AR T.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.—THE ENGLISH SCHOOL. fIrlEST NOTICE,]
Tura collection may be roughly described as illustrating the first hundred years of water-colour painting, and if such only be its mission, it is one which is well worthy the attention of all the picture-loving public. For there is no doubt that if there be one branch of art which we have made our own, it is the one repre- sented here ; and we think that any Englishman who knows at all what water-colour painting has become in the present day may be justly proud of his countrymen's energy and skill, as he traces on these walls the gradual development of the art.
From Girtin and Hills to Lewis and Holland, through every stage of progression, may the amateur trace the advance which has been made, and without the connecting links which we find in this Gallery it would be well-nigh impossible to understand how modern work of the same school could have grown so unlike that of its original founders.
The collection is not a faultless one, by any 'means—that, indeed, is impossible, from its very nature—but still there are some points on which, if a little care had been bestowed, a very great improvement might have been made. The first of these undoubtedly is the selection of the pictures, which has evidently in some instances been left to incapable or ill-judging hands.
■ Nobody ever said there WA. The moral wrong is in being an agent yet making a proat for yourself out of your principal's business without his knowledge. —ED. Sp+ecdador•. There is not one quite first-rate specimen of either Prout, Do taint, or Hunt, though there are many examples of each, and the great number of the Coxes are decidedly of inferior quality, though in this instance there are four or five good enough to redeem the rest. Again, it was, we think, very questionable taste to admit into a collection so specially English, specimens of Millet, Decamps, and Delacroix's work, particularly as they are not at all favourable examples of the masters in question. And the hanging has been managed very badly, for if we follow the catalogue, we find that after beginning with Constable, Old Chrome, and working gradually onwards through Cox, De Wint, Cotman, Prout, and Hunt, up to the culmination of colour and drawing in Turner, we are thrown suddenly backward into a cold bath by the appearance of Girtin, the very father of Water-colour painting. So that if anybody wishes to follow consecutively the progress of the art, he has to dodge here and there, backwards and forwards, across the gallery, in a most bewildering and perplexing manner. And no help will be afforded him by the catalogue, at all events until it has been considerably revised, for at present the dates of birth and death of many of the painters are completely omitted, and these not artists of little value or reputation, but such as Prout, De Wint, and Turner. In fact, the catalogue, as far as the English drawings are concerned, is badly done, and needs complete revision.
When all this deduction is made, however, the fact of a very interesting collection still remains, and it would be ungracious to blame Sir Coutts Lindsay for the omissions of his secretary. There certainly never has been at one time such a typical col- lection of Water-colours as this, and it could hardly have been done under other auspices.
It would be hopeless to attempt to notice in our brief space many of the five hundred drawings in this gallery, we can but select one or two here and there, as specially attractive or in- teresting. Omission is a matter of the greater difficulty, as there is here hardly any rubbish. Every drawing has some interest, either from its intrinsic merit, or its exemplification of a period of painting or a master's method, We think that we shall best help our readers to appreciate this collection (and what other object have we in criticising it ?) by noticing but few works in detail, and chiefly confining ourselires to explanatory comments upon the painters and their method, and the difference between their work and that of the present day, And first of all, let us ask what is the great difference between the old Water-colour painters and those of the present time ; what is the lesson, if any, which can be learnt from this col- lection? It would be perfectly hopeless to attempt here a com- plete answer to this question, embracing as it does a complete analysis of the modern feeling for art, as opposed to that of a hundred years ago, but we may, perhaps, be able to help our readers to solve the matter for themselves with the aid of a few suggestions. And first, we would beg of them not to look at this collection with a similar feeling to that with which they regard the works of the old Italian masters,—we mean that it is by no means to be taken for granted—and many persons do so take it— that even the works of Cox, De Wint, and Prout are superior to those of the landscape painters of the present day. The veneration for established repute which is such a dangerous factor of true judgment of Art should not be allowed to blind us to the fact that water-colour painting of landscape has reached a height of perfection and beauty which far excels that of any previous time. We could no more go back to the inade- quate (though frequently talented and beautiful) representation of nature of fifty years ago than we could change our illustrated literature for the keepsakes and annuals of the same period. It is the most dangerous fallacy to think that because the genius of particular men of that time overcame their faulty method, that their art was, therefore, based upon a truer and greater founda- tion than at present. Take, as an instance, David Cox, the most typical and most popular painter of that period, and one who has since had hosts of imitators. We hear frequently people who should be judges of Art say disparagingly of modern work that it isn't like Cox, and many people, following the lead of collectors and picture-dealers, imagine that there is some weakness in the present style of painting, and that it is really less like nature than this painter's work. Now the truth is that the painting of the present day is really infinitely more like nature than Cox at his best ever was, and for one truth which he gave dozens of modern painters give hundreds. But then this truth which Cox gave he gave fully, with the completeness of genius, and so giving it, his thousand inaccuracies and omissions were overlooked. He saw that the most essential feature in every landscape was the modification of its appearance by atmospheric effect—he mastered thoroughly, though roughly, the representa- tion of the weather. Look at any of the forty Coxes in this gallery, and determine for yourself whether the first thing, which strikes you is not what sort of day it was. And then look a little closer at the form and the local colour, and see if you can believe them to be true. The ejfect of sun, or wind, or rain Cox could and did paint with a mast marvellous power,. but he habitually neglected truth of detail. The effect was what he wanted, the effect was what he gained, but as far as we know— and for many years we have studied his works—he never painted a. landscape truly in detail in his life. Trees, with Cox, are things. to be twisted this way, and dragged that, and blown the other,. till they express wind and motion and ragged picturesqueness, and you may look in vain in his water-colours for a tree which stands upright in the pride of healthy strength and beauty. Take another example, that of De Wint, even a more typical one per- haps than Cox. De Wint mastered a certain sombre har- mony of tone and depth of colour, and to this harmony and depth he surrendered ungrudgingly the green fields,. the skies, and the golden sunlight of nature. Look where you will through De Wint's works, and you will look for a green field in vain. Long stretches of calm water, with grey skies, and perhaps some dull cattle and dark masses of. trees, make up the subject of nine-tenths of his work ; and it is noticeable that as with Cox the great beauty of nature was to be found in rolling masses of clouds and strong breezes, so De. Wint finds it in undisturbed peace. We might go on with in- stance upon instance, but these two will serve sufficiently to illustrate our meaning, which is that the representation of those days is in its very essence a shortcoming representation, that its very merits are inextricably mixed up with its faults. A. painter who copied Cox's method of painting trees would be scouted at the present day, because his trees are not true speci- mens of nature, but dramatic works illustrative of a particular- sort of text. Now think for a moment of the way in which a modern water-colour artist will paint a tree, or a field, or a rock,. and give to such objects an individuality almost personal, and this without any undue prominence, but by simply treating each. part faithfully and truly, not including all the natural facts in one- fierce grasp (even though it be the grasp of genius) and crushing them into harmony with one leading idea. And this brings us to the essential difference in spirit between modern painting of land- scape and that of Cox and his contemporaries, which lies in the difference of aim. It is now beginning to be recognised that beauty is not to be gained by disobeying, but by following nature.. 'Turner and Ruskin together have shown us the little value of man's picturesque as opposed to nature's beauty, and the modern school of landscape painting has at last, after many fierce struggles. and with all the labouring of a new birth, given up this idea, or at least has not allowed it its old pre-eminence. Day by day, more and more are painters beginning to feel that it is too difficult a work for any but the most gifted geniuses to improve upon nature, and. feeling this deeply, they are striving simply after a true represen- tation. " Our duty," said a landscape painter to us a few days sinee," is to see a little beauty, represent it as well as we can,. and die," and it would be hard to express more succinctly and correctly the feeling of the modern school. We have spoken of Cox chiefly, but the remarks will hold good of nearly all the landscapes here exhibited, with the exception of those by Cotman. and Turner.
There are no less than forty-three Coxes here, of which the great majority are of second-rate quality, there being, however, two quite first-rate. There are Nos. 80 and 87, " Green Lanes " and. "Hop-picking." The first is a well-known picture with some sheep and a couple of anglers in the foreground, and a long muddy road winding away into the distance, under dark trees. It is one of the violent storms of wind and rain which Cox was so fond of painting, and has probably never been surpassed as a.. picture of a windy day. '1 he second picture is an absolutely calm summer's day in Kent, the view taken from the brow of a hill over-looking long miles of wooded country. This is far the most beautiful picture of the two, as much more beautiful aa perfect peace is than violent struggle ; but it is of relatively, small size and importance, and perhaps hardly so specially distinctive of the artist.
Next we come to a contemporary of Cox, and an artist who- has never been appreciated as he deserved till quite of late years,. John Cotman. There is in Cotman a trace of the feeling which we have above attributed to the school of our own day, and in nearly all his work there is what might perhaps be called negative, pre-Raphaelitism,—we mean a love of painting things exactly as he found them, and without any particular theory of art. Cotnian always appears to us to have been a man of the most intense humility and earnestness, who lived his life out amongst the quiet home scenes in which he was born, and asked for nothing better than to represent them as faithfully as possible. There are nearly a dozen examples of him hero, of which, perhaps, the most entirely beautiful is No. 106, " Evening," a very quiet, green landscape, with rooks flying homeward over the tall trees. No. 101 should also be noticed for the wonderful power of the colouring shown in a very slight sketch,--at a very short distance it cannot be told from an elaborately worked drawing.
From Cotman we retrograde to Barret, and a retrogression it is in every way. The last-mentioned painter was only eight years senior to Cotman, but he was centuries removed from him in feeling and power. A modern Claude, whose key-note of colour is a mustard-yellow, instead of blue, would be a fair description of most of his work. If he had ever allowed himself to be natural, he might, perhaps, have done something ; as it is, except to per- vert the taste of a good many people, he has left no mark upon Art worth mentioning. It is, however, instructive to see any pictures which have once had a wide-spread popularity, and these Grecian temples (built in the Marylebone Road), winding streams, and round-topped trees were once considered beautiful.
After Barret comes a division of various artists, including Copley Fielding, Stansfield, and Varley, and then the De Whits, which, we think, should have succeeded to the Coxes. There is, as we have said, no example of this master here which is quite first-rate, the two best being Nos. 161 and 175, "View in Lincolnshire" and "A .River Scene." Of these, the former is slight, but very beautiful ; the latter larger and more finished, but somewhat more sombre in colour even than usual with De Wint, who was at all times inclined to look at nature through smoked glasses. After the De Wints, there are four or five specimens of Muller, but none which do him justice, the best being No. 195, " Lyn Twilt." In the same division are the Hunt's, fairly representative in still life, but very far from adequately doing justice to the greatest colourist. Of the many richly humourous figure pictures which are known to the picture-loving world from this artist's hand, there is not one example here ; and there are two or three which are here which would have been better elsewhere, such are Nos. 198 and 199. Next to these come the Prouts, of which there are sixteen, amongst them no less than three large pictures of Nurem- berg. These examples are favourable ones in point of size, but hardly of feeling, and there is not one of the highly finished small pictures, very rich in colour, which are known to admirers of this master as his best work. Prout's large pictures are almost always thin and poor in tint, something like coloured prints, but this was by no means the case with him in his less ambitious works, especially when he painted the seaward scenes amongst which he was born and bred. There is a little one here, No. 211, " Evening," which despite a very ugly subject and the somewhat hard drawing of the water, is full of feeling and depth of tone. After the Pronto, there come a miscellaneous lot of twenty or thirty drawings, including Louis Bonnington, Landseer, Nash, Chator, and Walker, one of whose most beautiful street-scenes is here, as well as the large drawing entitled the "The Gondola" (No. 237).
We must leave to another week the remainder of the drawings in this room, including all those on the screens—the Girtins, Blakes, and the Turners—as well as the whole collection of the OldrMaster drawings in the other rooms.
On the whole, we may truly say that this is the most inter- esting collection of water-colours which has ever been brought before the public, and would of itself amply repay the price of admission ; and there are besides these, seven hundred drawings by the Old Masters, many of the greatest interest and value. Certainly if the exhibition does not succeed, it will not be the fault either of its promoter or of its intrinsic merit, and in that case we will leave our readers to decide for themselves in what quarter the fault will lie.
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