THE ARTISTIC LIFE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 71, 25 March 1907, Page 3

THE ARTISTIC LIFE.

YOUTHFUL STUDENTS

In a lecture delivered recently at the Royal Academy, in London, to an audience chiefly composed of youthful students, Professor Yon Herkomer discussed the human side of the artist with a good-humoured and whimsical satire that cloaked many a thrust of searching criticism. Tho lecturer said that while ballot-girls, "Gibson" girls, " Sandow" girls, and other girls achieved pictorial fame, the public for the most part was content to judge the artist-by his work alone. In England, Germany, and America, artists no longer adopted extraordinary decorative schemes in the matter of dress. The master was usually not to bs distinguished from the stockbrokerand the business man, and the successful portrait painter was almost invariably a well-groomed, perfectlypolished society man. Young students, however, frequently 'affected a style," and in France, the art student still wore the high black cravat and the long hair that fell like a waterfall from the middle parting. * or this little love of a picturesque appearance the lecturer craved the tender indulgence of the more conventional public. "Leave him his pride," he said. '•' He has a right to it. For to him is given a wealth denied to all others in a similar degree—the power of seeing the beauties of nature. It is the greatest gift God has given to man; he cannot lose it; he cannot give it away; he cannot squander it. With every touch of his brush he writes history—leave him his pride'" The lecturer warned yound artists of the dangers of the first success. With the public plaudits in his ears, it was easily lost sight of the great ideal. The problem of the artists life- was to harmonise the opinion of his brother painters with the opinion of the public. He coveted the former, but his wife and family had to be fed by the latter. | Many an artist had found the necessity to earn his living a curse to him. i The greatest and most deadly enemy the painter had to meet was fashion. It was one of the public gods, the most powerful, masterful, and destructive of them all. While the painter had youth he might avoid it, but the question always remained, "How long?" In his experience as a teacher he had not found amnog his students such zeal, 1 industry, and earnestness as existed jin earlier days.