In the eighteenth century, and the centuries that preceded it, artists were visited by their patrons, who bought what the artist had to sell, and commissioned him to paint what he was pleased to paint. But in our time the artist is visited by a showily-dressed man, who comes into the studio whistling, his hat on the back of his head. This is the West-End dealer: he throws himself into an arm-chair, and if there is nothing on the easels that appeals to the uneducated eye, the dealer lectures the artist on his folly in not considering the exigencies of public taste. On public taste--that is to say, on the uneducated eye--the dealer is a very fine authority. His father was a dealer before him, and the son was brought up on prices, he lisped in prices, and was taught to reverence prices. He cannot see the pictures for prices, and he lies back, looking round distractedly, not listening to the timid, struggling artist who is foolishly venturing an explanation. Perhaps the public might come to his style of painting if he were to persevere. The dealer stares at the ceiling, and his lips recall his last evening at the music-hall. If the public don't like it--why, they don't like it, and the sooner the artist comes round the better. That is what he has to say on the subject, and, if sneers and sarcasm succeed in bringing the artist round to popular painting, the dealer buys; and when he begins to feel sure that the uneducated eye really hungers for the new man, he speaks about getting up a boom in the newspapers.
The Press is in truth the great dupe; the unpaid jackal that goes into the highways and byways for the dealer! The stockbroker gets the Bouguereau, the Herkomer, the Alfred East, and the Dagnan-Bouveret that his soul sighs for; but the Press gets nothing except unreadable copy, and yet season after season the Press falls into the snare. It seems only necessary for a dealer to order an artist to frame the contents of his sketch-book, and to design an invitation card--"Scenes on the Coast of Denmark", sketches made by Mr. So-and-so during the months of June, July, and August--to secure half a column of a goodly number of London and provincial papers--to put it plainly, an advertisement that Reckitts or Pears or Beecham could not get for hundreds of pounds. One side of the invitation card is filled up with a specimen design, usually such a futile little thing as we might expect to find in a young lady's sketch-book: "Copenhagen at Low Tide", "Copenhagen at High Tide", "View of the Cathedral from the Mouth of the River", "The Hills of----as seen from off the Coast". And this topography every art critic will chronicle, and his chronicling will be printed free of charge amongst the leading columns of the paper. Nor is this the worst case. The request to notice a collection of paintings and drawings made by the late Mr. So-and-so seems even more flagrant, for then there is no question of benefiting a young artist who stands in need of encouragement or recognition; the show is simply a dealer's exhibition of his ware. True, that the ware may be so rare and excellent that it becomes a matter of public interest; if so, the critic is bound to notice the show. But the ordinary show--a collection of works by a tenth-rate French artist--why should the Press advertise such wares gratis? The public goes to theatres and to flower-shows and to race-courses, but it does not go to these dealers' shows--the dealer's friends and acquaintances go on private view day, and for the rest of the season the shop is quieter than the tobacconist's next door.
For the last month every paper I took up contained glowing accounts of Messrs. Tooth & MacLean's galleries (picture dealers do not keep shops--they keep galleries), glowing accounts of a large and extensive assortment of Dagnan-Bouveret, Bouguereau, Rosa Bonheur: very nice things in their way, just such things as I would take Alderman Samuelson to see.
These notices, taken out in the form of legitimate advertisement, would run into hundreds of pounds; and I am quite at a loss to understand why the Press abandons so large a part of its revenue. For if the Press did not notice these exhibitions, the dealers would be forced into the advertising columns, and when a little notice was published of the ware, it would be done as a little return--as a little encouragement for advertising, on the same principle as ladies' papers publish visits to dressmakers. The present system of noticing Messrs Tooth's and not noticing Messrs. Pears' is to me wholly illogical; and, to use the word which makes every British heart beat quicker--unbusinesslike. But with business I have nothing to do--my concern is with art; and if the noticing of dealers' shows were not inimical to art, I should not have a word to say against the practice. Messrs. Tooth & MacLean trade in Salon and Academy pictures, so the notices the Press prints are the equivalent of a subvention granted by the Press for the protection of this form of art. If I were a statistician, it would interest me to turn over the files of the newspapers for the last fifty years and calculate how much Messrs. Agnew have had out of the Press in the shape of free advertisement. And when we think what sort of art this vast sum of money went to support, we cease to wonder at the decline of public taste.
My quarrel is no more with Messrs. Agnew than it is with Messrs. Tooth & MacLean; my quarrel--I should say, my reprimand--is addressed to the Press--to the Press that foolishly, unwittingly, not knowing what it was doing, threw such power into the hands of the dealers that our exhibitions are now little more than the tributaries of the Bond Street shop? This statement will shock many; but let them think, and they will see it could not be otherwise. Messrs. Agnew have thousands and thousands of pounds invested in the Academy--that is to say, in the works of Academicians. When they buy the work of any one outside of the Academy, they talk very naturally of their new man to their friends the Academicians, and the Academicians are anxious to please their best customer. It was in some such way that Mr. Burne-Jones's election was decided. For Mr. Burne-Jones was held in no Academic esteem. His early pictures had been refused at Burlington House, and he resolved never to send there again. For many years he remained firm in his determination. In the meantime the public showed unmistakable signs of accepting Mr. Jones, whereupon Messrs. Agnew also accepted Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones was popular; he was better than popular, he stood on the verge of popularity; but there was nothing like making things safe--Jones's election to the Academy would do that. Jones's scruples would have to be overcome; he must exhibit once in the Academy. The Academicians would be satisfied with that. Mr. Jones did exhibit in the Academy; he was elected on the strength of this one exhibit. He has never exhibited since. These are the facts: confute them who may, explain them who can.
It is true that the dealer cannot be got rid of--he is a vice inherent in our civilisation; but if the Press withdrew its subvention, his monopoly would be curtailed, and art would be recruited by new talent, at present submerged. Art would gradually withdraw from the bluster and boom of an arrogant commercialism, and would attain her olden dignity--that of a quiet handicraft. And in this great reformation only two classes would suffer--the art critics and the dealers. The newspaper proprietors would profit largely, and the readers of newspapers would profit still more largely, for they would no longer be bored by the publication of dealers' catalogues expanded with insignificant comment.
[The end]
George Moore's essay: Picture Dealers