Part 1
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.