All T.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
[CONCLUDING NOTICE.]
WE must say a few more words upon one or two of the pictures in the largo west gallery, though we have in our previous articles nearly exhausted its interest. To many of those who visit the Grosvenor, Mr. Watts will appear in a new character —as a landscape painter, that is—in his very beautiful picture of the " Carrara, seen from the top of the Leaning Tower at Pisa." This is a very lovely picture of a mountain range, beautifully drawn, and coloured,—well, we can hardly use words too strong to characterise the infinite variety and beauty of the colouring. A curious problem is presented by this picture, or is rather suggested by it and its companions in this exhibition, and that is,-min what lies the very well marked difference between this painting, and that of any other land- scape in the rooms P What is it, we mean, that gives this dis- tinct idea of poetical conception, which makes the realism of form so wholly a subordinate element in the picture P Certainly it is no obscurity of detail, no mystery of light and shade, no extrava- gance of tint or form. The mountains lie before the spectator in calm, sunny daylight ; the atmosphere is exceptionally clear ; the peaks carefully and distinctly drawn. And yet we doubt whether any visitor to the gallery could be quite so dull as to class this work with an ordinary landscape. There is, somehow, overshadowiug it the same sort of feeling that we find when we look at a large land- scape by Rubens, or on one of Titian's elaborate back- ground studies,—a sense of dignity and power, an utter absence of all common-place or trivial accidents, a subtlety of colouring and modelling which perhaps could only come from the hands of a great figure-painter. Of Mr. Watts's other work in this gallery we do not intend to speak. It is all of it fine in places, but it is all comparatively unimportant. The portraits show him by no means at his best, and with the exception of the singularly beautiful study of Diana stooping from the clouds to kiss the sleeping Endymion, there is nothing which is quite worthy of being analysed by the painter's admirers,—nothing, for instance, which is to be compared with the exquisite single figure of Psyche in this exhibition last year. If any one should be desirous of seeing two bad portraits by conscientious artists, let him or her look at Nos. 70 and 74, by Mr. John Collier and E. S. Poynter ; both of which show the painters quite at their worst, and in both the dresses of the sitters seem to have been most unfortunately chosen, and unpleasantly painted. With these may be classed for disagreeableness of impres- sion the two oval portraits of the Queen's " Maids of Honour," painted by Mr. Halle, " by command." Mr. Halle, of course, has no pretensions to the same skill as either of the artists we have mentioned, being little more than an amateur ; but he might have avoided the peculiar garish quality of colour in these works, even if he could make them interesting in no other way. Mr. Halle has several other works in the east gallery, of which the best is a "Dance of Shepherdesses," and the worst a portrait of " Mr. Comyns Carr," Mr. Cecil Lawson has a fine example of his monochromatic work in No. 78, entitled, " The Wet Moon, Battersea," a picture of river and barges under a cloudy, moonlight sky. The picture is undeniably powerful in its way, though, as we have almost grown tired of suggesting, Mr. Lawson would do well to try to give a little colour in Nature ; as it is, he might almost as well paint through a piece of smoked glass. Mr. Felix-Moscheles has a clever little picture, close to this, entitled, " The Minstrel of Algiers," a Nubian showing his white teeth in a grin of pleasure, while he plays some outlandish kind of violin ; and the same artist has two fresh sketches in the vestibule, one of a woman's head surrounded by a mass of wavy, yellow hair, and the other of a baby. All three of these works stiffer, in our
opinion, from a certain deadness of colouring. Mrs. Spartali Stillman's "Among the Willows of Tuscany" is a single-figure study, full of colour and patient work. It will recommend itself to the admirers of the school of which Mr. MELIA Brown is the head. What are we to say of the large picture by Mr. Matthew Hall, called " Les Trois Princesses P" It cannot be called a pleasant work of art in any way, and yet it is well painted in places, and has evidently had a great deal of care bestowed upon it. The three Princesses are sitting, or rather half-sitting, half-crouching, in a sort of garden-orchard, in the middle of a huge bed of daffo- dils and narcissus ; in the background is a mediaeval castle, with a young knight riding away to the war. Perhaps this is an imaginative picture ; we say perhaps, because it seems to us to be neither imaginative nor realistic, but tumbles somehow between the two. The colours employed are not exactly in- harmonious, but they are very insistent, like the voice of a street lecturer, and there is a curious absence of feel- ing in the expression of the Princesses. The whole work, indeed, seems to be out of tone, and though it has elements of beauty, they are so scattered and so confused with bits of absolute ugliness as to be of little worth. It must be remembered, however, that Mr. S. Matthew Hale is probably a young painter, and it cannot be denied that in this picture he has challenged many very great difficulties. Underneath this is a little child's portrait, by Sir Frederick Leighton—so, at least, we should have thought—but as it is called" Mrs. Algernon Sartoris " in the catalogue, we suppose we must believe it to be the picture of a grown-up woman. It is excessively pretty, and far fresher and more life-like than the President's work has been of late, but it certainly does not look as if the original could he more than fourteen. Two well-drawn studies by Legros are next to this, of which the " Old Wood-burner " is the best, the drawing of his bent arm and hand being especially good.
If we now turn to the east gallery, we find it to be, on the whole, very inferior in merit. Mr. H. Cook has a pleasant little picture of "Noon at Venice." Mr. Fairfax Murray sends a very dignified and well-painted portrait of "Michael Darays, Hungarian violinist." Miss Pickering sends a cheerful picture, entitled, " The Angel of Death !" in which the draperies are very carefully studied, but the colour is abominable ; and Mr. Morris, A.R.A., sends a fine effect of cloud and sunshine on a fiat landscape, which he calls " Breezy England." All the above pictures hang close together at the entrance to the gallery. Mr. J. H. Heyermans's " Day of Anxiety " should be noticed, for the very good painting of atmosphere in the cottage interior. It is almost like a De Hooghe in its truth. As in an old Dutch picture, we seem to look through plane after plane of light and shadow, till we come to the cottage window in the background. The figures of the old woman and the sick child are carefully painted, but rather de- void of interest,—but all the details of furniture are first-rate. The colour is poor, but not offensive. Mr. Napier Henry's large picture of " Oporto " is one of the most important works in this room, and shows the artist in somewhat a new light. It is, briefly speaking, an impossible subject of which to make a picture,—long, high banks of houses, rising tier above tier, with a narrow strip of water, crowded with boats in the fore- ground. This is, as a panoramic view, one of the best we have ever seen ; but it is not a picture to which one can attach any interest, except that of fidelity to the place. It has been, we imagine, sketched hastily, and then finished from a photograph. In fact, if Mr. Homy had sent a photograph and painted some- thing else, he would, have done more " wisely," and not less " well."
A little picture above this, of white "Azaleas," should be noticed. It has an amount of style rare in English flower paintings, and is by Mrs. M. D. Mitchell. And there is a little landscape, called " Evening " (111), by Mr. R. C. Minor, which also deserves a moment's attention, from the breadth with which it is painted. Mr. R. W. Macbeth's two studies of single figures, entitled, " The Path Through the Wood" and " September," are good, but hardly so good as usual. There is all the strength and beauty of lusty womanhood which we are accustomed to see in this artist's work, but there is a little coarse- ness, which is by no means either usual or necessary. Both of these are rich in colour. It is difficult to know whether it be wisest to notice or omit Mr. Whistler's work, either proceeding seeming to irritate this artist ; but we cannot be far wrong in saying that
ho sends a portrait to this gallery (113) of Miss Alexander,. and that it represents a young lady standing in front of a folding-screen. Of the merits and demerits of this work of art we must leave our readers to judge ; it is, fortunately, a subject on which there can be but little difference of opinion. Und neath this is a wonderful piece of still-life painting of the el fashioned kind, by Mr. W. J. Muckley. It represents chid " Oranges." Mr. H. Moore's example of "Kilbrennan Sound Sunset," is a bad specimen of a good man ; the colour is har throughout, and the general effect chalky, and without delicac Two fanciful pictures by Mr. Walter Crane (120), (133), closer considerable attention for their inventiveness, and a costal air of poetry which clings to them. The figures in eac are the worst part, especially when the artist attempts as he will attempt, despite all warning—to draw th nude. That is the one thing which cannot be painted out of the inner consciousness. The one picture in the eas gallery of real genius is, perhaps, the only one which is genuinely and indubitably unpleasant to look upon. This is the portrait of Miss Galloway, by Mr. E. J. Gregory. It repro gents a large, fair girl, in a white-satin evening dress. It is har to say what gives the work the flavour of coarseness an violence which it, no doubt, has. Something, no doubt, is duo to its exaggerated size, which must be, we think, rather more than less, that of life ; something, perhaps, to the crud strength with which the artist has attacked the face, an the unsparing, or at all events unsoftening, delineation o the features ; something, perhaps, to the rather over-sump tuousness of gown, and chair, and fan, all of which ar
dashed, as it were, in the spectator's face. Whethe it be for any or all of these reasons, or for some other les perceptible cause, it is certain that the portrait produces at first sight, a painful impression. That this disappear- quickly is quite true. The picture is a wonderful one, were for one quality alone,—its strength. To say that it is superio to the other portraits in the Gallery, with the single exceptio of Mr. Holman Hunt's "Professor Owen," is not putting th case sufficiently clearly. It is superior to them almost in th same way that a man is superior to his likeness,—it has almos the quality of life. Haug it up by the side of this any of the other portraits here, and you will see at once the difference betwee a " living dog " and a " dead lion." Mr. Gregory is, as it were the " dog." He does not care what he paints, or how lie paints or what you think of it ; and the result is naturally almost a insult to the looker-on ; but,—the " stuff " is there. Insolent eccentric, and violent, genius stripped of every attractive quality, and apparently almost despised by its possessor, but genius still,—
" Even the light that led astray Was light from Heaven."
After this, there is little else of great value here. Mr. Herko- mer's large Welsh landscape is a magnificent piece of scene painting, but nothing more. Mr. Frank Holl's " Viscoun Holmesdale " is a fair example. Mr. Weguelin's " Roman Acrobat" shows this young painter improving very greatly in technical skill and in colour, and copying a mixture of Poynter and Tadema with considerable success. Mr. Lockhart's picture of " The Cid and the Five Moorish Kings" is elaborate furni- ture work, not of the highest quality. Sir Noel Paton's picture. of " The Adversary" (which is a polite way of saying the Devil) is a fine conception, carried out in an unpleasant sort of reddish monochrome. The one thoroughly good drawing in the vesti- bule is by Mr. J. M. Nicholson, and represents part of " Douglas- Harbour." This is really a beautiful bit of ship-drawing, an is fine in colour.
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