Part 2
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.