The Girl from Malta by Fergus Hume — Read

"The Society for the Improvement of Art" was one of the favourite fads of the day, and will no doubt hold its own till some newer "fad" comes to the front, and then it will fall to pieces. It was organized by three or four enthusiasts, who said there was a great deal of latent artistic talent in England which needed development, and they proposed to let everybody, who thought he or she could draw, have an exhibition once a year. Every picture sent in was hung on the walls of their saloon, and some queer things figured there. Unappreciated geniuses with the talents, as they thought, of Michael Angelo, sent in hideous productions, which were enough to send a painter of any knowledge whatever crazy, such was the crudity of the drawing.

Some of the pictures were done in a firm, precise manner, as if they were the productions of very young people, and finished by the Governess; others had a dashing, sketchy appearance, as if they had been done in half an-hour, a not unlikely thing; but here and there were some really pretty sketches that were admired. Yet the whole effect of these walls, disfigured in such a manner, was depressing in the extreme. The fact was, the Society for the Improvement of Art was a collection of amiable idiots, who made their mad project an excuse for having evenings when everybody who was anybody went.