WHAT ART MAY COME TO.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3141, 13 March 1879, Page 1

WHAT ART MAY COME TO.

Perhaps an intermediate ooarie will be the one actually taken in the future derelopement of art. A more exacting and critical eye in coming generation! may demand a stricter adherence to the color* ing of nature in landscape and portrait, while it may retain somewhat of the older brilliancy and purely ideal pieces. There is little likelihood of any ascetic rejection of color on its own account. But when the rising aesthetic school hare reformed our houses in accordance with their own taste, it may perhaps happen that the public will find color enough in its decorative appliances, and only demand the intellectual pleasure of accurate imitation in its pictorial art. There will perhaps be sensuous stimulation sufficient for every eye in the encaustic tiles, the wooden parquets, the oaken wainscoting, the rich carpets, the deeply-tinted dados, the' light «nd brilliant wallpapers, the delicate table* covers, the chintzes, curtains, cushions, banner-screens, and antimacassars; and it may become a pleasant relief to rest the vision and fix the attention upon a landscape or a figure painting in gentle and natural colors. Pictures might then cease to do double duty as art-products and decorative furniture. Landscape might become greyer and more truthful; historical paintings might grow less theatrical and more realistic; while general figure subjects might be chosen with less reference to costume and coloring than is at present the case. However this may be, it is important to remember that art in every stage is exactly adapted to its public and its professors. The stage which we have actually reached is at each moment the one which we are best able to appreciate. In art, whatever is, is right; because to 5 be right is merely to please one's public. I trust, therefore, that no reader will misunderstand my meaning, and suppose that I would blame artists for the decorative color* ing which I cannot help seeing, in their work. I merely point out that it is there, and what is there. Further than this no .philosophic critic can go. To say that it is right or wrong is merely to say that the critic himself admires or dislikes it; a purely personal point which can very seldom be of very general into* rest to the outside world. Given an object and its representation, any man can decide.upon the positive question whether or not and how much decorative deviation other people ought to admire. It is the business of the critic to point out beauties or failures as he conceives them; it is the province of the psycholo* gical sesthetician to account for the average likes and dislikes of others as he findi them.—Cornhill Magazine.