ART.
MR. SIMPSON'S SKETCHES "ROUND THE WORLD." READERS of newspapers, whose memories can carry them so fat- back, may recollect a leader in the Times last May which came forth in the form of a lament that our Academy Exhibition con- tained so little to illustrate current events for the information of future ages. We had no Terburg to portray the arbitration of Geneva, no Zoffany to place on record the darbars of Lords Dal- housie and Mayo, no Wouvermans to paint the picturesque inci- dents of modern campaigns. Our artists seemed to receive no- impulse from what was passing around them, but to live in a sort of " professional fairyland," where " the light that sur- rounds," like that of the childhood painted by Tom Moore (as well as Correggio), is "all from within." The writer- no doubt laid himself open to criticism, and was accordingly. taken to task by critics and by artists, both for slighting the ideal and aesthetic elements in art, and for seeming to ignore the fact that what is politically or socially important may be, and very often is, wholly nnpictorial. But there was a germ of pre- cious truth in what he said ; and his error lay not in desiring such an artistic record, but in looking for it where, in the nature of things, it can never be found ; and still more, in passing over its actual existence in a more valuable and complete form. For this is what we have in the class of works which are the subject of the present notice. We do not know what other artists or what, skill and talent are now being employed in a similar way, but it appears to us that the water- colour drawings and sketches of Mr. William Simpson, now on view at the Burlington Gallery, in Piccadilly, not only fulfil the requirements of the writer referred to, but fulfil them much better than would be in the power of any finished studio pictures, fit for Burlington House. To take, for example, one of the special omissions alleged in the lament above mentioned, the condition of India. Who, that saw Mr. Simpson's Indian sketches (exhibited some ten years ago), about 20 of which are comprised in this col- lection, can regret that the time spent in depicting on the spot -what passed before the artist's eyes in so many varied scenes was not bestowed upon the elaboration of jewels in a Court ceremonial, or enlarging to life-size on canvas some half-dozen grand natives, instead of striking off on paper the very look and action of hun- dreds of Hindoos and Mussulmans and Anglo-Indians engaged in their ordinary occupations ? Not that he has neglected the cere- monies of State. He went more than once expressly to paint them, and in his way has told us as much as Zoffany himself had time to do. Here, in this little gallery, are the marriage of the Czarewitch at St. Petersburg (169), and a whole series of sketches—quite as good as finished pictures, and better—of the ceremonies attending that of the Emperor of China at Pekin. And more than that, he not only paints the midnight procession (59) of the Celestial bride, which nobody was allowed to see, but also shows us, in an admir- able study of light and shade (65), the way in which the Chinese, and no doubt the artist too, did see the marriage nevertheless, after the precedent of Peeping Tom. And again, who that cares for real history would not infinitely prefer this original sketch (96), done on the spot in September, 1870 (on the back of a piece of wall-paper, and yet a clear, graphic, and artistic drawing, full of priceless detail and facts), of the " Battle-field of Sedan, from the -Château of Donchery," to a huge picture of the same scene cooked for preservation in a national gallery ?
The fact is that we have in our ordinary picture-exhibitions a great deal too much of mere studio-work. The more such work is founded upon actual memoranda from nature, the better, of course ; and it is quite right for a painter of pictures to be constantly on the look-out for material for them. Every real artist, whether he stay at home or travel abroad, has his mind always open to pictorial sugges- tion by the scenes, and beauties, and chance incidents, and combi- nations in life and nature. But when we look upon art as the handmaid of history, it becomes mere waste of time to expend it either upon close imitation of permanent detail, or upon deepen- ing the intensity of expressions which have been the same from the beginning of the world, and which are alike from one end of it to the other. A spirited sketch on the spot, with the scene itself before the eye, or with the fresh bloom on its image in the mind, has reality and value as a historic record to which what is usually called " historical painting " can make no pretension. There is infinitely more of history in Mr. Simpson's sketches of the present state of Jerusalem and the excavations now being made there, than in what to most people in the crowd of sight-seers that throng Old Bond Street daily is the most important fact conveyed by an artist after years of study in the East, namely, that a carpenter's shavings are of similar shape and reflect light under the same laws in Bethlehem and Britain.
Most painters when they go abroad have what is in some respects a wholesome contempt for tourists, but it would be the better for art if they themselves had a little more of the observant spirit of the tourist, or rather of the traveller who writes his travels. Their object generally is to form a peculiar style, or to perfect themselves in a special class of subjects, which they can go on varying or repeating ever after, and so ensure a market of their own. Thus the tendency of the kind of painting for the market which is fostered by our picture-exhibitions, with that of the Royal Academy at their head, is to conduct into particular channels a portion only of the profuse material for artistic record afforded by the scenes of nature, and more especially of human life and interest, in the midst of which we move and have our -being. In sketches like these of Mr. Simpson's, this course is inverted. Instead of narrowing his field to subserve the purposes of art, he employs the art he possesses as a means of extending his narration of facts. It is something like the relation between botany and horticulture. Where one man describes the universal flora of nature, another digs up an exotic, carries it home, and develops it in a pot.
In the present selection of 186 sketches, the artist has fairly surveyed the world "from China to Peru," and we can have no doubt that his observation was as accurate as his view has been extensive. It is to be regretted that the arrangement on the walls does not enable us to follow the course of his travels, being drawings from all parts of the globe curiously intermixed. But the artist is an author as well. When he put the girdle round the world which gives its name to this exhibition, he was writing letters to the Daily News, as well as drawing for the illustrated; and he has recently described his tour in a book called " Meeting the Sun," from whence we learn that it extended from August, 1872, to June, 1873, and embraced the route in part illus- trated by the following sketches :—We have, first, a bright, airy view of " Venice, with the P. and 0. steamer 'Poonah" (15), which reminds us of the work of the late Mr. Holland. From Brindisi there are several sketches; in particular, the general view (30), full of life and appropriate incident, and quite a model of what a topo- graphic drawing should be. We have never been there, but we feel that it tells us all about the place. There ie the big steamer ready to start at the end of the Appian Way, marked by two broken columns ; a dredging-machine is at work in the wide harbour, and overseers are giving directions, and men moving great stones with crow-bars, to show, as they do in Turner's " Carthage," that the picture represents a rising port. This is one among the many merits of Mr. Simpson's work. Not only are his pure figure-subjects characteristic, admirably composed, and drawn with freedom and power, but his incidental figures are always appropriate to the occasion, as well as artistically placed. They tell the story while they help the picture, and we have no doubt that the secret of this success lies in the fact that they were really there. Then we have a bird's-eye view of the Suez Canal, and the passage to India in the P. and 0. steamers is illustrated by some telling figure-pictures, mostly in sepia, as "Mail-bags Coming on Board at Brindisi " (23), the " Stoke- hole" (20), the " Bridge" (168), and most beautiful of all, the "Forecastle" (167), under a hot August moonlight in the Red Sea, with groups of exhausted sailors prostrate on the deck. Next we pass the Straits of Malacca, and are shown the boys of Singa- pore (131) diving for coins, where British statesmen have since been seeking for capital of another kind. And then there are more than sixty interesting drawings and sketches of China and Japan, among them a large view of the " Great Wall " (55), some curious sketches of the Ming Tombs, near Pekin, and the sculptured figures about them (98 &c.), and other pieces of Chinese architecture ; and a series of illustrations of the examination for the Pekin senior wranglership, and its 10,000 cells for students. After this the artist crossed the Pacific, and he has brought back a large detailed drawing of the wondrous and beautiful city of San Francisco (134), some half-dozen scenes in the Modoc war, a sketch of the wives and families of Brigham Young at the theatre at Utah, the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, and visitors at Niagara. The above belong strictly to the tour " Round the World," but there are besides several series of sketches made during former expeditions, illustrating, among other events, the opening of the Mont Cenis tunnel, the before-mentioned excava- tions at Jerusalem, and the war in Abyssinia, including an admir- able finished drawing of the country about " Magdala " (97). We could dwell much longer on Mr. Simpson's merits as an artist, and his great facility as a sketcher, but must be content to direct attention to the drawing of the river " Yang-tee-Kiang " (104), for a suggestion of great space, and to his cave studies generally for a skilful management of light. But the whole exhibition belongs to a department of art which will some day hold an important place in the history of painting.
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