here is a
fairly large, authoritative, and intensely serious public composed of
artists, critics, and competent amateurs. This public knows so well what
it is about that no painter, be he never so grandly independent, can
make himself impervious to its judgments. It is an unofficial areopagus
which imposes its decisions, unintentionally but none the less
effectively, on the rich floating _snobisme_ of Paris and of continental
Europe. Those who go to the _Salon_ for their art or invest in Henners
and Bougereaus are reckoned hopelessly bourgeois even by the cultivated
pressmen. It is a fastidious public, intelligent, learned, and extremely
severe: painting it regards as an end in itself, not as a branch of
journalism or a superior amenity; and no artist can begin to abuse his
talent or play tricks with the currency without getting from this
formidable body the sort of frown that makes even a successful
portrait-painter wince. Indeed, many popular continental
likeness-catchers, some of whom enjoy the highest honours in this
country, having come under its ban, are now ruled out of contemporary
civilization.[21] In England, on the other hand, the artist's public
consists of that fringe of the fashionable world which dabbles in
culture and can afford to pay long prices; from it the press
obsequiously takes the cue; and any honest burgher who may wish to
interest himself in the fine arts goes, I presume, for instruction to
the place from which instruction comes--I mean the ha'penny papers.

Patronage of the arts in England is an expensive pleasure. In France the
prices of the most promising young men range from one hundred to one
thousand francs, and many an amateur with a first-rate collection of
modern work has never paid more than five hundred francs for a picture.
The Englishman who would possess the works of native geniuses must be
able to put down from L50 to L2000. Thus it comes about that a few of
the richer people in the more or less cultivated class form in England
the artist's public. To them he must look for criticism, sympathy,
understanding, and orders; and most of them, unluckily, have no use
either for art or for good painting. What they want is furniture and a
background--pretty things for the boudoir, handsome ones for the hall,
and something jolly for the smoking-room. They want, not art, but
amenity; whether they get it is another matter. What is certain is that
their enthusiasms and disappointments, likes