The sketching-clubs up and down the country might form the nucleus of
such a society, provided all professional men were rigorously excluded.
As for the old masters, the better plan would be never even to look at
one of them, and to consign Raffaelle, along with Plato, Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus, Dante, Goethe, and two others, neither of them Englishmen, to
limbo, as the Seven Humbugs of Christendom.
While we are about it, let us leave off talking about "art for art's
sake." Who is art, that it should have a sake? A work of art should be
produced for the pleasure it gives the producer, and the pleasure he
thinks it will give to a few of whom he is fond; but neither money nor
people whom he does not know personally should be thought of. Of course
such a society as I have proposed would not remain incorrupt long.
"Everything that grows, holds in perfection but a little moment." The
members would try to imitate professional men in spite of their rules,
or, if they escaped this and after a while got to paint well, they would
become dogmatic, and a rebellion against their authority would be as
necessary ere long as it was against that of their predecessors: but the
balance on the whole would be to the good.
Professional men should be excluded, if for no other reason yet for this,
that they know too much for the beginner to be _en rapport_ with them.
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