“Oh, he’s all right for teaching; I haven’t a word against him. He’s one of the few men in England who are supposed to know their trade. But he’s too stilted and classical; there’s no sentiment in him; he don’t touch the heart of the buying public. It’s all science and draughtsmanship, and he won’t do anything to meet the market half way.”
“It’s spunky of him to stick to his convictions, anyhow,” said Matt, in low tones, provoked by his uncle’s disparagement into a recrudescent enthusiasm for Tarmigan, who had recently been weighing upon him like a nightmare.
“Bah! and how does he know his convictions are right? The public’s the best judge of art.”
“Oh!” said Matt, deprecatingly. “Should you really think that’s so?”
“Of course I think so. Would the public have _me_? No. And the public was right.” He looked at Matt half fiercely, as if defying him to deny it. Madame was smiling and shaking her head. “The public’s always right,” he went on, emphatically. “It’s the critics that throw the market into perpetual confusion. Such a babel of voices, all laying down what is right and what is wrong, what is art and what is not art, that it’s enough to drive a dealer crazy. For my part, I steer by the Academy; that’s my polestar, and I’m rarely out, for that’s what the public take their reckoning by. And it’s an R.A. that my boy is going to be, please God, for theories may come and theories may go, but the Academy goes on forever.”
“I suppose he’s awfully advanced,” said Matt, wistfully.
“Years ago he took the medal for the best copy of an Old Master at the Royal Academy Schools, where he is now just finishing his course,” explained his uncle. “And you know you can’t even begin the course without being clever.”
“No, I know,” said Matt, with a sinking of heart, for he had by this time studied the prospectus of the national art-schools and been dismayed, not so much by the anatomical information and technical expertness demanded at the entrance competition as by the slow-dragging septennial course, the drudgery of still-life and perspective and the antique, and all the tedious grind of convention. “I thought of trying to get in myself, but I’m afraid I shall have to give up the idea.”