulative powers, and onlybase in pandering to degrading inclinations. The evilcontao-ion of false sentiment is
Pre-Raphaelitism and the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood . ndent course and initiate a purifying influence, and helpto mould the nations thoughts, affections, and may be rich and accomplished in power, and of greatperfection as to technique, but delusive in sentiment, and itsexcellence will all the more seduce the mind of its admirers,and lead them to forget the certain consequences of un-restraint—certain, not at all the less, if the work of artbe cultivated in aesthetic manipulative powers, and onlybase in pandering to degrading inclinations. The evilcontao-ion of false sentiment is not rendered innocuous bycunning workmanship. Mawkish imagination will not beconfined to professed art powers, but extends to thewhole nation, and ends either with temporary disaster,to be recovered from only by contrition, forswearingfrivolity and vice, the following of a new course, or thepenalty may be utter and final catastrophe. We haveseen some such ruin overtaking nations in our day, andcertainly destinys thunderbolts are not yet u/.-^?Uf^^ruxn, .^XunZ. pA-nec- -fo OJ o rrxti//, in ..| xvr PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD 461 Twenty-five years ago I wrote In the Nineteenth Centurythat if copyright in works of art were not legallysafeguarded, invention, which costs most time, wouldbe discontinued by the painter, and he would con-sider only the meaningless surface of a canvas. Nothingtangible was done to protect design, and now myprophecy is verified to the full. With few exceptions,paintings are no longer strictly works of art, but onlygood or bad manipulation. Perhaps the admirers ofelevated purpose in the latter half of the last centuryneglected too much the workman-like part of theirambition and provoked hasty reaction. The revulsionto materialism is a deadly sign. The artists of the newschool emulate one another in the repudiation of inventivethought, and this, as it proves, encourages careless execu-tion and neglect of fundamental form, and is allied toa syst
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