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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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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 *** |