Little that makes
life noble and solemn is reflected in the Art of our day; to amuse a
languid audience seems its highest aim. Seeing this, some of my readers
may ask whether the artists have not been faithful to the law I have
expounded, and chosen to paint the small things they have seen, rather
than the great things they have not seen? The answer is simple. For the
most part the artists have not painted what they have seen, but have
been false and conventional in their pretended realism. And whenever
they have painted truly, they have painted successfully. The
authenticity of their work has given it all the value which in the
nature of things such work could have. Titian's portrait of "The Young
Man with a Glove" is a great work of art, though not of great art. It
is infinitely higher than a portrait of Cromwell, by a painter unable
to see into the great soul of Cromwell, and to make us see it; but it
is infinitely lower than Titian's "Tribute Money," "Peter the Martyr,"
or the "Assumption." Tennyson's "Northern Farmer" is incomparably
greater as a poem than Mr.
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