The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎590r] (70/239)

A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES.
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his only aim was to show you what astonishing tricks he could
play with his fingers. For my part, I don’t care, as the old Duke
used to say, ‘ a twopenny d n ’ for a painter’s tricks. What I
want is a beautiful work and fine imagination.”
“Imagination!”, said Van Dyke. “We don’t want to
imagine things. We want to reproduce them—show them just as
we see them. Imagination is the ruin of Art! We painters have
to make things look just as they are.”
“ Why, that is what photographers have to do ! And they beat
you realists hollow at it! Is a Kodak snap-shot of a kitchenmaid
taken in my backyard, Art? It certainly reproduces faithfully
the look of a very commonplace object.”
“ It would be Art if the painter could make the backyard as
absolutely true to fact as the photograph, adding colour, chiaro
scuro, and tone. Let him get his ‘ values ’ right—and all is
right! ’ ’
“ Surely,” I murmured, “ it would be a dull piece to hang over
one’s dinner-table.”
“ This cursed photography,” Sir Visto broke in, “ has been
the death of Art. It has shown artists how infinitely subtle and
various are the facts in the simplest and commonest object. A
bootmaker puts his own ugly mug on his trade card. Soaps, cigars,
whiskies, and corsets, drench us with photographs till life has
become a sort of revolving panorama of commonplace, crudely
realised in all its naked vulgarity and dulness. We live in a
photographic inferno ; and now Art thinks it chic to be equally
literal and tedious.”
By this time we had reached Burlington House, and I hoped to
have a less lively debate. Sir Visto took us straight into the large
room and stood before The Finding of Moses, by Sir L. Alma-
Tadema. “ There,” said he, “is a fine subject finely treated.
We want no catalogue to tell us what it represents. Anyone who
has ever read or heard of the delightful idyll in second of Exodus
sees at once that it is Pharaoh’s daughter returning from the bath,
and bringing the baby in his ark. The composition, the local colour
ing, the archaic ‘properties’ and costumes, are all those of a
master. How ridiculous it was of Buskin to tell us Alma-Tadema
always painted twilight! Is not this sunlight, and sunlight in
Egypt? A fine picture ! a fine conception ! ”
“ It has too much beauty, elegance, and harmony for me,”
growled Van Dyke. “ Why are all the girls so pretty, and so fair
of skin? There is nothing pre-historic, barbaric, cruel, ghastly
about the scene—nothing to remind you of the ferocious edict of
Pharaoh and the leader who was one day to drown him in the
Red Sea. I admit it is beautiful, if that is what you want. It is
too smooth, too refined, too idyllic for me.”