ART.
TilE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[FIRST NOTICE.) IT is an ungracious task to find fault, and especially to find fault with a well-established society, whose aims, theoretically at least, are beneficial to a large section of the public. Yet matters are reaching such a pitch of absurdity with regard to the exhi-. bitions of the Royal Academy, that it seems absolutely necessary that some voice should be raised in protest. The reason of the whole difficulty with regard to these exhibitions is caused by the Academy having a sort of Janus-like existence, one face being turned to the public, one towards their own interests. We are not quite sure of the history of the matter, but believe that in the first instance this Society was mainly constituted for the pur- pose of exhibiting the paintings of a certain body of men, and that the public or semi-public functions now belonging to it, have accrued from year to year in various ways. So that the Academy now is still a private society with regard to its mem- bers, and a public society with regard to the public, and hence almost any argument that is directed against the inefficiency of its management, or the unfairness of its proceedings from a public point of view, is answered by its members from the stand-point of a private society. Thus, from a public point of view, it is utterly inexcusable that, in a collection of pictures limited for space, and intended to represent the national art of the year, a large body of men should be empowered to send eight works apiece, and choose for those works the best places in the galleries. But say it is a private society, and then nothing can be more just or more natural ; then outsiders are only admitted as a privilege, not as a right, and must take what they can get, and be thankful. Again, with regard to the selection of pictures, it is manifestly unfair that the hanging Committee should be chosen entirely from members of the Society, for they would be more than human to reject their own works, and admit those of younger and less-known men. But if this is what it professes to be—a national exhibition, with a Royal Charter and all the rest of it, a great teaching body of Art, as we were told last week at the Academy dinner—if this be an institution of this kind, then the admittance of inferior pictures by members of the society is a distinct wrong and injustice done to every painter of a better work. There seems to us to be no escape from this dilemma : either the Academy is a private society, and entitled to hang what rubbish it likes upon its walls, and perpetrate what absurdities it chooses in its councils, or it is a public and national body, which is being conducted for private benefit in an unjustifiable manner. In either case, the present position of the Academicians is an untenable one, for if the first is true, they must descend from their pedestal to the same level as other private societies, and renounce their lofty pretensions ; and if the second is true, they are in the position of directors managing a company for their own benefit first, and for that of.the shareholders afterwards.
These few remarks upon the constitution of the Academy have been called forth by noting the excessive poorness and, in many cases, utter worthlessness of the Academicians' contributions to the present exhibition. A set of men who could deliberately choose and hang such works as Solomon Hart's "Dedication of the Infant Samuel," and Cope's "Lieutenant Cameron's Welcome Home," have forfeited all right to be called both capable artists and just men. They may be one or the other, but in so far as their fairness lies in accepting the best pictures, and their ability in knowing them when brought before their notice, one or the other quality gives way, and we must choose between either wilful blindness or extra- ordinary incapacity. It is a positive grief to behold at all works like those we have named, and how much worse is it find them in a picked collection of English Art, and turning to the Catalogue, to discover they are by men who have been chosen to receive the highest artistic distinction which the Academy could confer ! It is really time that all this solemn nonsense should cease, and that we should for the future have a representative exhibition which does not, in the first place, exist for its own good, but for that of artists and the public generally. We say boldly that there is not a student at any art school we know of that would dare to show his master such a work as that sacred subject of Hart's mentioned above, and there is not a visitor to the gallery of the slightest knowledge of art who will not verify our words.
'We will devote the remainder of this preliminary notice to giving a short account of the general impression we have received from the exhibition, and a glance at a few of the most noteworthy features. It is best to speak the truth at once, and to say that of the highest kind of ideal art we have here absolutely nothing ; the best works are only of a secondary quality, even those of Mr. Watts falling into this category. A few days before this exhibition was opened to the public, we remarked to a friend that perhaps the most hopelessly inartistic piece of work to be found on the walls would, in all probability, be the chief favourite amongst general visitors during the season. This was said in reference to a series of pictures (five in number, Nos. 291-5), by W. P. Frith, R.A., re- presenting "The Road to Ruin,"—of course, a nineteenth-century imitation of Hogarth's "Rake's Progress." We could not help wondering yesterday, as we stood behind this picture and watched about fifty people, who, with their noses against the canvas, were being moved on by an imperturbable policeman, what it was that attracted them. Grace and beauty in the work there is none ; sentiment only of the most trashy and Family-Herald order, fit for the 'Victoria Theatre in a fit of virtue ; and over all, that strange atmosphere of unblushing, hopeless vulgarity, which of itself would suffice to condemn any work of art,—because it is not the vulgarity of common things or common people, but vulgarity of the painter's spirit itself, more evident when he paints a gentleman than a race-course "cad." Well, this is one of the great features of the exhibition. Before this trophy of the nineteenth century and the imaginative English school,* will the great English public stare and gape for the next few months, and in the process will, if some protection be not soon afforded, stick their elbows through the neighbouring pictures, in their hurry to be shown the "Road to Ruin of a painter "? Next this is a bird-painting, by Marks, called "Convocation," full of his quaint, sly humour, and more successful than he usually is in the colour of his large pictures. Generally they have a somewhat hard, dry look, like the works of a portion of the Belgian school, but in this instance, the colour is bright and fresh, and the greys of the plumage and fresh green of the rushes form a pleasant harmony. A pleasant picture, both in its dexterous painting and careful study of the birds, and in its kindly satire of deliberative proceedings in general.
Perhaps the most sensational element after the one mentioned above is the collection of portraits of Mrs. Langtry. The face is a beautiful one, and three noted painters have tried their hands at it,—No. 2, II. Weigall ; No. 155, E. J. Poynter, R.A. ; No. 307, "A Jersey Lily," J'. E. Millais, R.A. Weigall's effort, a sketch in oils, we may dismiss at once ; it is poor in spirit, and quite inconsiderable as a picture, or indeed from any point of view. Is it possible that this artist was ever thought to be the best portrait-painter we have. Surely we have heard somewhere that such was the case. Of Poynter's and Millais's portraits we must speak more at length. They both deserve careful criticism and con- siderable praise. First, of Poynter's. It is undoubtedly true that this is the most successful portrait that has been produced by this
* See Earl 0 Beaconsfield's Speech at Academy Dinner.
artist. In quality and depth of colour it approaches the Venetian school, and though it lacks the inner fire—if we may so term it— which shines through the hues of Titian and Tintoretto, it is in every way a worthy and memorable piece of painting, and we should say, a delightful picture to live with. As to its qualities of portraiture, we are more doubtful, but here we speak only from internal evidence and from the other pictures and photographs, as we have unfortunately not been amongst the number of those who follow this lady to her carriage, or elsewhere. Millais's work is lacking in most of the good qualities of Poyn- ter's. It is not a thorough, careful piece of work, it is not a beautiful effect of colour, and it is not a complete picture ; nevertheless, it appears to us to be a better portrait. It is intensely individual and characteristic. We fancy we can tell ten times as much of the personal character as we could from Poynter's work, and there is a tinge of genius over the whole that we scarcely find in the first-mentioned, highly though we esteem it. To us, of late years, there has hung over almost all of Millais' works somewhat of the sombre radiance of the fallen angel. The pictures are still great, even in their fall. What they might have been, had the artist continued to paint as he began, with Hunt and Rossetti, a quarter of a century since, we can only surmise ; as it is, we must, as Swinburne says, take "the best that he gives, and be thankful even for that."
The great strength of the exhibition lies in the landscape work by the young men, with one notable exception, in favour of John Brett. No. 105, "The Cornish Lions," is, we should say, the most marvellous realist sea-scape which has ever been painted, not excepting the greatest works we have had from the artist himself. In "Among the Boulders," which was, perhaps, his first great work, we had, it is true, a marvellous rendering of sand, and rocks imbedded in it, bright under a blue sky. But rocks and sand will wait to be painted, and admit of careful drawing and constant verification ; his picture of the Scilly Isles we did not see, but his "Spires and Steeples of the Channel Islands" is open to the same remark as the first-mentioned picture ; for though the greater part of that consisted of a summer sea with cloud-shadows, yet there was nothing to verify the shadows or ripples, which might practically have been put in out of the painter's head. 1Vith regard to last year's picture of St. Michael's Bay, the same is true of all the greater part, but this year the artist has attacked and conquered a subject of such intense diffi- culty that his triumph should be proportionately great. It is (for it is really the picture, though the cliffs behind give the name) a long wave breaking upon the shore, in an atmo- sphere of brightest sunlight. Here the artist had three great difficulties,—the form of the sea, its transparency in places, and the retiring lines of the undertow, as they are being sucked back before the breaking of the wave. Of these, the greatest difficulty is, in our opinion, the last, and we may add that long ago (though we have forgotten exactly when) Ruskin said that these retiring curves of foam had never been drawn, and were, in fact, undrawable. They had been represented and suggested, he meant, but never drawn. We dare not say on our own authority that Brett has drawn them rightly, but certainly he has attempted to draw them, and succeeded so far as to impress an ordinary spectator with the sense that they are right. And, taking all things together, the vivid sunlight, the accurately beautiful form of the wave, and the difficult pro- blem in drawing firmly grappled with, if not triumphantly solved, we say that though it is only pure realism, without a trace of the higher ideal of landscape which Turner left us, yet that this is the picture, and far and away beyond any academic landscape, in the exhibition.
In our succeeding notices, we will, as usual, take the Galleries in order, mentioning what seems to us most noteworthy in each.
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