The daring innovators started with the new notion of buying a picture which they themselves could admire and appreciate, and for the genuineness of which the artist was still living to vouch. These rough and ready customers were not to be led by rules or frightened by precedents; they were not to be easily imposed upon, for the article they wanted was not to be easily counterfeited. Sturdily holding to their own opinions, they thought incessant repetitions of Saints, Martyrs, and Holy Families, monotonous and uninteresting--and said so. They thought little pictures of ugly Dutch women scouring pots, and drunken Dutchmen playing cards, dirty and dear at the price--and said so.
They saw that trees were green in nature, and brown in the Old Masters, and they thought the latter color not an improvement on the former--and said so. They wanted interesting subjects;variety, resemblance to nature; genuineness of the article, and fresh paint; they had no ancestors whose feelings, as founders of galleries, it was necessary to consult; no critical gentlemen and writers of valuable works to snub them when they were in spirits;nothing to lead them by the nose but their own shrewdness, their own interests, and their own tastes--so they turned their backs valiantly on the Old Masters, and marched off in a body to the living men.
From that time good modern pictures have risen in the scale. Even as articles of commerce and safe investments for money, they have now (as some disinterested collectors who dine at certain annual dinners I know of, can testify) distanced the old pictures in the race. The modern painters who have survived the brunt of the battle, have lived to see pictures for which they once asked hundreds, selling for thousands, and the young generation making incomes by the brush in one year, which it would have cost the old heroes of the easel ten to accumulate. The posterity of Mr.
Pickup still do a tolerable stroke of business (making bright modern masters for the market which is glutted with the dingy old material), and will, probably, continue to thrive and multiply in the future: the one venerable institution of this world which we can safely count upon as likely to last, being the institution of human folly. Nevertheless, if a wise man of the reformed taste wants a modern picture, there are places for him to go to now where he may be sure of getting it genuine; where, if the artist is not alive to vouch for his work, the facts at any rate have not had time to die which vouch for the dealer who sells it. In my time matters were rather different. The painters _we_ throve by had died long enough ago for pedigrees to get confused, and identities disputable; and if I had been desirous of really purchasing a genuine Old Master for myself--speaking as a practical man--I don't know where I should have gone to ask for one, or whose judgment I could have safely relied on to guard me from being cheated, before I bought it.
We are stopping a long time in the picture-gallery, you will say.
I am very sorry--but we must stay a little longer, for the sake of a living picture, the gem of the collection.
I was still admiring Mr. Pickup's Old Masters, when a dirty little boy opened the door of the gallery, and introduced a young lady.
My heart--fancy my having a heart!--gave one great bound in me. Irecognized the charming person whom I had followed in the street.
Her veil was not down this time. All the beauty of her large, soft, melancholy, brown eyes beamed on me. Her delicate complexion became suddenly suffused with a lovely rosy flush. Her glorious black hair--no! I will make an effort, I will suppress my ecstasies. Let me only say that she evidently recognized me.
Will you believe it?--I felt myself coloring as I bowed to her. Inever blushed before in my life. What a very curious sensation it is!
The horrid boy claimed her attention with a grin.
"Master's engaged," he said. "Please to wait here.""I don't wish to disturb Mr. Pickup," she answered.
What a voice! No! I am drifting back into ecstasies: her voice was worthy of her--I say no more.