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THE ART TOURIST

The class of art tourists is very numerous, and of all tourists the art tourist is, I think, the most indefatigable. He excels the tourist in search of knowledge both in length of hours and in assiduity while he is at his work. The art tourist now described is not the man or woman who goes abroad to learn to paint, or to buy pictures and gems, or to make curious art investigations. Such travellers are necessarily few in number, and set about their work as do other people of business. They are not tourists at all in the now accepted meaning of the word. Our art tourist is he, – or quite as often she, – who flies from gallery to gallery, spending hours and often days in each, with a strong determination to get up conscientiously the subject of pictures. Sculpture and architecture come also within the scope of the labours of the art tourist, but not to such an extent as to influence them materially. Pictures are the ever present subject of the English art tourist's thoughts, and to them and their authors he devotes himself throughout his holiday with that laborious perseverance which distinguishes the true Briton as much in his amusement as in his work. He is studying painters rather than pictures, – certainly not pictures alone as things pleasing in themselves. A picture, of which the painter is avowedly unknown, is to such a one a thing of almost no interest whatever, – unless in the more advanced period of his study he should venture to attempt to read the riddle and should take upon himself to name the unknown. And this work of the art tourist, though it may lead to a true love of pictures, does in no wise arise from any such feeling. And, indeed, it is quite compatible with an entire absence of any such predilection. Men become learned in pictures without caring in the least for their beauty or their ugliness, just as other men become learned in the laws, without any strong feeling either as to their justice or injustice. The lawyer looks probably for a return for his labours in a comfortable income, and the art tourist looks for his return in that sort of reputation which is now attached to the knowledge of the history of painting.

The first great object of the art tourist is to be able to say, without reference to any card, guide-book, or affixed name, and with some approach to correctness, who painted the picture then before him; and his next great object is to be able to declare the date of that painter's working, the country in which he lived, the master who taught him, the school which he founded, the name of his mistress or wife, the manner of his death, and the galleries in which his chief works are now to be found.

As regards the first object, – that of knowing the painter from his work, – the art tourist soon obtains many very useful guides to his memory. Indeed, it is on guides to his memory that he depends altogether. When he has progressed so far that he can depend on his judgment instead of his memory, he has ceased to be an art tourist, and has become a connoisseur. The first guide to memory is the locality of the picture. He knows that Raphaels are rife at Florence, Titians at Venice, Vandykes at Genoa, Guidos at Bologna, Van Eykes and Memlings in Flanders, and Rembrandts and Paul Potters in Holland. Pictures have been too much scattered about to make this knowledge alone good for much; but joined to other similar aids, it is a powerful assistance, and prevents mistakes which in an old art tourist would be disgraceful. Next to this, probably, he acquires a certain, though not very accurate idea of dates, which supplies him with information from the method and manner of the picture. If he is placed before a work of some early Tuscan painter, – Orcagna, or the like, – he will know that it is not the work of some comparatively modern painter of the same country, – such as Andrea del Sarto; – and so he progresses. Then the old masters themselves were very liberal in the aids which they gave to memory by repeating their own work, – as, indeed, are some of their modern followers, who love to produce the same faces year after year upon their canvas, – I will not say usque ad nauseam, for how can we look on a pretty face too often? The old masters delighted to paint their own wives or their own mistresses, – the women, in short, whom they loved best and were most within their reach, guided perhaps by some idea of economy in saving the cost of a model; and this peculiarity on their part is a great assistance to art tourists. He or she must be a very young art tourist who does not know the Murillo face, or the two Rubens faces, or the special Raphael face, or the Leonardo da Vinci face, or the Titian head and neck, or the Parmigianino bunch of hair, or the Correggio forehead and fingers. All this is a great assistance, and gives hope to an art tourist in a field of inquiry so wide that there could hardly be any hope without such aid. And then these good-natured artists had peculiar tricks with them, which give further most valuable help to the art tourist in his work. Jacobo Bassano paints people ever cringing towards the ground, and consequently a Jacobo Bassano can be read by a young art tourist in an instant. Claude Lorraine delighted to insert a man carrying a box. That vilest of painters, Guercino, rejoices in turbans. Schalken painted even scenes by candle-light, so that he was called Della Notte. Jan Steen usually greets us with a portrait of himself in a state of drunkenness. Adrian van Ostade seldom omits a conical-shaped hat, or Teniers a red cap and a peculiar figure, for which the art tourist always looks immediately when he thinks of discovering this artist. All these little tricks of the artist, and many more of the same kind, the art tourist soon learns, much to his own comfort.

And then he progresses to a kind of knowledge which comes somewhat nearer to art criticism, but which does not yet amount to the exercise of any judgment on his own part. He learns to perceive the peculiar manner of certain artists who painted peculiarly; and though by the knowledge he so attains he may be led into error, – as when he takes a Lancret for a Watteau, – still the error is never disgracefully erroneous. He knows at once the girl by Greuze, with her naked shoulder and her head on one side; he knows at once the old woman by Denner, the little wrinkles on whose face, as he looks at them through his magnifying glass, seem to be so very soft. The unnatural sunshine of Claude he knows, and the natural sunshine of Cuyp. The blotches of Rembrandt and the smoothness of Carlo Dolci are to him as A, B, C. The romantic rocks and trees of Salvator Rosa do not certainly represent nature, – to which they bear no resemblance, – but to him they represent Salvator Rosa very adequately. The pietistic purity of Fra Angelico strikes him forcibly, and the stiff grace of Perugino; though, when he advances as far as this, he is somewhat prone to make mistakes. And he learns to note the strong rough work of the brush of Paul Veronese, and the beautiful blue hills of Titian's backgrounds. He distinguishes between the graceful dignity of a Venetian nobleman and the manly bearing of a Florentine citizen; and he recognizes the spears of Paolo Uccello, who painted battles; and the beards of Taddeo Gaddi, who painted saints; and the long-visaged virgins with fair hair, by Sandro Botticelli. And he will gradually come to perceive how those long-visaged, fair-haired virgins grew out of the first attempts at female dignity by Cimabue, and how they progressed into the unnatural grace of Raphael, and then descended into the meretricious inanities of which Raphael's power and Raphael's falseness were the forerunners.

And so the art tourist goes on till he really knows something about painting, – even whether he have a taste or no, – and becomes proud of himself and his subject. That second object of which I have spoken, and which has reference to the life of the painter, he of course acquires from books. And it may be remarked that the popularity of this kind of knowledge has become so strong that much of the information is given in the ordinary guide-books. We do not much care to know who taught Christopher Wren to be an architect, or whence Mozart learned the art of music, or even how Canova became a sculptor. But it is essential to the art tourist, to the youngest tyro in art touring, that he should know that Titian was the scholar of Bellini, and Raphael of Perugino, and Vandyke of Rubens. The little intricacies of the schooling, – how this man migrated from one school to another, and how the great pernicious schools of art at last formed themselves, destroying individual energy, – these come afterwards. But to the diligent art tourist they do come. And it is delightful to hear the contests on the subject of art tourists who have formed themselves, one on Kugler and another on Waagen; who have read the old work of Vasari, or have filled themselves with a widely-extended mass of art information from the late excellent book by Mr. Wornum.

The upshot of all this has been the creation of a distinct and new subject of investigation and study. Men and women get up painting as other men and women get up botany, or entomology, or conchology, and a very good subject painting is for the purpose. It is innocent, pretty, and cheap; – for I take the fact of the tour to be given as a matter of course. It leads its pursuers to nothing disagreeable, and is as open to women as to men. And it leads to very little boring of other people who are not tourists, which, perhaps, is its greatest advantage; for though the art tourist will sometimes talk to you of pictures, what is that to the persecution which you are called on to endure in inspecting cupboards full of pickled snakes or legions of drawers full of empty egg-shells? The work of an art tourist must at least be more attractive than the unalluring task of collecting postage-stamps and monograms. And, above all, let it be remembered that if it so chance that the art tourist have an eye in his head, he may at last become a lover of art.

The work of the art tourist begins about the middle of September, is carried on hotly for that and the next three months, and then completes its season at Rome in Easter. It flourishes, however, only in autumn, as the normal art tourist is one who is either away from his business for his holiday, or whose period of travelling is dependent on some such person. The work is begun at the Louvre, for the disciple in this school of learning will never condescend to use our own National Gallery, though for the purposes of such learning our own is perhaps the best gallery in the world. He begins in the Louvre; and, indeed, in the tribune of that gallery, under the influence of the great picture by Paul Veronese, which is probably the most marvellous piece of painting in the world, the resolution to get up painting is often taken by the young scholar. Then the galleries of Italy are seen – Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and perhaps Naples; Antwerp and Bruges probably come next; and then Dresden, Munich, and Vienna. By this time the art tourist is no longer a tyro, but, stored with much knowledge, burns for the acquisition of more. He pines after Madrid and Seville, and steals a day or two from some year's holiday for Amsterdam and the Hague. He works hard and conscientiously at his galleries, as though he could turn aside in idleness from no wall, on which pictures are hung, without dishonesty.

And then how the subject swells before him when he takes to fresco-painting, and begins to despise easel pictures! He penetrates to Assisi, and declares the Campo Santo at Pisa to be the centre of the world of Art! He expatiates to you with vigour on the chapel in the Carmine, and turns from you in disgust when he finds that you don't know what that chapel is, or where that chapel may be.

There is an old saying, which the world still holds to be very true, but which is, nevertheless, I think, very false: "Whatever you do, do well." Now there are many things which are worth doing which cannot be done well without the devotion of a lifetime, and which certainly are not worth such devotion as that. Billiards is a pretty game, but to play billiards well is a dangerous thing. And chess is a beautiful game; but they who play chess really well can rarely do much else. Art tourists are in this danger, that it is quite possible they may teach themselves to think that they should do their art touring so well as to make that the one pleasurable pursuit of their lives. After all, it is but a collecting of dead leaves, unless the real aptitude and taste be there.