jiut Arto.
MR. NOEL PATON'S "HOME."
On Tuesday, the final "sending-in day" for the Royal Academy, while so many other artists were receiving within their own doors the verdicts of friends, acquaintances, and critics in general, upon their works intended for exhibition, the picture sent to London by Mr. Noel Paton for the same purpose was on view at Messrs. Colnaghi's. It is entitled "Home-the Soldier's Return from the Crimea " ; and is de- scribed, in a prospectus of a forthcoming engraving of it, as "the ex- quisitely-conceived and beautifully-elaborated picture commemorative of the services and sufferings of the British Soldier in the late War." Of the services, however, we see nothing, and of the sufferings only the lingering traces. The scene is an interior in a poor but decent Scottish home. The soldier, war-worn and travel-worm, has but just returned, and sits again at his hearth : his wife clasps him kneeling at his feet, his old mother weeps upon his shoulder, and his child, whom perhaps he had never seen, sleeps in the cradle. The mother has laid aside her Bible at his entrance, and the wife her hoarded bundle of his letters from the camp. The sentiment is unexaggerated, and quite sufficient to make the work a success with the public ; aria the painting is marked by Mr. Paton's accuracy and uniformity of finish. The "effect" is less studied than the details, and has probably been done out of the artist's own head without reference to fact ; the firelight, which is the only light in the picture, producing but little modification of colour in the surrounding objects.
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