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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/75265-0.txt b/75265-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ddc6092 --- /dev/null +++ b/75265-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2164 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75265 *** + + + + + +Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868 + + + + +_PRICE, ONE SHILLING._ + + + NOTES ON THE + ROYAL ACADEMY + EXHIBITION, 1868. + + Part I., by + Wm. Michael Rossetti. + + Part II., by + Algernon C. Swinburne. + + LONDON: + JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN PICCADILLY. + +(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.) + + + + +BY HER MAJESTY’S ROYAL LETTERS PATENT. + +BRYANT & MAY’S + +The “Times” says “Lucifers have risen gradually to be at last a special +source of danger, and no careful housekeeper who looked at these +returns (_Fire Brigade_) would ever allow any but _Safety Matches_ +inside their doors.” + + +PATENT + +SAFETY MATCHES + +_FRAUD._ Without the precaution of observing closely the address, +BRYANT & MAY, and their Trade Mark, [Illustration: TRADE MARK] the +Public may be imposed upon with an article that _does not afford_ +Protection from Fire. + +LIGHT ONLY ON THE BOX. + + + + +NOTES ON THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION, 1868. + + PART I. BY + WM. MICHAEL ROSSETTI. + + PART II. BY + ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. + + “Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope.”--SHAKSPEARE. + + LONDON: + JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. + + (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.) + + + + +The reader of this pamphlet will be apt to understand, from its very +arrangement, the fact that each of the writers speaks solely for +himself. Each chooses his own point of view, and expresses his own +opinion, and in his own way. If the opinions happen to diverge, it will +be for the reader to select, as he pleases, either or neither. + + A. C. S. + W. M. R. + + + + +A person who undertakes to express to the public his opinion of any +such Exhibition as that of the Royal Academy is not unreasonably liable +to the imputation of presumption. For that imputation I am prepared; I +admit it to be, within certain limits, just; and must bear it as I may. + +But there are two forms of possible and probable censure which I should +respectfully decline to accept as well bestowed. + +The first is censure of a signed critical pamphlet, _rather than_ +an unsigned newspaper or review article. The pamphlet expresses the +opinion of an individual: the article does or ought to do the same. So +far they stand on the same ground; anything which may be presumption +in the first is presumption in the second also. The difference is that +the first does, while the second does not, lay bare the writer to the +retorts of any person who may hold himself aggrieved: that may be more +open, more equitable, and more bold, but it is not more presumptuous. + +The second form of misleading censure is that which makes a point of +reprobating omissions. The limits of this pamphlet, as to dimensions +and as to the time and facilities available for its preparation and +composition, are manifestly narrow. All that the writer professes is to +say straightforwardly whatever he does say: he by no means implies that +nothing else remains to be noted concerning the works of art commented +upon, nor that the works wholly omitted are undeserving of mention. +If anybody, therefore, tells me that the picture of A, of which +this pamphlet says nothing, merits criticism, or that the picture of +B, praised for colour, claims praise on the score of drawing also, +I shall have no difficulty in admitting the probable correctness of +these remarks; but, if he adds that I am blameable for the omissions, I +shall feel entitled to reply that A’s picture and B’s draughtsmanship +were not in the bond. What _is_ in the bond is liberty of selection +and candour of statement on my part: if my selection is stupid, or my +statement unfair or erroneous, be that the charge. Let the censure +concern itself with something wrong that _is_ done; not with something +right that might have been done. + + W. M. R. + + + + +ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION, 1868. + +_PART I._ + + +Some twenty years and more ago, the ingrained fault of the British +School of Painting was that it painted flimsy pictures. They were not +exactly sketchy, having little of either the merits or defects proper +to the phase of art termed sketching: pictures they were, but flimsy +pictures. Then came the thick-and-thin revolution of Præraphaelitism; +which aimed at treating substantial subjects, thinking them out deeply, +and painting them with abnormal thoroughness. That revolution scarcely +exists now otherwise than in its results: certain works executed +according to the principle in question, and representing it; many +others parodying or maiming the principle, and traducing it; a vast +number of works, still in course of active production, which owe their +genesis to the principle, but have metamorphosed it beyond recognition. +So that now we have come round to a condition of the school more +analogous to that of twenty years ago: only that the present staple +product is, instead of flimsy pictures, works executed with a valuable +reserve-fund of knowledge, efficiency, and material, but in the feeling +and with the aim proper to sketches. Critics have long been beseeching +for “breadth.” That is now supplied to them in handsome measure; but +it is found that breadth, like frittering, may overlie a considerable +surface of commonplace and inanity. The very skill of our current +generation of painters is one of their chief perils; for it enables +them to indicate with ease, and often indeed with mastery, what less +dexterity could only strive for with labour. Rapid gains and the tumult +of competition conduce towards the same result. The upshot, to some +critics, is, in the present Academy exhibition, a sense of no little +dissatisfaction, mingled with unstinted recognition of telling and +well-diffused ability. One perceives that many artists can now do a +good deal, if they choose; but the more sound one sees the attainments +of the painter himself to be, the less one is disposed to accept with +implicit faith the rather cheap outcome of those attainments. Sketches +may be excellent things, and they testify to the ready availability of +the artist’s gifts: but sketches magnified into pictures cloy upon one. +They betray in especial a self-complacent unconcern for higher efforts. +In general character the present Academy exhibition, the hundredth of +the series, is very like that of 1867: that was a particularly clever +display, according to its own standard, and this perhaps is nearly on a +par with it.[A] + + [A] To estimate the comparative merits of successive Exhibitions + is always to me a difficult matter. The sentence in the text + expresses what I felt about the present Academy show while I + was in the rooms and as I began writing; but, on treating of + the pictures individually, I so often have to say that some + painter is this year quite at his best that I infer the + display of 1868 may probably be fully as good as that of + 1867. I leave the text, however, unaltered, as faithful to a + general impression. + +With these few remarks, I turn at once to the walls, and begin with-- + +6. MILLAIS--_Sisters._--It is a great satisfaction to find Mr. Millais +in force this year--in very superior force, for instance, to what +he displayed last year. This group of three girlish sisters--the +painter’s daughters--shows him in pure, unforced, untrammelled +possession of his mastery throughout. The arrangement of the group is +so far artificial that one clearly perceives the sisters are posing +for their portraits: no effort is made to disguise this fact, and it +cannot, I think, be counted as a blemish--rather as one legitimate +method of portrait-painting, though not so popular now as the contrary +scheme. All the three girls are dressed in white muslin, with azure +ribbons, and hair combed out. The background is composed of azaleas, +which, in the left-hand[B] corner of the picture, seem to change from +crimson-pink to vermilion-pink; but the latter colour is scrubbed about +with no appreciable traces of form. + + [B] “Left-hand” and “right-hand,” in this pamphlet, will always be + used to designate the portions of the pictures opposite to the + _spectator’s_ left and right respectively. + +10. LEYS--_La Famille Pallavicini de Gênes réclamant le droit de +Bourgeoisie des Bourgmestres et Echevins de la Ville d’Anvers, +1542._--When our Royal Academy is honoured by a contribution from one +of the first magnates of European art, it becomes us to accept his +work in a spirit of gratitude, with much desire to study, and very +little to cavil. It is by way of study that I venture to note some +of the leading characteristics of that mediæval style which has made +Baron Leys famous throughout the civilized world. 1st. He identifies +himself with the period he paints--not only in a general way, as a +good scholar might do, but especially in respect of its concerted +outer demonstrations, and its social aspects, and this with all the +more zest when a spice of patriotism is involved. 2nd. Working from +this solid basis of mediævalism, he is never afraid of individualizing +his personages to the very uttermost: they are actual men and women +whom he might--and for anything I know does--pick up in the streets of +modern Belgium. An extreme instance appears in the present picture, +in the furthest right-hand figure, whose portrait-like aspect is +unmistakeable. This, however, being an obviously modern head, differs +from the generality--which, with their personal actuality, are somehow +_projected back_, by the imagination and skill of the painter, into +the mediæval period, and thus come to be even more like what one +conceives of the sixteenth than what one knows of the nineteenth +century. Hence an air of startling realism: the personages are as real +as if they were painted in coats and trowsers; and the mediævalism +is as real as any modern man can make it. The very uncouthness and +hard-featuredness of the figures is a powerful element in this realism: +it looks as if the painter had seen them actually there, and depicted +them as in duty bound--had he been selecting, one would expect more +of positive beauty or semi-idealism. 3rd. Baron Leys paints with a +remarkable mixture of force and slightness, detail and unfinish. He +gives an extraordinary number of items, and with singular strength of +definition, yet with little that can, on close inspection, be called +elaboration. Everything is done so as to solicit the eye at a little +distance, and up to a certain point to satisfy, never to satiate it. +The style of execution has even a good deal that might be termed rough +and ready; and (what is of great importance) it is quite unlike any +handiwork of the Middle Ages themselves. Moreover, the painter (in the +present phase of his style) very seldom gives any mere _accidents_ of +light and shade--direct or flickering sunshine, contrasts of natural +and artificial light, or the like. It may seem fanciful to say that +this also subserves the historical impression; and yet I think it +does so powerfully--the scenes and the actors in them tell upon the +mind, through the eye, as having passed out of the momentary into the +permanent--out of the region of chance and change into that dim lumour +and remote subsistency of the past. Having said thus much, by way of +study, of Baron Leys’s pictures in general, I shall not endeavour to +analyse the particular work before us. It is a _replica_ of one of his +frescoes in the Townhall of Antwerp, and illustrates the value which +distinguished foreigners were wont to set upon the right of citizenship +in that great commercial and privileged city. It is to be regarded as +an important and excellent specimen of the master, though some others +might deserve the preference in point of executive completeness. + +17. LINNELL, SEN.--_English Woodlands._--A very characteristic and +fine example of the painter’s style: one might use it as a text-book +wherefrom to develope his specialties in the English school of +landscape. + +30. WATTS--_Landscape, Evening._--A small work, but conspicuous by its +broad, strong colour, very warm and mellow: it has power both of hand +and of sentiment. The sky is especially luminous. + +44. HEMY--_Tête de Flandre, near Antwerp._--There is a great deal of +space in this picture: and the tone of green-grey colour is finely felt +and solidly sustained. A sense of the ripple in the estuary is given +by a curious sort of sleight of hand--an actual ridging or rucking in +the surface of the paint. + +52. COPE--_The Life’s Story._--This is the subject of Othello relating +his adventures to Brabantio and Desdemona. The lady hangs upon the +words of the Moor with a demonstrative interest that fully justified +his inference that she must be in love with him. The picture cannot, I +think, be counted among Mr. Cope’s successes. + +64. GRANT--_The Duke of Cambridge at the Battle of the Alma, leading +the Guards up the Hill in support of the Light Division._--The weak +point of this picture is the isolated figure of the Duke himself, which +has more the character of a likeness by a portrait-painter than of a +leading agent in the event. The Guards in the foreground are happily +treated; with sufficient individuality in the several figures, not made +singly over-prominent. The general execution is not unlike that of Sir +Edwin Landseer; which is as much as to say that it has uncommon ability. + +70. MILLAIS--_Rosalind and Celia._--A picture full of sunny light and +masterly celerity of execution. The faces have great sentiment, and +ample charm of beauty: the confiding self-subordinating character of +Celia speaks in the lines of her mouth. Touchstone is older than one +would infer from the drama. It is a pity that Mr. Millais did not set +himself to reflect what Rosalind would probably have done with her hair +and costume in order to sustain the disguise of a young man. The upper +portion of the dress is absurdly feminine, and hardly recedes even +from the nineteenth century. On the stage one pardons the paraded sex +of the actress--it is partly unavoidable, and partly a device of her +profession: but in a picture one fairly expects a greater conformity to +the common sense of the situation. Mr. Millais, however, never _will_ +pay any attention to his costume. With all the signal merits of the +execution, the texture is not free from woolliness. + +87. FRITH--_Before dinner at Boswell’s Lodgings in Bond Street, 1769: +present, Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Murphy, Bickerstaff, +Davies, and Boswell._--We have heard only too often about Goldsmith’s +“bloom-coloured coat.” This is the scene of its exhibition before +Boswell’s guests. The picture may be termed a self-respecting one: +the humours of the personages and the incident are indicated without +being made to stare one out of countenance. _Per contra_, it must be +said that strength is deficient throughout: common weakish mouths +prevail in this distinguished company. Goldsmith and Reynolds are +indifferent likenesses; and Johnson’s clothes fit almost as accurately +as Goldsmith’s. + +123. EDWIN LANDSEER--_Rent-Day in the Wilderness._--“After the defeat +of the Stuart army in 1715, at Sheriff Muir, Colonel Donald Murchison, +to whom the Earl of Seaforth confided his confiscated estates in +Ross-shire, defended them for ten years, and regularly transmitted the +rents to his attainted and exiled chief.” The picture shows the rent +being thus collected under difficulties. A bearded clansman, attended +by his daughter, is in the act of paying; a friar kneels close beside +Colonel Murchison; and a number of other Highlanders have assembled +for the occasion. This large and crowded picture has a peculiar look, +in consequence of the stealthy and crouching action of most of the +figures: they are keeping close amid the brushwood on one side of +Loch Affric, while some of the Government soldiers are patrolling the +opposite bank. The work has thus--besides the generic merits which any +large painting by Sir Edwin Landseer is sure to possess--plenty that is +both peculiar and interesting, not unmingled with a certain impression +of discomfort. + +138. HERBERT--_The Valley of Moses in the Desert of Sinai._--This +picture (as Mr. Herbert is stated never to have been in the East) is +somewhat noticeable in point of eclectic, and at the same time diluted, +study. The light and tone are agreeable, and free from that hardness +which besets many Eastern pictures; but, on observing the comparative +faintness of the shadows upon the blazing sands, one sees at once that +the avoidance of hardness has involved some sacrifice of truth. + +150. WARD--_Royal Marriage, 1477._--The detestable humbug of a sham +contemporary “MS.” is resorted to for the purpose of informing the +reader of the Academy catalogue that this painting represents the +marriage of the Duke of York, aged four, son of Edward IV., to +Lady Anne Mowbray, aged three. A bishop of almost decrepit old age +officiates, and Gloucester is naturally made a prominent witness. Mr. +Ward’s style of painting, chiaroscuro, and handling, is universally +known; it may be termed the overblown style, with about as much +retirement and repose as a peony the hour before it falls to pieces. +But this should not blind us to his solid merits of thought and +invention, always exercised in a direction which tells with the public, +and for the most part felicitously in other respects as well. The +present picture is an instance. Besides any amount of fine dresses and +demonstrative infancy, it boasts a power of association which must +take hold of every spectator: the infant bridal, the gorgeous dawn +of promise to the little sons of King Edward, and the crash of fate +reserved for them within the cerebral convolutions of the future King +Richard. We may afford, while we are about it, to recollect that this +effective subject pertains by right of priority to Mr. Houghton, who +designed it for a woodcut. + +167. FRITH--_Sterne and the French Innkeeper’s Daughter._--The +imperfectly Reverend Mr. Sterne is looking at the damsel as she knits +a stocking, and pondering upon its neat adjustment to the shape of her +leg. On general grounds much the same may be said of this picture as +of No. 87: both are superior examples of the easy certainty with which +Mr. Frith can strike the key he wants, just as loud as he wishes it, +and no louder. Sterne (as Goldsmith and Reynolds before) appears to me +anything but a good likeness: the young woman is more French in feature +than in the _ensemble_ of the face. + +172. T. FAED--_Worn Out._--This ranks with Mr. Faed’s best pictures: it +is very skilful, and has more equality of painting than usual--somewhat +less of obtruded knack and flourish. The various small accessories are +well related to the main incident of the hard-working father who has +fallen asleep while watching his invalid boy. + +188. POOLE--_Custaunce sent adrift by the Constable of Alla, King of +Northumberland._--This moonlight picture has rather the character of a +manufacture; yet it is manufacture by a poetic eye and pictorial hand. +There is some clever handling in the water of the foreground; and the +entire absence of red from the picture--which relies for colour upon +iridescent tints of grey-blue, green, yellow, and so on--is observable. + +209. HOUGHTON--_H. Bassett, Esq., in his Laboratory._--A capital +piece of peculiarity. Great pains and intelligence have gone to the +depicting of the scientific plethora of the laboratory; and the sense +of the shut-in, moderately-lit room, not lightly to be intruded upon, +is vivid. Mr. Bassett is represented smoking a pipe. This may seem +a trivial or purposeless incident. Yet it may have been introduced +to indicate some enforced pause in his work while an experiment is +maturing; and, if so, it is certainly not unsuggestive. + +223. ORCHARDSON--_Mrs. Birket Foster._--This seems to me about the best +work Mr. Orchardson has yet exhibited: it is a small full-length--more +a subject than a mere portrait. The artist has a certain streaky or +gauzy touch which amounts to mannerism: here the handling and colour +have almost a _soupçon_ of Gainsborough. The bright face, the quiet +lighting of the dusky-boarded room, and the untumbled white muslin +dress, make up a picture in which elegant and artist-like taste verges +upon quaintness. + +235. ELMORE--_Ishmael._--An accomplished study, perhaps (within its +limits) unsurpassed by any work of its author. + +236. G. D. LESLIE--_Home News._--An English lady in her remote Asiatic +home is reading a letter from the old country. The half-hovering +smile, and the long-drawn regard of the eye as though she were in +contemplation back across the measureless ocean, are delicately caught; +also the coolness of the matted interior, jealously excluding the sun +itself, but not the sense of how it is blazing outside. + +242. MILLAIS--_Stella._--A single figure, three-quarter length, and +perhaps the very best Mr. Millais has done of its class. The name +Stella naturally suggests Swift’s Stella; and Swift’s Stella holding +a letter, with a countenance of subdued long-suffering, suggests her +receipt of the letter from Vanessa inquiring whether she and Swift +were in fact married. If this is the incident really intended, the +sympathizing spectator may be startled at being reminded that Stella +was at that time about forty years of age. But Mr. Millais is not the +man to mind much whether he does or does not represent a particular +incident, or whether or not any such representation is endurably +correct. He has painted delightfully a very loveable woman, and that +will probably suffice him and us. The tint of flesh in the arm appears +hardly so pure as the rest of the colouring. + +247. O’NEIL--_Before Waterloo._--This picture will certainly have +critics of two sorts. One set, incurious of artistic subtleties, will +batten upon such a purveying of British military heroism, gushing +young creatures, and harrowing family partings. Another set will turn +with æsthetic distaste from so much of ball-costume and regimentals, +and such a cross between the leaden and the garish in colour. An +intermediate set ought also to find a voice, and to aver that the +scheme of arrangement in the picture is very ingenious, and successful +in turning a serious difficulty--that the story is told with great +emphasis and much well-considered variety of detail--and that, when +one faces the picture with deliberation, one can hardly refuse it the +praise of being interesting. If Mr. O’Neil could but get somebody +else’s colour to exude through his brush, with texture and surface to +correspond! + +248. SIR C. LINDSAY--_The Earl Somers._--It is only fair to cite this +picture, by an amateur and a Baronet, as one of the best portraits on +the walls. The steadiness of the figure on his feet, without compromise +and without bravado, is alone a considerable merit. A spectator may +be struck by the great number of sitters who elect to be painted in +shooting costume, or in some other dress and with other accessories of +sport. “Manly exercises” will of course account for most of this; and +knickerbockers and black velvet have their share of influence. + +260. LEGROS--_The Refectory._--The eye finds repose and satisfaction in +this broadly and firmly painted picture, free from the last suspicion +of _ad captandum_ appeal. Three monks and a tabby cat have assembled to +make a meal off a mackerel--the board laid with a perfectly clean white +cloth. The monks are all men of dignified and thoughtful presence: two +of them still pause over a book of orisons or meditations before they +begin the refection. It might not be unfair to say that there is a +good deal of space to let in the large-sized canvas: but one need not +exactly quarrel with that. The painter, a man now of reputation equally +confirmed and well deserved both in his own country and in ours, knows +perfectly well what he is about; we may safely accept his point of +view, and find in the result that, if he has not done precisely what we +might have bespoken, there is nevertheless a definite value to be got +out of his method of treatment, not to be slighted because a different +method would have given some other and countervailing value. If +anybody wishes to learn (among graver things) what amount of executive +short-hand suffices for making a cat tabby, Mr. Legros’s picture will +inform him. + +268. R. BUTLER--_The Lost Path._--This artist’s name is unfamiliar to +me. His little picture of children astray in a copse has great merit of +naïve expression, rendered as well by action as by countenance. + +273. STOREY--_The Shy Pupil._--The painter has here attained to a high +point of force in simplicity of work. The subject is a budding girl +learning to dance in her father’s presence. With nothing that can be +called elaboration, the execution would, for purity of lighting and +directness of hand, bear comparison with many a choice Dutch picture. +If we went to Mr. Legros for a tabby cat, we may consult Mr. Storey +for a small dog peering through a door; a few twirls of the brush +have, by a species of legerdemain, produced a surprising amount of +characteristic form. This work, with much effect of solidity, is +nevertheless amenable to my opening remarks as to sketchiness: but, in +so simple and semi-humorous a subject, that need hardly be objected to. + +283. DICKINSON--_George Peabody, Esq._--A very honest good piece of +work, and a most unmistakeable likeness, to be remembered among the +portraits of the year much to Mr. Dickinson’s credit. + +288. COPE--_The Disciples at Emmaus._--Mr. Cope’s method of art unites +remarkable defining power with a certain thinness of the primary +material; it reminds one of good woodcarving--strong and accurate +modelling bestowed upon a substance which, after the utmost has been +done for it, retains an aboriginal crudity. In the present picture, the +artist has planned out all forcibly and distinctly--he has left nothing +vague to his own mind or the spectator’s eye. Yet no corresponding +impression of reality is produced; the work wants _imaginative_ +reality, and therefore its other elements of reality do not tell as +they were intended to do. To attenuate the form of the risen Christ, +and to make his drapery transparent to the evening light, is not the +way to remove him from the regions of fleshliness. + +302. HORSLEY--_Rent-day at Haddon Hall._--Considerably the best +picture Mr. Horsley has exhibited of late, or perhaps at any time. +A very moderate proportion of adult good sense may have sufficed to +discriminate it from his staple commodity. + +311. G. RICHMOND--_Mrs. Brereton._--While Mr. Richmond can put into +a face so much feminine candour and amiability as we see in this +likeness, no one need be surprised at his eminent standing among +portrait painters. To look at the face seems to be like making Mrs. +Brereton’s acquaintance--or like wishing to make it. + +316. CALDERON--_The Young Lord Hamlet._--Yorick is on all-fours on +the pleasance of the Danish palace, with little Hamlet riding on his +back; Queen Gertrude and some of her ladies looking on; and an infant, +presumably Ophelia, not yet “taking notice.” This is strictly a sketch; +no doubt a very able one, and only to be done by a man of long training +and solid acquirement in art. Not only is the thing full of sparkling +animal spirits as a whole, but each point, when one attends to it, is +pertinent and telling: except indeed the face of the lady who holds +Ophelia, and who exhibits a smile as hard as her teeth. This is not the +only time that Mr. Calderon has made considerable play with teeth, and +not, I think, successfully; nothing is more difficult to manage in a +picture. + +323. WATTS--_The wife of Pygmalion, a Translation from the +Greek._--This is one of the few works of poetic elevation in the +gallery: it is beautiful with a noble beauty, which one hardly knows +whether rather to call womanly or impassive. It rests midway between +coldness and warmth, without being lukewarm. It should be added that +the merit is not exclusively Mr. Watts’s, the head being truly “a +translation from the Greek,” _i.e._, adapted from the fine antique bust +pointed out not long ago for admiration among the Arundel Marbles in +Oxford. + +328. LEIGHTON--_Ariadne abandoned by Theseus. Ariadne watches for +his return; Artemis releases her by death._--This also is a picture +which claims to be of the poetic order, and sustains the claim; it +may without rashness be pronounced the loftiest work Mr. Leighton has +produced, reckoning together subject-matter, scale, and the result +attained. To ignore the limitations of his style, or the symptoms of +them which this picture also presents, would be futile. One might +sum them up by saying that there is a certain hiatus between his +perception of the poetic in art, and his power of expressing it; +and that, though he bridges this over with a readiness of resource +which is to himself almost as natural as the first perception, yet to +others the artificiality of the bridge is glaringly and even irksomely +apparent. But the picture of Ariadne is sufficiently noble to keep +these considerations in the background, as soon as we have once for +all fairly stated or implied them. The face is wrung with sorrow, +yet is free from what we mean to condemn in a work of art when we +term it “painful.” One might say that this woman has died of the very +weariness of daily renewed grief. But the calm now is as profound as +the yearning heretofore; profound as the blue sea violet-tinted in its +distant intensity, or as the lulling oppression of its clang in the +sultry meridian, barely audible as a faint murmur at the dizzy height +of Ariadne’s rock-seat. There is a sensation of stationariness, as if +Phœbus Apollo might be pausing in heaven to see how his sister Artemis +has accomplished her mercy upon the outworn Ariadne. As I looked at the +picture, a divine reminiscence of Shelley intervened:-- + + “Yet now despair itself is mild, + Even as the winds and waters are. + I could lie down like a tired child, + And weep away the life of care + Which I have borne and yet must bear, + Till death like sleep might steal on me,-- + And I might feel in the warm air + My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea + Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.” + +329. MASON--_Evening Hymn._--Again a very poetical and beautiful +picture, one of the enduring glories of the present exhibition. It +reaches higher than anything Mr. Mason had hitherto done; and shows him +qualified to paint figures on a fair scale of size, and with an amount +of positive beauty which, in his previous productions (though well +traceable), was to some extent overlaid by the _picturesque_, as that +is popularly understood. This work glows with the light of a spring +sunset, and with the unbidden fervour of a group of young village-girls +who are carolling the Evening Hymn as they saunter homewards. It +seems almost churlish to object to a leading point of treatment in so +delightful a picture; but I confess to some suspicion that the men +who are shown listening might with advantage have been missed out of +the subject altogether--and more especially the youth who comes close +behind a girl in white, holding a rose in her hand. Mr. Mason is a +painter who never loses sight of facts in his pursuit of the beautiful; +this is the one of his works which goes nearest to merging all other +its material in a general ideal of loveliness and solemnity. + +331. PETTIE--_Tussle with a Highland Smuggler._--Here we revert to the +category of sketchy work; and we see in this picture and in another by +its author (No. 484, “_Weary with present cares and memories sad_”), +an unpleasant and unrepaying development of style which might be +described as “the offhand squalid.” No. 331 shows extreme--indeed, +excessive--cleverness: but its unsightly violence of action embodies +a subject of little consequence to any one, and of less still to the +cause of fine art. + +347. EDWIN LANDSEER--“_Weel, sir, if the deer got the ball, sure’s +deeth Chevy will no leave him._”--A masterpiece of Landseerian art: +the good hound Chevy is seen couched amid high mountain ice and snows, +by the side of a dead deer, which the ravens have already scented from +afar. + +356. MILLAIS--_Pilgrims to St. Paul’s._--A more rational title would +be “Greenwich Pensioners at the Tomb of Nelson.” One of them has lost +his left arm--a very resolute, bluff old seaman, whom “foreigneers” may +have been shy of tackling in his time; the other halts upon two wooden +legs, more senile and commonplace, but also, in his undemonstrative +way, one of those who, like his hero, “never saw fear.” His face is +most triumphantly painted; whether regarded as a mere study of a head, +or as a piece of character, or with reference to its intense lighting +by the flare of the sepulchral lantern. Indeed, the picture is quite +admirable throughout, and in power of painting not to be surpassed +by Mr. Millais, nor approached by any competitor. There is in its +materials something which verges towards a _tour de force_; but all is +so manly, and so free from sentimental overdoing, that no charge arises +against it on this ground. + +363. YEAMES--_Lady Jane Grey in the Tower._--An able satisfactory +picture; perhaps the best of its author. Lady Jane is in a +controversial colloquy with the Chaplain Feckenham: her face expresses +very successfully that she is weighing his arguments in her mind, and +considering what may be the true answer to them, but with no prospect +of her coming to the conclusion that answer there is none. Feckenham +also is appropriately conceived and painted, without any exaggeration. +Of costume and accessory there is enough, and not overmuch. + +369. HOUGHTON--_In the Garden._--A very handsome boy of eight is +lifting his little sister of five to smell a rose upon its bush. A +kitten which has already made some advances towards cat-hood is romping +around the stem. The feeling of the subject would be improved were +there more of a look of smelling in the girl’s face; and the colour +is hardly on a level with the other merits of the picture. It is, +however, a very choice and complete little work; fine in design and +draughtsmanship, and charming in general impression--quite free, +moreover, from that sort of nursery silliness which has infected +some canvasses of late, and has even been aptly enshrined in a title +reproducing the broken utterance of babes. Mr. Houghton knows that +“ta-ta” or “tootsicums,” whether written with the pen or rendered into +the language of the brush, is a mild effort of art. + +401. G. D. LESLIE--_Kate Leslie._--This artist is almost always +attractive, and often most engagingly so: the present work may be +cited in proof. But he is “painty” (as the profession terms it) in the +generality of his work, and especially in his flesh-tints. Here the +face has far too much of a tawny or ligneous hue; which is the more +to be regretted as the work, on the whole, comes nearer than usual to +ranking Mr. Leslie among colourists. + +402. POYNTER--_The Catapult._--Great knowledge, great power of +combination, and much disciplined artistic capacity, have gone to the +making of this picture. It has more effect, and is on the whole more +pictorial, than the very striking work which Mr. Poynter exhibited last +year--_Israel in Egypt._ Some people may refuse to take much interest +in a scene in which the work of the artificer or mechanician plays so +large a part; but, bating this objection (which to many will be no +objection at all), it is difficult to award anything but praise to the +picture. The event is the use of a catapult as an engine of war in the +siege of Carthage: we see written on one of the beams “Delenda est +Carthago, S.P.Q.R.” The officer is supervising, archers are shooting; +the monster hand of the catapult is about once more to launch a red-hot +bolt against the doomed city: pots of blazing pitch are being hurled +by the defenders at the assailants. The solidity and good balance of +all parts of the subject, the agreeable tone of colour in flesh and +otherwise, the sound drawing, unfaltering and unpretentious, command +high respect. + +410. WYNFIELD--_Oliver Cromwell’s First Appearance in the +Parliament._--To find this picture uninteresting would be difficult. +Hampden is represented introducing his cousin to Cromwell; Pym, +Elliot, Sir Robert Phillips, Strafford, and many other famous men, are +present. The arrangement pleases one from its obvious adaptation to +the more important demands of the subject, irrespectively of artistic +conventions. The method of the painting, however, is so excessively +opaque and heavy that, until Mr. Wynfield shall manage to correct this +blemish, one cannot expect his pictures to get cordially accepted by +the public, or to please critical eyes. + +424. T. GRAHAM--_The Dominie._--Mr. Graham has powers of a high order; +but he has seemed of late only too likely to be led away by the offhand +practice, semi-grotesque picturesqueness, and rapid success, of some +of his compatriots from beyond Tweed. _The Dominie_ is about the least +laudable picture he has exhibited--tending much to caricature, and to +coarseness of handling. Of course, along with this, there is a deal of +ability; and the figure of the boy still attests a genuine sense of +beauty. Let us trust that Mr. Graham will have “pulled up” by next year. + +434. HOOK--_Are Chimney-sweepers Black?_--A most delightful picture, +fully equal to the best productions of its distinguished author. There +are two others in this gallery (Nos. 48 and 270) also excellent: +but so little remains now-a-days to be said about Mr. Hook’s works, +except that they afford deep, pure, and vivid pleasure, and show their +painter to be one of the most artist-like colourists and executants +of the British school, that I have passed them by, and limited myself +to specifying the present one only. A begrimed (not _over_ begrimed) +chimney-sweeper, with the implements of his craft, presents himself +to the startled eyes of a naked infant, as fresh and bright as a +Cupid, who has just been bathing on the margin of the sea: he is still +paddling in a sand-pool, and takes refuge against his young mother’s +dress, hardly so scared as not to be a little amused. This group of the +mother and child is most charming; and all other parts of the picture +are worthy of it. + +439. MACLISE--_The Sleep of Duncan._--The first aspect of this work, as +of so many of Mr. Maclise’s, gives an impression of unreality, huddled, +and oppressed with decorative exuberances. A more deliberate inspection +shows that it possesses, in ample measure, the fine qualities which +rank him so high in our school--qualities of invention and design, +associated with remarkable, though bounded and monotonous, gifts of +execution. The moment is when Lady Macbeth, having drugged the guards, +and “laid their daggers ready” (one of these lies within the circlet of +the crown), relinquishes any thought of herself assassinating the old +king, who “resembles her father as he sleeps.” The tragic air of crime +in Lady Macbeth, her superfluous stealthinesses of action, are grandly +given; though it cannot be said that her face differs much from the +type so constant and familiar in Mr. Maclise’s productions. Duncan and +the two guards are all three fine figures. The lighting of the picture +is not obvious: it would appear to be the union of soft moonshine and +pale diffused grey dawn-light which comes through the loop-hole at the +back; but this does not seem to account for all the light in front, as +on the figures of the guards; while neither can one discern, on the +other hand, that much (if any) influence of artificial light has been +intended by the painter. Real the picture would, of course, never be +made to look; but I think it would look considerably less unreal at one +point if Duncan’s head lay deeper in the silken pillows. + +440. WELLS--_Letters and News at the Loch-side._--A landscape with +portraits and incident. I pick it out from among the contributions of +its able painter, for the sake of noting the great amount of space, +light, and air, which he has got into this picture, although there +is no single glimpse of sky: the ground rises all round from the +lake-side. This is no small thing to have managed. + +449. LEIGHTON--_Acme and Septimius._--Remarkable for its elegant skill +of concentrated composition. The knee of Acme’s left leg--the foot of +the same leg being set underneath her right thigh as she sits--appears +to me to project too much laterally. This may be a convenient place +for calling attention (with implied apology for not speaking of them +with the detail they properly claim) to Mr. Leighton’s three remaining +pictures: Nos. 227, _Jonathan’s Token to David_; 234, _Mrs. Frederick +P. Cockerell_; 522, _Actæa, the Nymph of the Shore._ + +453. HODGSON--_Chinese Ladies looking at European Curiosities._--A +quaint and amusing notion, and a pleasant picture. A Chinese gentleman +is exhibiting to his wives and their women a pair of European white +satin slippers, which the small-footed fair (or rather dusky) ones +regard as elephantine eccentricities. An Englishwoman looking at a +Chinese “six-marker,” or at a Japanese masterpiece of woodcut design +or colouring, is not more tickled. Perhaps the best head of all is +that of the elderly woman to the right. The peculiarities of Chinese +physiognomy are not at all overdone--indeed, I doubt whether the eyes +are quite sidelong enough. It would have been admissible to make one +of the wives prettier, and (if I am not mistaken) clearer-complexioned +also. + +461. LEGROS--_Sir Thomas More showing some of Holbein’s Pictures to +Henry VIII._--Without tampering with his own style, Mr. Legros comes +more than hitherto, in this picture, within the same general lines as +English art. The work, in essentials, is extremely good; and simplicity +of execution does not interfere with its keeping its place well and +solidly amid those which surround it. Sir Thomas More does not strike +me as much of a likeness. Henry is excellent: he sits (if a bull may +be excused) as he would sit in a contemporary portrait, though not as +he _does_ sit in any of those I remember. Perhaps his eyes are less +small than in the likenesses. Holbein looks the best man of the lot: +well able to have done the fine things Sir Thomas is displaying, and +to do as many more as bluff Harry may commission. Three ladies are +also present. One of them gives her head a turn in which the manner +of a connoisseur is dimly anticipated; and one might fancy her to be +saying to herself, “Really, most excellent; but, were I to sit to him, +should I come good-looking enough?” Capitally as the whole subject is +kept together, I think a single little touch would still improve it in +this respect: one of the ladies might be glancing from the picture to +Holbein, and so helping to identify the work with its worker. + +477. WALKER--_In the Glen, Rathfarnham Park._--This is a halt of +gipsies, who are lighting a fire; and perhaps there is something more +of incident implied than I happen to catch. Mr. Walker’s pictures +have a certain mottled look and grainy surface which might be called +mannerism, though not too confidently. At any rate, after making some +abatement for this, and for a too easily contented choice of subject, +one is fairly surprised at a sureness of hand which seems to have at +its finger-ends the power of realization without labour, and at a +sturdiness of work which yet picks up (as it were) at every stroke +refinements of drawing and colour. The evidences of ability are so +profuse that a non-practical critic like myself may well, in modesty +and self-knowledge, feel his mouth shut to objections. I should doubt +whether there are in Europe many artists more accomplished than Mr. +Walker, within his own sphere of work. + +494. H. S. MARKS--_Experimental Gunnery in the Middle Ages._--Mr. Marks +has done nothing better than this picture; probably nothing equally +good. The subject involves just the sort of out-of-the-way humour +which is his _specialité_; and he has made this the informing spirit +of a full composition without condescending to any burlesque. There is +much varied and capital by-play of incident and expression; and the +subject is so treated as to allow one, even in these days of Armstrong +guns and Chassepots, to feel a good-humoured respect for the primitive +artillerists. + +499. PRINSEP--_A Venetian Lover._--The gist of this subject is made +so evident that we could dispense with the motto--“De deux amans, il +y en a toujours un qui aime, et l’autre qui se laisse aimer.” Handled +with marked fulness and breadth, and with a very painter-like choice of +the _tints_ of colour, the picture proves once again that Mr. Prinsep +is well qualified to work on a large scale; having at command a fund +of really pictorial material, on which he may draw with full stress +of faculty, secure that it will not fail him at his need. As a matter +of sentiment, the picture leaves a certain feeling of discontent; the +impassivity of the woman is so extreme as to provoke one first with +her and next with her impassioned adorer. But no doubt this is only +what the artist intended. In some parts the surface may be considered +too smooth--as especially in the lady’s face, which has hardly the +pulpiness of flesh. Possibly, however, this impression would be +corrected could one examine the picture closer. + +510. A. HUGHES--“_Sigh no more, Ladies, Sigh no more._”--Mr. Hughes’s +pictures are always full of refined sentiment; and this is eminently +so, and in all respects one of his best successes. The lady is so +tender, uncomplaining, and beautiful, that one takes her part on +the instant. Happily, she seems, after an interval of disconsolate +dejection, to be dimly awaking once more to the interests of life; and +soon she will be taking the advice of the song, and tempting fate with +another affair of the heart. She is at once sentimental to the romantic +point, and domestically feminine. It was a happy thought to introduce +the thrush at her window, trilling a cheerful ditty, which one can +imagine that her heart translates into the spoken language of the song. +This picture has in it a gentle but real poetry which places it on a +very different footing from most of the work in the exhibition. + +511. STOREY--_Saying Grace._--The small denizens of a nursery have +seated themselves with impeccable propriety for their early dinner, +regulated by (as one might infer from her physiognomy) a foreign +nursery-governess. The baby has joined his hands with dispread fingers, +and enacts (he is too young to pronounce) the grace with a solemnity +which would do credit to a parish-clerk. No doubt the children are all +portraits, with inordinate heads of hair; but the baby’s irregularity +of contour seems to exceed infantine bounds. Let us trust that his +mamma will insist upon his growing up with a modified profile, and +that “’tis his nature to.” The picture has a genuine distinction of +quaintness and zest. + +513. CALDERON--_Œnone._--Mr. Tennyson, with the magic fetters of +genius, has enslaved all Englishmen to the conviction that Œnone can +only be contemplated as in a state of heartbroken dereliction; and I +suppose that Mr. Calderon intends his nymph to be so understood. I +cannot, however, perceive that sentiment in her face or action; she +appears to the eye rather in a mood of rampant laziness and florid +self-display. This is a very singular piece of colour. White or +whiteish tints occupy a considerable space; the extremely blue hills +are the second important constituent; and the pea-green mantle of +Œnone is the third. The pea-green appears to me a discord, though some +other hue of green, along with a texture more like drapery, might +have proved much the reverse. On the whole, I should say that, in its +colour as in other respects, the painting has much boldness, with no +corresponding proportion of felicity. + +517. R. CARRICK--_After the Sortie._--This is a very large picture, +hung so high that one cannot fully estimate it in detail. It represents +a wounded knight borne up the winding castle-stairs by three of his +retainers; his wife, with a horrible sinking of the heart, totters and +clings about for support as she follows. It seems to be a strongly +designed and carefully executed work, of very superior merit; the most +important production of Mr. Carrick, and about the best. + +524. H. W. B. DAVIS--_A Summer Forenoon._--A landscape and sheep-piece, +warm, gentle, and genial. Landscape and the allied forms of art occupy +a very small space, comparatively, in the present exhibition. There are +nevertheless several works of this kind which call for examination and +praise: their being left unnoticed in this pamphlet does not imply any +indifference to their merits. + +540. MISS M. E. FREER--_Red Roses._--Coquetry is the predominant +spirit of this work. But it is not painted with the slightness which +a coquettish picture from a fresh female hand might be expected to +display. On the contrary, there is a good deal of careful realization, +and an amount of general skill and force which places Miss Freer high +among lady artists. No. 446, _Margaret Wilson_, by the same painter, +hung too high to be scrutinized, seems to be equally good, or better. + +585. MACLISE--_Madeline after Prayer._--The useful adage which Mr. +Maclise will never lay to heart is that “Enough is as good as a feast.” +We find Keats’s Madeline encumbered with items of furniture and +ornamentation. Moreover, the painter’s decorative taste is anything +but chastened; witness the horrible pattern which she has begun in her +broidery frame. A graver objection is the want of any real luminosity +in the moonlight which Keats has made so resplendent; the painted +window itself is the very maximum of opacity, and the light (if light +it can be called) seems to fall _upon_ it, not to be transmitted +through its panes. Whatever his failings in execution, Mr. Maclise +can depict light vastly better than this when he chooses. So much for +objections. After any quantity of them, it remains that the picture is +highly attractive, and the Madeline a very beautiful creature--perhaps +the sweetest woman Mr. Maclise has painted. She is a personage _not_ +made + + “For human nature’s daily food,” + +and yet she is sympathetic. To be that, she must be poetic also. + +589. BURCHETT--_Measure for Measure._--Mr. Burchett follows up his +remarkable work of last year with another of corresponding importance. +Matured consideration, and strong powers of working and of development, +have gone to the making of this picture; which represents the great +crisis in the action of _Measure for Measure_, where the Duke of +Vienna, disguised as a friar, is revealed by the unwitting Lucio to +the eyes of the abashed Angelo and Escalus, and of the now almost +hopeless Isabella and Mariana. The story is told with much judgment and +penetration (so far as such a complicated story _can_ be told) by the +Duke’s vacated chair of state, with coronet and sceptre laid upon it, +between the seats of Escalus and Angelo; the young courtier, facing the +just uncowled Duke, and recognising him on the instant, and raising +his cap; the frothy bluster of Lucio dying out on his scared visage +as he gasps to see whom he has been mauling and traducing; and other +well-chosen and well-combined incidents. The countenance of the Duke is +German and searching; that of Escalus true to the good-natured cynicism +of the substantially upright old man; Isabella has much of the nun +about her. Angelo is, I think, too much the burly insolent oppressor; +for we must understand from the drama that he really looked and was +an abstinent Pharisee, led on by temptation and opportunity into +vilenesses quite unlike the man that all others and himself supposed +him to be. There is much able and accurate painting in this work, +though it would benefit by more breadth of general harmonizing. + +600. PARSONS--_The Wayfarer._--A peculiar and delicate piece of subdued +execution, deserving of inspection; _so_ peculiar in its granulated +texture that it hardly proclaims itself to be oil-painting. + +613. HICKS--_Escape of the Countess of Morton to Paris, with Henrietta, +infant Daughter of Charles I._--The most important and best production +of Mr. Hicks. Like Mr. Burchett’s picture, its incidents require to be +analysed one by one: when that process has been gone through, one finds +a great deal of ingenious skill standing to the painter’s credit. + +614. PRINSEP--_A Study of a Girl Reading._--Mr. Prinsep deserves real +thanks for this painting. The girl is an exquisite person, and the +picture also may without flattery be called exquisite. It has a most +charming sense of the womanly in the maidenly. The fair one is about to +sit down to luncheon, but holds and reads her book up to the moment of +drawing in her chair. Perhaps she will violate etiquette by persisting +in “reading at meals:” and who will not forgive her? + +621. A. MOORE--_Azaleas._--This will be remembered as one of the +_illustrations_ (as the French phrase it) of the Exhibition of 1868. It +presents, in life size, a Grecian lady (or at any rate Grecian-robed), +at a pot of azaleas, some of which she plucks and drops into a basin. +Whether or not azaleas were known to Grecian ladies, whether or not +they came from America, are questions not difficult of solution, but of +sublime indifference to Mr. Moore. (The flowers in Mr. Watts’s Grecian +picture, No. 323, are also, I apprehend, azaleas.) The study of the +blossom-loaded plant is most delicate and lovely; and the lady has +elevated classic grace, though her face hardly sustains comparison with +the rest of the picture. For a sense of beauty in disposition of form, +and double-distilled refinement in colour, this work may allow a wide +margin to any competitors in the gallery, and still be the winner. On +the other hand, it is proper to remember that such a painting as this +presupposes certain _data_ in art, which _data_ some people not wholly +unworthy of a hearing demur to: chiefly, it presupposes once for all +that that innermost artistic problem of how to reconcile realization +with abstraction deserves to be given up. How much could be said on +this question from differing points of view, I need not here indicate. +You linger long to look at Mr. Moore’s picture, and return to it again +and again: and that justifies him in taking, individually, the benefit +of one of those points of view. He unites with singular subtlety of +grace a phase of the evanescent to a phase of the permanent: colour and +handling which withdraw themselves from the eye with a suggestion (or, +as one might say, with a whisper), to statuesque languor and repose of +form. + +624. BRETT--_Christmas Morning, 1866._--In scale combined with subject, +this is far the most important picture Mr. Brett has produced. We see +a manned boat and a wrecking ship upon the immense ocean, with its +swirling drift blown across like a tongue of tormented flame; and huge +volumes of grey cloud over the horizon, walling out from the sea the +gorgeous dawn of a new day, on fire with the blaze of sunlight. The +painting of the vast sea-surface is a very great effort of knowledge +and mastery, and a very successful one. + +629. A. GOODWIN--_The Dead Woodman._--A picture of highly remarkable +effect, and poetic perception. A blue-grey bloom of sunset broods +luminously over all. The work has a kind of intellectual analogy to +the _Dead Stonebreaker_ which Mr. Wallis painted years ago: but in all +points of externals it is entirely different. + +632. MILLAIS--_Souvenir of Velasquez_ (_Diploma-work deposited in +the Academy on his election as an Academician_).--It is not for an +outsider to surmise whether or not the Academicians court the deposit +of diploma-pictures which may have cost their painters, working with +the quick-handedness of a Millais, perhaps a couple of days’ labour. +However this may be, they have here got a diploma-picture of that +description, and an admirable one in its way it certainly is. The +resemblance to Velasquez is hardly such as to justify the title. + +685. WATTS--_A. Panizzi, Esq._--That this is about the finest portrait +of the year need scarcely be specified, Mr. Watts being its author. It +was presented to Mr. Panizzi by the Officers of the British Museum, +on his retirement; and happily expresses, in the sitter, great powers +of work, long in active exercise, and now in well-earned repose. A +sketch-plan of the Museum reading-room forms an appropriate and not +undecorative device in the right-hand upper corner. + +735. SANDYS--_Study of a Head._--We have now got out of the +oil-pictures, and have come to the drawings. This is an excellent +study of a wilful, tameless-spirited beauty, who bites her hair in +her gathering mood. Further on (816) is an equally well-done head +of _George Critchett, Esq._, a head that seems to teem with defined +calculation. It will be known to many besides myself that Mr. Sandys +sent to the Academy an oil-picture of Medea in an act of incantation, +not only worthy, but more than worthy, of his highly disciplined powers +and determined accomplishment. It has dropped out of the Exhibition +when the pictures came to be actually hung; leaving some food for +pondering to those who care for the higher and completer forms of +pictorial work. They may feel--and the feeling would be only enhanced +by some other things they may have heard, and a great deal of what +they see on the Academy walls--that an off-hand style of painting, +now predominant, has interests of its own clashing with those of some +graver phases of art; and that judicial equity in adjusting these +interests may sometimes be in default. Sir Francis Grant, detailing +after-dinner statistics, may fancy that the whole question is settled +by saying that there is space for so many pictures only, and that +so many more were sent in; but this is far from being the _dernier +mot_. Efficiency No. 1 and semi-efficiency No. 2 may be contending +for a residue of space, and the admission of either is obviously the +exclusion of the other; but he would be a very innocent President, +non-academician artist, or private and unprofessional person, who +should thence conclude that the Pompey and the Cæsar have coequal +claims, especially the Pompey. Anybody, who has experienced, written, +read, heard, or seen, even a little of this ever-recurrent hanging +controversy, loathes its very atmosphere, and gladly retreats from it, +seldom without a sense of protest, and a chafing at injustice. + +753. J. F. LEWIS--_Bedouin Arabs._--One of the very finest studies of +the kind produced by a hand unrivalled in its own way. + +943. MUNRO--_The Sisters._--We are now in the Sculpture Room. Mr. Munro +has earned great popularity and a defined position by works of this +class, in which groups of children are treated with some graceful +incident and execution, and very genuinely graceful feeling. The +present group counts among the best of them. + +948. WOOLNER--_Elaine with the Shield of Sir Launcelot._--The maiden +loves and muses, and pines as she muses; but as yet her doom only +hovers over her pityingly. The feeling of reserve and purity, of the +new experience of love timidly entertained, and yet already permeating +her whole life, and absorbing all her forces into its own surging and +resistless current, is predominant in this figure. Along with this, +and with much simplicity of pose and motive, one readily perceives +that the whole thing is uncommonly treated--_uncommonly_ rather than +_unusually_. The face has more of personal individuality, the turn +of the figure more shades of variety within unity, the execution +throughout more distinction, than British sculpture accustoms us to. So +also with the hands and feet: their peculiarities are all significant +and forecast, though to my eye they do not sufficiently partake of +the beauty of delicacy. Compare--or contrast would be the word--this +statuette with + +981. J. S. WESTMACOTT--_Elaine._ + +984. ARMSTEAD--_Astronomy._--A bronze colossal figure, destined for the +Prince-Consort memorial in Hyde Park. It has a good decorative look, +and adequate grandeur of pose and line. It might fairly (so far as one +can judge before it is placed _in situ_) be termed a _proportional_ +work; one, that is, in which the conception, treatment, and general +force of impression, have relation to its scale, and to its destination +as one in a series of impersonating figures. + +987. LEIFCHILD--_The Dawn._--The sentiment of this figure is well +expressed in two lines from the MS. quotation:-- + + “The Dawn, whose splendour is a promise still, + Heralding more than Day can e’er fulfil.” + +It is the sentiment of an ushering-in, an announcement, something +to come. Mr. Leifchild has produced several sculptural works eminent +for thoughtfulness in concentration. The present figure belongs to a +different order of work, yet something of the same spirit can be traced +in it. + +1007. WOOLNER--_Thomas Carlyle._--The strong, emphatic, penetrating +style of Mr. Woolner, who searches under the surface of his sitter’s +face, and records on its surface what he has found beneath, gave +him the best of rights to deal with such a magnificent head as +Carlyle’s--marked as that is by a most powerful dominating expression, +with abundant points of subordinate detail and individuality. Mr. +Woolner had, indeed, done a medallion of the great writer many years +ago; now we get a bust worthily recording so memorable a man. + +1027. WOOLNER--_Reliefs from the Iliad_ (_pedestal of the Bust of the +Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone_).--Here are three subjects executed +on a small scale, with a singular amount of original force. The third, +_Thetis consoling Achilles_, does not appear to me, in composition and +suggestion, so remarkable as the other two. _Pallas and Achilles at the +Trenches_, where the hero shouts to the Greeks a superhuman cry, while +Pallas overshadows him with her ægis, is a most vigorous and admirable +composition; indeed, but for its small size, one would be minded to +call it the finest thing Mr. Woolner has yet exhibited. _Thetis praying +to Zeus on behalf of Achilles_ is hardly second to it. The sea-goddess +rises on tiptoe to stroke the beard of the omnipotent cloud-compeller; +and no single touch perhaps could have given the amplitude and +primitiveness of the Homeric Pantheon more keenly than this. It is not +exactly _naïveté_, and still less exactly humour, but something happily +between both. + +1053. WATTS--_Clytie_; _Marble Bust, unfinished._--This is an +experiment in sculpture by our distinguished painter. I find it a very +interesting one, and (_pace_ the professional sculptors) a remarkable +success. The head reverts over the right shoulder with a graceful and +energetic turn; and these qualities, especially that of energy, are +preserved in all points of view. The modelling of the bust and arms is +pulpy and creased--more comparable in tendency to that of the Elgin +Marbles than of later Greek sculpture. Indeed, I should surmise that +the thoughts of Mr. Watts, as he worked, were mostly shared between +Phidias and Michael Angelo. The spectator who finds some parts lumpy or +rude should bear in mind that the work is avowedly “unfinished”--even +if he does not deem the general conditions under which the experiment +has been made sufficient to abate the picking of holes. + + * * * * * + +Possibly some readers of this pamphlet may use it to be referred to as +they range through the Academy rooms, examining their contents. If this +is the case, I should regret to pass over without a word of mention +several works which, according to the scope and limitations of the +pamphlet, I have not found an opportunity of reviewing in any detail in +their proper order. After all, a great number of works against whose +skilfulness and merit I neither raise nor suggest any imputation will +be remaining totally unnamed. Meanwhile, a simple numerical list of +contributions may be added to which I would rather direct attention +thus barely than not at all. Some of them are productions of leading +importance: others have modest graces which should not pass unobserved. +The visitor must form his own opinion of whether and why they deserved +specification. + + 28. SWINTON--_The Earl Bathurst._ + 29. T. S. COOPER--_Descending from the Rock Grazing, + East Cumberland._ + 49. MAC WHIRTER--_Old Edinburgh, Night._ + 67. GRANT--_Miss Grant._ + 68. FLEUSS--_G. Makgill, Esq._ + 120. GRACE--_The Curfew tolls the Knell of parting Day._ + 124. GRANT--_The Earl of Bradford._ + 158. EDEN--_On the Thames near Pangbourne._ + 160. HARVEYMORE--_The Point, near Walton on the Naze._ + 168. J. B. BURGESS--_A Portrait._ + 170. H. MOORE--_Ebb-tide, Squall coming on._ + 176. CATHELINAU--_The Nurse._ + 184. HALLE--_Miss Jessie._ + 199. E. GILL--_Storm and Shipwreck on a Rocky Coast._ + 205. ELMORE--“_Two Women shall be grinding at the Mill._” + 206. ZUCCOLI--_Wine Gratis._ + 208. Ditto--_Preparing to cook Indian Corn._ + 222. YEAMES--_The Chimney-Corner._ + 241. LEHMANN--_Portrait of a Gentleman._ + 251. NICOL--_A China Merchant._ + 267. GOODALL--_Mater Purissima._ + 272. ARCHER--_Burial of Guinevere._ + 290. WATTS--_The Meeting of Jacob and Esau._ + 298. V. COLE--_Sunlight Lingering on the Autumn Woods._ + 303. WELLS--_James Stansfeld, Esq., of Halifax._ + 321. POTT--_The Minuet._ + 322. G. D. LESLIE--_Mrs. Charles Dickens, Jun._ + 327. PRINSEP--_A Portrait._ + 340. FRITH--_Scene from “She Stoops to Conquer.”_ + 344. PERUGINI--_Daphne._ + 345. MRS. ROBBINSON--_The Firstborn._ + 346. RADFORD--_“No Man that Warreth” &c._ + 348. LUCY--_The Forced Abdication of Mary Stuart._ + 367. MISS A. THORNYCROFT--_Study of a Head._ + 378. BOUGHTON--_A Breton Pastoral._ + 387. WYLLIE--_Dover Castle and Town._ + 390. CALTHROP--_The Last Song of the Girondins, 1793._ + 400. ORCHARDSON--_Scene from “King Henry IV.”_ + 403. STANHOPE--_The Footsteps of the Flock._ + 416. WHAITE--_Harvest on the Mountains._ + 420. WADE--_A Stitch in Time._ + 452. H. MOORE--_Weather Moderating after a Gale._ + 467. MRS. WARD--_Sion House, 1553._ + 474. CROWE--_A Chiffonnier._ + 478. WELLS--_The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne._ + 490. E. FRÈRE--_La Sortie de l’Ecole des Filles._ + 503. HEMY--_By the River Side, Antwerp._ + 504. NICOL--_Waiting at the Cross-roads._ + 520. ARMITAGE--_Herod’s Birthday Feast._ + 521. LIDDERDALE--_The Exiled Jacobite._ + 523. PRINSEP--_A Greek Widow at a Tomb._ + 529. HILLINGFORD--_Before the Tournament._ + 531. ARMSTRONG--_Daffodils._ + 532. OPIE--_The Musical Genius._ + 542. HAYLLAR--_Midsummer, Parham Hall, Suffolk._ + 551. GALE--_Nazareth._ + 552. GOLDIE--_A Child Martyr borne across the Roman Campagna + to one of the Catacombs._ + 571. MISS SANDYS--_Enid._ + 579. CALDERON--_Whither?_ + 580. MASON--_Netley Moor._ + 615. HODGSON--_Off the Downs in the Days of the Cæsars._ + 616. A. HAYWARD--_The Haunted House._ + 636. J. E. WILLIAMS--_The Bishop of Gloucester._ + 646. ARCHER--_Bringing home Fern, Evening._ + 648. MCCALLUM--_Near the Buck Gates, Sherwood Forest._ + 656. TOURRIER--_The Cloisters._ + 657. G. D. LESLIE--_The Empty Sleeve._ + 671. BRENNAN--_Via della Vita, Rome._ + 673. CROWE--_Mary Stuart, February 8th, 1586._ + 683. A. HUGHES--_Mrs. Edward Rhodes._ + 689. LOBLEY--_Fancies in the Fire._ + 727. R. DOYLE--_The Enchanted Tree._ + 754. A. C. H. LUXMOORE--_Searching for Treason._ + 763. J. F. LEWIS--_Camels._ + 764. COUNT G. V. ROSEN--_A Street in Cairo._ + 833. HARDWICK--_The Woods in Early Spring._ + 908. E. EDWARDS--_Four Etchings, Wells, &c._ + 915. C. N. LUXMOORE--_Pen and Ink Sketches from Nature._ + 1001. WOOLNER--_Hon. W. E. Frere, late of Bombay._ + 1029. Ditto--_The late Robert Leslie Ellis._ + 1040. BÖHM--_Miss Cumberbatch._ + 1052. AP GRIFFITH--_Cain preparing his Sacrifice._ + 1106. G. A. LAWSON--_The Maiden’s Secret._ + 1164. TUPPER--_Dr. Hyde Salter._ + 1169. G. MORGAN--_Study of a Head._ + 1194. LEIFCHILD--_The Rev. Thomas Jones._ + + + + +_PART II._ + + BY + ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. + + +I have been asked to note down at random my impressions of some few +among this year’s pictures. These I am aware will have no weight or +value but that which a sincere and studious love of the art can give; +so much I claim for them, and so much only. To pass judgment or tender +counsel is beyond my aim or my desire. + +Returning from the Academy I find two pictures impressed on my memory +more deeply and distinctly than the rest. First of these--first of +all, it seems to me, for depth and nobility of feeling and meaning--is +Mr. Watts’ “Wife of Pygmalion.” The soft severity of perfect beauty +might serve alike for woman or statue, flesh or marble; but the eyes +have opened already upon love, with a tender and grave wonder; her +curving ripples of hair seem just warm from the touch and the breath +of the goddess, moulded and quickened by lips and hands diviner than +her sculptor’s. So it seems a Greek painter must have painted women, +when Greece had mortal pictures fit to match her imperishable statues. +Her shapeliness and state, her sweet majesty and amorous chastity, +recall the supreme Venus of Melos. In this “translation” of a Greek +statue into an English picture, no less than in the bust of Clytie, +we see how in the hands of a great artist painting and sculpture may +become as sister arts indeed, yet without invasion or confusion; how, +without any forced alliance of form and colour, a picture may share +the gracious grandeur of a statue, a statue may catch something of the +subtle bloom of beauty proper to a picture. + +The other picture of which I would speak, unlike enough to this in +sentiment or in tone, has in common with it the loftiest quality of +beauty pure and simple. Indeed, of all the few great or the many +good painters now at work among us, no one has so keen and clear a +sense of this absolute beauty as Mr. Albert Moore. His painting is to +artists what the verse of Théophile Gautier is to poets; the faultless +and secure expression of an exclusive worship of things formally +beautiful. That contents them; they leave to others the labours and +the joys of thought or passion. The outlines of their work are pure, +decisive, distinct; its colour is of the full sunlight. This picture +of “Azaleas” is as good a type as need be of their manner of work. +A woman delicately draped, but showing well the gentle mould of her +fine limbs through the thin soft raiment; pale small leaves and bright +white blossoms about her and above, a few rose-red petals fallen +on the pale marble and faint-coloured woven mat before her feet; a +strange and splendid vessel, inlaid with designs of Eastern colour; +another--clasped by one long slender hand and filled from it with +flowers--of soft white, touched here and there into blossom of blue: +this is enough. The melody of colour, the symphony of form is complete: +one more beautiful thing is achieved, one more delight is born into the +world; and its meaning is beauty; and its reason for being is to be. + +We all owe so much to Mr. Leighton for the selection and intention of +his subjects--always noble or beautiful as these are, always worthy of +a great and grave art; a thing how inexpressibly laudable and admirable +in a time given over to the school of slashed breeches and the school +of blowsy babyhood!--we owe him, I say, so much for this that it seems +ungracious to say a word of his work except in the way of thanks and +praise. I find no true touch of Greek beauty in the watery Hellenism +of his Ariadne: she is a nobly moulded model of wax, such a figure +as a mediæval sorceress might set to waste before a charmed fire +and burn out the life of the living woman. The “Actæa” has the charm +that a well-trained draughtsman can give to a naked fair figure; this +charm it has, and no other; it has also a painful trimness suggestive +of vapour-baths, of “strigil” and “rusma,” of the toilet labours of +a Juvenalian lady; not the fresh sweet strength of limbs native to +the sea, but the lower loveliness of limbs that have been steamed and +scraped. The picture of Acme and Septimius is excellently illustrative +of Mr. Theodore Martin’s verse; it is in no wise illustrative of +Catullus. I doubt if Love would have sneezed approval of these lovers +either to left or to right. As for detail, surely one arm at least of +his and one leg at least of hers are singular samples of drawing. In +his two other pictures Mr. Leighton has, I think, reached his highest +mark for this year. The majestic figure and noble head of Jonathan are +worthy of the warrior whose love was wonderful, passing the love of +woman; the features resolute, solicitous, heroic. The boy beside him is +worthy to stand so near; his action has all the grace of mere nature, +as he stoops slightly from the shoulder to sustain the heavy quiver. +The portrait of a lady hard by has a gracious and noble beauty, too +rare even among the abler of English workmen in this line. + +The genius of Mr. Millais is of course a thing indestructible; but +all that can be done to deaden or distort it the Academy has done. +“They have scotched the snake, not killed it”--being as it is a +“Serpent-of-Eternity.” There is nothing here to recall the painter of +past years. There is no significance or depth, no subtlety of beauty; +there is the fit and equal ability of an able craftsman. The group of +three sisters is a sample of this excellent ability; no man needs to +be told that. There is no lack of graceful expressive composition; +there is no stint of ribbons and trimmings. There is a bitter want +of beauty, of sweetness, of the harmony which should hang about the +memories of men after seeing it as an odour or a cadence about their +senses: and this beauty, this sweetness, this harmony, all great and +all genuine pictures leave with us for an after-gust, not soon to pass +or perish. The picture called “Rosalind and Celia” gives us graver +and deeper offence. Of the landscape nothing evil shall be said, and +nothing good; but the figures cry aloud for remark and reprobation. +These women are none of Shakspeare’s. Think but in passing of the +fresh grace, the laughters as of April, the light delicate daring, +the tender and brilliant sweetness of the true “Ganymede;” what is +left of all this? She figures here as a fair-faced ballet-girl, with +a soul absorbed by the calf of her leg. And this dull, sickly, stolid +woman huddling heavily against her is Celia; this is the purest rarest +type that Shakspeare could give of heroic and sweet devotion; this is +she who alone even among his women could not live but in another’s +life. And Touchstone--can this sour ape-cheeked face be the face that +Jaques “met i’ the forest?” these the lips that rallied Corin and wooed +Aubrey? “Bear your body more seemly,” Touchstone. And with all this +debasement and distortion of Shakspeare’s figures, we do not even get +by way of amends a well-wrought piece of work; forget if you will the +names attached, this is still but an unlovely picture. It seems that +Mr. Millais has forgotten how to paint a lady; his women here all smack +of the side-scenes or the servants’ hall. Admirable for its strong sure +power of painting, the “Stella” is, nevertheless, pitiably vacuous. +If the sailors at Nelson’s tomb appeal somewhat overmuch to popular +sentiment of no deep or delicate kind, the picture is yet a noble one +and impressive. The faces are full of simple and keen feeling, of tacit +and loyal reverence. There is a superfluous ugliness in the two wooden +stumps; and perhaps the knack by which the light is arranged so as to +strike out severally from each pane of the glass lantern is too like +one of those petty feats which are as lime-twigs laid to catch the +eyes and tongues of the half-trained sightseers who jostle and saunter +through a gallery, pausing now and again to “wonder with a foolish face +of praise.” The worst of these pictures, painted by a meaner man, would +justly win notice and applause; but it is no small thing that a great +man should do no greater work than some of this. The clear eye and the +strong hand have not forgotten their cunning; it is a master whom we +find too often at work fit only for a craftsman. Surely a painter who +has done things so noble will not always be content to take for his +battle-cry, “Philistia, be thou glad of me.” + +I return now to the works of Mr. Watts. His little landscape is full +of that beauty which lives a dim brief life between sunset and dusk. +The faint flames and mobile colours of the sky, the dim warm woods, the +flight of doves about the dovecote, have all their part in the grave +charm of evening, are all given back to the eye with the grace and +strength of a master’s touch; the stacks that catch the glare and glow +of low sunlight seem crude and violent in their intense yellow colour +and hard angles of form: natural it may be, but a natural discord that +jars upon the eye. “The Meeting of Jacob and Esau,” though something +too academic, has in part the especial, the personal grandeur of Mr. +Watts’s larger manner of work. In the pale smooth worn face of Jacob +there is a shy sly shame which befits the supplanter: his well-nigh +passive action, as of one half reassured and half abashed, bares to +view the very heart and root of his nature; and the rough strenuous +figure of Esau, in its frank grandeur of brave sun-brown limbs, speaks +aloud on the other side of the story, by the fervid freedom of his +impetuous embrace. Far off, between the meeting figures, midmost of the +remote cavalcade, the fair clear face of a woman looks out, pale under +folds of white, patient and ill at ease; her one would take to be Leah. +It is noticeable that one year, not over rich in excellent work, should +give us two admirable pictures drawn from the Hebrew chronicles. What +they call scriptural art in England does not often bear such acceptable +fruit. I know not if even Mr. Watts has ever painted a nobler portrait +than this of Mr. Panizzi; it recalls the majestic strength and depth of +Morone’s work: there is the same dominant power of hand and keenness of +eye, the same breadth and subtlety of touch, the same noble reticence +of colour. + +Before I pass on to speak of any other painter, I will here interpolate +what I have to say of Mr. Watts’s bust of Clytie. Not imitative, not +even assimilative of Michel Angelo’s manner, it yet by some vague +and ineffable quality brings to mind his work rather than any Greek +sculptor’s. There is the same intense and fiery sentiment, the same +grandeur of device, the same mystery of tragedy. The colour and the +passion of this work are the workman’s own. Never was a divine legend +translated into diviner likeness. Large, deep-bosomed, superb in arm +and shoulder, as should be the woman growing from flesh into flower +through a godlike agony, from fairness of body to fullness of flower, +large-leaved and broad of blossom, splendid and sad--yearning with +all the life of her lips and breasts after the receding light and the +removing love--this is the Clytie indeed whom sculptors and poets have +loved for her love of the Sun their God. The bitter sweetness of the +dividing lips, the mighty mould of the rising breasts, the splendour of +her sorrow is divine: divine the massive weight of carven curls bound +up behind, the heavy straying flakes of unfilleted hair below; divine +the clear cheeks and low full forehead, the strong round neck made for +the arms of a god only to clasp and bend down to their yoke. We seem to +see the lessening sunset that she sees, and fear too soon to watch that +stately beauty slowly suffer change and die into flower, that solid +sweetness of body sink into petal and leaf. Sculpture such as this has +actual colour enough without need to borrow of an alien art. + +The work of M. Legros is always of such a solid and serious excellence +as to require no passing study. His picture of Henry VIII. and +courtiers is, I must think, an instance of absolute error; it has +no finer quality of its own, and the reminiscence of Holbein is not +fortunate. “The Refectory” makes large amends: he has never done more +perfect work than this. The cadence of colours is just and noble; +witness the red-leaved book open in one monk’s hand on the white cloth, +the clear green jug on the table, the dim green bronze of the pitcher +on the floor; beside it a splendid cat, its fur beautiful with warm +black bars on an exquisite ground of dull grey, its expectant eye and +mouth lifted without further or superfluous motion. The figures are +noble by mere force of truth; there is nothing of vulgar ugliness +or theatrical holiness. As good but not so great as the celebrated +“Ex-voto” of a past year, this picture is wholly worthy of a name +already famous. + +The large work of Baron Leys stands out amid the overflow all round it +of bad and feeble attempts or pretences at work in all the strength +of its great quality of robust invention. It has the interest of +excellent narrative; in every face there is a story. A great picture +is something other than this; but this also is a great thing done. It +is a chapter of history written in colours; a study which may remind +us of Meinhold’s great romances, though the author of “Sidonia the +Sorceress” may stand higher as a writer than Leys as a painter. All the +realistic detail is here, but not the vital bloom and breath of action +which Meinhold had to give. Rigour of judicial accuracy might refuse to +this work the praise of a noble picture; for to that the final imprint +and seal of beauty is requisite; and this beauty, if a man’s hand be +but there to bestow it, may be wrought out of homely or heavenly faces, +out of rare things or common, out of Titian’s women or Rembrandt’s. +It is not the lack of prettiness which lowers the level of a picture. +Here for imagination we have but intellect, for charm of form we have +but force of thought. Too much also is matter of mere memory; thus +the clerk writing is but a bastard brother of Holbein’s Erasmus. Form +and colour are vigorous, if hard also and heavy; and when all is said +it must in the end be still accepted as a work of high and rare power +after its own kind, and that no common kind, nor unworthy of studious +admiration and grave thanksgiving. + +It is well to compare this with the work that passes for historical in +many English eyes. Doubtless it may be said that such things as some of +these are not worth mention in a study so imperfect and discursive as +this must be; that they were better passed by in peace and left to find +their level. But it has been well said, “Il est des morts qu’il faut +qu’on tue;” and though undesirous in general to take that duty out of +abler hands, I will choose but one sample at random, on which I came by +chance, looking up from Sir E. Landseer’s dog and deer, a work of brute +ability, excellently repulsive as all brutish pain must be if duly +rendered. This select sample of historic art in England is a picture +of Mary Stuart about to sign her abdication. Posthumous parasites have +often libelled her with praise of pencil or of pen; but retribution +never yet fell heavier on her memory. She, the woman of such keen clear +wits, such indomitable nerves, such pitiless charms and such tameless +passions, that the very record of them can yet seduce and daunt men as +she daunted and seduced them of old--the fairest, subtlest, hardest +among women, with a heart of iron and fire--she shows here a fool’s +face, doubtful between a simper and a sob, raised in pitiable appeal +to a ring of stagestruck ruffians. The picture is worth notice as a +tangible piece of proof that certain men do really accept this as the +historic type of a figure so famous as hers. Another hand has drawn her +portrait, perhaps somewhat nearer life, to this effect; (I take leave +to cite the lines as a corrective, being reminded of them at sight of +this picture. They may perhaps find place here, as the Queen of Scots +figures thrice in this year’s show:)-- + + “Nor shall men ever say + But she was born right royal; full of sins, + Dyed hand and tongue with bloody stains and black, + Unmerciful, unfaithful, but of heart + So high and fiery, and of spirit so clear, + In extreme danger and pain so lifted up, + So of all violent things inviolable, + So large of courage, so superb of soul, + So sheathed with iron mind invincible + And arms unbreached of fireproof constancy-- + By shame not shaken, fear or force or death, + Change, or all confluence of calamities-- + And so at her worst need beloved, and so, + (Naked of help and honour when she seemed, + As other women would be, of their strength + Stript) still so of herself adorable, + She shall be a world’s wonder to all time, + A deadly glory watched of marvelling men + Not without praise, not without noble tears, + And if without what she would never have + Who had it never, pity--yet from none + Quite without reverence and some kind of love + For that which was so royal.” + +Having delivered my soul as to this matter, I return not unrelieved +from historic ground, with some hope that this aberration may prove +pardonable when the provocation has been taken into account. + +I have compared Albert Moore to Théophile Gautier; I am tempted to +compare Mr. Leslie to Hégésippe Moreau. The low melodious notes of his +painting have the soft reserve of tone and still sweetness of touch +which belong to the idyllic poet of the Voulzie. Sometimes he almost +attains the gentle grace of the other’s best verse--though I hardly +remember a picture of his as exquisite for music and meaning as the +“Étrennes à la Fermière.” His work of this year has much of tender +beauty, especially the picture called “Home News;” his portraits have +always a pleasant and genuine quality of their own; and in the picture +called “The Empty Sleeve,” though trenching somewhat nearly on the +obvious and facile ground of family feeling and domestic exhibition, +there is enough of truth and grace visible to keep it up on the proper +level of art. + +The “Evening Hymn” of Mr. Mason is in my mind the finest I have seen +of his works, admirable beyond all where all are admirable. A row of +girls, broken in rank here and there, stand and sing on a rough green +rise of broken ground; behind them is a wild spare copse, beyond it +a sunset of steady and sombre fire stains red with its sunken rays +the long low space of sky; above this broad band of heavy colour the +light is fitful and pale. The raised faces and opening mouths of the +singers are as graceful as those carved by Della Robbia or Donatello +in their choral groups; nothing visible of gape or strain, yet the +action of song is made sensible. Their fine features are not over fine; +they have all an air of the fields and the common country, which is +confirmed in the figures, cast in a somewhat ruder mould, of the two +young peasants who stand listening. One girl stands off a little from +the rest, conning the text with eyes set fast upon her open book; the +rest sing freely at large; the middle group of three girls is most +noble and exquisite. Rich at once and grave in the colour, stately and +sweet in the composition, this picture is a model of happy and majestic +temperance. + +Mr. Walker’s picture of “Vagrants,” has more of actual beauty than +his “Bathers” of last year; more of brilliant skill and swift sharp +talent it can hardly have. The low marsh with its cold lights of grey +glittering waters here and there; the stunted brushwood, the late and +pale sky; the figures gathering about the kindling fire, sad and wild +and worn and untameable; the one stately shape of a girl standing +erect, her passionate beautiful face seen across the smoke of the scant +fuel; all these are wrought with such appearance of ease and security +and speed of touch, that the whole seems almost a feat of mere skill +rather than a grave sample of work; but in effect it is no such slight +thing. + +In Mr. Armstrong’s “Daffodils” there is a still sobriety of beauty, a +quiet justice and a fine gravity of manner, far unlike the flash and +flare of obtrusive cleverness which vexes us so often in English work +of this kind. The sombre sweetness of a coming twilight is poured upon +hill and field; only the yellow flowers wreathed about the child’s +hat or held by the boy kneeling on the stile relieve the tender tone +of sunless daylight with soft and tempered colour. The action of the +figures has all the grace of simple truth and childlike nature. + +“The Exiled Jacobite” of Mr. Lidderdale is full of the noble sadness of +the subject, excellent also as a genuine picture, a work of composed +harmony. The noble worn face of the old man, stamped with the sacred +seal of patience and pain, looks seaward over the discoloured stonework +of the low wall, beyond the dull grey roofs of a low-lying town that +slope to the foreign shore. His eyes are not upon the dusky down +sweeping up behind, the rough quaint houses and deep hollow, veiled all +and blue with the misty late air; they are set, sad and strong, upon +things they shall never see indeed again. From the whole figure the +spirit of the old song speaks: + + “Now all is done that man can do, + And all is done in vain.” + +The pathos of the picture is masculine and plain as truth; the painter +might have written under it the simple first words of the same most +noble song: + + “It was a’ for our rightful king.” + +Mr. Poynter’s picture of “The Catapult” has an admirable energy of +thought and handiwork; the force and weight of faculty shown in it +would be worthy remark if the result were less excellent. Excellent of +its kind it is, but not delightful; surprise and esteem it provokes, +but not the glad gratitude with which we should welcome all great work. +The labouring figures and the monstrous engine are worthy of wonder and +praise; but there is a want on the whole of beauty, a want in detail of +interest. The painter’s “Israel in Egypt” had more of both qualities, +though there is this year a visible growth of power; it left upon our +eyes a keen impression of gorgeous light and cruelty and splendour and +suffering; it had more room for the rival effects at once of fine art +and of casual sentiment. + +The two pictures of Mr. Hughes show all his inevitable grace and tender +way of work; they are full of gentle colour and soft significance. The +smaller is to us the sweeter sample; but both are noticeable for their +clear soft purity and bright delicacy of thought and touch. In the +larger picture the bird singing on the sill, delicious as it would be +anywhere, has here a double charm. + +There is a genuine force and a quaint beauty in Mr. Houghton’s +picture--portrait it can hardly be called--of a gentleman in his +laboratory. His other picture, of a boy lifting up a younger child +to smell a rose on the tree, while a kitten bounds at his feet, is +admirable for its plain direct grace of manner. + +The head of a priest by Mr. Burgess has a clear air of truth and +strength; its Spanish manner recalls the style of Phillip, whom the +painter, it seems, has sought to emulate. Among the few portraits worth +a look or a word, is that of Mrs. Birket Foster by Mr. Orchardson; +though the showy simplicity be something of a knack, and the painting +of woodwork and drapery rather a trick of trade acquired than a test +of accomplished power, the work is so well done and the action so +plain and good as to bear and to reward a second look. + +The show of this year is noticeably barren in landscape. Nothing is +here of Inchbold, nothing of Anthony. The time which can bring forth +but two such men should have also brought forth men capable to judge +them and to enjoy. Even here however the field is not all sterile: +there are two studies of sea by Mr. H. Moore, worthy to redeem the +whole waste of a year. One of these shows an ebbing tide before the +squall comes up; the soft low tumult of washing waves, not yet beaten +into storm and foam, but weltering and whitening under cloud and wind, +will soon gather power and passion; as yet there is some broken and +pallid sunlight flung over it by faint flashes, which serve but to show +the deepening trouble and quickening turmoil of reluctant waters. The +shifting and subtle colours of the surging sea and grey blowing sky are +beautiful and true. The study of storm subsiding as the waves beat up +inshore, though vigorous and faithful, is in parts somewhat heavy; but +the jostling breakers muster and fight and fall with all the grace and +force of nature. + +In these stray notes I had meant to set down nothing in dispraise of +this picture or that, but merely to say of such as I found good the +best I had to say; passing by of necessity many well worthy of praise +or blame, and many more not wholly worthy of either. Of these indeed +the main part of an exhibition must usually be made up; of mediocrities +and ingenuities which art must on the whole ignore and put aside +without rebuke, though they may not call aloud for fire to consume +them. But a word may here be said of M. Édouard Frère; a name that +carries weight with it. He has been likened to Wordsworth; it must be +a Wordsworth shorn of his beams. In the large field of the poet there +are barren and weedy places enough; he may at times, with relaxed hand +and bedimmed eye, drop from the hills to the quagmires, and croak there +to children, instead of singing to men; but the qualities which at such +times a great poet may have in common with a small painter are not the +qualities which make him great. When we find in M. Frère the majesty +and music of thought, the stately strength and high-toned harmonies, +the deep sure touch and keen-edged pathos of the poet, then only we may +grant the kinship. To the rags and tatters, the stubble and sweepings +of Wordsworth, he meantime is more than welcome. What is there in this +year’s picture well conceived, well composed, well painted? what of +effect, of harmony, of variety in these crude monotonous figures? A +great artist in verse or in colour may assuredly make some great thing +out of the commonest unwashed group of dull faces; but the workman must +first be great; and this workman, without force of hand or delicacy, +without depth or grace of painting, would pass off on us, in lieu of +these, such mere trickeries of coarse and easy sentiment, fit only +to “milk the maudlin” eyes of M. Prudhomme and his wife. Turn from +his work to that of M. Legros, and compare the emasculate with the +masculine side of French art. + +Among the drawings here are two studies by Mr. Sandys, both worthy of +the high place held by the artist. One is a portrait full of force +and distinction, drawn as perhaps no other man among us can draw; the +other, a woman’s face, is one of his most solid and splendid designs; +a woman of rich, ripe, angry beauty, she draws one warm long lock of +curling hair through her full and moulded lips, biting it with bared +bright teeth, which add something of a tiger’s charm to the sleepy and +couching passion of her fair face. But of that which is not here I have +also something to say. Exclusion and suppression of certain things in +the range of art are not really possible to any academy upon earth, be +it pictorial or literary. It is natural for academies to try, when any +rare or new good thing comes before them in either kind; witness much +of academic history in England as in France; but the record of their +ill-will has always been the record of their impotence. Mr. Sandys’ +picture of “Medea” is well enough known by this time, wherever there +is any serious knowledge of art, to claim here some word of comment, +not less seasonable than if it were now put forward to grace the great +show of the year. Like Coriolanus, the painter might say if he would +that it is his to banish the judges, his to reject the “common cry” of +academics. For this, beyond all doubt, is as yet his masterpiece. Pale +as from poison, with the blood drawn back from her very lips, agonized +in face and limbs with the labour and the fierce contention of old +love with new, of a daughter’s love with a bride’s, the fatal figure +of Medea pauses a little on the funereal verge of the wood of death, +in act to pour a blood-like liquid into the soft opal-coloured hollow +of a shell. The future is hard upon her, as a cup of bitter poison set +close to her mouth; the furies of Absyrtus, the furies of her children, +rise up against her from the unrisen years; her eyes are hungry and +helpless, full of a fierce and raging sorrow. Hard by her, henbane and +aconite and nightshade thrive and grow full of fruit and death; before +her fair feet the bright-eyed toads engender after their kind. Upon the +golden ground behind is wrought in allegoric decoration the likeness of +the ship Argo, with other emblems of the tragic things of her life. The +picture is grand alike for wealth of symbol and solemnity of beauty. + +The present year has other pictures to be proud of, not submitted to +the loose and slippery judgment of an academy. Of one or two such I am +here permitted to make mention. The great picture which Mr. Whistler +has now in hand is not yet finished enough for any critical detail to +be possible; it shows already promise of a more majestic and excellent +beauty of form than his earlier studies, and of the old delicacy and +melody of ineffable colour. Of three slighter works lately painted, +I may set down a few rapid notes; but no task is harder than this +of translation from colour into speech, when the speech must be so +hoarse and feeble, when the colour is so subtle and sublime. Music or +verse might strike some string accordant in sound to such painting, +but a mere version such as this is as a psalm of Tate’s to a psalm of +David’s. In all of these the main strings touched are certain varying +chords of blue and white, not without interludes of the bright and +tender tones of floral purple or red. In two of the studies the keynote +is an effect of sea; in one, a sketch for the great picture, the soft +brilliant floor-work and wall-work of a garden balcony serve in its +stead to set forth the flowers and figures of flower-like women. In +a second, we have again a gathering of women in a balcony; from the +unseen flowerland below tall almond-trees shoot up their topmost +crowns of tender blossom; beyond and far out to west and south the +warm and solemn sea spreads wide and soft without wrinkle of wind. The +dim grey floor-work in front, delicate as a summer cloud in colour, +is antiphonal to the bluer wealth of water beyond: and between these +the fair clusters of almond-blossom make divine division. Again the +symphony or (if you will) the antiphony is sustained by the fervid or +the fainter colours of the women’s raiment as they lean out one against +another, looking far oversea in that quiet depth of pleasure without +words when spirit and sense are filled full of beautiful things, till +it seems that at a mere breath the charmed vessels of pleasure would +break or overflow, the brimming chalices of the senses would spill +this wine of their delight. In the third of these studies the sea is +fresher, lightly kindling under a low clear wind; at the end of a pier +a boat is moored, and women in the delicate bright robes of eastern +fashion and colour so dear to the painter are about to enter it; one +is already midway the steps of the pier; she pauses, half unsure of +her balance, with an exquisite fluttered grace of action. Her comrades +above are also somewhat troubled, their robes lightly blown about by +the sea-wind, but not too much for light laughter and a quivering +pleasure. Between the dark wet stair-steps and piles of the pier the +sweet bright sea shows foamless here and blue. This study has more of +the delight of life than the others; which among three such may be most +beautiful I neither care to guess nor can. They all have the immediate +beauty, they all give the direct delight of natural things; they seem +to have grown as a flower grows, not in any forcing house of ingenious +and laborious cunning. This indeed is in my eyes a special quality of +Mr. Whistler’s genius; a freshness and fulness of the loveliest life +of things, with a high clear power upon them which seems to educe a +picture as the sun does a blossom or a fruit. + +It is well known that the painter of whom I now propose to speak has +never suffered exclusion or acceptance at the hand of any academy. To +such acceptance or such rejection all other men of any note have been +and may be liable. It is not less well known that his work must always +hold its place as second in significance and value to no work done by +any English painter of his time. Among the many great works of Mr. D. +G. Rossetti, I know of none greater than his two latest. These are +types of sensual beauty and spiritual, the siren and the sibyl. The one +is a woman of the type of Adam’s first wife; she is a living Lilith, +with ample splendour of redundant hair; + + She excels + All women in the magic of her locks; + And when she winds them round a young man’s neck + She will not ever set him free again. + +Clothed in soft white garments, she draws out through a comb the heavy +mass of hair like thick spun gold to fullest length; her head leans +back half sleepily, superb and satiate with its own beauty; the eyes +are languid, without love in them or hate; the sweet luxurious mouth +has the patience of pleasure fulfilled and complete, the warm repose of +passion sure of its delight. Outside, as seen in the glimmering mirror, +there is full summer; the deep and glowing leaves have drunk in the +whole strength of the sun. The sleepy splendour of the picture is a fit +raiment for the idea incarnate of faultless fleshly beauty and peril +of pleasure unavoidable. For this serene and sublime sorceress there +is no life but of the body; with spirit (if spirit there be) she can +dispense. Were it worth her while for any word to divide those terrible +tender lips, she too might say with the hero of the most perfect and +exquisite book of modern times--_Mademoiselle de Maupin_--“Je trouve +la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la +forme est la vertu.” Of evil desire or evil impulse she has nothing; +and nothing of good. She is indifferent, equable, magnetic; she charms +and draws down the souls of men by pure force of absorption, in no wise +wilful or malignant; outside herself she cannot live, she cannot even +see: and because of this she attracts and subdues all men at once in +body and in spirit. Beyond the mirror she cares not to look, and could +not. + + “Ma mia suora Rahel mai non si smaga + Dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto ’l giorno.” + +So, rapt in no spiritual contemplation, she will sit to all time, +passive and perfect: the outer light of a sweet spring day flooding +and filling the massive gold of her hair. By the reflection in a deep +mirror of fervent foliage from without, the chief chord of stronger +colour is touched in this picture; next in brilliance and force of +relief is the heap of curling and tumbling hair on which the sunshine +strikes; the face and head of the siren are withdrawn from the full +stroke of the light. + +After this faint essay at an exposition, the weighty and melodious +words in which the painter has recast his thought (words inscribed +on the frame of the picture) will be taken as full atonement for my +shortcomings; I fear only that the presumption and insufficience of the +commentator will now be but the more visible. + + +LADY LILITH. + + Of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, it is told + (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve) + That, ere the snake’s, her sweet tongue could deceive, + And her enchanted hair was the first gold. + And still she sits, young while the earth is old, + And, subtly of herself contemplative, + Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave, + Till heart and body and life are in its hold. + + Rose, foxglove, poppy, are her flowers: for where + Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent + And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? + Lo! as that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went + Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent, + And round his heart one strangling golden hair. + +The other picture gives the type opposite to this; a head of serene and +spiritual beauty, severe and tender, with full and heavy hair falling +straight in grave sweet lines, not like Lilith’s exuberant of curl +and coil; with carven column of throat, solid and round and flawless +as living ivory; with still and sacred eyes and pure calm lips; an +imperial votaress truly, in maiden meditation: yet as true and tangible +a woman of mortal mould, as ripe and firm of flesh as her softer and +splendid sister. The mystic emblems behind her show her power upon +love and death to make them loyal servants to the law of her lofty and +solemn spirit. Here also the artist alone should first be heard; and +I, having leave to act as his outrider, give him the due precedence. + +SIBYLLA PALMIFERA. + + Under the arch of life, where love and death, + Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw + Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, + I drew it in as simply as my breath. + Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath, + The sky and sea bend on thee,--which can draw, + By sea or sky or woman, to one law, + The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath. + + This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise + Thy voice and hand shake still,--long known to thee + By flying hair and fluttering hem,--the beat + Following her daily of thy heart and feet, + How passionately and irretrievably, + In what fond flight, how many ways and days! + +After these all weaker words must fall flat enough; but something of +further description may yet be allowed. Behind this figure of the ideal +and inaccessible beauty, an inlaid wall of alternate alabaster and +black marble bears inwrought on its upper part the rival twin emblems +of love and death; over the bare carven skull poppies impend, and +roses over the sweet head with bound blind eyes: in her hand is the +palm-branch, a sceptre of peace and of power. The cadence of colour is +splendid and simple, a double trinity of green and red, the dim red +robe, the deep red poppies, the soft red roses; and again the green +veil wound about with wild flowers, the green down of poppy-leaves, the +sharper green of rose-leaves. + +An unfinished picture of Beatrice (the Beata Beatrix of the Vita +Nuova), a little before death, is perhaps the noblest of Mr. Rossetti’s +many studies after Dante. This work is wholly symbolic and ideal; a +strange bird flown earthward from heaven brings her in its beak a +full-blown poppy, the funereal flower of sleep. Her beautiful head +lies back, sad and sweet, with fast-shut eyes in a death-like trance +that is not death; over it the shadow of death seems to impend, making +sombre the splendour of her ample hair and tender faultless features. +Beyond her the city and the bridged river are seen as from far, dim +and veiled with misty lights as though already “sitting alone, made +as a widow.” Love, one side, comes bearing in his hand a heart in +flames, having his eyes bent upon Dante’s; on the other side is Dante, +looking sadly across the way towards Love. In this picture the light is +subdued and soft, touching tenderly from behind the edges of Beatrice’s +hair and raiment; in the others there is a full fervour of daylight. +The great picture of Venus Verticordia has now been in great measure +recast; the head is of a diviner type of beauty; golden butterflies +hover about the halo of her hair, alight upon the apple or the arrow in +her hands; her face has the sweet supremacy of a beauty imperial and +immortal; her glorious bosom seems to exult and expand as the roses +on each side of it. The painting of leaf and fruit and flower in this +picture is beyond my praise or any man’s; but of one thing I will here +take note; the flash of green brilliance from the upper leaves of the +trellis against the sombre green of the trees behind. Once more it must +appear that the painter alone can translate into words as perfect in +music and colour the sense and spirit of his work. + +VENUS VERTICORDIA. + + She hath it in her hand to give it thee, + Yet almost in her heart would hold it back; + She muses, with her eyes upon the track + Of that which in thy spirit they can see. + Haply, “Behold, he is at peace,” saith she: + “Alas! the apple for his lips--the dart + That follows its brief sweetness to his heart-- + The wandering of his feet perpetually!” + + A little space her glance is still and coy; + But if she give the fruit that works her spell, + Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy; + Then shall her bird’s strained throat the woe foretell, + And her far seas moan as a single shell, + And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy. + +Another work, as yet incomplete, is a study of La Pia; she is seen +looking forth from the ramparts of her lord’s castle, over the fatal +lands without; her pallid splendid face hangs a little forward, wan +and white against the mass of dark deep hair; under her hands is a +work of embroidery, hanging still on the frame unfinished; just touched +by the weak weary hands, it trails forward across the lap of her pale +green raiment, into the foreground of the picture. In her eyes is a +strange look of wonder and sorrow and fatigue, without fear and without +pain, as though she were even now looking beyond earth into the soft +and sad air of purgatory: she presses the deadly marriage-ring into +the flesh of her finger, so deep that the soft skin is bloodless and +blanched from the intense imprint of it. Two other studies, as yet only +sketched, give promise of no less beauty; the subject of one was long +since handled by the artist in a slighter manner. It also is taken +from the Vita Nuova; Dante in a dream beholding Beatrice dead, tended +by handmaidens, and Love, with bow and dart in hand, in act to kiss +her beautiful dead mouth. The other is a design of Perseus showing to +Andromeda the severed head of Medusa, reflected in water; an old and +well-worn subject, but renewed and reinformed with life by the vital +genius of the artist. In the Pompeian picture we see the lovers at +halt beside a stream, on their homeward way; here we see them in their +house, bending over the central cistern or impluvium of the main court. +The design is wonderful for grace and force; the picture will assuredly +be one of the painter’s greatest. + +Wide and far apart as lie their provinces of work, their tones of +thought and emotion, the two illustrious artists of whom I have just +said a short and inadequate word have in common one supreme quality of +spirit and of work, coloured and moulded in each by his individual and +inborn force of nature; the love of beauty for the very beauty’s sake, +the faith and trust in it as in a god indeed. This gift of love and +faith, now rare enough, has been and should be ever the common apanage +of artists. _Rien n’est vrai que le beau_; this should be the beginning +and the ending of their belief, held in no small or narrow sense, +but in the largest and most liberal scope of meaning. Beauty may be +strange, quaint, terrible, may play with pain as with pleasure, handle +a horror till she leave it a delight; she forsakes not such among her +servants as Webster or as Goya. No good art is unbeautiful; but much +able and effective work may be, and is. Mere skill, mere thought and +trouble, mere feeling or dexterity, will never on earth make a man +painter or poet or artist in any kind. Hundreds of English pictures +just now have but these to boast of; and with these even studious and +able men are often now content; forgetful that art is no more a matter +of mere brain-work than of mere handicraft. The worship of beauty, +though beauty be itself transformed and incarnate in shapes diverse +without end, must be simple and absolute; hence only must the believer +expect profit or reward. Over every building made sacred to art of any +sort, upon the hearts of all who strive after it to serve it, there +should be written these words of the greatest master now living among +us:-- + + La beauté est parfaite, + La beauté peut toute chose, + La beauté est la seule chose au monde qui n’existe pas à demi. + + +THE END. + + + + +LONDON: + +SAVILI, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN. + + + + +KEATING’S COUGH LOZENGES. + + +[Illustration: KEATING 79 ST. 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Their special designs +of Machine-Made Necklaces, Earrings, and Bracelets. + +COURT DIAMONDS RE-ARRANGED. + + +REVIEWS OF MR. EDWIN W. STREETER’S MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY. + +“_Professor Pepper states that the use of machinery in the manufacture +of Gold Ornaments is of great advantage to the Public._”--TIMES, 19th +October, 1867. + +“_By the introduction of machinery 50 per cent. is saved in the +manufacture of Gold Jewellery._”--STANDARD, September, 1867. + + +“_Articles of 18-carat gold are manufactured by machinery, and the +result is a saving of 50 per cent. to the purchaser._”--FUN, 29th +December, 1866. + +“_Mr. Edwin W. Streeter marks upon his goods the quality of gold +supplied by him._”--TIMES, 17th September, 1867. + + +REVIEWS OF MR. EDWIN W. STREETER’S BOOK OF JEWELLERY AND GOLD. + +“_The description of the manufacture of Gold and the various Hall-marks +are well worth perusal._”--STANDARD, 3rd January, 1868. + +“_This is a very useful little manual on Jewellery, of +importance._”--PUBLIC OBSERVER, 16th Nov., 1867. + +“_This volume is worth its weight in gold._”--COURT JOURNAL, 9th Feb., +1867. + +“_Every intending buyer of Jewellery should make Mr. Streeter’s little +book his vade mecum._”--ILLUSTRATED NEWS, 30th November, 1867. + + + + +Transcriber’s Note: + +Punctuation has been standardised; hyphenation has been retained as it +appears in the original publication. + +The following changes have been made: + + Page 30 + 1052. APGRIFFITH _changed to_ + 1052. AP GRIFFITH + + Page 42 + But a word may here be said of M. Edouard Frère _changed to_ + But a word may here be said of M. Édouard Frère + + Page 47 + And soft-shed fingers and soft sleep shall snare? _changed to_ + And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75265 *** diff --git a/75265-h/75265-h.htm b/75265-h/75265-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..08e723f --- /dev/null +++ b/75265-h/75265-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2580 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868 | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + body {margin: 0 10%;} + div .chapter, div .section {page-break-before: always;} + h1, h2, .nobreak {text-align: center; clear: both; page-break-before: avoid;} + h2 {line-height: 2em;} + h2 span {font-size: .8em;} + p {margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;} + em {font-style: italic;} + ins {text-decoration: none;} + + /* General */ + .noi {text-indent: 0em;} + .p180 {font-size: 1.8em;} + .p160 {font-size: 1.6em;} + .p140 {font-size: 1.4em;} + .p120 {font-size: 1.2em;} + .p110 {font-size: 1.1em;} + .p8 {font-size: .8em;} + .center {text-align: center; 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Michael Rossetti.</p> +</div> + +<div class="container"> +<p class="hang p140 underline">Part II., by<br> + Algernon C. Swinburne.</p> +</div> + +<p class="center p120 mt3">LONDON:<br> +JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN PICCADILLY.</p> + +<hr class="divider2"> + +<p class="center mt3">(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)</p> + + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p class="center">BY HER MAJESTY’S ROYAL LETTERS PATENT.</p> + +<p class="center p180">BRYANT & MAY’S</p> + +<p class="p110">The “Times” says “Lucifers have risen gradually to be at last a +special source of danger, and no careful housekeeper who looked at +these returns (<em>Fire Brigade</em>) would ever allow any but <em>Safety +Matches</em> inside their doors.”</p> + +<hr class="divider3"> + +<p class="center p120">PATENT</p> + +<p class="center p180">SAFETY MATCHES</p> + +<hr class="divider3"> + +<p class="p110"><em><span class="smcap">Fraud.</span></em> Without the precaution of observing closely the +address, <span class="smcap">Bryant & May</span>, and their Trade Mark, + <img style="width: 8em" src="images/trade-mark.jpg" width="819" height="271" alt="Bryant and May Trade Mark"> +the Public may be imposed upon with an article that <em>does not +afford</em> Protection from Fire.</p> + +<hr class="divider3"> + +<p class="center p140">LIGHT ONLY ON THE BOX.</p> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i"></a>i</span> +</div> + +<p class="center linespace"><span class="spaced p180">NOTES</span><br> +<span class="p8">ON THE</span><br> +<span class="p140">ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION,</span><br> +<span class="p120">1868.</span></p> + +<p class="center linespace2"><span class="p8">PART I. BY</span><br> + WM. MICHAEL ROSSETTI.</p> + +<p class="center linespace2 mt2"><span class="p8">PART II. BY</span><br> + ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE.</p> + +<hr class="divider3"> +<p class="center">“Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s +scope.”—<span class="smcap">Shakspeare.</span></p> +<hr class="divider3"> + +<p class="center mt3">LONDON:<br> + JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.</p> + +<hr class="short"> + +<p class="center p8">(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)</p> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a>ii</span> +</div> + +<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> reader of this pamphlet will be apt to understand, from its very +arrangement, the fact that each of the writers speaks solely for +himself. Each chooses his own point of view, and expresses his own +opinion, and in his own way. If the opinions happen to diverge, it will +be for the reader to select, as he pleases, either or neither.</p> +</div> + +<div class="float-right"> +<p class="noi"> +A. C. S.<br> +W. M. R.</p> +</div> + + + +<div class="chapter clear"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a>iii</span> +</div> + +<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">A person</span> who undertakes to express to the public his opinion of any +such Exhibition as that of the Royal Academy is not unreasonably liable +to the imputation of presumption. For that imputation I am prepared; I +admit it to be, within certain limits, just; and must bear it as I may.</p> + +<p>But there are two forms of possible and probable censure which I should +respectfully decline to accept as well bestowed.</p> + +<p>The first is censure of a signed critical pamphlet, <em>rather than</em> +an unsigned newspaper or review article. The pamphlet expresses the +opinion of an individual: the article does or ought to do the same. So +far they stand on the same ground; anything which may be presumption +in the first is presumption in the second also. The difference is that +the first does, while the second does not, lay bare the writer to the +retorts of any person who may hold himself aggrieved: that may be more +open, more equitable, and more bold, but it is not more presumptuous.</p> + +<p>The second form of misleading censure is that which makes a point of +reprobating omissions. The limits of this pamphlet, as to dimensions +and as to the time and facilities available for its preparation and +composition, are manifestly narrow. All that the writer professes is to +say straightforwardly whatever he does say: he by no means implies that +nothing else remains to be noted concerning the works of art commented +upon, nor that the works wholly omitted are undeserving of mention. +If anybody, therefore, tells me that the picture of A, of which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv"></a>iv</span> this +pamphlet says nothing, merits criticism, or that the picture of B, +praised for colour, claims praise on the score of drawing also, I shall +have no difficulty in admitting the probable correctness of these +remarks; but, if he adds that I am blameable for the omissions, I shall +feel entitled to reply that A’s picture and B’s draughtsmanship were +not in the bond. What <em>is</em> in the bond is liberty of selection +and candour of statement on my part: if my selection is stupid, or my +statement unfair or erroneous, be that the charge. Let the censure +concern itself with something wrong that <em>is</em> done; not with +something right that might have been done.</p> + +<div class="float-right"> +<p class="noi">W. M. R.</p> +</div> + +<div class="chapter clear"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>1</span> +</div> + +<p class="center p180 linespace2">ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION,<br> +1868.</p> + +<hr class="short"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_I"><em>PART I.</em></h2> +<hr class="short"> + +<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Some</span> twenty years and more ago, the ingrained fault of the British +School of Painting was that it painted flimsy pictures. They were not +exactly sketchy, having little of either the merits or defects proper +to the phase of art termed sketching: pictures they were, but flimsy +pictures. Then came the thick-and-thin revolution of Præraphaelitism; +which aimed at treating substantial subjects, thinking them out deeply, +and painting them with abnormal thoroughness. That revolution scarcely +exists now otherwise than in its results: certain works executed +according to the principle in question, and representing it; many +others parodying or maiming the principle, and traducing it; a vast +number of works, still in course of active production, which owe their +genesis to the principle, but have metamorphosed it beyond recognition. +So that now we have come round to a condition of the school more +analogous to that of twenty years ago: only that the present staple +product is, instead of flimsy pictures, works executed with a valuable +reserve-fund of knowledge, efficiency, and material, but in the feeling +and with the aim proper to sketches. Critics have long been beseeching +for “breadth.” That is now supplied to them in handsome measure; but +it is found that breadth, like frittering, may overlie a considerable +surface of commonplace and inanity. The very skill of our current +generation of painters is one of their chief perils; for it enables +them to indicate with ease, and often indeed with mastery, what less<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>2</span> +dexterity could only strive for with labour. Rapid gains and the tumult +of competition conduce towards the same result. The upshot, to some +critics, is, in the present Academy exhibition, a sense of no little +dissatisfaction, mingled with unstinted recognition of telling and +well-diffused ability. One perceives that many artists can now do a +good deal, if they choose; but the more sound one sees the attainments +of the painter himself to be, the less one is disposed to accept with +implicit faith the rather cheap outcome of those attainments. Sketches +may be excellent things, and they testify to the ready availability of +the artist’s gifts: but sketches magnified into pictures cloy upon one. +They betray in especial a self-complacent unconcern for higher efforts. +In general character the present Academy exhibition, the hundredth of +the series, is very like that of 1867: that was a particularly clever +display, according to its own standard, and this perhaps is nearly on a +par with +it.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[A]</a> To estimate the comparative merits of successive +Exhibitions is always to me a difficult matter. The sentence in the +text expresses what I felt about the present Academy show while I was +in the rooms and as I began writing; but, on treating of the pictures +individually, I so often have to say that some painter is this year +quite at his best that I infer the display of 1868 may probably be +fully as good as that of 1867. I leave the text, however, unaltered, as +faithful to a general impression.</p> +</div> + +<p>With these few remarks, I turn at once to the walls, and begin with—</p> + + +<p>6. <span class="smcap">Millais</span>—<em>Sisters.</em>—It is a great satisfaction to +find Mr. Millais in force this year—in very superior force, for +instance, to what he displayed last year. This group of three girlish +sisters—the painter’s daughters—shows him in pure, unforced, +untrammelled possession of his mastery throughout. The arrangement of +the group is so far artificial that one clearly perceives the sisters +are posing for their portraits: no effort is made to disguise this +fact, and it cannot, I think, be counted as a blemish—rather as one +legitimate method of portrait-painting, though not so popular now as +the contrary scheme. All the three girls are dressed in white muslin, +with azure ribbons, and hair combed out. The background is composed +of azaleas, which, in the +left-hand<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> +corner of the picture, seem to +change from crimson-pink to vermilion-pink; but the latter colour is +scrubbed about with no appreciable traces of form.</p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[B]</a> “Left-hand” and “right-hand,” in this pamphlet, will +always be used to designate the portions of the pictures opposite to +the <em>spectator’s</em> left and right respectively.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>3</span></p> + +<p>10. <span class="smcap">Leys</span>—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">La Famille Pallavicini de Gênes réclamant le +droit de Bourgeoisie des Bourgmestres et Echevins de la Ville d’Anvers, +1542.</em>—When our Royal Academy is honoured by a contribution from +one of the first magnates of European art, it becomes us to accept his +work in a spirit of gratitude, with much desire to study, and very +little to cavil. It is by way of study that I venture to note some +of the leading characteristics of that mediæval style which has made +Baron Leys famous throughout the civilized world. 1st. He identifies +himself with the period he paints—not only in a general way, as a +good scholar might do, but especially in respect of its concerted +outer demonstrations, and its social aspects, and this with all the +more zest when a spice of patriotism is involved. 2nd. Working from +this solid basis of mediævalism, he is never afraid of individualizing +his personages to the very uttermost: they are actual men and women +whom he might—and for anything I know does—pick up in the streets of +modern Belgium. An extreme instance appears in the present picture, +in the furthest right-hand figure, whose portrait-like aspect is +unmistakeable. This, however, being an obviously modern head, differs +from the generality—which, with their personal actuality, are somehow +<em>projected back</em>, by the imagination and skill of the painter, +into the mediæval period, and thus come to be even more like what +one conceives of the sixteenth than what one knows of the nineteenth +century. Hence an air of startling realism: the personages are as real +as if they were painted in coats and trowsers; and the mediævalism +is as real as any modern man can make it. The very uncouthness and +hard-featuredness of the figures is a powerful element in this realism: +it looks as if the painter had seen them actually there, and depicted +them as in duty bound—had he been selecting, one would expect<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>4</span> more +of positive beauty or semi-idealism. 3rd. Baron Leys paints with a +remarkable mixture of force and slightness, detail and unfinish. He +gives an extraordinary number of items, and with singular strength of +definition, yet with little that can, on close inspection, be called +elaboration. Everything is done so as to solicit the eye at a little +distance, and up to a certain point to satisfy, never to satiate it. +The style of execution has even a good deal that might be termed rough +and ready; and (what is of great importance) it is quite unlike any +handiwork of the Middle Ages themselves. Moreover, the painter (in the +present phase of his style) very seldom gives any mere <em>accidents</em> +of light and shade—direct or flickering sunshine, contrasts of natural +and artificial light, or the like. It may seem fanciful to say that +this also subserves the historical impression; and yet I think it +does so powerfully—the scenes and the actors in them tell upon the +mind, through the eye, as having passed out of the momentary into the +permanent—out of the region of chance and change into that dim lumour +and remote subsistency of the past. Having said thus much, by way of +study, of Baron Leys’s pictures in general, I shall not endeavour +to analyse the particular work before us. It is a <em>replica</em> of +one of his frescoes in the Townhall of Antwerp, and illustrates the +value which distinguished foreigners were wont to set upon the right +of citizenship in that great commercial and privileged city. It is +to be regarded as an important and excellent specimen of the master, +though some others might deserve the preference in point of executive +completeness.</p> + +<p>17. <span class="smcap">Linnell, Sen.</span>—<em>English Woodlands.</em>—A very +characteristic and fine example of the painter’s style: one might use +it as a text-book wherefrom to develope his specialties in the English +school of landscape.</p> + + +<p>30. <span class="smcap">Watts</span>—<em>Landscape, Evening.</em>—A small work, but +conspicuous by its broad, strong colour, very warm and mellow: it has +power both of hand and of sentiment. The sky is especially luminous.</p> + + +<p>44. <span class="smcap">Hemy</span>—<em>Tête de Flandre, near Antwerp.</em>—There is +a great deal of space in this picture: and the tone of green-grey +colour is finely felt and solidly sustained. A sense of the ripple in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>5</span> +the estuary is given by a curious sort of sleight of hand—an actual +ridging or rucking in the surface of the paint.</p> + + +<p>52. <span class="smcap">Cope</span>—<em>The Life’s Story.</em>—This is the subject of +Othello relating his adventures to Brabantio and Desdemona. The lady +hangs upon the words of the Moor with a demonstrative interest that +fully justified his inference that she must be in love with him. The +picture cannot, I think, be counted among Mr. Cope’s successes.</p> + + +<p>64. <span class="smcap">Grant</span>—<em>The Duke of Cambridge at the Battle of +the Alma, leading the Guards up the Hill in support of the Light +Division.</em>—The weak point of this picture is the isolated figure +of the Duke himself, which has more the character of a likeness by +a portrait-painter than of a leading agent in the event. The Guards +in the foreground are happily treated; with sufficient individuality +in the several figures, not made singly over-prominent. The general +execution is not unlike that of Sir Edwin Landseer; which is as much as +to say that it has uncommon ability.</p> + + +<p>70. <span class="smcap">Millais</span>—<em>Rosalind and Celia.</em>—A picture full of +sunny light and masterly celerity of execution. The faces have great +sentiment, and ample charm of beauty: the confiding self-subordinating +character of Celia speaks in the lines of her mouth. Touchstone is +older than one would infer from the drama. It is a pity that Mr. +Millais did not set himself to reflect what Rosalind would probably +have done with her hair and costume in order to sustain the disguise +of a young man. The upper portion of the dress is absurdly feminine, +and hardly recedes even from the nineteenth century. On the stage one +pardons the paraded sex of the actress—it is partly unavoidable, and +partly a device of her profession: but in a picture one fairly expects +a greater conformity to the common sense of the situation. Mr. Millais, +however, never <em>will</em> pay any attention to his costume. With +all the signal merits of the execution, the texture is not free from +woolliness.</p> + + +<p>87. <span class="smcap">Frith</span>—<em>Before dinner at Boswell’s Lodgings in Bond +Street, 1769: present, Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Murphy, +Bickerstaff, Davies, and Boswell.</em>—We have heard only too often +about Goldsmith’s “bloom-coloured coat.”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>6</span> This is the scene of its +exhibition before Boswell’s guests. The picture may be termed a +self-respecting one: the humours of the personages and the incident are +indicated without being made to stare one out of countenance. <em>Per +contra</em>, it must be said that strength is deficient throughout: +common weakish mouths prevail in this distinguished company. Goldsmith +and Reynolds are indifferent likenesses; and Johnson’s clothes fit +almost as accurately as Goldsmith’s.</p> + + +<p>123. <span class="smcap">Edwin Landseer</span>—<em>Rent-Day in the +Wilderness.</em>—“After the defeat of the Stuart army in 1715, at +Sheriff Muir, Colonel Donald Murchison, to whom the Earl of Seaforth +confided his confiscated estates in Ross-shire, defended them for +ten years, and regularly transmitted the rents to his attainted and +exiled chief.” The picture shows the rent being thus collected under +difficulties. A bearded clansman, attended by his daughter, is in the +act of paying; a friar kneels close beside Colonel Murchison; and a +number of other Highlanders have assembled for the occasion. This +large and crowded picture has a peculiar look, in consequence of the +stealthy and crouching action of most of the figures: they are keeping +close amid the brushwood on one side of Loch Affric, while some of +the Government soldiers are patrolling the opposite bank. The work +has thus—besides the generic merits which any large painting by Sir +Edwin Landseer is sure to possess—plenty that is both peculiar and +interesting, not unmingled with a certain impression of discomfort.</p> + + +<p>138. <span class="smcap">Herbert</span>—<em>The Valley of Moses in the Desert of +Sinai.</em>—This picture (as Mr. Herbert is stated never to have been +in the East) is somewhat noticeable in point of eclectic, and at +the same time diluted, study. The light and tone are agreeable, and +free from that hardness which besets many Eastern pictures; but, on +observing the comparative faintness of the shadows upon the blazing +sands, one sees at once that the avoidance of hardness has involved +some sacrifice of truth.</p> + + +<p>150. <span class="smcap">Ward</span>—<em>Royal Marriage, 1477.</em>—The detestable +humbug of a sham contemporary “MS.” is resorted to for the purpose +of informing the reader of the Academy catalogue that this painting +represents the marriage of the Duke of York,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>7</span> aged four, son of Edward +IV., to Lady Anne Mowbray, aged three. A bishop of almost decrepit +old age officiates, and Gloucester is naturally made a prominent +witness. Mr. Ward’s style of painting, chiaroscuro, and handling, is +universally known; it may be termed the overblown style, with about +as much retirement and repose as a peony the hour before it falls to +pieces. But this should not blind us to his solid merits of thought +and invention, always exercised in a direction which tells with the +public, and for the most part felicitously in other respects as well. +The present picture is an instance. Besides any amount of fine dresses +and demonstrative infancy, it boasts a power of association which must +take hold of every spectator: the infant bridal, the gorgeous dawn +of promise to the little sons of King Edward, and the crash of fate +reserved for them within the cerebral convolutions of the future King +Richard. We may afford, while we are about it, to recollect that this +effective subject pertains by right of priority to Mr. Houghton, who +designed it for a woodcut.</p> + + +<p>167. <span class="smcap">Frith</span>—<em>Sterne and the French Innkeeper’s +Daughter.</em>—The imperfectly Reverend Mr. Sterne is looking at the +damsel as she knits a stocking, and pondering upon its neat adjustment +to the shape of her leg. On general grounds much the same may be said +of this picture as of No. 87: both are superior examples of the easy +certainty with which Mr. Frith can strike the key he wants, just as +loud as he wishes it, and no louder. Sterne (as Goldsmith and Reynolds +before) appears to me anything but a good likeness: the young woman is +more French in feature than in the <em>ensemble</em> of the face.</p> + + +<p>172. <span class="smcap">T. Faed</span>—<em>Worn Out.</em>—This ranks with Mr. Faed’s +best pictures: it is very skilful, and has more equality of painting +than usual—somewhat less of obtruded knack and flourish. The various +small accessories are well related to the main incident of the +hard-working father who has fallen asleep while watching his invalid +boy.</p> + + +<p>188. <span class="smcap">Poole</span>—<em>Custaunce sent adrift by the Constable of +Alla, King of Northumberland.</em>—This moonlight picture has rather +the character of a manufacture; yet it is manufacture by a poetic eye +and pictorial hand. There is some clever handling<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>8</span> in the water of +the foreground; and the entire absence of red from the picture—which +relies for colour upon iridescent tints of grey-blue, green, yellow, +and so on—is observable.</p> + + +<p>209. <span class="smcap">Houghton</span>—<em>H. Bassett, Esq., in his Laboratory.</em>—A +capital piece of peculiarity. Great pains and intelligence have gone +to the depicting of the scientific plethora of the laboratory; and the +sense of the shut-in, moderately-lit room, not lightly to be intruded +upon, is vivid. Mr. Bassett is represented smoking a pipe. This may +seem a trivial or purposeless incident. Yet it may have been introduced +to indicate some enforced pause in his work while an experiment is +maturing; and, if so, it is certainly not unsuggestive.</p> + + +<p>223. <span class="smcap">Orchardson</span>—<em>Mrs. Birket Foster.</em>—This seems to me +about the best work Mr. Orchardson has yet exhibited: it is a small +full-length—more a subject than a mere portrait. The artist has a +certain streaky or gauzy touch which amounts to mannerism: here the +handling and colour have almost a <i>soupçon</i> of Gainsborough. The +bright face, the quiet lighting of the dusky-boarded room, and the +untumbled white muslin dress, make up a picture in which elegant and +artist-like taste verges upon quaintness.</p> + + +<p>235. <span class="smcap">Elmore</span>—<em>Ishmael.</em>—An accomplished study, perhaps +(within its limits) unsurpassed by any work of its author.</p> + + +<p>236. <span class="smcap">G. D. Leslie</span>—<em>Home News.</em>—An English lady in her +remote Asiatic home is reading a letter from the old country. The +half-hovering smile, and the long-drawn regard of the eye as though she +were in contemplation back across the measureless ocean, are delicately +caught; also the coolness of the matted interior, jealously excluding +the sun itself, but not the sense of how it is blazing outside.</p> + + +<p>242. <span class="smcap">Millais</span>—<em>Stella.</em>—A single figure, three-quarter +length, and perhaps the very best Mr. Millais has done of its class. +The name Stella naturally suggests Swift’s Stella; and Swift’s Stella +holding a letter, with a countenance of subdued long-suffering, +suggests her receipt of the letter from Vanessa inquiring whether +she and Swift were in fact married. If this is the incident really +intended, the sympathizing spectator may be startled at being reminded +that Stella was at that time<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>9</span> about forty years of age. But Mr. Millais +is not the man to mind much whether he does or does not represent a +particular incident, or whether or not any such representation is +endurably correct. He has painted delightfully a very loveable woman, +and that will probably suffice him and us. The tint of flesh in the arm +appears hardly so pure as the rest of the colouring.</p> + + +<p>247. <span class="smcap">O’Neil</span>—<em>Before Waterloo.</em>—This picture will +certainly have critics of two sorts. One set, incurious of artistic +subtleties, will batten upon such a purveying of British military +heroism, gushing young creatures, and harrowing family partings. +Another set will turn with æsthetic distaste from so much of +ball-costume and regimentals, and such a cross between the leaden and +the garish in colour. An intermediate set ought also to find a voice, +and to aver that the scheme of arrangement in the picture is very +ingenious, and successful in turning a serious difficulty—that the +story is told with great emphasis and much well-considered variety of +detail—and that, when one faces the picture with deliberation, one can +hardly refuse it the praise of being interesting. If Mr. O’Neil could +but get somebody else’s colour to exude through his brush, with texture +and surface to correspond!</p> + + +<p>248. <span class="smcap">Sir C. Lindsay</span>—<em>The Earl Somers.</em>—It is only fair +to cite this picture, by an amateur and a Baronet, as one of the best +portraits on the walls. The steadiness of the figure on his feet, +without compromise and without bravado, is alone a considerable merit. +A spectator may be struck by the great number of sitters who elect to +be painted in shooting costume, or in some other dress and with other +accessories of sport. “Manly exercises” will of course account for +most of this; and knickerbockers and black velvet have their share of +influence.</p> + + +<p>260. <span class="smcap">Legros</span>—<em>The Refectory.</em>—The eye finds repose and +satisfaction in this broadly and firmly painted picture, free from the +last suspicion of <em>ad captandum</em> appeal. Three monks and a tabby +cat have assembled to make a meal off a mackerel—the board laid with +a perfectly clean white cloth. The monks are all men of dignified and +thoughtful presence: two of them still pause over a book of orisons or +meditations before they begin<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>10</span> the refection. It might not be unfair +to say that there is a good deal of space to let in the large-sized +canvas: but one need not exactly quarrel with that. The painter, a man +now of reputation equally confirmed and well deserved both in his own +country and in ours, knows perfectly well what he is about; we may +safely accept his point of view, and find in the result that, if he has +not done precisely what we might have bespoken, there is nevertheless +a definite value to be got out of his method of treatment, not to be +slighted because a different method would have given some other and +countervailing value. If anybody wishes to learn (among graver things) +what amount of executive short-hand suffices for making a cat tabby, +Mr. Legros’s picture will inform him.</p> + + +<p>268. <span class="smcap">R. Butler</span>—<em>The Lost Path.</em>—This artist’s name is +unfamiliar to me. His little picture of children astray in a copse +has great merit of naïve expression, rendered as well by action as by +countenance.</p> + + +<p>273. <span class="smcap">Storey</span>—<em>The Shy Pupil.</em>—The painter has here +attained to a high point of force in simplicity of work. The subject +is a budding girl learning to dance in her father’s presence. With +nothing that can be called elaboration, the execution would, for purity +of lighting and directness of hand, bear comparison with many a choice +Dutch picture. If we went to Mr. Legros for a tabby cat, we may consult +Mr. Storey for a small dog peering through a door; a few twirls of the +brush have, by a species of legerdemain, produced a surprising amount +of characteristic form. This work, with much effect of solidity, is +nevertheless amenable to my opening remarks as to sketchiness: but, in +so simple and semi-humorous a subject, that need hardly be objected to.</p> + + +<p>283. <span class="smcap">Dickinson</span>—<em>George Peabody, Esq.</em>—A very honest +good piece of work, and a most unmistakeable likeness, to be remembered +among the portraits of the year much to Mr. Dickinson’s credit.</p> + + +<p>288. <span class="smcap">Cope</span>—<em>The Disciples at Emmaus.</em>—Mr. Cope’s method +of art unites remarkable defining power with a certain thinness of +the primary material; it reminds one of good woodcarving—strong<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>11</span> and +accurate modelling bestowed upon a substance which, after the utmost +has been done for it, retains an aboriginal crudity. In the present +picture, the artist has planned out all forcibly and distinctly—he +has left nothing vague to his own mind or the spectator’s eye. Yet +no corresponding impression of reality is produced; the work wants +<em>imaginative</em> reality, and therefore its other elements of reality +do not tell as they were intended to do. To attenuate the form of the +risen Christ, and to make his drapery transparent to the evening light, +is not the way to remove him from the regions of fleshliness.</p> + + +<p>302. <span class="smcap">Horsley</span>—<em>Rent-day at Haddon Hall.</em>—Considerably +the best picture Mr. Horsley has exhibited of late, or perhaps at any +time. A very moderate proportion of adult good sense may have sufficed +to discriminate it from his staple commodity.</p> + + +<p>311. <span class="smcap">G. Richmond</span>—<em>Mrs. Brereton.</em>—While Mr. Richmond +can put into a face so much feminine candour and amiability as we see +in this likeness, no one need be surprised at his eminent standing +among portrait painters. To look at the face seems to be like making +Mrs. Brereton’s acquaintance—or like wishing to make it.</p> + + +<p>316. <span class="smcap">Calderon</span>—<em>The Young Lord Hamlet.</em>—Yorick is on +all-fours on the pleasance of the Danish palace, with little Hamlet +riding on his back; Queen Gertrude and some of her ladies looking on; +and an infant, presumably Ophelia, not yet “taking notice.” This is +strictly a sketch; no doubt a very able one, and only to be done by +a man of long training and solid acquirement in art. Not only is the +thing full of sparkling animal spirits as a whole, but each point, +when one attends to it, is pertinent and telling: except indeed the +face of the lady who holds Ophelia, and who exhibits a smile as hard +as her teeth. This is not the only time that Mr. Calderon has made +considerable play with teeth, and not, I think, successfully; nothing +is more difficult to manage in a picture.</p> + + +<p>323. <span class="smcap">Watts</span>—<em>The wife of Pygmalion, a Translation from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>12</span> the +Greek.</em>—This is one of the few works of poetic elevation in the +gallery: it is beautiful with a noble beauty, which one hardly knows +whether rather to call womanly or impassive. It rests midway between +coldness and warmth, without being lukewarm. It should be added that +the merit is not exclusively Mr. Watts’s, the head being truly “a +translation from the Greek,” <em>i.e.</em>, adapted from the fine antique +bust pointed out not long ago for admiration among the Arundel Marbles +in Oxford.</p> + + +<p>328. <span class="smcap">Leighton</span>—<em>Ariadne abandoned by Theseus. Ariadne +watches for his return; Artemis releases her by death.</em>—This also +is a picture which claims to be of the poetic order, and sustains the +claim; it may without rashness be pronounced the loftiest work Mr. +Leighton has produced, reckoning together subject-matter, scale, and +the result attained. To ignore the limitations of his style, or the +symptoms of them which this picture also presents, would be futile. +One might sum them up by saying that there is a certain hiatus between +his perception of the poetic in art, and his power of expressing it; +and that, though he bridges this over with a readiness of resource +which is to himself almost as natural as the first perception, yet to +others the artificiality of the bridge is glaringly and even irksomely +apparent. But the picture of Ariadne is sufficiently noble to keep +these considerations in the background, as soon as we have once for +all fairly stated or implied them. The face is wrung with sorrow, +yet is free from what we mean to condemn in a work of art when we +term it “painful.” One might say that this woman has died of the very +weariness of daily renewed grief. But the calm now is as profound as +the yearning heretofore; profound as the blue sea violet-tinted in its +distant intensity, or as the lulling oppression of its clang in the +sultry meridian, barely audible as a faint murmur at the dizzy height +of Ariadne’s rock-seat. There is a sensation of stationariness, as if +Phœbus Apollo might be pausing in heaven to see how his sister Artemis +has accomplished her mercy upon the outworn Ariadne. As I looked at the +picture, a divine reminiscence of Shelley intervened:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>13</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent2">“Yet now despair itself is mild,</div> + <div class="verse indent5">Even as the winds and waters are.</div> + <div class="verse indent3">I could lie down like a tired child,</div> + <div class="verse indent5">And weep away the life of care</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Which I have borne and yet must bear,</div> + <div class="verse indent5">Till death like sleep might steal on me,—</div> + <div class="verse indent3">And I might feel in the warm air</div> + <div class="verse indent5">My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<p>329. <span class="smcap">Mason</span>—<em>Evening Hymn.</em>—Again a very poetical +and beautiful picture, one of the enduring glories of the present +exhibition. It reaches higher than anything Mr. Mason had hitherto +done; and shows him qualified to paint figures on a fair scale of +size, and with an amount of positive beauty which, in his previous +productions (though well traceable), was to some extent overlaid by +the <em>picturesque</em>, as that is popularly understood. This work +glows with the light of a spring sunset, and with the unbidden fervour +of a group of young village-girls who are carolling the Evening Hymn +as they saunter homewards. It seems almost churlish to object to a +leading point of treatment in so delightful a picture; but I confess +to some suspicion that the men who are shown listening might with +advantage have been missed out of the subject altogether—and more +especially the youth who comes close behind a girl in white, holding a +rose in her hand. Mr. Mason is a painter who never loses sight of facts +in his pursuit of the beautiful; this is the one of his works which +goes nearest to merging all other its material in a general ideal of +loveliness and solemnity.</p> + + +<p>331. <span class="smcap">Pettie</span>—<em>Tussle with a Highland Smuggler.</em>—Here +we revert to the category of sketchy work; and we see in this picture +and in another by its author (No. 484, “<em>Weary with present cares +and memories sad</em>”), an unpleasant and unrepaying development of +style which might be described as “the offhand squalid.” No. 331 shows +extreme—indeed, excessive—cleverness: but its unsightly violence of +action embodies a subject of little consequence to any one, and of less +still to the cause of fine art.</p> + + +<p>347. <span class="smcap">Edwin Landseer</span>—“<em>Weel, sir, if the deer got the +ball,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>14</span> sure’s deeth Chevy will no leave him.</em>”—A masterpiece +of Landseerian art: the good hound Chevy is seen couched amid high +mountain ice and snows, by the side of a dead deer, which the ravens +have already scented from afar.</p> + + +<p>356. <span class="smcap">Millais</span>—<em>Pilgrims to St. Paul’s.</em>—A more rational +title would be “Greenwich Pensioners at the Tomb of Nelson.” One of +them has lost his left arm—a very resolute, bluff old seaman, whom +“foreigneers” may have been shy of tackling in his time; the other +halts upon two wooden legs, more senile and commonplace, but also, in +his undemonstrative way, one of those who, like his hero, “never saw +fear.” His face is most triumphantly painted; whether regarded as a +mere study of a head, or as a piece of character, or with reference to +its intense lighting by the flare of the sepulchral lantern. Indeed, +the picture is quite admirable throughout, and in power of painting +not to be surpassed by Mr. Millais, nor approached by any competitor. +There is in its materials something which verges towards a <em>tour de +force</em>; but all is so manly, and so free from sentimental overdoing, +that no charge arises against it on this ground.</p> + + +<p>363. <span class="smcap">Yeames</span>—<em>Lady Jane Grey in the Tower.</em>—An able +satisfactory picture; perhaps the best of its author. Lady Jane is in a +controversial colloquy with the Chaplain Feckenham: her face expresses +very successfully that she is weighing his arguments in her mind, and +considering what may be the true answer to them, but with no prospect +of her coming to the conclusion that answer there is none. Feckenham +also is appropriately conceived and painted, without any exaggeration. +Of costume and accessory there is enough, and not overmuch.</p> + + +<p>369. <span class="smcap">Houghton</span>—<em>In the Garden.</em>—A very handsome boy of +eight is lifting his little sister of five to smell a rose upon its +bush. A kitten which has already made some advances towards cat-hood is +romping around the stem. The feeling of the subject would be improved +were there more of a look of smelling in the girl’s face; and the +colour is hardly on a level with the other merits of the picture. It +is, however, a very choice and complete little work; fine in design +and draughtsmanship, and charming in general impression—quite free,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>15</span> +moreover, from that sort of nursery silliness which has infected +some canvasses of late, and has even been aptly enshrined in a title +reproducing the broken utterance of babes. Mr. Houghton knows that +“ta-ta” or “tootsicums,” whether written with the pen or rendered into +the language of the brush, is a mild effort of art.</p> + + +<p>401. <span class="smcap">G. D. Leslie</span>—<em>Kate Leslie.</em>—This artist is almost +always attractive, and often most engagingly so: the present work may +be cited in proof. But he is “painty” (as the profession terms it) in +the generality of his work, and especially in his flesh-tints. Here the +face has far too much of a tawny or ligneous hue; which is the more +to be regretted as the work, on the whole, comes nearer than usual to +ranking Mr. Leslie among colourists.</p> + + +<p>402. <span class="smcap">Poynter</span>—<em>The Catapult.</em>—Great knowledge, great +power of combination, and much disciplined artistic capacity, have gone +to the making of this picture. It has more effect, and is on the whole +more pictorial, than the very striking work which Mr. Poynter exhibited +last year—<em>Israel in Egypt.</em> Some people may refuse to take much +interest in a scene in which the work of the artificer or mechanician +plays so large a part; but, bating this objection (which to many will +be no objection at all), it is difficult to award anything but praise +to the picture. The event is the use of a catapult as an engine of war +in the siege of Carthage: we see written on one of the beams “Delenda +est Carthago, S.P.Q.R.” The officer is supervising, archers are +shooting; the monster hand of the catapult is about once more to launch +a red-hot bolt against the doomed city: pots of blazing pitch are +being hurled by the defenders at the assailants. The solidity and good +balance of all parts of the subject, the agreeable tone of colour in +flesh and otherwise, the sound drawing, unfaltering and unpretentious, +command high respect.</p> + + +<p>410. <span class="smcap">Wynfield</span>—<em>Oliver Cromwell’s First Appearance in the +Parliament.</em>—To find this picture uninteresting would be difficult. +Hampden is represented introducing his cousin to Cromwell; Pym, +Elliot, Sir Robert Phillips, Strafford, and many other famous men, are +present. The arrangement pleases<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>16</span> one from its obvious adaptation to +the more important demands of the subject, irrespectively of artistic +conventions. The method of the painting, however, is so excessively +opaque and heavy that, until Mr. Wynfield shall manage to correct this +blemish, one cannot expect his pictures to get cordially accepted by +the public, or to please critical eyes.</p> + + +<p>424. <span class="smcap">T. Graham</span>—<em>The Dominie.</em>—Mr. Graham has powers +of a high order; but he has seemed of late only too likely to be +led away by the offhand practice, semi-grotesque picturesqueness, +and rapid success, of some of his compatriots from beyond Tweed. +<em>The Dominie</em> is about the least laudable picture he has +exhibited—tending much to caricature, and to coarseness of handling. +Of course, along with this, there is a deal of ability; and the figure +of the boy still attests a genuine sense of beauty. Let us trust that +Mr. Graham will have “pulled up” by next year.</p> + + +<p>434. <span class="smcap">Hook</span>—<em>Are Chimney-sweepers Black?</em>—A most +delightful picture, fully equal to the best productions of its +distinguished author. There are two others in this gallery (Nos. +48 and 270) also excellent: but so little remains now-a-days to be +said about Mr. Hook’s works, except that they afford deep, pure, +and vivid pleasure, and show their painter to be one of the most +artist-like colourists and executants of the British school, that I +have passed them by, and limited myself to specifying the present one +only. A begrimed (not <em>over</em> begrimed) chimney-sweeper, with the +implements of his craft, presents himself to the startled eyes of a +naked infant, as fresh and bright as a Cupid, who has just been bathing +on the margin of the sea: he is still paddling in a sand-pool, and +takes refuge against his young mother’s dress, hardly so scared as +not to be a little amused. This group of the mother and child is most +charming; and all other parts of the picture are worthy of it.</p> + +<p>439. <span class="smcap">Maclise</span>—<em>The Sleep of Duncan.</em>—The first aspect +of this work, as of so many of Mr. Maclise’s, gives an impression of +unreality, huddled, and oppressed with decorative exuberances. A more +deliberate inspection shows that it possesses, in ample measure, the +fine qualities which rank him so high in our school—qualities of +invention and design, associated with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>17</span> remarkable, though bounded and +monotonous, gifts of execution. The moment is when Lady Macbeth, having +drugged the guards, and “laid their daggers ready” (one of these lies +within the circlet of the crown), relinquishes any thought of herself +assassinating the old king, who “resembles her father as he sleeps.” +The tragic air of crime in Lady Macbeth, her superfluous stealthinesses +of action, are grandly given; though it cannot be said that her face +differs much from the type so constant and familiar in Mr. Maclise’s +productions. Duncan and the two guards are all three fine figures. The +lighting of the picture is not obvious: it would appear to be the union +of soft moonshine and pale diffused grey dawn-light which comes through +the loop-hole at the back; but this does not seem to account for all +the light in front, as on the figures of the guards; while neither +can one discern, on the other hand, that much (if any) influence of +artificial light has been intended by the painter. Real the picture +would, of course, never be made to look; but I think it would look +considerably less unreal at one point if Duncan’s head lay deeper in +the silken pillows.</p> + + +<p>440. <span class="smcap">Wells</span>—<em>Letters and News at the Loch-side.</em>—A +landscape with portraits and incident. I pick it out from among the +contributions of its able painter, for the sake of noting the great +amount of space, light, and air, which he has got into this picture, +although there is no single glimpse of sky: the ground rises all round +from the lake-side. This is no small thing to have managed.</p> + + +<p>449. <span class="smcap">Leighton</span>—<em>Acme and Septimius.</em>—Remarkable for its +elegant skill of concentrated composition. The knee of Acme’s left +leg—the foot of the same leg being set underneath her right thigh as +she sits—appears to me to project too much laterally. This may be a +convenient place for calling attention (with implied apology for not +speaking of them with the detail they properly claim) to Mr. Leighton’s +three remaining pictures: Nos. 227, <em>Jonathan’s Token to David</em>; +234, <em>Mrs. Frederick P. Cockerell</em>; 522, <em>Actæa, the Nymph of +the Shore.</em></p> + + +<p>453. <span class="smcap">Hodgson</span>—<em>Chinese Ladies looking at European +Curiosities.</em>—A quaint and amusing notion, and a pleasant picture. +A Chinese gentleman is exhibiting to his wives and their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>18</span> women a +pair of European white satin slippers, which the small-footed fair +(or rather dusky) ones regard as elephantine eccentricities. An +Englishwoman looking at a Chinese “six-marker,” or at a Japanese +masterpiece of woodcut design or colouring, is not more tickled. +Perhaps the best head of all is that of the elderly woman to the +right. The peculiarities of Chinese physiognomy are not at all +overdone—indeed, I doubt whether the eyes are quite sidelong enough. +It would have been admissible to make one of the wives prettier, and +(if I am not mistaken) clearer-complexioned also.</p> + + +<p>461. <span class="smcap">Legros</span>—<em>Sir Thomas More showing some of Holbein’s +Pictures to Henry VIII.</em>—Without tampering with his own style, +Mr. Legros comes more than hitherto, in this picture, within the same +general lines as English art. The work, in essentials, is extremely +good; and simplicity of execution does not interfere with its keeping +its place well and solidly amid those which surround it. Sir Thomas +More does not strike me as much of a likeness. Henry is excellent: +he sits (if a bull may be excused) as he would sit in a contemporary +portrait, though not as he <em>does</em> sit in any of those I remember. +Perhaps his eyes are less small than in the likenesses. Holbein looks +the best man of the lot: well able to have done the fine things Sir +Thomas is displaying, and to do as many more as bluff Harry may +commission. Three ladies are also present. One of them gives her head a +turn in which the manner of a connoisseur is dimly anticipated; and one +might fancy her to be saying to herself, “Really, most excellent; but, +were I to sit to him, should I come good-looking enough?” Capitally as +the whole subject is kept together, I think a single little touch would +still improve it in this respect: one of the ladies might be glancing +from the picture to Holbein, and so helping to identify the work with +its worker.</p> + + +<p>477. <span class="smcap">Walker</span>—<em>In the Glen, Rathfarnham Park.</em>—This +is a halt of gipsies, who are lighting a fire; and perhaps there is +something more of incident implied than I happen to catch. Mr. Walker’s +pictures have a certain mottled look and grainy surface which might +be called mannerism, though not too confidently. At any rate, after +making some abatement for this,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>19</span> and for a too easily contented choice +of subject, one is fairly surprised at a sureness of hand which seems +to have at its finger-ends the power of realization without labour, +and at a sturdiness of work which yet picks up (as it were) at every +stroke refinements of drawing and colour. The evidences of ability are +so profuse that a non-practical critic like myself may well, in modesty +and self-knowledge, feel his mouth shut to objections. I should doubt +whether there are in Europe many artists more accomplished than Mr. +Walker, within his own sphere of work.</p> + + +<p>494. <span class="smcap">H. S. Marks</span>—<em>Experimental Gunnery in the Middle +Ages.</em>—Mr. Marks has done nothing better than this picture; +probably nothing equally good. The subject involves just the sort of +out-of-the-way humour which is his <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">specialité</em>; and he has made +this the informing spirit of a full composition without condescending +to any burlesque. There is much varied and capital by-play of incident +and expression; and the subject is so treated as to allow one, even in +these days of Armstrong guns and Chassepots, to feel a good-humoured +respect for the primitive artillerists.</p> + + +<p>499. <span class="smcap">Prinsep</span>—<em>A Venetian Lover.</em>—The gist of this +subject is made so evident that we could dispense with the motto—“De +deux amans, il y en a toujours un qui aime, et l’autre qui se laisse +aimer.” Handled with marked fulness and breadth, and with a very +painter-like choice of the <em>tints</em> of colour, the picture proves +once again that Mr. Prinsep is well qualified to work on a large scale; +having at command a fund of really pictorial material, on which he may +draw with full stress of faculty, secure that it will not fail him +at his need. As a matter of sentiment, the picture leaves a certain +feeling of discontent; the impassivity of the woman is so extreme as to +provoke one first with her and next with her impassioned adorer. But no +doubt this is only what the artist intended. In some parts the surface +may be considered too smooth—as especially in the lady’s face, which +has hardly the pulpiness of flesh. Possibly, however, this impression +would be corrected could one examine the picture closer.</p> + + +<p>510. <span class="smcap">A. Hughes</span>—“<em>Sigh no more, Ladies, Sigh no +more.</em>”—Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>20</span> Hughes’s pictures are always full of refined +sentiment; and this is eminently so, and in all respects one of his +best successes. The lady is so tender, uncomplaining, and beautiful, +that one takes her part on the instant. Happily, she seems, after an +interval of disconsolate dejection, to be dimly awaking once more to +the interests of life; and soon she will be taking the advice of the +song, and tempting fate with another affair of the heart. She is at +once sentimental to the romantic point, and domestically feminine. It +was a happy thought to introduce the thrush at her window, trilling a +cheerful ditty, which one can imagine that her heart translates into +the spoken language of the song. This picture has in it a gentle but +real poetry which places it on a very different footing from most of +the work in the exhibition.</p> + + +<p>511. <span class="smcap">Storey</span>—<em>Saying Grace.</em>—The small denizens of a +nursery have seated themselves with impeccable propriety for their +early dinner, regulated by (as one might infer from her physiognomy) a +foreign nursery-governess. The baby has joined his hands with dispread +fingers, and enacts (he is too young to pronounce) the grace with +a solemnity which would do credit to a parish-clerk. No doubt the +children are all portraits, with inordinate heads of hair; but the +baby’s irregularity of contour seems to exceed infantine bounds. Let us +trust that his mamma will insist upon his growing up with a modified +profile, and that “’tis his nature to.” The picture has a genuine +distinction of quaintness and zest.</p> + + +<p>513. <span class="smcap">Calderon</span>—<em>Œnone.</em>—Mr. Tennyson, with the magic +fetters of genius, has enslaved all Englishmen to the conviction +that Œnone can only be contemplated as in a state of heartbroken +dereliction; and I suppose that Mr. Calderon intends his nymph to be +so understood. I cannot, however, perceive that sentiment in her face +or action; she appears to the eye rather in a mood of rampant laziness +and florid self-display. This is a very singular piece of colour. White +or whiteish tints occupy a considerable space; the extremely blue +hills are the second important constituent; and the pea-green mantle +of Œnone is the third. The pea-green appears to me a discord, though +some other hue of green, along with a texture<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>21</span> more like drapery, might +have proved much the reverse. On the whole, I should say that, in its +colour as in other respects, the painting has much boldness, with no +corresponding proportion of felicity.</p> + + +<p>517. <span class="smcap">R. Carrick</span>—<em>After the Sortie.</em>—This is a +very large picture, hung so high that one cannot fully estimate +it in detail. It represents a wounded knight borne up the winding +castle-stairs by three of his retainers; his wife, with a horrible +sinking of the heart, totters and clings about for support as she +follows. It seems to be a strongly designed and carefully executed +work, of very superior merit; the most important production of Mr. +Carrick, and about the best.</p> + + +<p>524. <span class="smcap">H. W. B. Davis</span>—<em>A Summer Forenoon.</em>—A landscape +and sheep-piece, warm, gentle, and genial. Landscape and the allied +forms of art occupy a very small space, comparatively, in the present +exhibition. There are nevertheless several works of this kind which +call for examination and praise: their being left unnoticed in this +pamphlet does not imply any indifference to their merits.</p> + + +<p>540. <span class="smcap">Miss M. E. Freer</span>—<em>Red Roses.</em>—Coquetry is the +predominant spirit of this work. But it is not painted with the +slightness which a coquettish picture from a fresh female hand might be +expected to display. On the contrary, there is a good deal of careful +realization, and an amount of general skill and force which places Miss +Freer high among lady artists. No. 446, <em>Margaret Wilson</em>, by the +same painter, hung too high to be scrutinized, seems to be equally +good, or better.</p> + + +<p>585. <span class="smcap">Maclise</span>—<em>Madeline after Prayer.</em>—The useful adage +which Mr. Maclise will never lay to heart is that “Enough is as good as +a feast.” We find Keats’s Madeline encumbered with items of furniture +and ornamentation. Moreover, the painter’s decorative taste is anything +but chastened; witness the horrible pattern which she has begun in her +broidery frame. A graver objection is the want of any real luminosity +in the moonlight which Keats has made so resplendent; the painted +window itself is the very maximum of opacity, and the light (if light +it can be called) seems to fall <em>upon</em> it, not to be transmitted +through its panes. Whatever his failings in execution,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>22</span> Mr. Maclise +can depict light vastly better than this when he chooses. So much for +objections. After any quantity of them, it remains that the picture is +highly attractive, and the Madeline a very beautiful creature—perhaps +the sweetest woman Mr. Maclise has painted. She is a personage +<em>not</em> made</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent1">“For human nature’s daily food,”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="noi">and yet she is sympathetic. To be that, she must be poetic +also.</p> + + +<p>589. <span class="smcap">Burchett</span>—<em>Measure for Measure.</em>—Mr. Burchett +follows up his remarkable work of last year with another of +corresponding importance. Matured consideration, and strong powers of +working and of development, have gone to the making of this picture; +which represents the great crisis in the action of <em>Measure for +Measure</em>, where the Duke of Vienna, disguised as a friar, is +revealed by the unwitting Lucio to the eyes of the abashed Angelo +and Escalus, and of the now almost hopeless Isabella and Mariana. +The story is told with much judgment and penetration (so far as such +a complicated story <em>can</em> be told) by the Duke’s vacated chair +of state, with coronet and sceptre laid upon it, between the seats +of Escalus and Angelo; the young courtier, facing the just uncowled +Duke, and recognising him on the instant, and raising his cap; the +frothy bluster of Lucio dying out on his scared visage as he gasps to +see whom he has been mauling and traducing; and other well-chosen and +well-combined incidents. The countenance of the Duke is German and +searching; that of Escalus true to the good-natured cynicism of the +substantially upright old man; Isabella has much of the nun about her. +Angelo is, I think, too much the burly insolent oppressor; for we must +understand from the drama that he really looked and was an abstinent +Pharisee, led on by temptation and opportunity into vilenesses quite +unlike the man that all others and himself supposed him to be. There is +much able and accurate painting in this work, though it would benefit +by more breadth of general harmonizing.</p> + + +<p>600. <span class="smcap">Parsons</span>—<em>The Wayfarer.</em>—A peculiar and delicate +piece of subdued execution, deserving of inspection; <em>so</em> peculiar +in its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>23</span> granulated texture that it hardly proclaims itself to be +oil-painting.</p> + + +<p>613. <span class="smcap">Hicks</span>—<em>Escape of the Countess of Morton to Paris, +with Henrietta, infant Daughter of Charles I.</em>—The most important +and best production of Mr. Hicks. Like Mr. Burchett’s picture, its +incidents require to be analysed one by one: when that process has been +gone through, one finds a great deal of ingenious skill standing to the +painter’s credit.</p> + + +<p>614. <span class="smcap">Prinsep</span>—<em>A Study of a Girl Reading.</em>—Mr. Prinsep +deserves real thanks for this painting. The girl is an exquisite +person, and the picture also may without flattery be called exquisite. +It has a most charming sense of the womanly in the maidenly. The fair +one is about to sit down to luncheon, but holds and reads her book +up to the moment of drawing in her chair. Perhaps she will violate +etiquette by persisting in “reading at meals:” and who will not forgive +her?</p> + + +<p>621. <span class="smcap">A. Moore</span>—<em>Azaleas.</em>—This will be remembered as one +of the <em>illustrations</em> (as the French phrase it) of the Exhibition +of 1868. It presents, in life size, a Grecian lady (or at any rate +Grecian-robed), at a pot of azaleas, some of which she plucks and drops +into a basin. Whether or not azaleas were known to Grecian ladies, +whether or not they came from America, are questions not difficult of +solution, but of sublime indifference to Mr. Moore. (The flowers in +Mr. Watts’s Grecian picture, No. 323, are also, I apprehend, azaleas.) +The study of the blossom-loaded plant is most delicate and lovely; and +the lady has elevated classic grace, though her face hardly sustains +comparison with the rest of the picture. For a sense of beauty in +disposition of form, and double-distilled refinement in colour, this +work may allow a wide margin to any competitors in the gallery, and +still be the winner. On the other hand, it is proper to remember that +such a painting as this presupposes certain <em>data</em> in art, which +<em>data</em> some people not wholly unworthy of a hearing demur to: +chiefly, it presupposes once for all that that innermost artistic +problem of how to reconcile realization with abstraction deserves to +be given up. How much could be said on this question from differing +points of view, I need not here indicate. You linger long to look +at Mr. Moore’s picture, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>24</span> return to it again and again: and that +justifies him in taking, individually, the benefit of one of those +points of view. He unites with singular subtlety of grace a phase of +the evanescent to a phase of the permanent: colour and handling which +withdraw themselves from the eye with a suggestion (or, as one might +say, with a whisper), to statuesque languor and repose of form.</p> + + +<p>624. <span class="smcap">Brett</span>—<em>Christmas Morning, 1866.</em>—In scale combined +with subject, this is far the most important picture Mr. Brett has +produced. We see a manned boat and a wrecking ship upon the immense +ocean, with its swirling drift blown across like a tongue of tormented +flame; and huge volumes of grey cloud over the horizon, walling out +from the sea the gorgeous dawn of a new day, on fire with the blaze of +sunlight. The painting of the vast sea-surface is a very great effort +of knowledge and mastery, and a very successful one.</p> + + +<p>629. <span class="smcap">A. Goodwin</span>—<em>The Dead Woodman.</em>—A picture of highly +remarkable effect, and poetic perception. A blue-grey bloom of sunset +broods luminously over all. The work has a kind of intellectual analogy +to the <em>Dead Stonebreaker</em> which Mr. Wallis painted years ago: but +in all points of externals it is entirely different.</p> + + +<p>632. <span class="smcap">Millais</span>—<em>Souvenir of Velasquez</em> (<em>Diploma-work +deposited in the Academy on his election as an Academician</em>).—It is +not for an outsider to surmise whether or not the Academicians court +the deposit of diploma-pictures which may have cost their painters, +working with the quick-handedness of a Millais, perhaps a couple of +days’ labour. However this may be, they have here got a diploma-picture +of that description, and an admirable one in its way it certainly is. +The resemblance to Velasquez is hardly such as to justify the title.</p> + + +<p>685. <span class="smcap">Watts</span>—<em>A. Panizzi, Esq.</em>—That this is about the +finest portrait of the year need scarcely be specified, Mr. Watts +being its author. It was presented to Mr. Panizzi by the Officers of +the British Museum, on his retirement; and happily expresses, in the +sitter, great powers of work, long in active exercise, and now in +well-earned repose. A sketch-plan of the Museum reading-room forms an +appropriate and not undecorative device in the right-hand upper corner.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>25</span></p> + + +<p>735. <span class="smcap">Sandys</span>—<em>Study of a Head.</em>—We have now got out of +the oil-pictures, and have come to the drawings. This is an excellent +study of a wilful, tameless-spirited beauty, who bites her hair in +her gathering mood. Further on (816) is an equally well-done head of +<em>George Critchett, Esq.</em>, a head that seems to teem with defined +calculation. It will be known to many besides myself that Mr. Sandys +sent to the Academy an oil-picture of Medea in an act of incantation, +not only worthy, but more than worthy, of his highly disciplined powers +and determined accomplishment. It has dropped out of the Exhibition +when the pictures came to be actually hung; leaving some food for +pondering to those who care for the higher and completer forms of +pictorial work. They may feel—and the feeling would be only enhanced +by some other things they may have heard, and a great deal of what +they see on the Academy walls—that an off-hand style of painting, +now predominant, has interests of its own clashing with those of some +graver phases of art; and that judicial equity in adjusting these +interests may sometimes be in default. Sir Francis Grant, detailing +after-dinner statistics, may fancy that the whole question is settled +by saying that there is space for so many pictures only, and that so +many more were sent in; but this is far from being the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">dernier +mot</em>. Efficiency No. 1 and semi-efficiency No. 2 may be contending +for a residue of space, and the admission of either is obviously the +exclusion of the other; but he would be a very innocent President, +non-academician artist, or private and unprofessional person, who +should thence conclude that the Pompey and the Cæsar have coequal +claims, especially the Pompey. Anybody, who has experienced, written, +read, heard, or seen, even a little of this ever-recurrent hanging +controversy, loathes its very atmosphere, and gladly retreats from it, +seldom without a sense of protest, and a chafing at injustice.</p> + + +<p>753. <span class="smcap">J. F. Lewis</span>—<em>Bedouin Arabs.</em>—One of the very +finest studies of the kind produced by a hand unrivalled in its own way.</p> + + +<p>943. <span class="smcap">Munro</span>—<em>The Sisters.</em>—We are now in the Sculpture +Room. Mr. Munro has earned great popularity and a defined position by +works of this class, in which groups of children are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>26</span> treated with some +graceful incident and execution, and very genuinely graceful feeling. +The present group counts among the best of them.</p> + + +<p>948. <span class="smcap">Woolner</span>—<em>Elaine with the Shield of Sir +Launcelot.</em>—The maiden loves and muses, and pines as she muses; +but as yet her doom only hovers over her pityingly. The feeling of +reserve and purity, of the new experience of love timidly entertained, +and yet already permeating her whole life, and absorbing all her +forces into its own surging and resistless current, is predominant +in this figure. Along with this, and with much simplicity of pose +and motive, one readily perceives that the whole thing is uncommonly +treated—<em>uncommonly</em> rather than <em>unusually</em>. The face has +more of personal individuality, the turn of the figure more shades of +variety within unity, the execution throughout more distinction, than +British sculpture accustoms us to. So also with the hands and feet: +their peculiarities are all significant and forecast, though to my eye +they do not sufficiently partake of the beauty of delicacy. Compare—or +contrast would be the word—this statuette with</p> + + +<p>981. <span class="smcap">J. S. Westmacott</span>—<em>Elaine.</em></p> + + +<p>984. <span class="smcap">Armstead</span>—<em>Astronomy.</em>—A bronze colossal figure, +destined for the Prince-Consort memorial in Hyde Park. It has a +good decorative look, and adequate grandeur of pose and line. It +might fairly (so far as one can judge before it is placed <em lang="la" xml:lang="la">in +situ</em>) be termed a <em>proportional</em> work; one, that is, in which +the conception, treatment, and general force of impression, have +relation to its scale, and to its destination as one in a series of +impersonating figures.</p> + + +<p>987. <span class="smcap">Leifchild</span>—<em>The Dawn.</em>—The sentiment of this figure +is well expressed in two lines from the MS. quotation:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent1">“The Dawn, whose splendour is a promise still,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Heralding more than Day can e’er fulfil.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="noi">It is the sentiment of an ushering-in, an announcement, +something to come. Mr. Leifchild has produced several sculptural works +eminent for thoughtfulness in concentration. The present figure belongs +to a different order of work, yet something of the same spirit can be +traced in it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>27</span></p> + + +<p>1007. <span class="smcap">Woolner</span>—<em>Thomas Carlyle.</em>—The strong, emphatic, +penetrating style of Mr. Woolner, who searches under the surface of his +sitter’s face, and records on its surface what he has found beneath, +gave him the best of rights to deal with such a magnificent head as +Carlyle’s—marked as that is by a most powerful dominating expression, +with abundant points of subordinate detail and individuality. Mr. +Woolner had, indeed, done a medallion of the great writer many years +ago; now we get a bust worthily recording so memorable a man.</p> + + +<p>1027. <span class="smcap">Woolner</span>—<em>Reliefs from the Iliad</em> (<em>pedestal of +the Bust of the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone</em>).—Here are three +subjects executed on a small scale, with a singular amount of original +force. The third, <em>Thetis consoling Achilles</em>, does not appear +to me, in composition and suggestion, so remarkable as the other two. +<em>Pallas and Achilles at the Trenches</em>, where the hero shouts to +the Greeks a superhuman cry, while Pallas overshadows him with her +ægis, is a most vigorous and admirable composition; indeed, but for +its small size, one would be minded to call it the finest thing Mr. +Woolner has yet exhibited. <em>Thetis praying to Zeus on behalf of +Achilles</em> is hardly second to it. The sea-goddess rises on tiptoe to +stroke the beard of the omnipotent cloud-compeller; and no single touch +perhaps could have given the amplitude and primitiveness of the Homeric +Pantheon more keenly than this. It is not exactly <em>naïveté</em>, and +still less exactly humour, but something happily between both.</p> + + +<p>1053. <span class="smcap">Watts</span>—<em>Clytie</em>; <em>Marble Bust, +unfinished.</em>—This is an experiment in sculpture by our +distinguished painter. I find it a very interesting one, and +(<em>pace</em> the professional sculptors) a remarkable success. The head +reverts over the right shoulder with a graceful and energetic turn; and +these qualities, especially that of energy, are preserved in all points +of view. The modelling of the bust and arms is pulpy and creased—more +comparable in tendency to that of the Elgin Marbles than of later Greek +sculpture. Indeed, I should surmise that the thoughts of Mr. Watts, as +he worked, were mostly shared between Phidias and Michael Angelo. The +spectator who finds some parts lumpy or rude should bear in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>28</span> mind that +the work is avowedly “unfinished”—even if he does not deem the general +conditions under which the experiment has been made sufficient to abate +the picking of holes.</p> + +<hr class="divider3"> + +<p>Possibly some readers of this pamphlet may use it to be referred to as +they range through the Academy rooms, examining their contents. If this +is the case, I should regret to pass over without a word of mention +several works which, according to the scope and limitations of the +pamphlet, I have not found an opportunity of reviewing in any detail in +their proper order. After all, a great number of works against whose +skilfulness and merit I neither raise nor suggest any imputation will +be remaining totally unnamed. Meanwhile, a simple numerical list of +contributions may be added to which I would rather direct attention +thus barely than not at all. Some of them are productions of leading +importance: others have modest graces which should not pass unobserved. +The visitor must form his own opinion of whether and why they deserved +specification.</p> + +<div class="container"> +<ul> +<li> 28. <span class="smcap">Swinton</span>—<em>The Earl Bathurst.</em></li> +<li> 29. <span class="smcap">T. S. Cooper</span>—<em>Descending from the Rock Grazing, East Cumberland.</em></li> +<li> 49. <span class="smcap">Mac Whirter</span>—<em>Old Edinburgh, Night.</em></li> +<li> 67. <span class="smcap">Grant</span>—<em>Miss Grant.</em></li> +<li> 68. <span class="smcap">Fleuss</span>—<em>G. Makgill, Esq.</em></li> +<li>120. <span class="smcap">Grace</span>—<i>The Curfew tolls the Knell of parting Day.</i></li> +<li>124. <span class="smcap">Grant</span>—<em>The Earl of Bradford.</em></li> +<li>158. <span class="smcap">Eden</span>—<em>On the Thames near Pangbourne.</em></li> +<li>160. <span class="smcap">Harveymore</span>—<em>The Point, near Walton on the Naze.</em></li> +<li>168. <span class="smcap">J. B. Burgess</span>—<em>A Portrait.</em></li> +<li>170. <span class="smcap">H. Moore</span>—<em>Ebb-tide, Squall coming on.</em></li> +<li>176. <span class="smcap">Cathelinau</span>—<em>The Nurse.</em></li> +<li>184. <span class="smcap">Halle</span>—<em>Miss Jessie.</em></li> +<li>199. <span class="smcap">E. Gill</span>—<em>Storm and Shipwreck on a Rocky Coast.</em></li> +<li>205. <span class="smcap">Elmore</span>—“<em>Two Women shall be grinding at the Mill.</em>”</li> +<li>206. <span class="smcap">Zuccoli</span>—<em>Wine Gratis.</em></li> +<li>208. Ditto—<em>Preparing to cook Indian Corn.</em></li> +<li><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>29</span> +222. <span class="smcap">Yeames</span>—<em>The Chimney-Corner.</em></li> +<li>241. <span class="smcap">Lehmann</span>—<em>Portrait of a Gentleman.</em></li> +<li>251. <span class="smcap">Nicol</span>—<em>A China Merchant.</em></li> +<li>267. <span class="smcap">Goodall</span>—<em>Mater Purissima.</em></li> +<li>272. <span class="smcap">Archer</span>—<em>Burial of Guinevere.</em></li> +<li>290. <span class="smcap">Watts</span>—<em>The Meeting of Jacob and Esau.</em></li> +<li>298. <span class="smcap">V. Cole</span>—<em>Sunlight Lingering on the Autumn Woods.</em></li> +<li>303. <span class="smcap">Wells</span>—<em>James Stansfeld, Esq., of Halifax.</em></li> +<li>321. <span class="smcap">Pott</span>—<em>The Minuet.</em></li> +<li>322. <span class="smcap">G. D. Leslie</span>—<em>Mrs. Charles Dickens, Jun.</em></li> +<li>327. <span class="smcap">Prinsep</span>—<em>A Portrait.</em></li> +<li>340. <span class="smcap">Frith</span>—<em>Scene from “She Stoops to Conquer.”</em></li> +<li>344. <span class="smcap">Perugini</span>—<em>Daphne.</em></li> +<li>345. <span class="smcap">Mrs. Robbinson</span>—<em>The Firstborn.</em></li> +<li>346. <span class="smcap">Radford</span>—<em>“No Man that Warreth” &c.</em></li> +<li>348. <span class="smcap">Lucy</span>—<em>The Forced Abdication of Mary Stuart.</em></li> +<li>367. <span class="smcap">Miss A. Thornycroft</span>—<em>Study of a Head.</em></li> +<li>378. <span class="smcap">Boughton</span>—<em>A Breton Pastoral.</em></li> +<li>387. <span class="smcap">Wyllie</span>—<em>Dover Castle and Town.</em></li> +<li>390. <span class="smcap">Calthrop</span>—<em>The Last Song of the Girondins, 1793.</em></li> +<li>400. <span class="smcap">Orchardson</span>—<em>Scene from “King Henry IV.”</em></li> +<li>403. <span class="smcap">Stanhope</span>—<em>The Footsteps of the Flock.</em></li> +<li>416. <span class="smcap">Whaite</span>—<em>Harvest on the Mountains.</em></li> +<li>420. <span class="smcap">Wade</span>—<em>A Stitch in Time.</em></li> +<li>452. <span class="smcap">H. Moore</span>—<em>Weather Moderating after a Gale.</em></li> +<li>467. <span class="smcap">Mrs. Ward</span>—<em>Sion House, 1553.</em></li> +<li>474. <span class="smcap">Crowe</span>—<em>A Chiffonnier.</em></li> +<li>478. <span class="smcap">Wells</span>—<em>The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.</em></li> +<li>490. <span class="smcap">E. Frère</span>—<em>La Sortie de l’Ecole des Filles.</em></li> +<li>503. <span class="smcap">Hemy</span>—<em>By the River Side, Antwerp.</em></li> +<li>504. <span class="smcap">Nicol</span>—<em>Waiting at the Cross-roads.</em></li> +<li>520. <span class="smcap">Armitage</span>—<em>Herod’s Birthday Feast.</em></li> +<li>521. <span class="smcap">Lidderdale</span>—<em>The Exiled Jacobite.</em></li> +<li>523. <span class="smcap">Prinsep</span>—<em>A Greek Widow at a Tomb.</em></li> +<li>529. <span class="smcap">Hillingford</span>—<em>Before the Tournament.</em></li> +<li>531. <span class="smcap">Armstrong</span>—<em>Daffodils.</em></li> +<li>532. <span class="smcap">Opie</span>—<em>The Musical Genius.</em></li> +<li>542. <span class="smcap">Hayllar</span>—<em>Midsummer, Parham Hall, Suffolk.</em></li> +<li><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>30</span> +551. <span class="smcap">Gale</span>—<em>Nazareth.</em></li> +<li>552. <span class="smcap">Goldie</span>—<em>A Child Martyr borne across the Roman Campagna to one of the Catacombs.</em></li> +<li>571. <span class="smcap">Miss Sandys</span>—<em>Enid.</em></li> +<li>579. <span class="smcap">Calderon</span>—<em>Whither?</em></li> +<li>580. <span class="smcap">Mason</span>—<em>Netley Moor.</em></li> +<li>615. <span class="smcap">Hodgson</span>—<em>Off the Downs in the Days of the Cæsars.</em></li> +<li>616. <span class="smcap">A. Hayward</span>—<em>The Haunted House.</em></li> +<li>636. <span class="smcap">J. E. Williams</span>—<em>The Bishop of Gloucester.</em></li> +<li>646. <span class="smcap">Archer</span>—<em>Bringing home Fern, Evening.</em></li> +<li>648. <span class="smcap">McCallum</span>—<em>Near the Buck Gates, Sherwood Forest.</em></li> +<li>656. <span class="smcap">Tourrier</span>—<em>The Cloisters.</em></li> +<li>657. <span class="smcap">G. D. Leslie</span>—<em>The Empty Sleeve.</em></li> +<li>671. <span class="smcap">Brennan</span>—<em>Via della Vita, Rome.</em></li> +<li>673. <span class="smcap">Crowe</span>—<em>Mary Stuart, February 8th, 1586.</em></li> +<li>683. <span class="smcap">A. Hughes</span>—<em>Mrs. Edward Rhodes.</em></li> +<li>689. <span class="smcap">Lobley</span>—<em>Fancies in the Fire.</em></li> +<li>727. <span class="smcap">R. Doyle</span>—<em>The Enchanted Tree.</em></li> +<li>754. <span class="smcap">A. C. H. Luxmoore</span>—<em>Searching for Treason.</em></li> +<li>763. <span class="smcap">J. F. Lewis</span>—<em>Camels.</em></li> +<li>764. <span class="smcap">Count G. V. Rosen</span>—<em>A Street in Cairo.</em></li> +<li>833. <span class="smcap">Hardwick</span>—<em>The Woods in Early Spring.</em></li> +<li>908. <span class="smcap">E. Edwards</span>—<em>Four Etchings, Wells, &c.</em></li> +<li>915. <span class="smcap">C. N. Luxmoore</span>—<em>Pen and Ink Sketches from Nature.</em></li> +<li>1001. <span class="smcap">Woolner</span>—<em>Hon. W. E. Frere, late of Bombay.</em></li> +<li>1029. Ditto—<em>The late Robert Leslie Ellis.</em></li> +<li>1040. <span class="smcap">Böhm</span>—<em>Miss Cumberbatch.</em></li> +<li>1052. +<ins id="Ap" title="Original has ApGriffith"><span class="smcap">Ap Griffith</span></ins>—<em>Cain preparing his Sacrifice.</em></li> +<li>1106. <span class="smcap">G. A. Lawson</span>—<em>The Maiden’s Secret.</em></li> +<li>1164. <span class="smcap">Tupper</span>—<em>Dr. Hyde Salter.</em></li> +<li>1169. <span class="smcap">G. Morgan</span>—<em>Study of a Head.</em></li> +<li>1194. <span class="smcap">Leifchild</span>—<em>The Rev. Thomas Jones.</em></li> +</ul> +</div> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>31</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_II"><em>PART II.</em></h2> +</div> + +<p class="center linespace2"><span class="p8">BY</span><br> +ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.</p> + +<hr class="short"> + +<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">I have</span> been asked to note down at random my impressions of some few +among this year’s pictures. These I am aware will have no weight or +value but that which a sincere and studious love of the art can give; +so much I claim for them, and so much only. To pass judgment or tender +counsel is beyond my aim or my desire.</p> + +<p>Returning from the Academy I find two pictures impressed on my memory +more deeply and distinctly than the rest. First of these—first of +all, it seems to me, for depth and nobility of feeling and meaning—is +Mr. Watts’ “Wife of Pygmalion.” The soft severity of perfect beauty +might serve alike for woman or statue, flesh or marble; but the eyes +have opened already upon love, with a tender and grave wonder; her +curving ripples of hair seem just warm from the touch and the breath +of the goddess, moulded and quickened by lips and hands diviner than +her sculptor’s. So it seems a Greek painter must have painted women, +when Greece had mortal pictures fit to match her imperishable statues. +Her shapeliness and state, her sweet majesty and amorous chastity, +recall the supreme Venus of Melos. In this “translation” of a Greek +statue into an English picture, no less than in the bust of Clytie, +we see how in the hands of a great artist painting and sculpture may +become as sister arts indeed, yet without<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>32</span> invasion or confusion; how, +without any forced alliance of form and colour, a picture may share +the gracious grandeur of a statue, a statue may catch something of the +subtle bloom of beauty proper to a picture.</p> + +<p>The other picture of which I would speak, unlike enough to this in +sentiment or in tone, has in common with it the loftiest quality of +beauty pure and simple. Indeed, of all the few great or the many +good painters now at work among us, no one has so keen and clear a +sense of this absolute beauty as Mr. Albert Moore. His painting is to +artists what the verse of Théophile Gautier is to poets; the faultless +and secure expression of an exclusive worship of things formally +beautiful. That contents them; they leave to others the labours and +the joys of thought or passion. The outlines of their work are pure, +decisive, distinct; its colour is of the full sunlight. This picture +of “Azaleas” is as good a type as need be of their manner of work. +A woman delicately draped, but showing well the gentle mould of her +fine limbs through the thin soft raiment; pale small leaves and bright +white blossoms about her and above, a few rose-red petals fallen +on the pale marble and faint-coloured woven mat before her feet; a +strange and splendid vessel, inlaid with designs of Eastern colour; +another—clasped by one long slender hand and filled from it with +flowers—of soft white, touched here and there into blossom of blue: +this is enough. The melody of colour, the symphony of form is complete: +one more beautiful thing is achieved, one more delight is born into the +world; and its meaning is beauty; and its reason for being is to be.</p> + +<p>We all owe so much to Mr. Leighton for the selection and intention of +his subjects—always noble or beautiful as these are, always worthy of +a great and grave art; a thing how inexpressibly laudable and admirable +in a time given over to the school of slashed breeches and the school +of blowsy babyhood!—we owe him, I say, so much for this that it seems +ungracious to say a word of his work except in the way of thanks and +praise. I find no true touch of Greek beauty in the watery Hellenism +of his Ariadne: she is a nobly moulded model of wax, such a figure +as a mediæval sorceress might set<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>33</span> to waste before a charmed fire +and burn out the life of the living woman. The “Actæa” has the charm +that a well-trained draughtsman can give to a naked fair figure; this +charm it has, and no other; it has also a painful trimness suggestive +of vapour-baths, of “strigil” and “rusma,” of the toilet labours of +a Juvenalian lady; not the fresh sweet strength of limbs native to +the sea, but the lower loveliness of limbs that have been steamed and +scraped. The picture of Acme and Septimius is excellently illustrative +of Mr. Theodore Martin’s verse; it is in no wise illustrative of +Catullus. I doubt if Love would have sneezed approval of these lovers +either to left or to right. As for detail, surely one arm at least of +his and one leg at least of hers are singular samples of drawing. In +his two other pictures Mr. Leighton has, I think, reached his highest +mark for this year. The majestic figure and noble head of Jonathan are +worthy of the warrior whose love was wonderful, passing the love of +woman; the features resolute, solicitous, heroic. The boy beside him is +worthy to stand so near; his action has all the grace of mere nature, +as he stoops slightly from the shoulder to sustain the heavy quiver. +The portrait of a lady hard by has a gracious and noble beauty, too +rare even among the abler of English workmen in this line.</p> + +<p>The genius of Mr. Millais is of course a thing indestructible; but +all that can be done to deaden or distort it the Academy has done. +“They have scotched the snake, not killed it”—being as it is a +“Serpent-of-Eternity.” There is nothing here to recall the painter of +past years. There is no significance or depth, no subtlety of beauty; +there is the fit and equal ability of an able craftsman. The group of +three sisters is a sample of this excellent ability; no man needs to +be told that. There is no lack of graceful expressive composition; +there is no stint of ribbons and trimmings. There is a bitter want +of beauty, of sweetness, of the harmony which should hang about the +memories of men after seeing it as an odour or a cadence about their +senses: and this beauty, this sweetness, this harmony, all great and +all genuine pictures leave with us for an after-gust, not soon to pass +or perish.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>34</span> The picture called “Rosalind and Celia” gives us graver +and deeper offence. Of the landscape nothing evil shall be said, and +nothing good; but the figures cry aloud for remark and reprobation. +These women are none of Shakspeare’s. Think but in passing of the +fresh grace, the laughters as of April, the light delicate daring, +the tender and brilliant sweetness of the true “Ganymede;” what is +left of all this? She figures here as a fair-faced ballet-girl, with +a soul absorbed by the calf of her leg. And this dull, sickly, stolid +woman huddling heavily against her is Celia; this is the purest rarest +type that Shakspeare could give of heroic and sweet devotion; this is +she who alone even among his women could not live but in another’s +life. And Touchstone—can this sour ape-cheeked face be the face that +Jaques “met i’ the forest?” these the lips that rallied Corin and wooed +Aubrey? “Bear your body more seemly,” Touchstone. And with all this +debasement and distortion of Shakspeare’s figures, we do not even get +by way of amends a well-wrought piece of work; forget if you will the +names attached, this is still but an unlovely picture. It seems that +Mr. Millais has forgotten how to paint a lady; his women here all smack +of the side-scenes or the servants’ hall. Admirable for its strong sure +power of painting, the “Stella” is, nevertheless, pitiably vacuous. +If the sailors at Nelson’s tomb appeal somewhat overmuch to popular +sentiment of no deep or delicate kind, the picture is yet a noble one +and impressive. The faces are full of simple and keen feeling, of tacit +and loyal reverence. There is a superfluous ugliness in the two wooden +stumps; and perhaps the knack by which the light is arranged so as to +strike out severally from each pane of the glass lantern is too like +one of those petty feats which are as lime-twigs laid to catch the +eyes and tongues of the half-trained sightseers who jostle and saunter +through a gallery, pausing now and again to “wonder with a foolish face +of praise.” The worst of these pictures, painted by a meaner man, would +justly win notice and applause; but it is no small thing that a great +man should do no greater work than some of this. The clear eye and the +strong hand have not forgotten<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>35</span> their cunning; it is a master whom we +find too often at work fit only for a craftsman. Surely a painter who +has done things so noble will not always be content to take for his +battle-cry, “Philistia, be thou glad of me.”</p> + +<p>I return now to the works of Mr. Watts. His little landscape is full +of that beauty which lives a dim brief life between sunset and dusk. +The faint flames and mobile colours of the sky, the dim warm woods, the +flight of doves about the dovecote, have all their part in the grave +charm of evening, are all given back to the eye with the grace and +strength of a master’s touch; the stacks that catch the glare and glow +of low sunlight seem crude and violent in their intense yellow colour +and hard angles of form: natural it may be, but a natural discord that +jars upon the eye. “The Meeting of Jacob and Esau,” though something +too academic, has in part the especial, the personal grandeur of Mr. +Watts’s larger manner of work. In the pale smooth worn face of Jacob +there is a shy sly shame which befits the supplanter: his well-nigh +passive action, as of one half reassured and half abashed, bares to +view the very heart and root of his nature; and the rough strenuous +figure of Esau, in its frank grandeur of brave sun-brown limbs, speaks +aloud on the other side of the story, by the fervid freedom of his +impetuous embrace. Far off, between the meeting figures, midmost of the +remote cavalcade, the fair clear face of a woman looks out, pale under +folds of white, patient and ill at ease; her one would take to be Leah. +It is noticeable that one year, not over rich in excellent work, should +give us two admirable pictures drawn from the Hebrew chronicles. What +they call scriptural art in England does not often bear such acceptable +fruit. I know not if even Mr. Watts has ever painted a nobler portrait +than this of Mr. Panizzi; it recalls the majestic strength and depth of +Morone’s work: there is the same dominant power of hand and keenness of +eye, the same breadth and subtlety of touch, the same noble reticence +of colour.</p> + +<p>Before I pass on to speak of any other painter, I will here interpolate +what I have to say of Mr. Watts’s bust of Clytie. Not imitative, not +even assimilative of Michel Angelo’s manner,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>36</span> it yet by some vague +and ineffable quality brings to mind his work rather than any Greek +sculptor’s. There is the same intense and fiery sentiment, the same +grandeur of device, the same mystery of tragedy. The colour and the +passion of this work are the workman’s own. Never was a divine legend +translated into diviner likeness. Large, deep-bosomed, superb in arm +and shoulder, as should be the woman growing from flesh into flower +through a godlike agony, from fairness of body to fullness of flower, +large-leaved and broad of blossom, splendid and sad—yearning with +all the life of her lips and breasts after the receding light and the +removing love—this is the Clytie indeed whom sculptors and poets have +loved for her love of the Sun their God. The bitter sweetness of the +dividing lips, the mighty mould of the rising breasts, the splendour of +her sorrow is divine: divine the massive weight of carven curls bound +up behind, the heavy straying flakes of unfilleted hair below; divine +the clear cheeks and low full forehead, the strong round neck made for +the arms of a god only to clasp and bend down to their yoke. We seem to +see the lessening sunset that she sees, and fear too soon to watch that +stately beauty slowly suffer change and die into flower, that solid +sweetness of body sink into petal and leaf. Sculpture such as this has +actual colour enough without need to borrow of an alien art.</p> + +<p>The work of M. Legros is always of such a solid and serious excellence +as to require no passing study. His picture of Henry VIII. and +courtiers is, I must think, an instance of absolute error; it has +no finer quality of its own, and the reminiscence of Holbein is not +fortunate. “The Refectory” makes large amends: he has never done more +perfect work than this. The cadence of colours is just and noble; +witness the red-leaved book open in one monk’s hand on the white cloth, +the clear green jug on the table, the dim green bronze of the pitcher +on the floor; beside it a splendid cat, its fur beautiful with warm +black bars on an exquisite ground of dull grey, its expectant eye and +mouth lifted without further or superfluous motion. The figures are +noble by mere force of truth; there is nothing of vulgar ugliness +or theatrical holiness. As good<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>37</span> but not so great as the celebrated +“Ex-voto” of a past year, this picture is wholly worthy of a name +already famous.</p> + +<p>The large work of Baron Leys stands out amid the overflow all round it +of bad and feeble attempts or pretences at work in all the strength +of its great quality of robust invention. It has the interest of +excellent narrative; in every face there is a story. A great picture +is something other than this; but this also is a great thing done. It +is a chapter of history written in colours; a study which may remind +us of Meinhold’s great romances, though the author of “Sidonia the +Sorceress” may stand higher as a writer than Leys as a painter. All the +realistic detail is here, but not the vital bloom and breath of action +which Meinhold had to give. Rigour of judicial accuracy might refuse to +this work the praise of a noble picture; for to that the final imprint +and seal of beauty is requisite; and this beauty, if a man’s hand be +but there to bestow it, may be wrought out of homely or heavenly faces, +out of rare things or common, out of Titian’s women or Rembrandt’s. +It is not the lack of prettiness which lowers the level of a picture. +Here for imagination we have but intellect, for charm of form we have +but force of thought. Too much also is matter of mere memory; thus +the clerk writing is but a bastard brother of Holbein’s Erasmus. Form +and colour are vigorous, if hard also and heavy; and when all is said +it must in the end be still accepted as a work of high and rare power +after its own kind, and that no common kind, nor unworthy of studious +admiration and grave thanksgiving.</p> + +<p>It is well to compare this with the work that passes for historical in +many English eyes. Doubtless it may be said that such things as some of +these are not worth mention in a study so imperfect and discursive as +this must be; that they were better passed by in peace and left to find +their level. But it has been well said, “Il est des morts qu’il faut +qu’on tue;” and though undesirous in general to take that duty out of +abler hands, I will choose but one sample at random, on which I came by +chance, looking up from Sir E. Landseer’s dog and deer, a work of brute +ability, excellently repulsive as all brutish pain must be if duly +rendered.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>38</span> This select sample of historic art in England is a picture +of Mary Stuart about to sign her abdication. Posthumous parasites have +often libelled her with praise of pencil or of pen; but retribution +never yet fell heavier on her memory. She, the woman of such keen clear +wits, such indomitable nerves, such pitiless charms and such tameless +passions, that the very record of them can yet seduce and daunt men as +she daunted and seduced them of old—the fairest, subtlest, hardest +among women, with a heart of iron and fire—she shows here a fool’s +face, doubtful between a simper and a sob, raised in pitiable appeal +to a ring of stagestruck ruffians. The picture is worth notice as a +tangible piece of proof that certain men do really accept this as the +historic type of a figure so famous as hers. Another hand has drawn her +portrait, perhaps somewhat nearer life, to this effect; (I take leave +to cite the lines as a corrective, being reminded of them at sight of +this picture. They may perhaps find place here, as the Queen of Scots +figures thrice in this year’s show:)—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent11">“Nor shall men ever say</div> + <div class="verse indent1">But she was born right royal; full of sins,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Dyed hand and tongue with bloody stains and black,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Unmerciful, unfaithful, but of heart</div> + <div class="verse indent1">So high and fiery, and of spirit so clear,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">In extreme danger and pain so lifted up,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">So of all violent things inviolable,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">So large of courage, so superb of soul,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">So sheathed with iron mind invincible</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And arms unbreached of fireproof constancy—</div> + <div class="verse indent1">By shame not shaken, fear or force or death,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Change, or all confluence of calamities—</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And so at her worst need beloved, and so,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">(Naked of help and honour when she seemed,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">As other women would be, of their strength</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Stript) still so of herself adorable,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">She shall be a world’s wonder to all time,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">A deadly glory watched of marvelling men</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Not without praise, not without noble tears,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And if without what she would never have</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Who had it never, pity—yet from none</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Quite without reverence and some kind of love</div> + <div class="verse indent1">For that which was so royal.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Having delivered my soul as to this matter, I return not unrelieved<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>39</span> +from historic ground, with some hope that this aberration may prove +pardonable when the provocation has been taken into account.</p> + +<p>I have compared Albert Moore to Théophile Gautier; I am tempted to +compare Mr. Leslie to Hégésippe Moreau. The low melodious notes of his +painting have the soft reserve of tone and still sweetness of touch +which belong to the idyllic poet of the Voulzie. Sometimes he almost +attains the gentle grace of the other’s best verse—though I hardly +remember a picture of his as exquisite for music and meaning as the +“Étrennes à la Fermière.” His work of this year has much of tender +beauty, especially the picture called “Home News;” his portraits have +always a pleasant and genuine quality of their own; and in the picture +called “The Empty Sleeve,” though trenching somewhat nearly on the +obvious and facile ground of family feeling and domestic exhibition, +there is enough of truth and grace visible to keep it up on the proper +level of art.</p> + +<p>The “Evening Hymn” of Mr. Mason is in my mind the finest I have seen +of his works, admirable beyond all where all are admirable. A row of +girls, broken in rank here and there, stand and sing on a rough green +rise of broken ground; behind them is a wild spare copse, beyond it +a sunset of steady and sombre fire stains red with its sunken rays +the long low space of sky; above this broad band of heavy colour the +light is fitful and pale. The raised faces and opening mouths of the +singers are as graceful as those carved by Della Robbia or Donatello +in their choral groups; nothing visible of gape or strain, yet the +action of song is made sensible. Their fine features are not over fine; +they have all an air of the fields and the common country, which is +confirmed in the figures, cast in a somewhat ruder mould, of the two +young peasants who stand listening. One girl stands off a little from +the rest, conning the text with eyes set fast upon her open book; the +rest sing freely at large; the middle group of three girls is most +noble and exquisite. Rich at once and grave in the colour, stately and +sweet in the composition, this picture is a model of happy and majestic +temperance.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>40</span></p> + +<p>Mr. Walker’s picture of “Vagrants,” has more of actual beauty than +his “Bathers” of last year; more of brilliant skill and swift sharp +talent it can hardly have. The low marsh with its cold lights of grey +glittering waters here and there; the stunted brushwood, the late and +pale sky; the figures gathering about the kindling fire, sad and wild +and worn and untameable; the one stately shape of a girl standing +erect, her passionate beautiful face seen across the smoke of the scant +fuel; all these are wrought with such appearance of ease and security +and speed of touch, that the whole seems almost a feat of mere skill +rather than a grave sample of work; but in effect it is no such slight +thing.</p> + +<p>In Mr. Armstrong’s “Daffodils” there is a still sobriety of beauty, a +quiet justice and a fine gravity of manner, far unlike the flash and +flare of obtrusive cleverness which vexes us so often in English work +of this kind. The sombre sweetness of a coming twilight is poured upon +hill and field; only the yellow flowers wreathed about the child’s +hat or held by the boy kneeling on the stile relieve the tender tone +of sunless daylight with soft and tempered colour. The action of the +figures has all the grace of simple truth and childlike nature.</p> + +<p>“The Exiled Jacobite” of Mr. Lidderdale is full of the noble sadness of +the subject, excellent also as a genuine picture, a work of composed +harmony. The noble worn face of the old man, stamped with the sacred +seal of patience and pain, looks seaward over the discoloured stonework +of the low wall, beyond the dull grey roofs of a low-lying town that +slope to the foreign shore. His eyes are not upon the dusky down +sweeping up behind, the rough quaint houses and deep hollow, veiled all +and blue with the misty late air; they are set, sad and strong, upon +things they shall never see indeed again. From the whole figure the +spirit of the old song speaks:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse outdent">“Now all is done that man can do,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And all is done in vain.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="noi">The pathos of the picture is masculine and plain as +truth;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>41</span> the painter might have written under it the simple first words +of the same most noble song:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent1">“It was a’ for our rightful king.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Mr. Poynter’s picture of “The Catapult” has an admirable energy of +thought and handiwork; the force and weight of faculty shown in it +would be worthy remark if the result were less excellent. Excellent of +its kind it is, but not delightful; surprise and esteem it provokes, +but not the glad gratitude with which we should welcome all great work. +The labouring figures and the monstrous engine are worthy of wonder and +praise; but there is a want on the whole of beauty, a want in detail of +interest. The painter’s “Israel in Egypt” had more of both qualities, +though there is this year a visible growth of power; it left upon our +eyes a keen impression of gorgeous light and cruelty and splendour and +suffering; it had more room for the rival effects at once of fine art +and of casual sentiment.</p> + +<p>The two pictures of Mr. Hughes show all his inevitable grace and tender +way of work; they are full of gentle colour and soft significance. The +smaller is to us the sweeter sample; but both are noticeable for their +clear soft purity and bright delicacy of thought and touch. In the +larger picture the bird singing on the sill, delicious as it would be +anywhere, has here a double charm.</p> + +<p>There is a genuine force and a quaint beauty in Mr. Houghton’s +picture—portrait it can hardly be called—of a gentleman in his +laboratory. His other picture, of a boy lifting up a younger child +to smell a rose on the tree, while a kitten bounds at his feet, is +admirable for its plain direct grace of manner.</p> + +<p>The head of a priest by Mr. Burgess has a clear air of truth and +strength; its Spanish manner recalls the style of Phillip, whom the +painter, it seems, has sought to emulate. Among the few portraits worth +a look or a word, is that of Mrs. Birket Foster by Mr. Orchardson; +though the showy simplicity be something of a knack, and the painting +of woodwork and drapery rather a trick of trade acquired than a test +of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>42</span> accomplished power, the work is so well done and the action so +plain and good as to bear and to reward a second look.</p> + +<p>The show of this year is noticeably barren in landscape. Nothing is +here of Inchbold, nothing of Anthony. The time which can bring forth +but two such men should have also brought forth men capable to judge +them and to enjoy. Even here however the field is not all sterile: +there are two studies of sea by Mr. H. Moore, worthy to redeem the +whole waste of a year. One of these shows an ebbing tide before the +squall comes up; the soft low tumult of washing waves, not yet beaten +into storm and foam, but weltering and whitening under cloud and wind, +will soon gather power and passion; as yet there is some broken and +pallid sunlight flung over it by faint flashes, which serve but to show +the deepening trouble and quickening turmoil of reluctant waters. The +shifting and subtle colours of the surging sea and grey blowing sky are +beautiful and true. The study of storm subsiding as the waves beat up +inshore, though vigorous and faithful, is in parts somewhat heavy; but +the jostling breakers muster and fight and fall with all the grace and +force of nature.</p> + +<p>In these stray notes I had meant to set down nothing in dispraise +of this picture or that, but merely to say of such as I found good +the best I had to say; passing by of necessity many well worthy of +praise or blame, and many more not wholly worthy of either. Of these +indeed the main part of an exhibition must usually be made up; of +mediocrities and ingenuities which art must on the whole ignore and +put aside without rebuke, though they may not call aloud for fire to +consume them. But a word may here be said of M. +<ins id="Edouard" title="Original has Edouard">Édouard</ins> +Frère; a name that carries weight with it. He has been likened to +Wordsworth; it must be a Wordsworth shorn of his beams. In the large +field of the poet there are barren and weedy places enough; he may at +times, with relaxed hand and bedimmed eye, drop from the hills to the +quagmires, and croak there to children, instead of singing to men; +but the qualities which at such times a great poet may have in common +with a small painter are not the qualities which make him great. When +we find in M. Frère the majesty and music of thought, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>43</span> stately +strength and high-toned harmonies, the deep sure touch and keen-edged +pathos of the poet, then only we may grant the kinship. To the rags +and tatters, the stubble and sweepings of Wordsworth, he meantime is +more than welcome. What is there in this year’s picture well conceived, +well composed, well painted? what of effect, of harmony, of variety in +these crude monotonous figures? A great artist in verse or in colour +may assuredly make some great thing out of the commonest unwashed group +of dull faces; but the workman must first be great; and this workman, +without force of hand or delicacy, without depth or grace of painting, +would pass off on us, in lieu of these, such mere trickeries of coarse +and easy sentiment, fit only to “milk the maudlin” eyes of M. Prudhomme +and his wife. Turn from his work to that of M. Legros, and compare the +emasculate with the masculine side of French art.</p> + +<p>Among the drawings here are two studies by Mr. Sandys, both worthy of +the high place held by the artist. One is a portrait full of force +and distinction, drawn as perhaps no other man among us can draw; the +other, a woman’s face, is one of his most solid and splendid designs; +a woman of rich, ripe, angry beauty, she draws one warm long lock of +curling hair through her full and moulded lips, biting it with bared +bright teeth, which add something of a tiger’s charm to the sleepy and +couching passion of her fair face. But of that which is not here I have +also something to say. Exclusion and suppression of certain things in +the range of art are not really possible to any academy upon earth, be +it pictorial or literary. It is natural for academies to try, when any +rare or new good thing comes before them in either kind; witness much +of academic history in England as in France; but the record of their +ill-will has always been the record of their impotence. Mr. Sandys’ +picture of “Medea” is well enough known by this time, wherever there +is any serious knowledge of art, to claim here some word of comment, +not less seasonable than if it were now put forward to grace the great +show of the year. Like Coriolanus, the painter might say if he would +that it is his to banish the judges, his to reject the “common cry” of +academics. For this, beyond all doubt, is as yet his masterpiece.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>44</span> Pale +as from poison, with the blood drawn back from her very lips, agonized +in face and limbs with the labour and the fierce contention of old +love with new, of a daughter’s love with a bride’s, the fatal figure +of Medea pauses a little on the funereal verge of the wood of death, +in act to pour a blood-like liquid into the soft opal-coloured hollow +of a shell. The future is hard upon her, as a cup of bitter poison set +close to her mouth; the furies of Absyrtus, the furies of her children, +rise up against her from the unrisen years; her eyes are hungry and +helpless, full of a fierce and raging sorrow. Hard by her, henbane and +aconite and nightshade thrive and grow full of fruit and death; before +her fair feet the bright-eyed toads engender after their kind. Upon the +golden ground behind is wrought in allegoric decoration the likeness of +the ship Argo, with other emblems of the tragic things of her life. The +picture is grand alike for wealth of symbol and solemnity of beauty.</p> + +<p>The present year has other pictures to be proud of, not submitted to +the loose and slippery judgment of an academy. Of one or two such I am +here permitted to make mention. The great picture which Mr. Whistler +has now in hand is not yet finished enough for any critical detail to +be possible; it shows already promise of a more majestic and excellent +beauty of form than his earlier studies, and of the old delicacy and +melody of ineffable colour. Of three slighter works lately painted, +I may set down a few rapid notes; but no task is harder than this +of translation from colour into speech, when the speech must be so +hoarse and feeble, when the colour is so subtle and sublime. Music or +verse might strike some string accordant in sound to such painting, +but a mere version such as this is as a psalm of Tate’s to a psalm of +David’s. In all of these the main strings touched are certain varying +chords of blue and white, not without interludes of the bright and +tender tones of floral purple or red. In two of the studies the keynote +is an effect of sea; in one, a sketch for the great picture, the soft +brilliant floor-work and wall-work of a garden balcony serve in its +stead to set forth the flowers and figures of flower-like women. In +a second, we have again a gathering of women in a balcony; from the +unseen flowerland<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>45</span> below tall almond-trees shoot up their topmost +crowns of tender blossom; beyond and far out to west and south the +warm and solemn sea spreads wide and soft without wrinkle of wind. The +dim grey floor-work in front, delicate as a summer cloud in colour, +is antiphonal to the bluer wealth of water beyond: and between these +the fair clusters of almond-blossom make divine division. Again the +symphony or (if you will) the antiphony is sustained by the fervid or +the fainter colours of the women’s raiment as they lean out one against +another, looking far oversea in that quiet depth of pleasure without +words when spirit and sense are filled full of beautiful things, till +it seems that at a mere breath the charmed vessels of pleasure would +break or overflow, the brimming chalices of the senses would spill +this wine of their delight. In the third of these studies the sea is +fresher, lightly kindling under a low clear wind; at the end of a pier +a boat is moored, and women in the delicate bright robes of eastern +fashion and colour so dear to the painter are about to enter it; one +is already midway the steps of the pier; she pauses, half unsure of +her balance, with an exquisite fluttered grace of action. Her comrades +above are also somewhat troubled, their robes lightly blown about by +the sea-wind, but not too much for light laughter and a quivering +pleasure. Between the dark wet stair-steps and piles of the pier the +sweet bright sea shows foamless here and blue. This study has more of +the delight of life than the others; which among three such may be most +beautiful I neither care to guess nor can. They all have the immediate +beauty, they all give the direct delight of natural things; they seem +to have grown as a flower grows, not in any forcing house of ingenious +and laborious cunning. This indeed is in my eyes a special quality of +Mr. Whistler’s genius; a freshness and fulness of the loveliest life +of things, with a high clear power upon them which seems to educe a +picture as the sun does a blossom or a fruit.</p> + +<p>It is well known that the painter of whom I now propose to speak has +never suffered exclusion or acceptance at the hand of any academy. To +such acceptance or such rejection all other men of any note have been +and may be liable. It is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>46</span> not less well known that his work must always +hold its place as second in significance and value to no work done by +any English painter of his time. Among the many great works of Mr. D. +G. Rossetti, I know of none greater than his two latest. These are +types of sensual beauty and spiritual, the siren and the sibyl. The one +is a woman of the type of Adam’s first wife; she is a living Lilith, +with ample splendour of redundant hair;</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent21">She excels</div> + <div class="verse indent1">All women in the magic of her locks;</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And when she winds them round a young man’s neck</div> + <div class="verse indent1">She will not ever set him free again.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Clothed in soft white garments, she draws out through a comb the heavy +mass of hair like thick spun gold to fullest length; her head leans +back half sleepily, superb and satiate with its own beauty; the eyes +are languid, without love in them or hate; the sweet luxurious mouth +has the patience of pleasure fulfilled and complete, the warm repose of +passion sure of its delight. Outside, as seen in the glimmering mirror, +there is full summer; the deep and glowing leaves have drunk in the +whole strength of the sun. The sleepy splendour of the picture is a fit +raiment for the idea incarnate of faultless fleshly beauty and peril +of pleasure unavoidable. For this serene and sublime sorceress there +is no life but of the body; with spirit (if spirit there be) she can +dispense. Were it worth her while for any word to divide those terrible +tender lips, she too might say with the hero of the most perfect and +exquisite book of modern times—<em>Mademoiselle de Maupin</em>—“Je +trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction +de la forme est la vertu.” Of evil desire or evil impulse she has +nothing; and nothing of good. She is indifferent, equable, magnetic; +she charms and draws down the souls of men by pure force of absorption, +in no wise wilful or malignant; outside herself she cannot live, she +cannot even see: and because of this she attracts and subdues all men +at once in body and in spirit. Beyond the mirror she cares not to look, +and could not.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse outdent">“Ma mia suora Rahel mai non si smaga</div> + <div class="verse">Dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto ’l giorno.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>So, rapt in no spiritual contemplation, she will sit to all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>47</span> time, +passive and perfect: the outer light of a sweet spring day flooding +and filling the massive gold of her hair. By the reflection in a deep +mirror of fervent foliage from without, the chief chord of stronger +colour is touched in this picture; next in brilliance and force of +relief is the heap of curling and tumbling hair on which the sunshine +strikes; the face and head of the siren are withdrawn from the full +stroke of the light.</p> + +<p>After this faint essay at an exposition, the weighty and melodious +words in which the painter has recast his thought (words inscribed +on the frame of the picture) will be taken as full atonement for my +shortcomings; I fear only that the presumption and insufficience of the +commentator will now be but the more visible.</p> + + +<p class="center smcap">Lady Lilith.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent1">Of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, it is told</div> + <div class="verse indent3">(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve)</div> + <div class="verse indent3">That, ere the snake’s, her sweet tongue could deceive,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And her enchanted hair was the first gold.</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And still she sits, young while the earth is old,</div> + <div class="verse indent3">And, subtly of herself contemplative,</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Till heart and body and life are in its hold.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza2"> + <div class="verse indent1">Rose, foxglove, poppy, are her flowers: for where</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And soft-shed +<ins id="kisses" title="Original has fingers">kisses</ins> and soft sleep shall snare?</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Lo! as that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And round his heart one strangling golden hair.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The other picture gives the type opposite to this; a head of serene and +spiritual beauty, severe and tender, with full and heavy hair falling +straight in grave sweet lines, not like Lilith’s exuberant of curl +and coil; with carven column of throat, solid and round and flawless +as living ivory; with still and sacred eyes and pure calm lips; an +imperial votaress truly, in maiden meditation: yet as true and tangible +a woman of mortal mould, as ripe and firm of flesh as her softer and +splendid sister. The mystic emblems behind her show her power upon +love and death to make them loyal servants to the law of her lofty and +solemn spirit. Here also the artist<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>48</span> alone should first be heard; and +I, having leave to act as his outrider, give him the due precedence.</p> + +<p class="center smcap">Sibylla Palmifera.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent1">Under the arch of life, where love and death,</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">I drew it in as simply as my breath.</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,</div> + <div class="verse indent3">The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,</div> + <div class="verse indent3">By sea or sky or woman, to one law,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza2"> + <div class="verse indent1">This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Thy voice and hand shake still,—long known to thee</div> + <div class="verse indent5">By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat</div> + <div class="verse indent5">Following her daily of thy heart and feet,</div> + <div class="verse indent3">How passionately and irretrievably,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">In what fond flight, how many ways and days!</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="noi">After these all weaker words must fall flat enough; but +something of further description may yet be allowed. Behind this figure +of the ideal and inaccessible beauty, an inlaid wall of alternate +alabaster and black marble bears inwrought on its upper part the rival +twin emblems of love and death; over the bare carven skull poppies +impend, and roses over the sweet head with bound blind eyes: in her +hand is the palm-branch, a sceptre of peace and of power. The cadence +of colour is splendid and simple, a double trinity of green and red, +the dim red robe, the deep red poppies, the soft red roses; and again +the green veil wound about with wild flowers, the green down of +poppy-leaves, the sharper green of rose-leaves.</p> + +<p>An unfinished picture of Beatrice (the Beata Beatrix of the Vita +Nuova), a little before death, is perhaps the noblest of Mr. Rossetti’s +many studies after Dante. This work is wholly symbolic and ideal; a +strange bird flown earthward from heaven brings her in its beak a +full-blown poppy, the funereal flower of sleep. Her beautiful head +lies back, sad and sweet, with fast-shut eyes in a death-like trance +that is not death; over it the shadow of death seems to impend, making +sombre the splendour of her ample hair and tender faultless features. +Beyond her the city and the bridged river<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>49</span> are seen as from far, dim +and veiled with misty lights as though already “sitting alone, made +as a widow.” Love, one side, comes bearing in his hand a heart in +flames, having his eyes bent upon Dante’s; on the other side is Dante, +looking sadly across the way towards Love. In this picture the light is +subdued and soft, touching tenderly from behind the edges of Beatrice’s +hair and raiment; in the others there is a full fervour of daylight. +The great picture of Venus Verticordia has now been in great measure +recast; the head is of a diviner type of beauty; golden butterflies +hover about the halo of her hair, alight upon the apple or the arrow in +her hands; her face has the sweet supremacy of a beauty imperial and +immortal; her glorious bosom seems to exult and expand as the roses +on each side of it. The painting of leaf and fruit and flower in this +picture is beyond my praise or any man’s; but of one thing I will here +take note; the flash of green brilliance from the upper leaves of the +trellis against the sombre green of the trees behind. Once more it must +appear that the painter alone can translate into words as perfect in +music and colour the sense and spirit of his work.</p> + +<p class="center smcap">Venus Verticordia.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent1">She hath it in her hand to give it thee,</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Yet almost in her heart would hold it back;</div> + <div class="verse indent3">She muses, with her eyes upon the track</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Of that which in thy spirit they can see.</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Haply, “Behold, he is at peace,” saith she:</div> + <div class="verse indent3">“Alas! the apple for his lips—the dart</div> + <div class="verse indent3">That follows its brief sweetness to his heart—</div> + <div class="verse indent1">The wandering of his feet perpetually!”</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza2"> + <div class="verse indent1">A little space her glance is still and coy;</div> + <div class="verse indent3">But if she give the fruit that works her spell,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy;</div> + <div class="verse indent3">Then shall her bird’s strained throat the woe foretell,</div> + <div class="verse indent3">And her far seas moan as a single shell,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="noi">Another work, as yet incomplete, is a study +of La Pia; she is seen looking forth from the ramparts of her lord’s +castle, over the fatal lands without; her pallid splendid face hangs +a little forward, wan and white against the mass of dark deep hair; +under her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>50</span> hands is a work of embroidery, hanging still on the frame +unfinished; just touched by the weak weary hands, it trails forward +across the lap of her pale green raiment, into the foreground of +the picture. In her eyes is a strange look of wonder and sorrow and +fatigue, without fear and without pain, as though she were even now +looking beyond earth into the soft and sad air of purgatory: she +presses the deadly marriage-ring into the flesh of her finger, so deep +that the soft skin is bloodless and blanched from the intense imprint +of it. Two other studies, as yet only sketched, give promise of no less +beauty; the subject of one was long since handled by the artist in a +slighter manner. It also is taken from the Vita Nuova; Dante in a dream +beholding Beatrice dead, tended by handmaidens, and Love, with bow and +dart in hand, in act to kiss her beautiful dead mouth. The other is +a design of Perseus showing to Andromeda the severed head of Medusa, +reflected in water; an old and well-worn subject, but renewed and +reinformed with life by the vital genius of the artist. In the Pompeian +picture we see the lovers at halt beside a stream, on their homeward +way; here we see them in their house, bending over the central cistern +or impluvium of the main court. The design is wonderful for grace and +force; the picture will assuredly be one of the painter’s greatest.</p> + +<p>Wide and far apart as lie their provinces of work, their tones of +thought and emotion, the two illustrious artists of whom I have just +said a short and inadequate word have in common one supreme quality of +spirit and of work, coloured and moulded in each by his individual and +inborn force of nature; the love of beauty for the very beauty’s sake, +the faith and trust in it as in a god indeed. This gift of love and +faith, now rare enough, has been and should be ever the common apanage +of artists. <em>Rien n’est vrai que le beau</em>; this should be the +beginning and the ending of their belief, held in no small or narrow +sense, but in the largest and most liberal scope of meaning. Beauty +may be strange, quaint, terrible, may play with pain as with pleasure, +handle a horror till she leave it a delight; she forsakes not such +among her servants as Webster or as Goya. No good art is unbeautiful; +but much able and effective work<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>51</span> may be, and is. Mere skill, mere +thought and trouble, mere feeling or dexterity, will never on earth +make a man painter or poet or artist in any kind. Hundreds of English +pictures just now have but these to boast of; and with these even +studious and able men are often now content; forgetful that art is no +more a matter of mere brain-work than of mere handicraft. The worship +of beauty, though beauty be itself transformed and incarnate in shapes +diverse without end, must be simple and absolute; hence only must the +believer expect profit or reward. Over every building made sacred to +art of any sort, upon the hearts of all who strive after it to serve +it, there should be written these words of the greatest master now +living among us:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent1">La beauté est parfaite,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">La beauté peut toute chose,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">La beauté est la seule chose au monde qui n’existe pas à demi.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<p class="center p120 mt3">THE END.</p> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p class="center">LONDON:<br> +SAVILI, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,<br> +COVENT GARDEN.</p> +</div> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p class="center p160">KEATING’S COUGH LOZENGES.</p> +</div> + + +<figure class="figleft" style="width: 8em" id="keating-trade-mark"> + <img src="images/keating-trade-mark.jpg" width="503" height="491" alt="Keating 79 St. Paul’s Churchyard +Trade Mark"> +<figcaption class="center"><span class="p8">TRADE MARK</span></figcaption> +</figure> + +<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> vast increase in the demand for these COUGH LOZENGES, and the +numerous Testimonials constantly received, fully justify the Proprietor +in asserting they are the best and safest yet offered to the Public +for the Cure of the following Complaints:—<span class="smcap">Asthma</span>, <span class="smcap">Winter +Cough</span>, <span class="smcap">Hoarseness</span>, <span class="smcap">Shortness of Breath</span>, and +other <span class="smcap">Pulmonary Maladies</span>.</p> + +<p>They have deservedly obtained the high patronage of their Majesties +the King of Prussia and the King of Hanover; very many also of the +Nobility and Clergy, and of the Public generally, use them under the +recommendation of some of the most eminent of the Faculty.</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span class="smcap pr4">Old Bank, Stratford-upon-Avon,</span><br> +(Branch of the Stourbridge and Kidderminster Banking Company,)<br> +<span class="pr4"><span class="smcap">Stratford</span>, May 7th, 1868.</span> +</p> + + +<p class="center p120">TESTIMONIAL.</p> + +<p class="noi">DEAR SIR,—Having had a severe Cough this winter I was advised to try +your Lozenges, which are invaluable; having purchased one box costing +<em>only</em> 1s. 1½d., completely set me up, and must, therefore, +strongly recommend them as a certain cure.</p> + +<p class="right"> +I remain your most obedient Servant,<br> +<span class="pr6">W. HOBBINS,</span><br> +<span class="pr4">Manager.</span></p> + +<p> +To Mr. <span class="smcap">Keating</span>,<br> +<span class="pl3">79, St. Paul’s Churchyard, London.</span></p> + +<p>Prepared and Sold in Boxes, 1s. 1½d., and Tins, 2s. 9d., 4s. 6d., +and 10s. 6d. each, by THOMAS KEATING, Chemist, &c., 79, St. Paul’s +Churchyard, London. Sold retail by all Druggists and Patent Medicine +Vendors in the World.</p> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p class="center p140 mt3">KEATING’S PERSIAN INSECT-DESTROYING POWDER.</p> +</div> +<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Fleas in dogs, poultry</span>, +<span class="p8">&c.</span>, are instantly destroyed, as also Bugs, +Beetles, and every other Insect, by this Powder, which is quite +harmless to domestic animals; sportsmen particularly will, therefore, +find it invaluable.</p> + +<p>Sold in Packets, 1s., Tins, 2s. 6d. and 4s. 6d. each; or 1s. Packets +free by post for 12 Postage Stamps, and 2s. 6d. on receipt of 36. Also +in Bottles, 1s. 2d., and with Bellows 1s. 6d. and 3s. each, by</p> + +<p class="center"><b>THOMAS KEATING, Chemist, 79, St. Paul’s Churchyard, London, E.C.</b></p> + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p class="center">BY ROYAL +<img style="width: 4em;" src="images/royal.jpg" width="410" height="262" alt="Royal Coat of Arms"> +COMMAND.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter" id="factory"> + <img style="width: 400px;" src="images/factory.jpg" width="844" height="531" alt="Gillott's Building"> +</figure> + +<p class="center p140">JOSEPH GILLOT’S</p> + +<p class="center">CELEBRATED</p> + +<p class="center p140">STEEL PENS,</p> + +<p class="center">Sold by all Dealers throughout the World.</p> +</div> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p class="center"><span class="p160">MR. EDWIN W. STREETER,</span><br> +LATE<br> +<span class="p120">HANCOCK, BURBROOK, & <span class="smcap">Company, Limited</span>.</span></p> +</div> + +<p class="center p160">18-CARAT GOLD JEWELLERY MACHINE MADE.</p> + +<p class="center p120">FIFTY PER CENT. LESS THAN HAND MADE.</p> + +<p class="center p140">37, CONDUIT STREET (5 doors from Bond St.)</p> + + +<p class="center">The Designs of the various Ornaments are exceedingly beautiful, being +for the most part classical. They are made of 18-carat Gold, and the +prices of some are as follows:—</p> + +<div class="jewellery-container"> +<p class="drop-cap2"> +MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY,<br> +18 Carat Gold: Mr. Edwin W. Streeter—His Gold<br> +Suites <span class="jewellery">£10 10s.</span></p> + +<p class="drop-cap2"> +MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY,<br> +18 Carat Gold: Mr. Edwin W. Streeter—His Gold<br> +Bracelets <span class="jewellery">£5 0s.</span></p> + +<p class="drop-cap2"> +MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY,<br> +18 Carat Gold: Mr. Edwin W. Streeter—His Gold<br> +Brooches <span class="jewellery">£3 0s.</span></p> + +<p class="drop-cap2"> +MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY,<br> +18 Carat Gold: Mr. Edwin W. Streeter—He<br> +Values Jewels at 1 per cent. for Probate; or Purchases,<br> +for Cash, and takes them in exchange.</p> + +<p class="drop-cap2"> +MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY,<br> +18 Carat Gold: Mr. Edwin W. Streeter—His Gold<br> +Lockets <span class="jewellery">£1 0s.</span></p> + +<p class="drop-cap2"> +MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY,<br> +18 Carat Gold: Mr. Edwin W. Streeter—His Gold<br> +Earrings <span class="jewellery">£1 10s.</span></p> + +<p class="drop-cap2"> +MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY,<br> +18 Carat Gold: Mr. Edwin W. Streeter—His<br> +Etruscan Jewellery.</p> + +<p class="drop-cap2"> +MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY,<br> +18 Carat Gold: Mr. Edwin W. Streeter—His<br> +Book on Gold. Eighth Edition, 13 Stamps by Post.<br> +<span class="smcap">Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.</span>, and all Booksellers, and of<br> +the Author, 37, Conduit Street (five doors from Bond<br> +Street).</p> +</div> + +<hr class="divider3"> + +<p class="hang p120">HANCOCK, BURBROOK, & CO. beg to announce a New and Recherche +Stock of Diamond-work and Jewellery for the present Season. +Every article marked in plain figures, and 10 per cent. discount +for Cash allowed on all articles above £5. Their special designs +of Machine-Made Necklaces, Earrings, and Bracelets.</p> + +<p class="center p140">COURT DIAMONDS RE-ARRANGED.</p> + +<hr class="short"> + +<p class="center">REVIEWS OF MR. EDWIN W. STREETER’S MACHINE-MADE JEWELLERY.</p> + +<p class="center">“<em>Professor Pepper states that the use of machinery in the +manufacture of Gold Ornaments is of great advantage to the +Public.</em>”—<span class="smcap">Times</span>, 19th October, 1867.</p> + +<p class="center">“<em>By the introduction of machinery 50 per cent. is saved in the +manufacture of Gold Jewellery.</em>”—<span class="smcap">Standard</span>, September, 1867.</p> + +<p class="center">“<em>Articles of 18-carat gold are manufactured by machinery, +and the result is a saving of 50 per cent. to the +purchaser.</em>”—<span class="smcap">Fun</span>, 29th December, 1866.</p> + +<p class="center">“<em>Mr. Edwin W. Streeter marks upon his goods the quality of gold +supplied by him.</em>”—<span class="smcap">Times</span>, 17th September, 1867.</p> + +<hr class="short"> + +<p class="center">REVIEWS OF MR. EDWIN W. STREETER’S BOOK OF JEWELLERY AND GOLD.</p> + +<p>“<em>The description of the manufacture of Gold and the various +Hall-marks are well worth perusal.</em>”—<span class="smcap">Standard</span>, 3rd +January, 1868.</p> + +<p>“<em>This is a very useful little manual on Jewellery, of +importance.</em>”—<span class="smcap">Public Observer</span>, 16th Nov., 1867.</p> + +<p>“<em>This volume is worth its weight in gold.</em>”—<span class="smcap">Court +Journal</span>, 9th Feb., 1867.</p> + +<p>“<em>Every intending buyer of Jewellery should make Mr. Streeter’s +little book his vade mecum.</em>”—<span class="smcap">Illustrated News</span>, 30th +November, 1867.</p> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<hr class="divider x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="tn"> +<p class="center">Transcriber’s Note:</p> + +<p>Punctuation has been standardised; hyphenation has been retained as it +appears in the original publication.</p> + +<p>The following changes have been made:</p> + +<ul> +<li>Page 30<br> +1052. <span class="smcap">ApGriffith</span> <em>changed to</em><br> +1052. <span class="smcap"><a href="#Ap">Ap Griffith</a></span></li> + +<li>Page 42<br> +But a word may here be said of M. Edouard Frère <em>changed to</em><br> +But a word may here be said of M. <a href="#Edouard">Édouard</a> Frère</li> + +<li> +Page 47<br> +And soft-shed fingers and soft sleep shall snare? <em>changed to</em><br> +And soft-shed <a href="#kisses">kisses</a> and soft sleep shall snare?</li> +</ul> +</div></div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75265 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75265-h/images/cover.jpg b/75265-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e00c336 --- /dev/null +++ b/75265-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75265-h/images/factory.jpg b/75265-h/images/factory.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..24dca1e --- /dev/null +++ b/75265-h/images/factory.jpg diff --git a/75265-h/images/keating-trade-mark.jpg b/75265-h/images/keating-trade-mark.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0d983bf --- /dev/null +++ b/75265-h/images/keating-trade-mark.jpg diff --git a/75265-h/images/royal.jpg b/75265-h/images/royal.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b31972 --- /dev/null +++ b/75265-h/images/royal.jpg diff --git a/75265-h/images/trade-mark.jpg b/75265-h/images/trade-mark.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2e88be1 --- /dev/null +++ b/75265-h/images/trade-mark.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8f1d4f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #75265 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75265) |
