ART.

THE BRITISH GALLERY IN NEW YORK.

To speak of English Art was, ten years ago, to speak of something formless, chaotic, indeed, so far as any order or organization of principles was concerned,—­a mass of individual results, felt out, often, under the most glorious artistic inspiration, but much oftener the expression of merely ignorant whim, or still more empty academic knowledge,—­a waste of uncultivated, unpruned brushwood, with here and there a solitary tree towering into unapproachable and inexplicable symmetry and beauty.  Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Turner are great names in Art-history; but to deduce their development from the English culture of Art, one must use the same processes as in proving Cromwell to have been called up by the loyalty of Englishmen.  They towered the higher from contempt for the abasement around them.  If there was greatness in measure in English Art, it was greatness subjected to tradition and conventionalism.  The three artists we have just named were the only great freemen, in the realm of Art England had known down to the close of the first half of the nineteenth century; and of these, Turner alone has left his impress on the Art succeeding his.

With the commencement of the present half-century there began a systematic movement in revolt from the degradation of Art in England, which, unfortunately, so far as significance was concerned, assumed the name of Pre-Raphaelitism.  It extended itself rapidly, absorbing most of the young painters of any force or earnestness, and attracting some who already held high places in public esteem.  Being something new, it was sure of its full measure of derision while it was considered unimportant, and of bitter and violent antagonism when it became evident that it was strong enough to make its way.  This hostility, beaten down for the moment by the rhetoric of Ruskin and the inherent earnestness of the new Art, is, however, as sure to prevail again as the English character is at once conservative of old forms, reverential of authorities, and subject to enthusiasms for new things, whose very extravagance tends to reaction.  If Pre-Raphaelitism now holds its own in England, it is simply because it is neither thoroughly understood nor completely defined.  It is an absolutely revolutionary movement, and must, therefore, be rejected by the English mind when seen as such,—­and this all the more certainly and speedily because Ruskin with his imaginative enthusiasm has raised it to a higher position than it really deserves at present.  That cause is unfortunate which retains as its advocate one whose rhetoric persuades all, while his logic convinces none; and the too readily believing converts of his enthusiasm and splendid diction, their sympathetic fire abated, revert with an implacable bitterness to their former traditions.  With all our respect for Ruskin, we think that he has asserted many things, but proved next to nothing.  He has utterly misunderstood and misstated Pre-Raphaelitism, which will thus be one day the weaker for his support.