FINE ARTS.
BRITISH INSTITUTION: WORKS OF THE OLD MASTERS.
THE selection of old pictures this year is of a very miscellaneous kind ; comprehensive rather than choice. It would appear to have been made with the view of including specimens of as many different painters as possible ; for it embraces the Italian, Spanish, Flemish, and Dutch schools, while the South room is wholly devoted to the works of de- ceased British artists. There are few but chefs d'ceuvre, and those not by the greatest masters : neither LEONARDO. CORBEGGIO, nor RAPHAEL are represented ; for the Christ in the Garden, attributed to the last, has too much of the manner of PERUGINO to be accepted as the work of RAPHAEL. Nevertheless, the pteseut exhibition contains some very fine pictures, and affords a better opportunity than often occurs of be- coming acquainted with the characteristics of the several schools, and comparing the works of different painters. The intermixture of Italian and Dutch pictures is unfavourable to the full enjoyment of the qualities of two such opposite schools : after revelling in the beauties of' Tineres Bath of Diana, and the Descent from the Cross by TircroaErro, one cannot take an interest in the hoots of TENIERS and OSTADE nor does RUYSDAEL relish after SALVATOR ROSA, or CUYP after CLAUDE. RU- BENS, REMBRANDT, and VANDYKE are golden links in the chain of art, connecting the Low Countries with Italy ; as Spain is linked by M mum.° and VELASQUEZ, France by CLAUDE and the POUSSINS, and England by REYNOLDS, GAINSBOHOUGH, and WILSON, in a brotherhood of genius.
As the visiter ascends the stairs to the gallery, the portraits of the Burgomaster Six and his Wife, by REMBRANDT, rivet the attention by their living truth : that of the lady is perhaps the mrst exquisitely finished of REMBRANDT'S paintings; and the husband's portrait, though less minutely wrought, is marvellous for luminous brightness of effect and the delicate expression of individual character. On entering the North room, the whole-length of Cardinal Ubaldini, by GUIDO, at the end, first attracts the eye by its red drapery ; but the flutter and garishness of the dress, and the cold, crude tone of the face, soon cause one to turn aside. The portrait of a man with a hawk, by TITIAN, Georgius Cornelius, Brother to the Queen of Cyprus, (44,) arrests the gaze, and holds it spell-hound by a fascivation irresistible. It is the only portrait by TITIAN in the gallery ; and there needs no other to proclaim its painter the first in the world: it exemplifies the art which conceals itself, and only makes known the extent of its power by the wondrous nature of the result. In this respect, we feel disposed to place it above all TITIAN'S portraits. It re- presents a handsome man in the prime of life, with thick black hair and beard, holding on his fist a hawk which he is scrutinizing. The face is seen in profile, and there is nothing very remarkable in its cha- racter or expression ; it is the life-like aspect of the figure that strikes the beholder : never has the air of ease, unconsciousness, and momentary action, been more felicitously depicted. The hawk, too, is full of life; its clear sharp eye sparkles with light : but the man's counte- nance first engages attention—as the human face always does in nature ; the eye is then directed to the hands by the flesh-tints, and from them to the bird ; the costume and accessories being the last to attract regard. This gradation of the points of interest is preserved by an artful management of the chiaroscuro, or general effect: the light and shade, by means of which the substance of the forms is re- presented, and the tints of colour are regulated, display equal refine- ment of skill. The colouring is as rich and glowing as the most gorgeous of TITIAN'S pictures, though of a deep tone, grave almost to solemnity, and showing little or no positive hues. It is the harmony of transparent tints blended together so as to enrich not deaden each other, which produces the golden lustre that pervades the darkest depths of this picture: the black seems actually composed of a combi- nation of intense colours interfused with light.
Turning from this matchless work of art to the portraits by REMBRANDT, of which there are half-a-dozen, including the two before-mentioned, and glancing at the full-length figure of the saturnine Alcalde Ranguillo, (85,) by VELASQUEZ, we enter the South room, among the English pic- tures. Sir THOMAS LAWRENCE'S melodramatic figure of John Kemble as Rolla stares out from the end in all the gaudy hardness and extravagant energy of caravan sign-painting ; while on one side an affected and thea- trical group of Hubert and Prince Arthur, by HABLOWE—smooth, flimsy, and flashy, and on the other a soft, insipid, salmon-coloured Sampson, by Ricano—the last appropriately contributed, together wi h one of LOUTHERBOURG'S brassy, teaboard landscapes, by the Royal Academy- represeut, with one of FUSELIS moustrosities, and WEST'S Lt, wooden commonplaces from Scripture, our late school of history-painting.
Happily there are a score of Sir Joanna REYNOLDS'S portraits to re- deem the character of British art : and nobly they stand their ground in competition with RENDSANDT'S and TITIAN'S ; exhibiting similar
principles of painting, though less skilfully acted upon. But turn from
any one of them to the Countess Cawdor, by Sir Tnowas LAWRENCE, and " oh, what a falling off is there ! " Half-a-dozen each of GAINS-
BoRouGH's and WILSON'S landscapes also pros e that Englishmen studied art as well as nature: though in distinctness of form, local truth, and knowledge of light and shade, they will not bear comparison with
CANALETTI, their Italian contemporary ; several of whose ‘ivid but
mechanical views of Venice are in the gallery. English artists draw better than they did; though their knowledge of the figure is still of a conventional kind, and not amounting to thorough mastery : they
attend to form more accurately, too. But their study of light and shade is lamentably deficient ; and hence the flatness of their representations
of rotund objects, the want of air and retrocession in their distances, their gaudy colouring and hard superficial smoothness of surface. They paint pictures as toys are painted ; not upon the principles that num( and other great colourists produced their works. Both can't be right : which is wrong—Timtar, or the toy men ?
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