ART.
THE NEW ENGLISH ART CLUB.
THE New English Art Club has returned this year from an enforced exile at Humphrey's Mansions to the members' old and more convenient quarters in the Dudley Gallery of the Egyptian Hall, a building that has congenial associations with the arts of mystery and legerdemain. The gallery is a small one, and holds just about as many pictures as are good for any mortal at one time ; among those hung there is very little rubbish (there is some—and a committee that prides itself on being not as other committees are, should guard against any com- promise in this matter); and a group of pictures like the four on one of the walls—a Steer flanked by a Starr and a Walton, and surmounted by a Roche—would be alone enough to justify an exhibition. An analysis of the pictures shows that some of the most distinguished names that have been associated with the Club are absent—Whistler, Sargent, William Stott— and Mr. Clausen sends only inconsiderable sketches; Newlyn is absent, save for a pleasing sketch of Mr. Tuke's ; and the result is, that there remain the two forces of " London Im- pressionists" and Scotchmen, and a small number of un- attached painters,—some of whom have presumably sent their best work elsewhere.
Of the London contingent, Mr. Steer, with his Portrait of Hrs. Cyprian Williams and her Two Little Girls, deserves notice first, because the beauty of his work is of an original kind; it rather promises a new master than refers back to an old one. We do not allude to the singularity of the point of view chosen. That happens to be a point of view commoner in Japanese than in Western art, and is no way less natural than the more usual plan of perching a sitter on a platform. Unfortunately, in challenging attention to his perspective, the painter has not made his drawing beyond cavil correct, Here is a stumbling-block to begin with; and more serious is the treatment of the children, who, one foresees, will lend them- selves to caricature as wooden dolls. But these defects are nothing in comparison with the merit of the picture, the surprising freshness and beauty of its colour. In the face of the lady there is nothing of the broken, analytic treatment that the painter has experimented with, and that leaves traces in the faces of the children. In its place there is simplicity and directness, and the whole invention, in which the colours of the flesh and hair combine with those of dress and furniture and draperies, gives a pleasure of the kind afforded by a Veronese. Mr. Steer's other contribution, the Ballerina Assoluta, is not so successful. The decorative inten- tion of the thing is right enough, but the perspective of the figure does not explain itself, and the observation that was at fault with' the seated figures of the children, is more heavily handicapped by the rapid movement of a dancing figure. Next Mr. Steer's portrait hangs Old and New Battersea Bridge, by Mr. Starr, a lovely effect of pale lamps lit in the last green interval of daylight, and sending broken reflections down on the blue river. To say that it is a worthy variation on a Whistler theme, is to give it exactly its due. The portrait (58) by the same painter is, curiously enough, wanting in the matter of atmosphere, but is fine in colour and characterisa- tion.
Mr. Lindner sends a landscape, The Storm-Cloud, which has largeness of conception and daring of pitch ; an enormous stream of flushed cloud mounts above a space of woods and water. If every part were as good as the passage to the left, the performance would equal the scheme; but on the right
there are some blue notes that falsify the general effect. The sea-piece, Swanage Cliffs, by the same painter, conveys the• same impression of occasional lapses of observation or memory made good, or rather made bad, in the direction of prettiness, —of something fine in colour that goes off uncomfortably, towards the jujube. Mr. Fred Brown's Peep into a Cornish. Cottage gives with great truth of effect beams of light, striking here on a lilac note of colour on a window-seat, there splashing on the table and floor. There is no little subtlety in the study of the spots of light, and they combine in a, pleasant opalescent• whole. The outer framework of the picture, however, and the bush at the door, seem to want reconsideration, with a view to greater pictorial concentration. Something of the same sort, is called for by Mr. Walter Sickert's Dieppe, and the• general tone is somewhat leaden, in spite of evident study of the relations and modulations of light. His orchard sketch (61) is pretty. Mr. Maitland returns to the Hollywood Arms, and gives the effect of illumination produced by an, enormous gas-lamp. The subject is rendered with wonderful delicacy and skill. With amusing particularity, we are told in the catalogue that the gas-burner is a "Sugg." Sugg P For the purpose in hand it were surely better to accept his light and suppress a name which was no way his fault. Mr.. Maitland has learned the lesson of sensitiveness to the beauty of effect that may be got from ugly things; the further lesson perhaps not so completely as his master, of dropping all of the ugly thing but its beautiful effect. The Hollywood Arms is, indeed, handled with great discretion ; but is there not a suspicion of " Sugg" in the uncompromising anatomy of the Folkestone Pier (60) P It bears its part in a charming play of light and colour, but so as a skeleton shares the feast. Light is merciful to iron girders, but was invented for better things. A work by Mr. George Thomson suggests a like. reflection with greater force. The public associates the ex- hibitions of this Club with what is vaguely dubbed " Impres- sionism," generously applying the word to painting that any way discomforts them. Now, of Impressionism in the sense of Velasquez—truth, that is, to a refined vision of the object—there is, as we have seen, something in the exhibition ; of Impressionism in the sense of Caren d'Ache's plein-air-ist who lays in his landscape with a pail of violet paint, and proceeds to paint what he sees, as he• sees it, with such sincerity to his temperament that a haystack becomes a three-decker, there is happily little ; and of Impressionism in the most proper sense, as the effort to catch and render fleeting and transitory things that will' not sit, there is, except in landscape, almost nothing. The only considerable attempt to render action is Mr. Thomson's Skating-Rink. Now, some of the characteristic movements of the sinkers are caught with praiseworthy skill. But how un- fortunately the skill is applied ! There may be plenty of beautiful pictures to be got from the skating-rink ; but this particular combination of electric-light, asphalte, and ulsters brings up a phrase, " cold hell," that Shelley applied to some- thing else. Modern life no doubt offers many pages of illustrations to supplementary circles of the Inferno, and then circle of the sinkers might be one of these; but it is not really all black and thunder-greys ; and at the moments when it so appears, the artist should shut his eyes.
A fine lesson in distinction is given by M. Blanche's The, Pink Rose. We wish the artist had not practically lost colour• in his research of nuance, nor allowed his red ground to show through here and there with jarring effect ; but the drawing of the child's head is delicate beyond anything in the room, and the whole picture has a charm that grows with acquaintance. Mr. Edward Stott's Feeding Pigeons is an almost too pretty: flush of colour; Mr. Bellingham Smith's Orchard, Finistere, isi sunny-green, if mannered in drawing ; Mr. O'Connor is a capable follower of Kroyer's ; and Mr. A. Tomson's Stack- Making and Mr. E. Sichel's Sketch are good, quiet work.
We now turn to contributions from the younger Scotchmen. These are easily distinguished by a community of decorative. aim, and by a lowness of tone that contrasts noticeably witlr the high pitch of some of the work we have been dealing with.. Some of the stronger men of the school are absent this yeas, in particular Messrs. Guthrie and Lavery. But Mr. Walton sends two pictures. His large Sisters cannot be reckoned' with his best work. It has considerable merits of design, but the lowness of tone of the flesh-tints verges in this case on dirtiness. His Pastoral, however, does summed in its colour-
intention, and is one of:the:most decorative pieces in the room. The blue of the sky is so lowered in pitch that one hesitates where to place the effect as Nature ; but as effect, the silver touches of cloud and cattle against vibrating green and dull blue, it justifies itself. The large decorative effort of Messrs. Hornel and Henry at the end of the gallery, called The Angel and the Shepherds, recalls their Druids of last year, but is not nearly so good. Its effect, as colour, is livid and disagreeable, and what seems to be fundamentally wrong is that while the heads and faces of the figures are painted as colourless as they would be by starlight, some of the draperies are painted in positive daylight tints. Agaiti, if the starlight tells, the fire- light does not, and the fire itself is painted neither as real nor as convention, but is a curious piece of random colouring. The disposition, again, of the sheep and landscape is obtrusively puzzling, and what is worse, not decoratively so. We dwell at length on these defects because the work has, in spite of them a large cast of design in the figures, and is, we hope, only a tem- porary losing of the way by artists who promised so well last year. Mr. Roche shows a hilltop with trees that recalls a design of the same noble kind in last year's exhibition. He also sends a little colour-fantasy, called A Court of Cards, in which the bizarre forms of Kings and Queens and Knaves leave their cards and disport themselves in a scene that suits with their flat persons. Mr. Pryde sends a charming little pastel indica- tion of a boy's portrait. When are we to have more work from him like the portrait of two years ago P Mr. Docharty's Changing Pasture, and Mr. Macgregor's tiara Var, both de- serve notice ; and Mr. Brown Macdougall's October Ploughing has a charming sky, with curiously prim drawing of the man and horses.
It seems natural, in noticing an exhibition that proclaims here and there the work of scholars, to turn for a moment to a work of the Master. The Corporation of Glasgow have just bought for their gallery the portrait of Carlyle by Mr. Whistler. By this act, they have at once done themselves an honour and the nation a service, and have marked a stage in the public appreciation of a great talent. The picture has been on view for a day or two at Messrs. Goupil's, and seen after some years, appeared even greater than before. The sitter has reached perfect harmony this way, if no other; and the artist, while yet the jeers of a mob that regarded him as a mere jester have hardly died away, will find himself an old master before his time.
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