The Eighteen Nineties by Holbrook Jackson — Read

In an earlier chapter I have pointed out that the art movements of the period took in the main two more or less diverse paths, paths which may be differentiated as the scientific and the traditional. The first aimed at reality of statement based upon close observation of life, the second depended upon the recapture of past tendencies in art and their definite association with the life of the day. The former was an exotic growth, having its antecedents in the work of the French Impressionists in painting, and the Realists and Symbolists in literature. The second was native, going back to the Middle Ages when art was definitely allied with utility. The former had for its outcome the development of the Fine Arts, and the latter that of what are known as the Applied Arts. In the preceding decade the Applied Art movement had the misfortune of becoming implicated in the esthetic propaganda of Oscar Wilde, and although its underlying principles were as sound then as they are now, it suffered in repute when accumulated ridicule finally drove out the esthetes. The movement sprang directly from the teaching of John Ruskin and it received considerable impetus from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It is doubtful, however, whether the enthusiasm of a group of artists and enthusiasts for good craftsmanship would have developed into anything approaching the proportions of a national movement had it not been for the practical genius of William Morris. He gave a fresh turn to the teaching of Ruskin, demonstrating in things real what was at the time little more than a pious opinion in peril of being lost in the rhetoric of an impressive prose.

For years a battle had been fought between the Impressionists and the Traditionalists, and the long series of wordy engagements had culminated in the Law Courts when Whistler brought his famous action against Ruskin. The result was a Pyrrhic victory for Whistler. This did little more than throw the contending parties into more definitely hostile camps without giving any hope of ultimate peace. William Morris, naturally on the side of Ruskin, did not make Ruskin's mistake of under-estimating or decrying the realistic movement. Being a craftsman himself, and knowing good craftsmanship when he saw it, he realised that the Impressionists were sincere artists, equally with himself; though, from his point of view, wrong-headed; and, after granting so much, he was content with stating his differences. "Now it seems to me," he said, in the preface to _Arts and Crafts Essays_ (1893), "that this impulse in men of certain minds and moods towards certain forms of art, this genuine eclecticism, is all that we can expect under modern civilisation; that we can expect no _general_ impulse towards the fine arts till civilisation has been transformed into some other condition of life, the details of which we cannot foresee. Let us then make the best of it, and admit that those who practise art must nowadays be conscious of that practice; conscious I mean that they are either adding a certain amount of artistic beauty and interest to a piece of goods which would, if produced in the ordinary way, have no beauty or artistic interest, or that they are producing something which has no other reason for existence than its beauty and artistic interest. But having made the admission let us accept the consequence of it, and understand that it is our business as artists, since we desire to produce works of art, to supply the lack of tradition by diligently cultivating in ourselves the sense of beauty (_pace_ the Impressionists), skill of hand and niceness of observation, without which only a _makeshift_ of art can be got; and also, so far as we can, to call the attention of the public to the fact that there are a few persons who are doing this, and even earning a livelihood by so doing, and that therefore, in spite of the destructive tradition of our immediate past, in spite of the great revolution in the production of wares, which this century only has seen on the road to completion, and which on the face of it, and perhaps essentially, is hostile to art, in spite of all difficulties which the evolution of the later days of society has thrown in the way of that side of human pleasure which is called art, there is still a minority with a good deal of life in it which is not content with what is called utilitarianism, which, being interpreted, means the reckless waste of life in the pursuit of the means of life. " Morris himself endeavoured to put his theories into practice in a variety of ways, and finally by the control of his own workshops at Merton Abbey and the sale of his goods at the historic shop in Oxford Street.