ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[THIRD NOTICE.]
WE continue our survey with the third room, and may say of Mr. Edward Brewtnall's landscape, that it is a large replica of the water-colour drawing which we noticed at length in our review of the Royal Water-Colour Society, and that its subject is a shepherd bringing his sheep to fold in winter-time. We mention it here only because there is such a lack of imaginative landscape in this year's exhibition at Burlington House, that it is well no picture of this kind should be omitted. For the rest, it is in every way inferior to the water-colour, and iu the latter medium all Mr. Brewtnall's beat work has invariably been done. The best portrait in the Academy, one of Mr. Barlow, the engraver, by Sir John Millais, hangs near this, and is in every way a fine piece of work. It shows that this great painter cane when he chooses, retain many of the best qualities of his pre.
Raphaelite days, and yet lose none of his freedom of handling. This picture is especially fine, too, as a piece of colour, the brown coat and orange and green handkerchief of the sitter being most strong and harmonious in their effect. The likeness is so vivid as to be on the very verge of caricature; it is quite accurately the man in his habit as he lives. It is worth while to compare this work of Sir John Millais with the large Roll portraits, such as that of the Duke of Cleveland, which hangs close by. The comparison shows very clearly that Mr. Ho11's work, vivid and powerful as it is, is nevertheless degenerating into strong mannerism ; he rumbles and tumbles all his sitters about very much as a policeman hustles a drunken man to the police- station. The unfortunates seem to have been painted in a strong breeze, generally with a glare of sunlight falling down their noses, and after a severe conflict in which their linen has suffered considerably. The above may sound exaggerated, but is in the main an accurate description of Mr. Roll's manner,—a manner which goes very far to spoil his work. Otherwise this portrait of the Duke of Cleveland is very fine, strongly drawn and modelled, and harmonious in its colouring. No one, perhaps, at the present time paints black so well as Mr. Holl,—no one in England, that is to say, for the best por- trait in this Academy, after Sir John Millais's of Mr. Barlow, is of a woman in a black dress, by M. Carolus Duran. This is a picture which should be looked at with great care ; it is No. 493 in the sixth room, and hangs high up above the line, on the large wall facing the door. It is an interesting experiment to stand in this doorway and look at the wall in front, and notice how M. Duran's work (it is simply that of a lady in black, in modern dress) absolutely obscures all the pictures which sur- round it. One may like or not like the style of his painting— and for our own part, we do not consider it by any means the highest art—but the brilliancy and power of the work is perfectly indisputable. The babies and the sentimental damsels of every kind of our English painters, flying here and there in confusion, so to speak, from this great French painting, sink into utter insignifi- cance beside M. Duran's portrait. The truth is that the man is a great artist, and that this is one of the best of his later works. The more it is looked at, the more vividly truthful it becomes; the slightly parted lips seem to be unclosing in the act of speech; the little foot, in its delicate shoe and silk stocking, seems to be tap- ping the floor eagerly. It may be suggested to those who care about such matters—not, of course, the Academicians themselves —that if a very great foreign artist of assured reputation and undisputed power has his work accepted by English painters, it should at least be hung in some fairly honourable position. To go and put a picture like this high up above the line in a sixth room is to commit one of those mingled stupidities and im- pertinences of which our countrymen are too frequently guilty. It shows either such jealousy or such ignorance, or such a mingling of both, that it is really difficult to speak of it with patience. It would be a great deal better that we should say frankly, " No; we won't have you at all ; you paint too well for us," than that we should accept a masterpiece, and hang it like a daub.
To return to our third room, Mr. David Murray sends a little pastoral, which, though less interesting than some of his work, deserves notice for its originality. Mr. Marks's "At the Ferry" is only a single figure of the humorous kind, but has the special quaint quality, the almost literary flavour, which has made this artist's reputation. Mr. Boughton's most important work hangs next to this, and shows a somewhat new departure ; it is entitled "The Councillors of Peter the Headstrong," and is an interior with many seated figures. This is one of those pictures of which, to paraphrase Wordsworth, we may say there are-
" All to praise and very few to love."
It is excessively clever, full of careful painting and keen obser- vation of character, but hardly in any sense of the word beautiful, and only intelligible with the help of the quotation appended to it in the catalogue. Fancy, if this picture were to last till the twenty-fifth century, what an unanswerable enigma its subject would probably be ! And is it not the first quality of a work of fine art that it should explain itself ? We have spoken of three good portraits ; let us mention one very bad contribution of Mr. Poynter, which is a likeness of the Marquis of Ripon. We do not intend to enter into any criticism of this composition, which shows Mr. Poynter at his very worst, nor should we have mentioned it were it not that it is necessary sometimes to draw attention to the careless work of
men who can, when they like, paint good pictures. When we consider that Mr. Poynter in years gone by has done such work as the "Israel in Egypt," "The Catapult," and "The Visit of Diana to Asculapins," it seems almost incredible that he should have sunk down to this hard, flat, coarsely-drawn, unin-
teresting tea-board presentment of the Marquis of Ripon. There does not appear to us to be a single quality of fine art therein worthy of the name. Mr. Vicat Cole's " Cookham " hangs near this, and is a pleasant specimen, not notable for any great originality of treatment. It has a thin prettiness which distinguishes Mr. Cole's usual work, and is in his and its own style a successful painting. Mr. Briton Riviere's "Rizpah," to which has been allotted the place of honour in the middle of the long wall of this third gallery, is notable for its drawing of the rock on which the jackals are crouching, more than for the seated figure or even the animals. But we have spoken of Mr. Riviere's work in earlier notices, and cannot now enter into details about this picture. Close to this hangs Mr. Caton Woodville's " In Vain," a picture of the return of Sir Herbert Stewart's force from Metemmeh, 1885,— not even a good illustration of its subject, and as a work of art scarcely deserving a notice. The truth is that Mr. Wood- ville has entirely ruined his artistic faculty by enormous over- production, an over-production of pictures chiefly out of his own head. His work grows to have less and less reference to Nature, his colour becomes more and more dull and uninteresting; and the "go" and dash of his compositions, which constituted their great merit some years ago, have almost entirely evaporated. The Alma-Tadema, which hangs within a few paces of this last-mentioned work, is a capital picture to look at after Mr. Woodville's, if only because it so entirely takes the taste out of one's mouth of the latter artist's sloppy painting ; it is called " An Apodyterinm," and represents the interior of a Roman bath with several figures unclothed. The great fault of the picture is that in at least a quarter of it there is no incident or interest whatever, nothing but a great blank space of marble round which the figures are grouped. As a composition, indeed,. it is frankly ugly ; as a piece of painting and drawing, excessively fine ; and, above all, the pleasure we get from the work is owing to the fact of its being done as well as the painter could do it. It is not only the work of a master, but it is the work of a master doing his very best. For a specimen of the portraits which are sometimes admitted —we must presume on purely disinterested considerations—ta Burlington House, it is desirable to look a little above this composition of Tadema's to the gigantic full-length tableau of Captain Verner, D.A.A.G., Nile Expeditionary Force. We have no doubt that this gentleman is a gallant soldier and a most estimable individual, but by what right a painting of this class—one which we should imagine was done entirely for the family delight—should be allowed to occupy a large wall-space- in the most important room of the Academy, is a matter we cannot understand.
The picture of the fourth room is, of course, Mr. Borne Jones's " Depths of the Sea," which we have previously criticised' at length ; but we should like to say here that though closer acquaintance has by no means changed the opinion we expressed in our first notice of this picture, yet that it is one which becomes, as Osric would say, " very precious to the fancy" when it is well known. The truth is that the work is so far superior in qualities of both mind and hand to the pictures which surround it, that any and all of its peculiarities can be easily condoned ; but, at all events, it is a very beautiful thing ; what need we care for anything else ? Mr. Alfred Hunt's " Drinstanburgh " is one of the best landscapes we have had from his hands for a long time, but scarcely calls for detailed notice, as it shows no new departure on the part of the artist, and its qualities are such as are well known to all his admirers. Mr. Alfred Hunt is one of those artists who, if a more liberal recognition of the claims of landscape-painters were allowed, would undoubtedly have been made a Royal Academician, and would, we think, have done more honour to that body than the delineators of Scotch mists and blasted trees who are generally selected. At all events, this is delicate work of Mr. Hunt's, and has an aim and a meaning, not simply a motiveless reproduction of one monotonous piece of Nature. We were looking a few days ago, in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool, at Mr. Hunt's great picture of " The Debateable Land." It seemed to us perfectly incredible that a painter who could do work of such a quality should not have received some Academic recognition daring the whole of his long artistic life.
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