THOUGHTS ON-ART.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7257, 13 March 1889, Page 6

THOUGHTS ON-ART.

Br Sib John Millais, Bart., R,A. "All la for the beet In the beat of all possible arts," Is the substance of the "Thoughts 'on Art"-which Sir John Miilais contributes to a recent number of the Magazine of Art. "lam emphatically of opinion," he says, " that the beat a ft of modern times is as good as any of its kind that has (tone before, and furthermore, that the best art of England can hold its own against the world. (But every one will admit that the beat living artist of England ia Sir John Millais. Ergo, he Iβ the greatest artist that ever lived.) But the time for admitting it is not yet; for it is impossible at present to make allowances for "the charm of mutilation or the fascination of decay." " Time and varnish," continues Sir John Millais, "are two of the greatest of old masters, and their merits and virtues,are too often attributed by critics—l do not of course allude to the professional art-critica—to the painters of the pictures they have coned and mellowed. The great artiets all painted in bright colours, such as it is the fashion now-a-days for men to decry as crude and vulgar, never ftuepect ing that what they applaud in those works is merely the result of what they condemn in their contemporaries. Take a case In point—the •Baochus and Ariadne , in the National Gallery, with its splendid red robe and its rich brown grass. You may rest assured that the painter of that brigkt red robe never painted the grass brown. Hβ naw. the colour aH it was, and painted It aa it Was—distinctly green; only it ha* faded with time to it*' present beautiful mellow colour. Yet many men, nowadays! will not have a picture with green in I* there are even buyers who when giving a cojnnoi&eiqn to an artist will stipulate that the canvas eh&ll contain of it. But God Almighty has gl^ n as green, and you may depend. it it's a fine colour. " There fefc> fdad has been for a century or • o, thj» growing cry for • subdued colour;' and what is the result? The case of Sir Joshua Reynolds is a sufficiently notorious example. It wan his custom—well knowing what he did—to paint in clear and trueeoloura. We have it from Walpole, after a visit to Reynold's studio, that he found the Waldegrave picture, which now commands ho much admiration for its mellowness of tone, 'dreadfully white and pinky.. . Bat Sir George Beaumont, the connoisseurs, and patrons, were for ever urging him to give them in his pictures what time alone can effect: 'tone—like the old masters.* And at length, to satisfy their reiterated demands, he made use of the pigment that would most readily give the rich soft brown they wanted— asphajtum. And now every picture that contains that villainous colour Iβ in every stage of decomposition and ruin—and the, chief responsibility for that lies heavily on hi* critic*." "-_