The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎588r] (66/239)

A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES.
In Dialogue.
Now that I have retired to a quiet life in a beautiful country I am
occupied with Nature more than with Art; and it is only with a
wrench that I can leave the roses, rhododendrons, and lilacs for
the smoke of town. But, as I do not wish to fall quite out of the
modern movement, I take a look in now and then at the May
shows, and had asked my friend Van Dyke, one of the young
lions of the New Gallery, to point out what was best to be seen.
He took me straight up to the Lycidas, the great sensation of the
year. “ There,” said he, eagerly, ” there is true Art. What a
noble form ! What a grand pose! What subtle grace in those
curves of the leg! What dignity in those uplifted arms ! It
might be the young athlete who sat to Phidias for the Parthenon
metopes. And those old Philistines at Burlington House made a
‘ record ’ in stupidity when they rejected—actually rejected—one
of the purest masterpieces of our time ! ’ ’
” But is it beautiful? ” I asked in my innocence.
“ Beautiful? ” he said quite warmly, ” we don’t go in for beauty
nowadays. We want truth, not beauty. Art has nothing to do
with beauty. The aim of Art is to be real. If you want to see a
real spinal column, an honest iliac muscle, a genuine biceps, and
all ten tendons of the extensor frankly displayed, there you have
them.”
” Well! ” I said, humbly, ”1 am no anatomist, and I daresay
this is all as it looks on the dissecting table. But what puzzles
me are those ten fingers all held up in a row. What does it mean ?
Is Lycidas a Neapolitan lazzarone playing at mora? What is the
story ? ’ ’
“ Oh ! ” said he, “a great piece of truth in Art does not need
any story. It is its own meaning. Perhaps Lycidas is what the
Boers call a Hands-upper; he seems to be saying ‘ Don’t shoot, I
give in.’ He looks rather down on his luck, as if he has had
enough. But see how truly Greek is the vitality of those limbs !
How daring is the realism of those tendons ! How defiant of con
ventions is the frankness of the pose! ’ ’
“ Thank you,” I said, ” for your lesson in Art. If 1 had come
here alone I should have taken it for a scraggy youth in an un
gainly attitude—a sort of naked man ‘ Friday,’ startled by the
footprints of cannibals on the shore.”
As 1 spoke we were joined by an old friend of my own, a certain
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