VII.PICTURES FOR THE PEOPLE.[1]

1Reprinted, by permission, from theCornhill Magazine, March 1883.

‘Itis folly, if nothing worse, to attempt it. What do the people want with fine art? They will neither understand nor appreciate it. Show them an oleograph of “Little Red Riding Hood,” or a coloured illustration of “Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” and they will like it just as much as Mr. Millais’s “Chill October” or Mr. Watts’s “Love and Death.”’

Such opinions met us at every turn when we first began to think of having an Art Exhibition in Whitechapel. But we knew that it is not only indifference which keeps the people living in the far East away from the West End Art Treasures. The expense of transit; the ignorance of ways of getting about; the shortness of daylight beyond working hours during the greater part of the year; the impression that the day when they could go is sure to be the day when the Museum is ‘closed to the public’—all these little discouragements become difficulties, especially to the large number who have not yet had enough opportunities of knowing the joy which Art gives.

‘Well, I should not have believed I could have enjoyed myself so much, and yet been so quiet,’ describes a lesson learnt from an hour spent in Mr. Watts’s Gallery at Little Holland House; and once, after showing a party of mechanics a large photograph of the Dresden Madonna, I was asked, ‘Where now can we see such things often?’ while further talk on the picture elicited from another of the same group, ‘But that’s more the philosophy of pictures; one wants to see a great many to learn how to see them so.’

Such remarks, by no means isolated, and the proposal that we should ‘get up a Loan Exhibition’ from one of our active working-men friends, turned inclination into determination.

The resources at command were hardly enough to promise success in the undertaking. They were but three schoolrooms, thirty feet by sixty, behind the church, not on a central thoroughfare, and approached by a passage yard; the light was much obscured by surrounding buildings; the doorways were narrow and the staircase crooked. But friends came forward to help, and there was soon formed a large committee, which, after meeting two or three times to discuss general principles and plans, divided itself into sub-committees to carry out special branches of a work which, though to a large extent one of detail, was by no means slight.

The hanging committee undertook to measure space, obtain the sizes of pictures, and see to the strength of rods and thickness of walls, but to the general committee was left the duty of refusing undesirable-sized or inappropriate pictures. This last was by no means theleast difficult labour, so extraordinary were some of the loans offered to us; a dreadful portrait of an uncomely old lady was sent because ‘she was the maternal grandmother of a man who used to keep a shop in the High Street,’ this recommendation being considered sufficient to obtain for the picture a place in an Art Collection; a pencil drawing ‘done by John when he was only fifteen, and now he’s doing well in the pawnbroking line,’ was held worthy by a proud mother.

But if, on the one side, we were somewhat overwhelmed with offers of loans of doubtful description, on the other we were not unfrequently surprised at the unwillingness of art owners to lend their treasures. Vain were promises of safety and insurance. ‘I don’t fear for the pictures, but I don’t like to have my walls bare,’ was the too common answer; and the argument, ‘Not for a fortnight, to enable thousands of people to see them?’ rarely penetrated the coat of selfishness which incases such owners.

By no means had the hanging committee a monopoly of work. The decorative committee made it its duty to provide hangings, flags, bunting; to hide the usual schoolroom suggestions, and to make the place attractive to the passing crowd. The advertising committee undertook the difficult and expensive work of making the undertaking known, always difficult, but especially so when many of the people among whom the information has to be spread can neither read nor write. The finance committee did the dull but necessary work connected with money.

At the first Exhibition 3d.was charged for admission during seven days, and free admittance granted for twodays. On the threepenny days 4,000 people paid or were paid for; on the free days, including Sunday, 5,000 came to see the show. The box for donations contained on the seven paying days 4l.16s.1d.; on the two free days 6l.2s.3d.The second Exhibition was opened free. In the thirteen days 26,492 people came to see it. The boxes contained 21l.8s.9d., and 4,600 catalogues were sold at 1d.,[2]realising 20l.17s.1d., the cost of printing of which was 17l.16s.

2First edition was sold at 3d.; and some on the first day at 6d., while a few were given away.

Not the least weighted with responsibility was the watch committee, whose work was the safeguarding of the loans, both by night and day. Policemen, firemen, and caretakers had to be engaged, not to mention the organisation required to arrange for the eighteen or twenty gentlemen who came down daily to ‘take a watch’ of four hours in the rooms; where their presence not only served to prevent unseemly conduct, but their descriptions of pictures and homely chats with the people made often all the difference between an intelligent visit and a listless ten minutes’ stare. The work of borrowing was everybody’s work; and, on the whole, the response met with has been generous, particularly from the artists and those owners whose possessions were few.

The first Exhibition included—besides pictures—pottery, needlework, and curiosities; but, interesting as these were, the expense of getting them together, providing cases for them, and showing them thoroughly under glass, was so great that in the second Exhibition it was determined to exhibit only pictures and such works of art and curiosities as the Kensington Museum would lendus, the latter already in cases, and with their own special caretaker to boot.

The cataloguing and describing committee comes last; and its work, though done in a hurry, bore no slight relation to the success of the undertaking.

It is impossible for the ignorant to even look at a picture with any interest unless they are acquainted with the subject; but when once the story is told to them their plain, direct method of looking at things enables them to go straight to the point, and perhaps to reach the artist’s meaning more clearly than some of those art critics whose vision is obscured by thoughts of ‘tone, harmony, and construction.’

Mr. Richmond’s fine picture of ‘Ariadne’ elicited many remarks. ‘Why, it is crazy Jane!’ exclaimed one woman, following up the declaration in a few moments by, ‘and it’s finely done, too;’ but the story once explained, either by catalogue or talk, the interest increased. ‘Poor soul! she’s seen her day,’ came from a genuine sympathiser. ‘Oh, no! she’ll get another lover; rest sure of that.’ ‘’Tain’t quite likely, seeing that it’s a desert island!’ was the practical retort, which rather dumbfounded the hopeful commentator; but she would have the last word: ‘Well, I would, if it were myself, and she’ll find a way, sure enough, somehow.’ ‘The light is all behind her,’ showed a delicate perception of what, perhaps, the artist himself had put in with the truth of unconsciousness.

Mr. Briton Rivière’s representation of the ‘Dying Gladiator’ was the subject of much conversation. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remind any one of the picture, which was in the Academy but a year or two ago.The splendid painting of the tigers, both dead and living, with the vividly depicted physical agony of the martyr, in spite of which he feels triumph, as, faithful even in death, he makes the sign of the cross in the sand, would probably make an impression on and be remembered by those who saw it.

‘There, my boy, there’s your ancestor in the lions’ den!’ was the paternal explanation of one of Abraham’s descendants to his small son; but a reference to the catalogue changed his opinion on the subject, if not on the goodness of the cause for which the gladiator suffered. The description in the catalogue for this picture was: ‘The Romans, for their holiday amusement, made their prisoners fight with wild beasts. The young Christian has killed one of the tigers; but is himself mortally wounded. His last act is to trace in the sand the form of a cross, the sign of the faith for which he dies. The shouts of the excited crowd, the roar of the baulked tiger, are fading in his ears. God has kissed him, and he will sleep.’ Somewhat fanciful, perhaps, but reaching, maybe, the spirit of the picture more truly than a plainer statement of facts would have done. ‘“God kissed him,” it says; I should have said the tiger clawed him,’ was the one adverse criticism overheard on the description. As a rule, the subject of the picture once understood, the people stood before it in thoughtful consideration.

Mr. Richmond’s ‘Sleep and Death,’ as well as Mr. Watts’s ‘Time, Death, and Judgment,’ both ideal rather than historical or domestic pictures, were greatly enjoyed, and this by a class of people whose external lives are drearily barren of ideals.

An interpretation offered by any one who had studied the parable pictures was eagerly accepted, and further thoughts suggested. ‘You can’t see Judgment’s face for his arm,’ perhaps had, perhaps had not, more meaning in it than the speaker meant; while in reference to the woman’s listless dropping of her flowers from her lap in ‘Time, Death, and Judgment,’ the remark, ‘Death does not want the flowers now she’s got ’em,’ told of thoughtful suffering at the apparent wastefulness of death. ‘Time is young yet, then,’ made one feel that the speaker had caught a glimpse of life’s possibilities with which probably any number of homilies had failed to impress him.

‘Sleep and Death,’ depicting the strong, pale warrior borne on the shoulders of Sleep, while being gently lifted into the arms of Death—so simple in colour, pure in idea, rich in suggestion—was good for the poor to see, among whom Death is robbed of none of its terrors by the coarse familiarity with which it is treated. With them funerals are too often a time of great rowdiness, and ‘a beautiful corpse’ a fit spectacle for all the neighbours—even the youngest child—to be invited to see. Death treated as a tender mother-woman, hidden in the cold grey vastness surrounding her, was a bright idea, producing, perhaps, greater modesty about the great mystery. ‘That’s the best of the whole lot, to my mind,’ came, after a long gaze, from a pale, trouble-stricken man, whose sorrows Sleep had not always helped to bear, whose loveless life had made Death’s enfolding arms seem wondrous kind.

Sometimes there were discussions as to which was Sleep and which Death, ended once summarily by theloudly expressed opinion, ‘It don’t much matter which. I don’t call it proper,anyhow, to see a man pickaback of an angel!’—a hypercritical sense of propriety which was hardly to be expected from the appearance of the critic.

Munkacsy’s picture of the ‘Lint Pickers,’ lent by Mr. J. S. Forbes, aroused much interest. In the catalogue, after a short account of the artist’s life and works, it was described thus: ‘A soldier, with a bandaged leg, is telling the story of the war to the women and children who are picking lint to dress wounds. The different feelings with which the news is received are shown with wonderful skill in the different faces. Some are waiting to hear the worst; another has already heard it, and can only bury her face in her hands. To others it is but an interesting story; while the little child is only intent on his basket of lint.

Man’s inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.’

Man’s inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn.’

The gloom of the picture, the utter dejection of the workers, relieved nowhere by a gleam of light—even the child (around whom Hope might have hovered) finding a grim plaything in the lint—all combine to tell the tale of what the artist evidently felt—the cruelty of war. Much interest was taken in finding out, amid the darkness, the different figures in their various attitudes of active or crushed woe. It spoke, though, a little sadly for the want of joyousness in East London entertainments that more than one sightseer,beforereading the catalogue or being helped by a verbal explanation, thought ‘it was a lot of poor people at tea.’

The frames of all the pictures excited wonder, sometimes admiration not accorded to the pictures themselves; and the oft-reiterated questions, ‘What, now, is it all worth? How much would it fetch?’ became a little wearisome, not the less so because expressive of one of the signs of the times.

‘All beautiful! and most of them [the pictures] done by machinery, I suppose,’ showed greater mechanical than artistic appreciation; while the cross-examination to which we were put as to why the Exhibition was held was sometimes interesting rather than edifying. ‘Oh, yes, it’ll pay, sure enough, if you only go on long enough,’ was one woman’s comforting assurance; and the answer, ‘I hardly see how, considering that it is open free,’ carried so little force to her mind that its only effect was to make her repeat her belief in a still more confidently cheery tone. But many and hearty were the thanks that were given at the end of some such chats; and the gentlemen who explained the pictures and talked to the little groups which quickly gathered round ‘some one who would tell about it all’ were more than once offered reward-money—a flattering tribute to their powers, and illustrative of the living sense of justice in the workman’s mind and the conviction that ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire.’

The pathetic pictures were, perhaps, the most generally appreciated. Israels’ ‘Day before the Departure,’ lent by Mr. J. S. Forbes, was described thus: ‘The widow, utterly sad, has shut her Bible and seems heartbroken and hopeless. The child does not understand everything, but she knows her mother is sorry; the toy isforgotten, while she nestles close in her desire to comfort. Her love may be the light which will brighten the future,’ often reduced the beholders to sympathetic silence; while warm was the praise given to Salentin’s ‘Foundling,’ a pretty picture of an old yeoman giving the forsaken babe into the arms of his kindly daughters. The bright evening sky, the tender spring-time, the interest of the farm-boy, and the curiosity of the sheep, all hopefully express that the little one’s short, troublous day is over, and that its happier spring-time has dawned.

‘Our Father’s House,’ by Wilfrid Lawson: the little, ragged girl peeping wistfully round the church pillar at the fashionably dressed congregation, who too often monopolise ‘Our Father’s House,’ had always around it some quiet and earnest students. It aroused in them, perhaps, the sleeping sense, now so often forgotten that it is almost ignored, that the church is the people’s possession, and, maybe, it awakened the hope, deep down (if sometimes visionary) in every breast, of the coming of the ‘good time’ when all class and unworthy distinctions will be lost in the Father’s presence.

Israels’ works, of which in the last Exhibition there were five, were duly appreciated, not perhaps by the mass, but by the more thoughtful of the spectators. ‘The Canal Boat, a picture full of sadness; the man and woman look weary and worked. Nature is in tune with their hard life; still there is progress,’ said the catalogue. I overheard one man say, ‘Ah! poor chap, he’s got into a wrong current, but he’ll get out all right. Pull away.’ The picture, sketchy as it was, had taught in Israels’ style the lesson he loves to give—the painand dreariness of life interlaced with the bright thread of hope—

Which is out of sight:That thread of all-sustaining beauty,Which runs through all and doth all unite.

Which is out of sight:

That thread of all-sustaining beauty,

Which runs through all and doth all unite.

Mr. Walter Crane’s picture of ‘Ormuzd and Ahriman,’ which he kindly lent, awoke much interest. The people read, or had read to them, the description which told that the Persians believed in two gods—the god of good, Ormuzd; the god of evil, Ahriman—and how the picture expressed the fight between the two; a fight going on in every nation and every heart, all nature being represented as standing still during the conflict; while the river of time wound gently on past the ruins of the Memnons, the Acropolis, the Grove, the Altar, and the Abbey—the symbols of the world’s great religions. ‘I expect that’s true, but we don’t seem to see much of thefightabout here,’ was one cogent remark. Most frequently, though, a picture will draw forth no expression—for with the unlettered all expression is difficult, and we know how, in the presence of death, of a grand sunset, or of anything deeply moving, silence seems most fitting.

Sometimes, though, one overhears talks which reveal much. Mr. Schmalz’s picture of ‘Forever’ had one evening been beautifully explained, the room being crowded by some of the humblest people, who received the explanation with interest, but in silence. The picture represented a dying girl to whom her lover has been playing his lute, until, dropping it, he seemed to be telling her with impassioned words that his love is stronger than death, and that, in spite of the grave andseparation, he will love herforever. I was standing outside the Exhibition in the half-darkness, when two girls, hatless, with one shawl between them thrown round both their shoulders, came out. They might not be living the worst life; but, if not, they were low down enough to be familiar with it and to see in that only the relation between men and women. The idea of love lasting beyond this life, making eternity real, a spiritual bond between man and woman, had not occurred to them until the picture with the simple story was shown them. ‘Real beautiful, ain’t it all?’ said one. ‘Ay, fine, but that “Forever,” I did take on with that,’ was the answer. Could anything be more touching? What work is there nobler than that of the artist who, by his art, shows the degraded the lesson that Christ Himself lived to teach?

The landscapes were, perhaps, the pictures least cared for; and this is not to be wondered at, considering how little the poorer denizens of our large towns can know of the country, or of nature’s varied and peculiar garbs, which artists delight to illustrate. ‘How far is it to that place?’ was eagerly asked before a picture of Venice, by R. M. Chevalier, a picture of which the description told how the Grand Canal was the ‘Whitechapel Road’ of Venice, and further explained the relationship of gondolas to omnibuses and cabs—a relationship not understood at once by the untravelled world. ‘Would it cost much money to go and see that?’ was often provoked by such pictures as Elijah Walton’s picture of ‘Crevasses in the Mer de Glace,’ kindly lent by Mr. H. Evill, or Mr. Croft’s ‘Matterhorn,’ lent by Mr. T. L. Devitt, and described: ‘A peak in the Alpstoo steep for snow, and until lately too steep for mountaineers. Chains have now been placed at the most difficult places, and several English ladies have reached the top. The artist shows the loneliness of greatness:—

The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,But to the stars, and to the cold lunar beams;Alone the sun rises, and aloneSpring the great streams.—Matthew Arnold.’

The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,

But to the stars, and to the cold lunar beams;

Alone the sun rises, and alone

Spring the great streams.—Matthew Arnold.’

With the knowledge of the indifference, because of the unhelped and inevitable ignorance of the town poor in respect to landscape art, special pains were taken with the descriptions, endeavours being made to connect the landscape with some idea with which they were already familiar, or to connect it with some moral association which would attract notice to its qualities; for instance, Mr. John Brett’s ‘Philory, King of the Cliffs,’ was brought nearer to the spectators by the suggestion that ‘the coast of England was, like its people, cool and strong, and not to be hurt by a storm’; and Mr. W. Luker’s picture of ‘Burnham Beeches,’ lent by Mr. S. Winkworth, gained in interest because the catalogue said it was ‘A forest near Slough, about eighteen miles from London, bought by the City of London, and made the property of the people.’

Mr. W. S. Wyllie’s ‘Antwerp,’ a grey, flat picture, had its idea partly embodied in ‘Sea and land seemed to end in the cathedral spire’; while the familiar proverb, ‘It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ drew attention to Mr. W. C. Nakkens’s ‘Harvesting in Holland’; and the suggestion that ‘the horses are enjoying thewind which is blowing up the rain, the farmer’s enemy in harvest,’ showed the standpoint from which the picture could be looked at.

Not that the catalogue was intended to contain exhaustive explanations of the pictures, but only indications of the lines along which the people could make their own discoveries. Full, however, as some of the descriptions were, they were not full enough to prevent misconceptions. A little copy of Tintoretto, lent by Mr. E. Bale, depicting the visit and embrace of the Virgin Mary and Elisabeth, simply entered in the catalogue as the ‘Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth,’ was mistaken for an interview between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth, and produced the reflection, ‘I suppose that was before they quarrelled, then’—a sign that historical had, in this instance, made more mark than Bible instruction.

Information about Darwin, concerning whose work the catalogue was silent, was finally volunteered by one of a little group who pronounced him to be ‘the Monkey Man’; and another knew no more about Gladstone than that ‘he was the chap that followed Lord Beaconsfield.’

‘Lesbia,’ by Mr. J. Bertrand, explained as ‘A Roman girl musing over the loss of her pet bird,’ was commented on by, ‘Sorrow for her bird, is it? I was thinking it was drink that was in her’—a grim indication of the opinion of the working classes of their ‘betters’; though another remark on the same picture, ‘Well, I hope she will never have a worse trouble,’ showed a kindlier spirit and perhaps a sadder experience.

But the catalogue once studied, it was clung to withalmost comical persistency. A picture by Jacob Maris, lent by Mr. J. S. Forbes, of a ‘Street in Amsterdam,’ was next in the catalogue, though not in the room, to one of Mr. F. F. Dicksee’s of ‘Christ walking on the Water.’ The Amsterdam picture was one in Maris’s best style—a row of quaint, irregular houses, boats by the wharf, still cold water from the midst of which a post protruded, catching the light. ‘No doubt a fine picture,’ commented a spectator, ‘but it requires a deal of imagination.’ ‘Why? I don’t see that; it’s plain enough: there are the ships, houses, wharf,’ explained a friendly neighbour. ‘Yes, I see all them; but it’s the rest of it that wants the imagination.’ Further pause, and then, ‘Oh! I see; I’ve got the wrong number; I thought it was “Christ walking on the Water”—that’s what I was looking for.’

The historical or domestic pictures, such as J. B. Burgess’s ‘Presentation,’ the English ladies visiting the house of a Moor who is presenting his children to them; or Edwin Long’s ‘Question of Propriety,’ the priests watching the dancing-girl to decide if the dance was proper or not, perhaps attracted the most immediate attention, just in proportion as they told their own tale; but, aided by catalogue or talk, the pictures embodying the highest spiritual truths became the most popular.

The sentiment pervading J. F. Millet’s ‘Angelus’ which makes prayer—the communion with the ‘Besetting God’—at evening time, ‘Earth’s natural vesper hour,’ seem right and fitting was an unspoken sermon beyond their comprehension as art critics, but within their reach as men and women capable of communion with the highest. And, at present, when ordinaryreligious influences appear to make so sadly little impression, shall we not use such pictures also as stepping-stones towards the truer life?

Some amount of fine art is now lost to the world because the construction of most modern houses puts narrow limits to the size of pictures. ‘We are often unable to express our best ideas for want of room,’ I was told by a living artist whom this or any age would, I think, call great; and another painter has had what he considers his finest picture left on his hands because it is too big for any drawing-room and most galleries.

Is there not a double work here for the rich to do? Might they not, by buying such pictures, encourage the artists to paint their best thoughts, whatever size they require, thus making the world richer by enabling it to possess a little more of the knowledge gained by those who ‘hang on to the sunskirts of the Most High’? Might they not put them as gifts or loans on the walls of churches or hospitals, making bare walls speak great truths, not the less audible because of the murmur of the people’s thanks, real, if unheard by the donors?

Pictures will not do everything. They will not save souls, for ‘it takes a life to save a life’; but shall such works be kept only for the amusement or passing interest of the rich? Shall not we, who care that the people should have life and fuller life, press them into the service of teaching? Words, mere words, fall flat on the ears of those whose imaginations are withered and dead; but art, in itself beautiful, in ideas rich, they cannot choose but understand, if it be brought within their reach.

Art may do much to keep alive a nation’s fadinghigher life when other influences fail adequately to nourish it; and how shall we neglect it in these hard times of spiritual starvation? In Mrs. Browning’s words

‘The artist keeps up open roads between the seen and the unseen. Art is the witness of whatisbehind the show.’

Henrietta O. Barnett.

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