Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

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are tliingr- .vhicli poets can Co ana painters Ccmiot. The poet
;ju:~ ,o&ts a picture to the- reader's mind in a Te>.; words, and
can jju^ est sounds. Those ./ho cannot rioe to tlie poet's
communications must make do with the clunGior art of the
painter:
Imagination not being a prevailing possession
aniongct men and women, a pictorial scene, from
nature naturally appeals nuch more quickly
and directly to many people than even ulu. most
exquisite poeti?r,l description.
(XIII (1882) 176-180; p,177)
This is hard on the painters, but there was no lack of
sympathetic literary men who knew ways in which their
pictorial colleagues might reach a wider public*writing in
Fraser*s Magazine for June, 1880, J.C.Horsfall suggested that
the poverty of the common stock of knowledge amongst British
people was hindering painters, who were forced to the expedient
of attaching long literary quotations to the frfunes of their
workc, and inserting copious explanations in exhibition
catalogues, io:/.3, it seemed, giving up the struggle, had taken
refuge in tue extremes of banality and pedantry, insulting
or confounding the intelligence of their public. Curiously,
Horsfall stumbles upon the theories of the availt- r;arc!.e;
So difficult is it to find fit subjects t'r,t,
in despair, the theory lias boon adopted that
there need not be - that, indeed, there ought
not to be, any connection between a picture
and a memorable thought and fec-lingj juct as,
if few fit subjects for poetry could bo found,
the theory would soon be established th=».t ;rcat
verue consists in fine rhytii;.! and rhyne, anc that
moaning is an impertinent superfluity.
He evidently couates "liter; ry" quality with "memorable
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thought and feeling" «
This yearning for the i.icnora.jlc leuds Horsx", 11 to prop, s^
the didacticism of rdd-century p inters as en ideal, and his
concept of art as an ennobling and civilising force seenc
indebted to Ruskin and Arnold, 'is solution for the problem
of "literary" painting is to c;ive books to the public, rat'.ier
than take them from artists: the Renaissance artists could
assunc a stock of Catholic legend and knowledge in their
E'.uciience, but now pictori 1 art must cleave to "the only r.ll:;
she can have today, noble literrture". Conservatisn of a