THE EXHIBITION OF THE FUTURE.

Western Star, Issue 1116, 15 January 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE EXHIBITION OF THE FUTURE.

This is not the place, nor is it yet the - time, perhaps, to remark that whether Mr Sydney Cooper exhibits eight canvases or none, the Eoyal Academy exhibition, as at present arranged, would still leave much to be desired. On the average mind the effects of such an enormous jumble of styles and schools as is achieved by the Hanging Committee year by year is pecessarily bewildering. To the public, its educational value is nil —is zero or even a frightful minus quantity ; while to the painter, ill-hung or ill-matched, or hoth at once, its one use is that it gives him a place in the catalogue, and therewithal a chance of appealing with success to the ordinary or, extraordinary dealer. What is wanted, no doubt, is a departure such as is presently to be taken by the Council of the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool, who have set apart a special room for the use of the New English which can hardly fail to be aprincipal feature of their coming exhibition. At the Eoyal [Academy, crippled by convention, blinded by a sense of self-importance, worm-eaten with traditions of the worst and most respectable sort, such an innovation is just now manifestly impossible. It is significant, however, [that the fashion should have begun ; and it is odds that Having once begun it will gain ground steadily, until it forces the very doors of Burlington House. It is from the study of the work of a knot of men united in the pursuit of a common aim that one gets to know something of art ; not from that of a couple of thousand numbers whose only points of resemblance are that they are all done in paint upon canvas, and that they all profess to be pictures. The artistic value of exhibitions of any sort has yet to be proved; but it seems'not doubtful that the exhibitions of the future will be exhibitions of coteries and cliques. —Erom The Magazine of Art.