ART.
IN our first article on this exhibition, we have chiefly spoken of the first and third rooms ; we will now say a few words on some of the more important compositions in the second gallery, and. the sculptures and bronzes which are this year placed in what is known as the Water-Colour Room.
The second gallery is, as usual, chiefly devoted to Dutch and Flemish pictures, and perhaps their quality is slightly inferior to that which we are accustomed to see at the Royal Academy. The large Peter de Hooge of the music-party we have already spoken of ; but there is a smaller one, showing us the interior of a courtyard, with a woman in a red petticoat, drinking from a tall glass, and a man in a dark costume seated beside her,
smoking. This is more in the artist's usual style, full of minute detail of paved courtyard and tiled roof ; luminous in its atmo- sphere, and possessing that almost crystalline quality of light which has made De Hooge famous. It is not so fine as a some- what similar subject by this artist in the National Gallery, but is a work of the same character.
Near this is a good Frank Hale, belonging to Sir Richard Wallace, the well-known picture which is generally called "The Laughing Cavalier." It is worth while comparing this with the Velasquez in the third gallery, the portrait of Don Balthazar Carlos, son of Philip IV. The Frank Hale is not as fine in colour, nor is it perhaps so perfectly harmonious, as the latter picture ; but both compositions are alike in their marvellous rendering of life, in the vivacity and freshness of their impression, and in the apparent absence of all artistic exaggeration. The Velasquez. indeed, is the most interesting work of the whole of this year's collection, and is not only admirable as a piece of most masterly painting and characterisation, but is a most delightful picture, soft and yet brilliant in colour, most delicate and harmonious in tone, and instinct with a certain magnificence of style which can hardly be described in words. This little chap—for Don Balthazar is only about ten years old—already stands as if half Spain belonged to him ; he has a half-Royal, half-childish swagger, such as one can easily conceive the original to have possessed. As for Mr. Frank Hals' cavalier, he swaggers in a very different way, with a fiercely-twisted moustache, and a hat on the back of his head, and one hand on his thigh, and a general air of roystering braggadoccio. Both, however, are equally alive and equally real.
For a contrast to this, take the large Hondekoeter which hangs above the last-mentioned picture, in which two very full-sized swans are swimming in a pool, surrounded by ducks, and turkeys, and pea-fowls, farm-buildings, trees, clouds, ,k,c. We say the swans are surrounded by these things, because they are painted, as is Hondekoeter's manner, as if each separate feather was a matter of pride to him, as if he would not allow a single detail to escape him or us. The result is that there is a sort of stuffed-bird look about the whole composition. We cannot believe, somehow, in the landscape ; the eye keeps going back to these elaborate swans, and wondering why on earth a painter should wish to spend his life in doing such unsympathetic work. Nevertheless, there are a great many people who admire Melchior de Houdekoeter ; and, indeed, the present writer remembers an old gentleman, who was considered. a very great art-critic, who many years ago took him round a large dining-room hung entirely with canvases by this artist, each about ten feet square, and each containing a perfect poulterer's-shop of dead game, fish, poultry, &c., and then and there instructed him, that that was the sort of art which be ought to admire, and which he would do well to imitate as far as possible. While we are speaking of still-life, we may as well mention the Van Huysum flower-picture, which is a good specimen, though the subject and the treatment are both in the painter's ordinary manner ; the flowers stand out against a brown background, are placed on a marble slab, and arranged in a somewhat meaningless heap. Let us look at a very different work of art, the Queen's Van de Velde, entitled "A Calm." Whether Mr. Ruskin was right in his fierce criticisms of Van de Velde's rough seas, may be a matter of dispute ; but he was certainly wrong in his wholesale condemnation of this painter. There is no one living who could paint calm water crowded with shipping, such as we see in this picture, with as much tenderness, or such depth of atmosphere as we find here ; besides which, the workmanship itself is enough to make the picture delightful. It would be an instructive lesson for the artistic gentlemen of the "palette-knife school" to examine the rigging, masts, and hulls of the various craft in this picture, and note the absolute precision with which every line is drawn, and the absolute firmness of hand displayed in every portion of the picture. If we wanted to mention the crowning merit of this composition, we could hardly express it more clearly than by saying that it conveys a sense of absolute rest; it represents to perfection, soft still air, laden with sunshine, and the hush which comes with the declining hours of a calm summer's day : that sense of immobility (which all who have been much in ships have noticed), which vessels lying in harbour in still water afford, is wonderfully expressed here. There is a good though uninteresting Hobbema near this, notable in one respect, that it bears a curious resemblance to Ruysdael's usual style of composition ; and a fine sketch of Vandyck, lent
by the Queen. The Rembrandt of the mill we have already noticed. It is worthy of remark how closely this picture approxi- mates, in its general tone, to some of Turner's work : across two hundred years, the artists seem to have shaken hands with Nature after much the same fashion.
Let us glance round the third gallery once more. The first picture in it is interesting. It is a Wilkie, one of those which Mr. Ruskin would describe as having been "spoilt by his Spanish experience," and is, as a matter of fact, rather "treacly," to use an artist's expression, in its general colour. What we want b notice about it is, that in some ways it anticipates the work of the present day. It might, we consider, be almost the first of the half-sentimental, half-theatric pictures which form the chief staple of the Royal Academy Exhibition. It is called here, "The Confessor's Confession," and represents a young monk pouring the history of his fault into the ear of his abbot. Most of our readers will understand the character of the picture, 2 we say that it is a very much finer" Pettie." No doubt it is clap- trap art to a certain extent, forced in its light and shade,. exaggerated and somewhat theatric in its motive and composi- tion; but as a tour de force, as a picture to look at once, and then never see again (which is what the modern conception of art seems to hold up as admirable), from such a point of view, this is a fine work ; and even from an artistic stand-point, the picture might claim our admiration for its fine expression of emotion, not only in the faces, but also in the drawing and arrangement of the hands. Indeed, it is an interesting experiment to cover the faces of the two actors in this picture, and notice how clearly the story is told by the position of figures and hands alone.
Turn, for a change from art of this kind, to a picture which hangs on the opposite wall, ascribed to Palma Vecchio,—three women singing, with a background of leaves and sky. Here is the very opposite of the modern spirit, of the modern unquiet- ness of subject, of the modern almost frenzied emotion ; here is an artist who is simply taking delight in beautiful things, and feeling their sufficiency, if only he can paint them perfectly. Very slow, unhurried work this seems to have been ; it must have been done in some green garden, a long way from the city, and been left in the sunshine for many quiet days, ripening, as it were, like a peach ; such, at least, is the impression which its luscious, frill beauty of colouring produces upon us. Notice, above all, that the one impossible thought to have in connection with this picture, or with any other pictures by this painter, is the thought of how the artist painted it; the mind refuses to consider that altogether : the thing is done : we think as little of the method of its doing, as we do of the growth of a flower ; what of the artist there is here, has passed entirely into the work, not remained outside to call to us, "Here I am !"
We have left ourselves but little space in which to speak of the bronzes of low-relief sculpture in the Water-Colour Gallery. A word must, however, be said as to the beauty of the small Donatello lent by Mr. Holman Hunt, a very exquisite piece of work, and marked by that tender maternal sentiment which, in pictorial art, we are accustomed to associate with Raphael alone. Donatello was, indeed, somewhat akin in sculpture to Raphael in painting, the difference mainly consisting in the greater un- consciousness of his work, and in its possessing a childlike, almost playful quality, of which the painter shows no trace. The largest, and what should be the most important sculpture here, is a high-relief of the Virgin and Child, which is set down in the catalogue to Antonio Rossellino ; but this is quite certainly, in our opinion, unauthentic, and is very doubtfully an ancient sculpture at all. Any of our readers who are interested in the matter can judge for themselves of the truth of this criticism by comparing the work with other sculptures in this gallery,. and especially with No. 39, which is a genuine bas-relief by the above-mentioned artist.
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