Art.
Mn. ARMITAGE never trifles, but he is an unequal painter. This in one of his good years. "Father's Banquet" (422) is the work of a trained artist, and attracts by the largeness of its conception and the seriousness and directness of its purpose. Especially good are the jealous and passionate King and the fallen minister despairingly suing for his life. Mr. Gale's careful Eastern studies are rich in colour, but rather deficient in the tempering qualities of intermediate tones. The strictly local treatment of Biblical subjects with a special eye to costume is becoming wearisome. Mr. Watts's " Esan " (11) errs in the opposite direction, possess- ing no very distinct marks of national or individual character. It is, however, a powerful sketch.
The readers of English history will recognize in Mr. H. S.
Marks's "Jovial Beggars" (331) the race of beings whom our forefathers strove with many "godly statutes" to repress, "such as wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and alehouses ; and no man wot from whence they come, nor whither they go." Careless roysterers, or sentimental im- postors, the dogs know them all for idle rogues, and howl a timely warning. Character, both human and canine, is here touched with a sure and a delicate hand. No less original is the same artist's other picture, wherein that magnanimous mouse, "Feeble, Woman's Tailor" (591) is taking the measure of a bulky lady's waist, her husband attending, and half-shyly admiring his better half. Mr. Marks gains ground both in colour and in breadth of treatment. Mr. Wynfield has very successfully expressed the melancholy that beset Elizabeth in her last days (189). An air of utter sadness fills the room where the moping Queen sits gazing at the evening sky. The bit of landscape seen through the window is remarkably good, but the drawing of the two men is weak. Near this picture hangs one of a very dif- ferent stamp by Mr. Pettie, "A Drum-head Court-Martial"
(192). Character is here cleverly expressed, but there is a tendency to caricature which should be checked. Mr. Orchardson, another of the Scotch brigade, exhibits a well- composed and well-coloured scene from Hamlet. But neither his Hamlet nor his Ophelia can be accepted as satisfactory repre- sentatives of their names. In truth they are too much like actors, tainted (especially the Prince) with an air of vulgarity. Mr. E. Nicol well maintains his own and his country's credit in "A Deputation" (514). The action is well and humorously ex- pressed, and it needs no prophetic power to see that the expensive tastes and habits of the landlord will be a sore difficulty in the way of his tenants, who seem to be asking for a reduction of rent.
As to Mr. Frith's great picture of the "Marriage of the Prince
of Wales," all that can be said is, that having to deal with a subject that no man would voluntarily choose, he has not shown himself otherwise than a clever and skilful painter. But it is difficult to profess any interest in the work beyond that sort of interest which every true Britain must necessarily feel in looking at the portraits of so many eminent "swells." Mr. Frith's little portrait of Mrs. Oppeuheim (239) contains an agree- able study of opal-like greys. Mr. J. Lewis trusts chiefly to his technical qualities to attract the world. In his "Turkish School" (121), however, besides good colour and truthful representation of sunlight, there is some humour in the expression of master and scholars. Mr. E. Cooke exhibits yet another Dutch bruise-water (595), and Mr. Ward sends a melodramatic and coppery version of the Rizzi° affair (258). Mr. Burgess and Mr. Solomon have hit on nearly the same subject. The latter paints (431) some Roman ladies at the Circus, looking with various emotions at the savage games of the Circus. The most striking head is that of the centre figure, showing utter indifference ; two, by the action of their thumbs, appear to demand the extreme penalty of the game for the vanquished ; only one has turned away in horror, half-fainting. There is considerable merit in the picture, but painting the background the same colour as the faces is a piece of affectation. Mr. Burgess's subject is a party of all sorts, gentle and simple, old and young, at a bull-fight. The boisterous enjoy- ment of the Spanish " rough " and the polished nonchalance of the " quality " are agreeably varied by some signs of compunction in here and there a less practical spectator. It is a clever but not very agreeable picture. Mr. A. Hughes's " Mower " (554) would have been a fine picture if he had been content to put less into it, or at least to subordinate some of its parts. It wants repose, a common fault with our artists, who appear to paint in constant fear of .having their industry impugned. However, setting aside some obvious faults of drawing (the mower's legs, for instance, are quite unintelligible), the picture is pleasing, and in parts very beautiful. The same artist has a portrait group (311) which may be mentioned in this place. The three children in this picture are remarkable, shcAving the artist's delicate appreciation of character, and are, indeed, the best things of the kind in the gallery. Itf point of execution they are flat, and want the roundness and technical perfection of the children in Mr. Leighton's pictures (305 and 316). "Gentle Spring" (359) is an attempt 13y Mr. Sandys to symbolize in human form the season which the flowers and blossoms of the background more distinctly express. The drawing of the figure is irreproachable, bat there is a want of joyousness in her ex- pression ,and her embonpoint is excessive. The landscape background suffers by hanging just below, and being thus brought into inevitable comparison with, one of the most luminous and powerful landscapes in the exhibition. This is Mr. Anthony's "Sheep-washing in Knowle Park" (361). The fresh green of early summer, sobered by the grey light of a cloud-laden sky, is treated with peculiar richness and freedom, but there is none of the blackness into which a desire for strength sometimes betrays this artist. It was a curious whim to put the great oak tree exactly in the middle of the canvass. But such disregard of linear composition is frequent in the modern naturalistic school.
As a body, the landscape painters have less reason to complain of the hanging than is often the case. Scarcely ever is a landscape admitted on the line except to satisfy the "vested interests" of an Academician, but this year some half-dozen or more outsiders are thus distinguished. True, they are not generally the best, but tfien nobody expects the Academy to know anything about an art which it utterly despises ; and those who are in less favour- able places must be content to acknowledge a corporate interest in and accept with a corporate gratitude, the concession made to their brethren. Such a concession .long ago extorted in favour of Mr. Linnell every one sees was mere justice. He has perhaps painted better pictures than his " Reapers" (337), but this one, too, is distinguished by a completeness quite his own. The reapers are asleep, sheltered from the noontide sun under a pent-house of sheaves, and beyond the gold-green stubble lies a rich Surrey vale. The sultriness of the season is unmistakeable, the careless postures of the reapers admirably studied. Some opacity, however, is to be observed in the brown shadows of the corn-sheaves. Mr. G. Mason, one of our most original and poetical landscape painters, sends three pictures very similar in subject and feeling to what he has previously exhibited. The ruddy glow of evening and ex- treme grace of line, got without the least sacrifice of rusticity, are the most marked beauties of his "Gander" (31). Even more beautiful is "The Cast Shoe" (240), where a rider has dismounted and leads his horse up the slopes of a common, carrying the shoe in his hand. Here, too, the sun is down, and the all-pervading glow of early twilight is painted with startling truth. Mr. Mason's remaining picture is called "Geese" (229), and also deserves notice. Mr. G. Mawley is another of our younger land- scape painters whose pictures are impressed with a strong indivi- dual character. "The Brook at Evening" (278) by him is also twilight, the golden light fast fading before the young moon ; it is solemn in feeling, and deeply and powerfully coloured. Compared with it Mr. Creswick's evening scene (with a clap-trap quotation about a blacksmith who is barely visible) looks common-place, shallow, and flat. Another twilight, by Mr. H. T. Wells (301), is an exceedingly good study. The time chosen is when the warm afterglow has given place to ashy grey, so that the picture is peculiarly sad in feeling. Quite oppo- site in sentiment is Mr. W. Field's" Midsummer-day "(64), with its light, gleaming clouds and clear sunshine. A party of young hay- makers are eating their dinner. They are painted with great freedom, and with true appreciation for the nice varieties of re- flected and transmitted light, but yet with a broad and natural simplicity, so that they quite belong to the landscape, which remains a landscape, and not a hybrid figure-piece. The picture is a decided advance on the artist's previous work. Mr. Leader is always on the verge of painting a first-rate landscape, and almost• as often misses the point. There are two of his (of which the catalogue transposes the names) both possessing great merit and a true feeling for nature. The grand lines and the transparent shadows in the foreground of one of them (468) are particularly good. The sunlight is so truly painted here that one is the more surprised to see how dead and lightlees is the yellow grass in 317. Mr. C. E. Johnson's "Hastings Trawler" (314) is a worthy sequel to his last year's "Launch." It is not a large picture, but there is nothing little about it, and there is lively action in the boat as she mounts a heaving wave. The sea (a subject still open to much study and novelty of treatment) is very good in drawing and colour. Perhaps, however, the sky reflections are too sharply insisted on. Mr. Johnson might take a lesson in generalizing the colours which are apparent (no doubt in great variety) on the sur- faces of a wave from Mr. Stanfield's "Bass Rock" (96). Here every effect of transparency and of reflected light is given not by a multplicity of distinct patches of colour, but with the higher art which, acknowledging and giving effect to the variety, seeks also to give the union and simplicity which characterize the colours of nature. Mr. Hook pursues a similar plan in his calmer seas.
V.
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