Viewing page 10 of 37

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

10 

sense, and to a certain extent, the artist is dependant on the individuals who purchase his works is unquestionably true; and in that sense and to that extent, he is bound by the common laws of gratitude. It is only when those obligations are unreasonably or ungraciously pressed, that the artist, like every other man of independent feelings, will deny his obligation, and break from the trammels by which they would bind him. 

The reviewer has merely embodied in a more tangible form the every day opinions with which every artist in the country is more or less conversant. If such notions were extensively to prevail in society, unmet, they would most effectually depress the artist. For by depriving him of his independence, you sink him down from his loftiness of purpose, and put him, not even on a par with the commonest barterer of goods, He is not to think for a moment that he has given to the purchaser of his works an equivalent in talent, or in property, for a sum of money often barely sufficient for his necessities; but, forsooth, because, "Painting and sculpture are not among the necessaries of life," and "the fine Arts are things we can live without," the artist must be put on the footing of a beggar, and having received his pittance in charity, is under an obligation which can never be repaid, but by ever after sacrificing his independence of judgement to that of his patron, as the name goes. The reviewer may talk of "holding high the standard of taste," but let such views be predominant, and art will fall forever with the degradation of the artist. Better is it to bear with the eccentricities and waywardness of genius, than thus to tame it down, on his composing system.

"But," the reviewer proceeds, "if the direction of Academies is by the jealousy of artists confined to their own number, others will soon be weary of their share in establishments, where taxation and representation are so little united."

What taxation? and what representation? we have no taxation of those out of the profession, unless it be the 25 cents from those who visit the exhibition, and surely the reviewer does not