Clive Bell by Vanessa Bell - c1909.

Clive Bell by Vanessa Bell - c1909.
Clive is slowly coming to life in my imagination, in large part due to @markhusseybooks excellent biography and through the complicated layers of text that I read in Clive’s book ‘Art’ - I don’t pretend to understand much of what he says but this text did make me smile:
“Thousands of people who care nothing about art are able to buy and are in the habit of buying pictures. They want a background, just as the ladies and gentlemen of the ancien régime wanted one : only their idea of what a background should be is different. The painter of commerce supplies what is wanted and in his simplicity calls it art. That it is not art, that it is not even an amenity, should not blind us to the fact that it is an honest article. I admit that the man who produces it satisfies a vulgar and unprofitable taste; so does the very upright tradesman who forces insipid asparagus for the Christmas market. Sir Georgius Midas will never care for art, but he will always want a background; and, unless things are going to change with surprising suddenness, it will be some time before he is unable to get what he wants, at a price. However splendid and vital the new movement may be, it will not, I fancy, unaided, kill the business of picture-making. The trade will dwindle; but I suspect it will survive until there is no one who can afford ostentatious upholstery, until the only purchasers are those who willingly make sacrifices for the joy of possessing a work of art.”
Image from @charlestontrust