ART.
THE SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER-COLOURS.* Tun Exhibition is one of average excellence, iu which there are few very important works and a great deal of quiet merit. Those who come to the Gallery for the first time will probably be struck by the prevalence of one type of landscape art, which may be called, for brevity's sake, the Foreground type, in which Nature seems to have been peeped at through a pin-hole. Many of the drawings remind one of Mr. Dante Rossetti's poem of the " Woodspurge," which recounts how a certain gentleman suffered much pain and sorrow, how in the midst thereof he was sitting on the grass, with his head bowed down between his knees—which, we may remark parenthetically, must have been a most uncomfortable position—and how in after-years all that he learnt by his travail was that "the woodspurge has a cup of three." In like manner, many of these drawings seem to sug- gest that the artist has with pain and labour learnt only some one trivial fact, of not the slightest consequence to himself or anybody else. Take, for instance, the work of the latest elected Associate to the Society, an artist of whom we may t'Llte it for granted that the Society thoroughly approves, as they elected. him in preference to Mr. Napier Horny, who is about the best marine painter in England. The name of this new member is Mr. Wilmot Pilsbury, and he is, we are informed, the head of the Art School at Leicester. He has in this gallery seven drawings, in which the only objects which have preten- sions to merit are literally the haystacks, and the carts, wheelbarrows, or chicken-coops, that stand in front of them. We have nothing to say against this gentleman's art, which is, no doubt, exquisitely fitted for the school of which he has the direction ; but when we find that an important body of artists deliberately prefers a man whose metier is hay- stacks, and haystacks only, to a man who paints, and paints thoroughly well, one whole department of Nature, we are tempted to inquire the reasons for the choice. Both artists, fortunately, are entirely unknown to us, and both show a lack of poetry in their art which renders their work unsympathetic to us ; but still there are certain crude equities which should be
• ('all Malt. observed even in the election of members of the Old. Society of 'Water-colours, and we should be very glad if any member of that body would give us even a plausible reason why Mr. Napier Homy was not elected and Mr. Pilsbury was The first picture in the gallery is by Mr. H. N. Marshall, and is entitled, "A Frozen Highway." It represents "the River" f(as we Londoners like to call it) in the winter ; in the middle- distance, the Houses of Parliament ; and above, an evening sky of mist and orange light. This work is laborious and comparatively successful, but it has not achieved the truth of tone which Mr. Arthur Severn's ice-and-snow scenes on the Thames possess. The artist has apparently started right, rand then been afraid to continue truthfully, lest his picture should not be attractive enough to the outside public ; so he has put in some pretty colour here and there, and fudged the foreground with the floating ice a little, and so the work is partly true and partly false. With these exceptions, however, this picture, and the one by the same artist of Cavendish Square,
.deserve high praise. They have caught the beauty of Loudon —a thing hard to see and harder to paint—they have an under- lying strain of poetry connivent upon that perception, and they are in beautiful tone throughout, and well worked, mostly in pure water-colour.
Mr. E. K. Johnson's " While Lubin is Away" is an average -example of that painter's merits and defects. The drapery is poorly arranged, the figure a little heavy, and the colour weak ; but the pose is easy and natural, and the com- position as a whole, of that character which the picture-dealers .call " pleasing." The sentiment does not go farther than a gentle melancholy (probably there are other Lubius in the isackground), and the lady is a cross between a society actress and a cottage maiden, of the exact kind which picture buyers love to accept as the genuine article.
Mr. Albert Goodwin's water-colours seem to be passing through .a period of change, and wo do not propose to criticise them minutely. The colour has lost all its happy luminousness, and the painter is, if we mistake not, ill at ease with his work and diimself. If not, we are sorry, for it shows that this most promising and imaginative artist is sinking to the level of the —haystacks. Mr. H. Moore's "Light Breezes " is a beautiful • example of his art,—fresh and blue as Nature herself, and the • wave-forms clearly and beautifully hinted at, without being Harshly defined. In every way a beautiful water-colour study .of sea and sky.
We have great pleasure in seeing that the oldest painter in -this Society, Mr. S. Palmer, is not only able still to contribute, but -to send two such splendid examples of his genius as the two illustrations to "L'Allegro," to which the Hanging Committee 'have, with commendable good-taste, given the places of honour in -this exhibition. We have criticised Mr. Palmer's work at length in these columns, in former years, and do not care now to dwell upon its defects; but its excellencies are very numerous, and in these two drawings they are well exemplified. We wish every one
w ho reads this article, and afterwards goes to the Water-colour Gallery, would notice the glory of light and the depth of shade which Air. Palmer attains to in his pictures; would notice the 'way in which local colour glows faintly, yet clearly, through the cast shadows ; would notice the strong feeling of a beauty of line and composition in both drawings ; would. notice, above nil, the dignity and sense of high power and talent not to be lightly wasted upon trivial or ignoble things ; and, lastly, the 'beauty of colour and poetical feeling with which Mr. Palmer's
w ork is instinct from beginning to end. The one which is entitled "1 The Eastern Gate " is the finest, we think, of these examples, if it be only from the magnificent sky. It represents a ploughman ploughing at early dawn with oxen, and is in subject, and, perhaps, partially in treatment and composition, a repetition of the well-known one of the same subject in the South Kensington Museum. The glory of the sunrise of crimson, purple, and gold is hardly to be expressed in words, and much of its beauty is owing, no doubt, to the intensely dark, yet coloured shadow, in which half the picture is enveloped. No doubt the method is conventional to a high degree, as conventional as Claude's, but it is a convention of Mr. Palmer's own origin; and if it surrenders frankly some natural truths, it seizes others, and very worthy ones, with almost unequalled intensity. Near this (24) is a very good example of Mr. Francis Powell, entitled, " Opposite the Setting Sun," a sketch of calm sea, with vessels waiting for the breeze.
Mr. Ernest Waterlow's ." Evening in S asses " is a pretty but artificial picture, injured by the wanton use of body-colour. Mrs. Allingham's " Clothes-basket" (48) represents two village children bringing clothes home across a common, their figures relieved against a lemon-coloured sky. This picture has only one fault, that of over-refinement. Mrs. Angell's " Fruit and Flowers" lacks a little of Hunt's transparency, especially about the edges of the black grapes, but otherwise it is scarcely inferior to the work of Helen Coleman's old master.
The first landscape in the exhibition, if we except Mr. Palmer's classical compositions, is undoubtedly " The Autumn Twilight," by Mr. W. M. Hale (66),—a glade of trees, with a meadow rising in the background. This is a drawing in pure water-colour, of exquisite tone, and has grasped the feeling of
the scene most poetically and truly. It is the truest piece of
landscape painting in the gallery, and perfectly unaffected. and good throughout. We do not remember having seen any work of Mr. Hale's which has given us so much pleasure as this specimen of his art, though his other contribution to this gal. lery, entitled " Loch Maree," has the same truth of tone and feeling, and, as we, who know the place, can affirm with certainty, has caught the exact look of the " low sky raining " in the Western Highlands. Miss Clara Montalba's sketches of Venice, &c., are scarcely so happy as usual ; they seem to be losing their power of colour, perhaps from too continued repetition of the same subject. Mr. Brierly's " Spanish Armada" is not a very good example of his art iu colour, but is drawn and conceived with all his usual force. Mr. Alfred Hunt's Whitby sketches are much the same as usual, and one of them raises the following question in our mind,—namely, why Mr. Hunt does not adopt in his painting the method he recom- mends in his writings F We refer to the sketch of Whitby iu afternoon sunlight, in which, according to Mr. Hunt's theory, the rod roofs and houses should (if we remember right) be painted white with red shadows, but which are, as a matter of fact, painted red, as most people would suppose they ought to be. Mr. George Andrews's shipping in the " Pool " is a very clever piece of painting, the boats beautifully drawn and put in the water, but suffering from a sense of confusion, and from being spotted about with too bright colour. Mr. George du Maurier, the newly-elected Associate, sends several water- colour sketches, rather black in colour, but otherwise delicately executed, and in beautiful tone throughout.
Carl Haag's Eastern scenes show somewhat of a return to his earlier, and we think, better manner of smaller figures and more varied subject. The execution is as perfect as can be desired, Mr. Carl Haag being an adept in the painting of water- colours to a very rare extent. Mr. R. Thorne Waite's land- scapes show great falling-off, and are in this exhibition supremely uninteresting. We are glad to notice that Mr. Torn Lloyd shows this year an inclination to forsake his accustomed track of pretty girls, very shiny mahogany boats, and young men in boating costume, for a more serious style of Art. His large picture of the " Harvest Moon " wants very little of being a really beautiful picture, that little being chiefly in his conven- tional type of face and expression. Probably the most charm- ing piece of genre painting iu the exhibition is Mr. E. F. Brewt- nail's " Her First Offer " (169), a very delicate piece of painting in a rather silvery key of colour, of an embarrassed maiden re- ceiving her first offer. The dress is old English, the attitudes graceful, the expressions full both of character and meaning, and the whole composition full of atmosphere, both of the in- tended sentiment and the time of day.
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