It was then on exhibition in Bond Street. I
asked a friend to buy it. "You will not like the picture now," I said;
"but if you have any latent aesthetic feeling in you it will bring it
out, and you will like it in six months' time." My friend would not
buy the picture, and the reason he gave was that he did not like it.
It did not seem to occur to him that his taste might advance, and that
the picture he was ignorant enough to like to-day he might be wise
enough to loathe six years hence.
An early customer of Sir John Millais said, "Millais, I'll give you
five hundred pounds to paint me a picture, and you shall paint me the
picture you are minded to paint." Sir John painted him one of the most
beautiful pictures of modern times, "St. Agnes' Eve". But the wisdom
of the purchaser was only temporary. When the picture came home he did
not like it, his wife did not like it; there was no colour in it; it
was all blue and green. Briefly, it was not a pleasant picture to live
with; and after trying the experiment for a few months this excellent
gentleman decided to exchange the picture for a picture by--by
whom?--by Mr. Sidney Cooper. I wonder what he thinks of himself
to-day. And his fate is the fate of the aldermen who buy pictures
because they like them.
The administration of art, as it was pointed out in the _Manchester
Guardian_, is one of extreme difficulty, and it is not easy to find a
competent director; but it seems to me to be easy to name many men who
would do better in art-management than a corporation, and
embarrassingly difficult to name one who would do worse.
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