A Painter's Camp in the Highlands Author:Philip Gilbert Hamerton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER III. PICTURE BUYING, WISE AND FOOLISH. A TRUTH bitter to all men who live by the exercise of their talents is the supremacy of money over talent, and the power of mere gold t... more »o enslave the finest and most delicate intelligences. It is useless to endeavour to evade or deny this fact, and it always seems to me that the position of talent in the world would be sounder if its real relation to capital were thoroughly and universally understood. Why not admit frankly, if the fact is indeed so, that the purse is the master and the brain the slave ? Our philosophy ought to be able to face any fact, however unpleasant. The simple truth is, that capital is the nurse and governess of the arts ; not always a very wise or judicious nurse, but an exceedingly powerful one. And in the relation of money to art, the man who has money will rule the man who has art, unless the artist has money enough to enable him to resist the money of the buyer. For money alone is powerful enough to resist money, and starving men are weak. But for capital to support the fine arts, it must be abundant—there must be superfluity. The senses will first be gratified to the full before the wants of the intellect awaken. Plenty of good meat and drink is thefirst desire of the young capitalist; then he must satisfy the ardours of the chase. One or two generations will be happy with these primitive enjoyments of eating and slaying, but a day will come when the descendant and heir of these will awake into life with larger wants. He will take to reading in a book, he will covet the possession of a picture; and unless there are plenty of such men as he in a country, there is but a poor chance there for the fine arts. To follow this ascending order of culture somewhat more in detail, I may say that the first sign of it is an increas...« less