ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines one of the main problems of artists in an age in which there was no longer a clearly defined set of well-known subjects to work from. Mrs Jonathan Foster thought that artists did not have time to read extensively all the books which could provide new subjects. Mrs Foster sees that subjects have become hackneyed but fails to realise why, and this weakens her answer to the difficulty. Artists naturally preferred the familiar to the unfamiliar, to paint scenes which would be understood with the minimum of ‘information’ or background knowledge without misinterpretation or ambiguity. The picture also had to promote what might be called ‘comprehensible sentiments’ accessible to the ordinary person. The classic example of a carefully wrought and well-intentioned painting going astray in all these areas is Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat.
