Art in England | Page 2

regarded art, not merely as an aid to the splendour of the throne, but for
its own sake. As Walpole says, 'Queen Elizabeth was avaricious with
pomp, James the First lavish with meanness.' To neither had the
position of the painter been a matter of the slightest concern. But from
Charles the First dates truly the dawn of a love of art in England, the
proper valuing of the artist-mind, and the first introduction into the
country of the greatest works of the continental masters.
At the present day a complaint is constantly arising, that artists are
found to be deficient in general education, while what may be called for
distinction's sake the educated classes are singularly wanting in artistic
knowledge. The Universities do not teach art;[1] the Art-schools do not
teach anything else. As a result, speaking generally, the painters are
without mental culture, the patrons are without art-acquirements. (This
supposes the patrons to be of the upper classes; but of course at the
present time a large share of art-patronage comes from the rich middle
or manufacturing classes, whose uninformed tastes are even less likely
to tend to the due appraisement and elevation of art.) Mr. Ruskin,
giving evidence before the commissioners inquiring into the position of
the Royal Academy (1863), says, 'The want of education on the part of
the upper classes in art, has been very much at the bottom of the abuses
which have crept into all systems of education connected with it. If the
upper classes could only be interested in it by being led into it when

young, a great improvement might be looked for;' and the witness goes
on to urge the expediency of appointing professors of art at the
Universities. Upon the question of infusing a lay-element into the
Royal Academy by the addition of non-professional academicians, Mr.
Ruskin takes occasion to observe:--'I think if you educate our upper
classes to take more interest in art, which implies of course to know
something about it, they might be most efficient members of the
Academy; but if you leave them, as you leave them now, to the
education which they get at Oxford and Cambridge, and give them the
sort of scorn which all the teaching there tends to give of art and artists,
the less they have to do with an Academy of Art the better.'
[1] The Slade Professorship, recently instituted, is a step towards
mending this matter, however.
It is somewhat curious after this to consider an attempt made by King
Charles the First, in the eleventh year of his reign, to supply these
admitted deficiencies of University instruction: to found an Academy
in which general and fine-art education should be combined.
A committee, consisting of the Duke of Buckingham and others, had
been appointed in the House of Lords for taking into consideration the
state of the public schools, and their method of instruction. What
progress was made by this committee is not known. One result of its
labours, however, was probably the establishment of the Musæum
Minervæ, under letters-patent from the king, at a house which Sir
Francis Kynaston had purchased, in Covent Garden, and furnished as
an Academy. This was appropriated for ever as a college for the
education of nobles and gentlemen, to be governed by a regent and
professors, chosen by 'balloting-box,' who were made a body corporate,
permitted to use a common seal, and to possess goods and lands in
mortmain. Kynaston, who styled himself Corporis Armiger, and who
had printed in 1635 a translation into Latin verse of Chaucer's Troilus
and Cressida, was nominated the first regent of the Academy, and
published in 1636 its constitution and rules, addressed 'to the noble and
generous well-wishers to vertuous actions and learning.' The
Academy--'justified and approved by the wisdom of the King's most

sacred Majesty and many of the lords of his Majesty's most honourable
privy council,'--its constitution and discipline being ratified under the
hands and seals of the Right Honourable the Lord Keeper of the Great
Seal of England and the two Lord Chief Justices--professed to be
founded 'according to the laudable customs of other nations,' and for
'the bringing of virtue into action and the theory of liberal arts into
more frequent practice.' Its aims were directed to the end that England
might be as well furnished for the virtuous education and discipline of
her own natives as any other nation of Europe; it being 'sufficiently
known that the subjects of his Majesty's dominions have naturally as
noble minds and as able bodies as any nation of the earth, and therefore
deserve all accommodation for the advancing of them, either in
speculation or action.' It was considered that a peculiar institution was
required for teaching those 'most useful accomplishments of a
gentleman'--the sciences of