ABSTRACT
The Romantic conception of the artist, with all that it implies of 'vocation', 'artistic temperament' and struggling 'misunderstood genius', is now so widely accepted that it is easy to forget its relatively recent origin. The word 'artist' had signified in the eighteenth century 'the professor of an art, generally an art manual', and 'a skilful man, not a novice'. This is very far from what Friedrich Schlegel had in mind when he remarked that artists were to the rest of mankind what human beings were to the rest of creation. Art had ceased to be a trade or a profession: it had become a vocation. And the scorn with which ascetics of former ages had regarded worldly priests was now turned by dedicated artists on their weaker brethren who ingratiated themselves with the public by painting decorative pictures or composing 'popular' music. The artist's new consciousness of himself and of his uniqueness found its most explicit expression in self-portraits.
