ABSTRACT
703 Five years’ thought and observation concentrateci on one canvas by a capable man, will hardly have failed to produce a work very little adapted to rapid eyes and oifliand criticism’ Something, if possible, of the nobler mind, some energy of the higher judgment, some stress of thought, in fact, to grasp the thoughts presented, must come with the spectator, if such a picture as Mr. Holman Hunt’s ‘Christ in the Temple’ is—let alone to be seen with understanding and pleasure—to be seen in any true sense at all. And even’ to an audience fit to learn its lesson, the primary impression will probably be that of strangeness. Let the world ever,so loudly announce its desire, love, and recognition of Genius, yet every original work, by the very fact of its originality, is sure to be first seen with a surprised displeasure. There is nothing wonderful in such a result. We have been cast in our mould, and the new thing will not fit it. It shocks perhaps our most determined laws of taste, our finest prejudices, our best bosom associations. It wishes, in a word, to make us think ... And when, added to this most painful of all requirements, the conventionalities of much noble art in earlier days are boldly set aside, it may be feared that most spectators will rather hold Mr. Hunt’s work a feat of skill for a season’s exhibition, than the treasure for ever it is. But the days to come will best authenticate its real value.
