Notoriety in Art.

Mr. Herkomer, professor of fine arts at Oxford, lectured on "Notoriety in Art" last evening, before a large and appreciative audience in Sever 11. Popularity, the speaker said, comes to work of a commonplace character too often. There is a course of indolence which hangs over work in art. The artist is compelled to choose between two audiences, the public or his fellow artists. The public are the makers of the artist's notoriety. The great drawback upon an artist's work is the "art-loafer" who talks himself and the artist into notoriety. Too easy publicity prevents the artist of to-day from standing out as did the masters of old. We do not know our great men. In art we want the work of the great artist pointed out to us. We love Routine. We want to see a Tadema or a Millais, but always expect to have it pointed out to us, and the result of this vicious practice has crept into every branch of art. The public exercises an irresistable coercian over the artist. The true artist is kept in misery by this tyrany. He is compelled to perpetuate that peculiarity by which he was first brought into notoriety despite his tastes. Poverty is no friend to art. Hard times have exercised a profound influence on English and Continental art. All must be "pretty" and "cheerful." Riches are necessary to the artist. If he does not have them, he is crushed and forced to do inferior work. Michael Angelo, Raphael, Rubens, da Vinci, Holbein, if alive to-day would show that notoriety is attained now as it was at the periods in which they lived. The two artists who will be ranked as the great artists of this century are Meissonier and Adolf Mensel. Yet these two are essentially different. The former is the object of extraordinary notoriety which he himself fosters and although attaining some excellencies never reached before he is a pronounced example of the artist striving after a coarse publicity. Mensel is a true artist. The notoriety which he enjoys is spontaneous on the part of the public, - it cannot be checked.