Part 4

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.