FINE ARTS.

ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.

Ter grand picture-show of the season was thrown open to the public on Monday at noon ; and the cast wing of the Gallery in Trafalgar

Square was instantly filled with the curious, who crowded the rooms, and screened the popular pictures from view, till dinner and departing daylight dispersed the throng. Curiosity is the prevailing motive with the visiters of the first few days—and, indeed, of the majority during

the few weeks that the exhibition remains open. Contributors are anxious to see how their own performances look, and where they are hung, and what figure their brother artists cut ; quidnuncs are eager to know wh:rt Mum and LANDSEER have done, and if TURNER is aw mad as ever ; and the mob of sight. seers go to look for the portrait of some friend, that they saw in progress, and are very much surprised to find stock up near the ceiling, and looking quite different from what it did when they criticized it on the easel. But few seek the gratification of asininity; a line picture ; and small is the amount of enjoyinsnt to those who do. It was not till the light grew dim and the sweepers began their work, that we could get a good view of Wfrate's portrait-picture of the Queen holding her first Council; but we were uninterrupted while contemplating the pathetic incident from the Mur- der of the Innocents, so finely painted by Ilfraoat, (193.) Ask the first person you meet what particularly struck him, and the chance is he will exclaim—"'There's a Newfoundland dog that looks as if he. would jump out of the frame, if you whistled to him:" not one in a busidred w iil describe the beauty and terror of the agonized mother protecting her infant from the uplifted sword of the slayer. Not that slit rox's picture is less conspicuous, or wants force; but it re- quires attentive consideration to appreciate its worth, and to feel its power and pathos. The living reality of LANDSEER'S dog—the "Distinguished Member of the Humane Society " (462)—is evident at a glance; though you look at it and admire again and again. Each is at the head of its class, but HILTON'S belongs to the highest : more- over, it is the only grand conception—the solitary historical painting in a collection of twelve hundred pictures; not one of which cat seises equal sway over the mind. This painter is the only one of the Royal. Academician's who eschews portraiture and sacrifices profit. in order to devote himself to the " labour of love." Honour to WILLI4M HILTON !

Regarding this exhibition, therefore, in its proper light—as a show— we will merely take a general view of its most striking features, for the information of distant readers, and the guidance of such as may wish for a cicerone to point out the pictures most worth attention ; reserving minute criticism and the discussion of principles till future opportunity. Beginning with the principal, or East Room, we start from the

centre of attraction Sir DAVID WILKIE'S picture " Our Sovereign, the Queen Victoria. presiding at the Council, upon Inc Majesty's Accession to the Throne, on the 20th Jute 1s137," (60.) At the upper end of a long table covered with a red cloth, is seated the youth- ful having the Officers of State behind her : the Dukes of' Sussex and Cumberland are seated at opposite sides of the table at the other end ; and the Ministers and the leading Tories are ennead along one side— Lord Melbourne being in the act of addressing his Sove- reign, and the Duke of Wellington bending forward to sign the decla- ration. The great fault of the picture is that it wants the interest that characterized the actual scene, to say nothing of the dignity of the oc- casion. A stranger might take it to be a representation of an innocent girl under examination by a court-martial, in the cabin of a ship, in- stead of a new-made sovereign receiving the homage of recognition from the magnates of the land, in a palace. The Marquis of Lana. donne looks as if exchanging a smile of suppressed exultation with some one opposite; but the characters in general have a stern, austere gravity, very different from the affectionate loyalty which animated the actors in this interesting ceremony. The Duke of Sussex is the most prominent and agreeable-looking of the party : his figure too is admi- rably painted, and the likeness is characteristic: so is that of the Hanoverian despot, with his satyr-like and sinister aspect. But from the two royal Dukes, and indeed front all the veterans, the painter has kindly taken off a weight of years: the Duke of Wellington, in parti- cular, looks like an "orderly " in the prime of life and the fresh vigour of health—he is a "corporal," but not " stunted" with age. Lord Melbourne, in his official coat, might pass for a footman. Lords Lyndhurst, Denman, Holland, and Morpeth, and Sir Robert Peel, strike us as the best likenesses : the Duke of Argyll, with his wand of office, stands like an official looker-on; and the Lord Mayor gapes with vacant wonderment. The Queen herself is one of WILKIE'S plump rustic simpletons, with a doll-like air : her white dress is the only part of her well painted ; and that is exquisite in tone. All the costumes and accessories, such as the chair, the cushion, &c. are painted to admiration ; but Mum, though a great artist in little things, is not a portrait-painter—least of all can he depict feminine grace and beauty. On the opposite side of the room, he has a picture, " The Bride ut her Toilet on the Day of her Wedding," (20l); where, iin.tead of the sentiment of the subject, only the circumstance is repre- sented. The bride looks us if annoyed at the trouble of making her toilet, and the bustle of preparation: the officious old nurse (a capital study) pinning the dress, the girl eagerly handing the pin-cushion, the servant bringing in the wedding-cake, the younger sister holding the infant looking on, is a rich piece of comedy. The effert of the mother to suppress her grief is overdone, and excites a smile : she has the appearance of a stiff' and stately dame shedding tears of mortification.

Wisim's forte is the quaint and ludicrous in common life: when he quits that he fails. See how he has screwed up O'Connell's massive

features and vigorous geniality, into a petty, perplexed look of cun- ning; and narrowed his broad chest and stalwart form and bold bear- ing, into a slim, precise, stiff lay-tiguie of a man, with a wig that the

"dandy of sixty" George the Fourth might have envied, (vide 200.) WILE IE'S colouring is much clearer than we have seen it of late, and his painting is more solid : he is more sparing of asphaltum too—that

article is getting up in the market. Why will this original genies and consummate artist sacrifice his fame and waste his powers by such mis- application ?

The temporary ittere,t of Mum's picture has induced us to bestow particular attention to it : resuming our survey, we must take a more rapid glance at the rest. Over it is HarrEa's "state portrait " of the Queen ; of which we have only to say, that the painting appears to greater advantage than it did in Messrs. Colnaghi's room, though we

see no reason to alter the opinion then expressed of it. The finest

whole-length portraits in the room, or in the exhibition, are BRIGGS'S of " The End of Eldon, as High Steward of the University of Oxford " (72,) and Lord Chancellor Cottenham, (104.) Old Lord Eldon's por-

trait is made more interesting by the introduction of the incident that occurred at the installation of the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor,

when Lord Encombe, after receiving his doctor's degree, turned to his grandfather, and taking his hand respectfully, bowed over it. The look of pride and pleasure in the venerable man's countenance, and the affec- tionate manner in which he returns his grandson's grasp, are beautifully expressed such things give vitality and lusting value to portraiture, and raise it above a merely mechanical art. There is great truth of character and grandeur of style in the portrait of Lord (lottenham, whose face wears its noblest aspect : the dignity of the office, the astute.

mess of the lawyer, and the physiognomy of the Mail are blended admi- rably : the judge seems intent on an argument and unconscious of his

state. Pnri.t.res's whole-length of Dr. Farr, (136,) an excellent por- trait and a tine picture, is next in merit. and the most elaborate of his performances ; though his portraits of Justices Littledale, (56,) Colt- man, (208,) and Baron Parke, (468,) are no less admirable for force of resemblance and power of painting. Sir MARTIN SHEE has stuck up William the Fourth on tiptoe again, varnished like a tea-board, (121); and has tricked out gouty Sir Francis Burdett in the character of a faded piece of juvenescent effeminacy, (177.) Above the heads of the crowd, the visiter will also be able to see two fine works of EDWIN LANDSEER : one a large picture representing dead stag lying on a rock in a chasm, with a forester supporting u wounded hound, (hurt, we may suppose, by leaping down after the

deer,) and shouting out to his comrades above, who have let down

a rope to him, " The life's in the old dog yet !" (21); the other, a group of " Portraits of the young Marquis of Stafford and Lady Evelyn Gower," (49,) in a bower in the grounds of Dunrobin Castle, amusing themselves with dressing up a pet fawn with garlands. The children look very grave in their play: but the fancy is pretty, and

any thing is better than the stiff monotony of set portraiture. Time animals in both pictures are perfect, of course : for the rest, the execu- tion is masterly, but the painting is superficial and too uniform in tex-

ture. This is not the case with his picture on the line of the eye—a group of the Queen's pets, " Dogs and Parrot," (90,) where the crea- tures are alive, and the objects real : it is brilliantly coloured, and a marvel of painting. Following the line of the eye round the room, we come to one of EASTLAKE'S richly coloured and expressive designs, (107,) "Gaston de Foix before the Battle of Ravenna," in gentle dalliance with a fair damsel, while his troops are on the march : though tame and grave, it has an air of beauty and refinement. Shakspeare's graphic description

of the Seven Ages, embodied by AI uutranv in a design where the exemplars are grouped together in one scene, (1220 next arrests the attention. The youthful grace of the lover, and the old man in the

last stage of all—" titter childishness and mere oblivion "—are the two most succe:sful personifications ; and though 1he obvious difficulty of the subject is not entirely overcome, the picture is full of thought and talent. " Salvator Rosa Painting his Friend Masaniello," (137,) by MACLISE, attracts the eye by the boldness of the painting ; but the utter absence of character in the principal persons makes one turn away with regret to see dexterity misemployed. " The Slave Market, Constantinople," (156,) by ALLAN, is a scene of reality as regards cos- tume; the pathos is too melodramatic to move our sensibilities for the captives. It would be kind to Uwitss to pass over altogether his lament- able failure in a Scriptural subject, " The Reproof," (1as.) Next in our track is an imaginary scene from the Merry Wires of Windsor, by LESLIE, a companion picture to one of the same subject exhibited a few seasons ago, but not equal to it in animation and freshness of con-

ception; in fact, it is a reproduction of the same ideas, with all the disadvantages of repetition. Despite the crude tone of colour, it is a

masterly painting; but Falstaff, the genius loci, is only fit for u sign- post. A poetical picture, by HowNs, " Lisa Puccini," (33,) a lady listening to the strains of a lutanist who has returned with a favourable answer to the declaration of her passion for a king, beautifully ex-

presses the sentiment of the story; though the lady listens to the im- passioned breathings of her ambassador with rather too placid rapture

for so ardent and during a spirit. The design is ill fine taste, the colouring rich and sober, and the execution finished. Next to Hit: TON'S, this picture has most of the soul of painting of any in the ex- hibition.

Interspersed with the designs are several fine landscapes. TURNER has three gorgeous unrealities ; in which the rich harmonies of colour and the wonderful effects of space, atmosphere, and light, almost re- concile: us to the monstrosities that deform scenes otherwise lovely. CALLCOTT, three serene and elegant Italian scenes—chaste, but some-

what dingy in their mellowness ; and a more pure and silver.toned

view on the Rhine. STANFIELD, a coast-scene, a marine piece, and a landscape, in his best manner—clear, solid, and bright, though still cold in colour, and riot transparent. LEE, two woody landscapes, in which the strong look of nature and the abrial skies overcome the heavy effect of his hard and opaque foliage and ground. His large landscape, in the next room, " The Ferry. boat," (269,) is full of day- light. The door of the Middle Room is sentinelled by two life-size figures by MactssE—" The Wood-Ranger," (301,) a brawny rollicking fel- low, with a laugh that you almost hear, carrying a brace of capercailie; and " The Page," (3080 loungirg gracefully at a gate, bearing a brace of pheasants. The execution is free and masterly, only too slight. This surface-painting of course becomes more objectionable in a small picture ; and it deteriorates his delightful scene from the Vicar (f Wakefield, " Olivia and Sophia fitting out Moses for the Fair," (277). The story is capitally told : the simple, artless, but not clownish lad, might be the original of Gor.nsstriat's conception : in short, the inci- dent and characters are realized, in every point, with singular distinctness and force. MaciasE's signal failure in his Salvator and Masanielle, and his complete success in this subject, significantly point out the proper scope for his invention—the comedy of ordinary life. fide one of the painters of " genre," as the French have it, though his fancy ranges " from the lowest note to the top of the compass " of the scale of society. Let us step into the next room—the West—and look at his large picture of " Merry Christmas in the Baron's Hall," (512). as a whole it is a mass of confusion, without harmony or keeping. but in every one of its many parts the coarse jollity is kept up with congenial humour and pleasantry. At the table on the dais, at the end of the hall, are placed the host and his chief guests, waiting the serving of the feast, which is being borne in grand procession; the hour's head preceded by the Lord of Misrule, and followed by the musicians playing their loudest. The foreground is filled by boisterous groups of mummers and retainers; and drinking, fortune-telling, pm. tical jokes, and hunt- the.slipper are going forward. A lovely laughing girl, with rosy cheeks amid white teeth, seated on the ground in the centre, is the soul of glee and good humour. No one paints the sun. shine of mirth like MAcuse. He revels in motley scenes of morel. meat, where grace and grotesqueness, beauty wide grimace, gayety and gravity, are mingled together. In this wide and inexhaustible

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field he is unrivalled: the pure ideal is above his reach. His facility is wonderful ; but his faces look like masks—thin, hard, hollow, and gaudy : his pictures have no shadow, nor any substance neither.

Want of space compels ems to leave off here : we shall return to the Middle Room when we resume the subject next week.