ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[THIRD NOTICE.] IN our last notice of the Royal Academy, we spoke only of a few landscapes, and reminded our readers that if our landscape. painters were at the present time few in number, and of com- paratively little merit, the blame must rest in no small measure- with the Royal Academy, since that body has for the last quarter of a century done its best to discourage landscape. painting. In the present notice, we propose chiefly to mention the subject-pictures which, either by the reputation of their artists, the attractiveness of their incidents, or their intrinsic merit, demand popular attention. In doing this, we shall follow our usual method, and select the works which appear to us to be most worthy of criticism, whether they are by famous or little- known artists.
It is with great pleasure that we have this year to congratu- late Mr. Gow upon one of the very best works which have come from his hand,—a garrison "marching out with the honours of war" (Lille, A.D. 1708), which is the best military picture- in the Academy. It is a work somewhat low in tone, the colour being chiefly in pale greys and buffs, and the figures are both more numerous and on a smaller scale than is- usual in Mr. Gow's painting. The chief peculiarities of the composition are the absence of clap-trap, and its somewhat methodical and almost commonplace conception. And yet the picture has that best kind of reality which makes the spectator feel not only that the facts might have been as. they are rendered, but also that if they were, the scene was touching and beautiful—in other words, they give evidence of the artist's grasp on reality and beauty. The painter has- seen the poetry of his chosen piece of life, and its capabilities- of awakening unstrained emotion, and has set down the poetry for us on his canvas in legible language. To the best of our recollection, Mr. Gow has painted nothing so good as this since- his " Relief of Leyden," about ten years ago. Just above Mr. Gow's picture hangs one which has probably been more talked about than any in the Academy, one which forms a very complete contrast to Mr. Gow's work. This is the gigantic- " Samson " of Mr. S. I. Solomon, a young artist of great ability, and perhaps even greater ambition. It represents Samson struggling with the Philistines, who have already well.nigh secured him, while Delilah—(who, by-the-way, is a rather com- monplace type, as conceived by Mr. Solomon)—shakes a bunch of the hair which she has just cut off, at him derisively. Mr. Solomon. has received plenty of praise for the pluck and ability shown in this work, and we should not have mentioned it in detail were it not that it points a good moral to many young English artists in its strength and courageousness in tack- ling great technical difficulties. We cannot help thinking that, though Mr. Solomon may not be a great artist, yet that if he has got the stuff in him, he is going the right way to become one ; he is, as rowing men used to say up at Cam- bridge, "putting his back into it:" trying to overcome every kind of technical difficulty, and in the attempt overcoming very many. We should recommend those who are interested in seeing the result to which the contrary method has led in one instance, and is likely to lead in many others, to look at Mr. T. M. Rooke's little picture in the first room, entitled "Autumn's Pipe," a composition of two figures sitting under a hedgerow,
piping, surrounded by small flowers and leaves delicately painted. Now, Mr. Rooke is a genuine artist, and a good dozen years or so ago, did this pretty, poetical, gentle work, as he is doing it to-day. But he was too timid to attempt more than he felt to be within his grasp ; he confined himself to his little figures, a foot or leas high, which he painted for the most part out of his head, and to the laboured surroundings of leaf and flower, such as we have in the present picture ; the consequence is that now his work is nerveless, boneless, trivial to a most irri- tating degree ; he dare not do wrong, and has never learnt to do right. The contrast is an instructive one in many ways, for Mr. Rooke has what Mr. Solomon lacks—reverence, tenderness, poetical imagination, and a love for all beautiful things—and Mr. Solomon has the virility, the pluck, the dash, the atmosphere of life and effort, which are sadly wanting in Mr. Rooke's pictures.
There are two landscapes in the seventh room which should have been mentioned in our last notice, but which may be bracketed together here, for the sake of convenience, the more appropriately that they are very similar in subject, though dissimilar in method and treatment ; and both are excellent specimens of natural-history painting of their kind, though hardly to be classed as great landscape-pictures, but as fine olour-studies of Nature, faithful to the aspect of the scene, and touched with a little of the sadness which characterises the work of so many modern landscape-painters. It is notable, by- the-way, that whereas the landscape-painting of the early part -of the century, and of nearly all antecedent times, was re- markable for a rather cheery conception of the universe, since 1860, or thereabouts, nearly all the best landscape-painting has been mournful in its emotional tendencies ; but we must not stop to discuss this here. The two landscapes are by Mr..Toseph Milne and Mr. Alfred East, the latter of whom had in the Royal Institute Gallery the fine water-colour, entitled "A New Neigh- bourhood," of which we spoke highly some weeks ago. Both these pictures are of reeds, water, and an autumn landscape. and Mr. East's is considerably the finer, though, unlike Mr, Mime's, it is hung considerably above the line.
To return to our subject-pictures. What shall be said of Mr. Pettie's apple-cheeked young lady coming down a country lane between two jealous swains; or of Mr. Horsley's "Master of the Hounds," a little boy of about five in a red frock ; or of Mr. Sant's "Thorn amidst the Roses ;" or of Mr. Sydney cooper's "Smithfield Market ;" or of Mr. Armitage's " In- stitution of the Franciscan Order ;" or Mr. Eyre Crowe's Convicts at Work ;" or Mr. Wells's "At Kensington Palace "P Well, all of these are the works of Royal Academicians which we should wish our readers to notice in order that they may gain a fair idea of the art which obtains official recognition in England. None of them are specially unfavourable examples of the painters' work ; they are average specimens, and we do not think it is an exaggeration to say of them, as works of art, that in no other country in the world than England, could such pictures be publicly exhibited by men holding an established artistic position, and be praised by a considerable portion of the public Press. It is not only that their intellectual and emotional character is feeble and trivial to the last degree ; it is not only that they show no recognition -of beauty, and no desire to render their pictures beautiful ; but it is that all the motives of the work, broadly speaking, are Philistine. One painter seeks for light, and another for beauty of line and composition, and another for beauty of colour, and -another for truth of effect, and another for craftsmanship, and another for beauty of light and shade, and so on ; and all of these are, or may be, adequate artistic motives, even if each is pureed too exclusively to admit of the rest being sought in due proportion. But when we make Royal Academicians of men in whose works we can trace no aim at any of these motives, it is -difficult to give any rational explanation of such:conduct ; and if the visitors to the Academy would but think of these matters for themselves, and go and examine the pictures, and see what can be said and what cannot be said for such works as those to which we have alluded, they would be preparing the way for a snore just recognition of artistic merit. It cannot be too mach insisted upon that the character of the art of England in the future depends less upon the artist than it does upon the nation in general. As soon as our people know what good art is, and mean to have it, the supply will begin to approach the demand ; and if that day never comes, then the works of our painters will also remain as they are at the present moment, at the exact artistic level of those for whom they are painted.
Let us once more return to our subject-pictures. There is rather a curious little country subject by Mr. Herkomer which has been a good deal spoken against, publicly and privately. It is called "The Firstborn," and shows us a country lane, with a few small figures, two of which are a carpenter and his wife coming down the middle of the road, the woman carrying the firstborn. The picture has been disliked, we imagine, because the landscape is rather hard,—rather "wooden," to use a studio term ; but we confess that, despite this defect, and despite • certain cheapness of motive in the figures, the picture to us is very attractive. To begin with, it is what so few pictures of the present day are,—delightf ally easy-looking, as if the artist had painted it when he was in a good temper, and because he wanted to paint it. Moreover, there is an especial beauty of truth in the painting which will atone for a multitude of sins, and this is the masterly delineation of the cirrus sky, which is splendidly done and perfectly true in effect ; and though comparatively little of the sky is shown, the artist has conveyed to us the impression both of light and cloud admirably.
One of the hest-painted subject-pictures by one of the younger artists is Mr. Blandford-Fletcher's "Evicted," a group of villagers round the cottage of a defaulting tenant, in front of which are the evicted woman and her child. The picture belongs to what is commonly called the French school, and is notable in the Academy for its truth of value and its good drawing. Its highest merit and greatest defect are indi. rated at the same time by saying that the work would make an admirable woodcut. Indeed, all its merits would be shown in the reproduction without its defects,—the defects, that is to say, of a certain monotony of colour, and rather mannered painting. The picture savours too much of a certain marked method ; even its good qualities are somewhat mechanical, and though the artist has set himself to escape—and has escaped—. all suspicion of melodrama, he has fallen somewhat into the contrary error, and made his rendering a little tame and a little insipid. Of somewhat similar motive to this is Mr. Stanhope Forbes's "Their Ever-Shifting Home,"—gipsies coming down the road, while their wandering home (a gipsy cart) is seen in the die- Mace. As a piece of somewhat banal criticism, we may perhaps be permitted to say that it is rather improbable that tired wanderers such as these would be so far in advance of their caravan ; but however this may be, Mr. Stanhope Forbes has conveyed cleverly the sentiment of his subject, and would have made a fine picture had he been as successful with the road, foliage, and landscape generally as he is with his figures. But in the former details he has failed most completely,—so completely, indeed, that all the back-part of his picture seems to be tumbling down a perpendicular mud wall, against which a few shadowy, shape- less leaves stick out unmeaningly. In the endeavour to make his figures prominent, Mr. Stanhope Forbes has made everything except his figures spectral ; and certainly the surroundings and natural details of this work are like nothing in heaven or earth but what they are in fact,—shapeless dabs of rather ugly brown paint.
Near this there is one of the few (very few, only three or four in all) nude figures in the Academy ; it is called "Eurydice Sinking Back to Hell," by Mrs. Normand Rae, a careful life. study, very quiet and inoffensive in its general tone, and in the surroundings of the figure.
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