ART.
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PAINTERS IN WATER- COLOURS.
[FIRST NOTICE.]
WE said last week of the Royal Society of Painters in Water- Colours, that its exhibition was above, rather than under, the usual average of interest; and we can make the same remark about the collection shown at the Royal Institute, which we notice to-day. In the present case, however, the increase is rather one of technical skill, than greater variety or originality of subject. Taking it, as a whole, as exhibiting both the older and more modern methods of water-colour painting, the present exhibition at the Institute is the most complete to be seen in London, and indeed, owing to the great number of works exhibited, and to their comparatively large size, holds to water-colour art very much the same position as the Burlington House collection holds to oil-painting. This is especially the case, owing to the admission of works by foreign artists, as well as outsiders generally.
In this first notice, we shall mention but a few works of special interest, and first of these, from its peculiar merit, we
would speak of Mr. Wimperis's "Rough Road by the Sea," undoubtedly the best water-colour landscape of the year, and one which recalls forcibly the earlier, and in some ways, better, times of English landscape-painting. It is a rough, breezy marshland, overhung by long rows of grey clouds, taken, appa- rently, where the estuary of a small river joins the sea, which Mr. Wimperis has chosen for his drawing; and there is but little to describe in the wet, furrowed road, the rough arid grass, the muddy banks, and the long ranges of wet cloud above. Bat, artistically speaking, the picture is a very notable one ; the colour, though chiefly confined to low tones, is delicate, veracious, and full of subtlety of gradation ; the drawing is excellent both in precision and suggestiveness, and beyond these essential merits, there is throughout this picture a vigour and breadth of treatment which remove it entirely from the usual category of modern landscape-paintings. For, and this is the great point, though this is not a studio picture, it is still less a mere natural-history one ; it is distinctly referable to great traditions of painting ; it belongs to Nature and to Art equally. This is, in truth, one of the qualities most rare in modern landscape art, which has grown to be almost entirely either conventional or recording,—which seems to have lost the power of seeing Nature except in details, and thereby lost the power of infusing any representation of her beauty with general significance. Mr. Wimperis sees his landscape as a whole, just in the same way that Cox did., and his skies belong to his earth, and his earth to his skies ; but beyond this, both in a measure belong to the artist himself ; he drives them, so to speak, with a definite intention before him. We should like, if possible, to make this distinction clear to our readers, but it is to do, without pointing out in a somewhat ungracious way the deficiencies of other painters,—deficiencies in this rasped alone, perhaps ; and we prefer rather to dwell in this article upon the merits of the pictures. A word only we must say about Mr. Halswelle's "Pass of Brander," which seems to us to reach a pitch of meretricious brilliancy we have rarely seen approached- Whether the flabby satin rocks, the hillsides devoid of form and almost of colour, the shapeless, bunchy clouds, or the palpably mock rainbow in this picture be the more or less washy, theatrical or untrue, we are at a loss to decide ; but the whole work may be quoted as a warning to students, despite the un- doubted technical skill of the artist. Tarn for a minute, for the sake of contrast, to solid, faithful work, done with the greatest care, and thought out with the utmost patience, and look at Mr. Charles Green's two illustrations of Dickens,—one of Captain Cattle and Florence in Sol. Gill's shop, the other of Sam Weller writing his valentine, while his father, hat in hand, stands smiling by the fire. Both are exquisite specimens of plainly good, unaffected brushwork; and the larger of the two, in its- minuteness of detail, and in the sober care with which each portion of the picture is finished, reminds us vividly of the earlier work of the late Fred. Walker. His earlier work only, because in his prime Mr. Walker developed an exquisite sense of colouring to which,,,with all his merits, Mr. Green can lay no. claim. He is not, in our opinion, much of a colourist, though his work in this respect is harmonious, and, if we may use such a word, equable. In these hurried days, when artists turn out pot-boilers so frequently, and when tricky work is commonly preferred and exalted above sober, careful paiiiting, it is worth while to point out distinctly an artist like Mr. Green, who does each bit of his picture as if it were going to be the last on which his hand would ever be occupied. Look, for au instance of this especially, in this Captain Cattle picture, at the model of the ship and the telescope which are hung- against the wall. Those who are fond of pictures of " Royalty " will have a great treat in this Gallery, for here- is the Prince of Wales shooting "with Baron Oscar Dickson in Sweden," in the most realistic and lifelike fashion. MT. Sydney Hall cannot, however, be congratulated upon anything but the subject of his drawing, for it is in all other respects excessively poor. Dull in colour and awkward in composition, its brushwork at once tame and niggling, this would be, were it not for the gratification of seeing how Royalty holds its grin, the least interesting work in the Exhibition. Mr. Wetherbee's "Autumn," a single figure of a woman-reaper at twilight, is an attempt at making a figure of the sculpturesque rather than the pictorial point of view ; it is, perhaps, its misfortune rather than its fault that this work should remind us how a certain French artist, called Jules Breton, painted a similar subject, and hit in the centre, the mark which Mr. Wetherbee has missed. But whether or no this reaper was suggested by Breton's " Gleaner," it is a picture with a definite intention, and deserves consideration. Amongst the many who trifle with shallow prettiness, Mr. Wetherbee is a young artist who definitely tries after both beauty and truth, and gets into his work almost always some hints of both. There are three pictures by the President, Sir James Linton, here, of which two are simply figure-studies. The third, "Romeo and Juliet," is a large work, which we cannot say we like. It is, it appears to us, both awkward and unpleasing, especially in the figure a Romeo, and looks throughout as though the artist had been working against the grain. Technically skilful in a high degree, no doubt it is ; but even in this respect it yields to the figure of the man in armour with a red standard, which is the best of Sir James's smaller works. Indeed, this last is, from the technical point of view, entirely admirable, and could hardly be surpassed as a specimen of pure water-colour brushwork. Those of our readers who care to know what water-colour painting, as opposed to water-colour smudging, can be, should contrast this work with that of any of the plaster-impasto scenes of modern life of which there are too many specimens here. They will learn better by such an examination than by chapters of criticism, the gulf which lies between Art and artfulness. And if this contrast does not sufficiently enlighten them, let them pass to Mr. Gregory's 'a Hoyden," and look at the painting of the face therein ; for this last, though lacking the solidity, the restraint, and sobriety of Sir James Linton's brush-work, is, neverthe- less, master's work beyond all question. The peculiar quality of Mr. Gregory's painting is its mingling of delicacy and verve, the technical part of his work possessing in many cases, as here, the minuteness of a miniature, and yet being executed with great ease and apparent freedom. It is not nice, this study of a blowsy, over-blown girl, in an attitude the careless- ness of which passes the borders of vulgarity. It is not, in our opinion, the sort of picture which would be pleasant to live with ; but despite that, here, shining out clearly from its arti- ficial and unpleasing circumstance, is the genuine artistic spirit, touching even vulgarity with its halo of inspiration, making us tolerate and almost admire it. Bat, as we have often said before—alas ! with but little result—Mr. Gregory is one of those painters whose power seems only limited by his wilfulness. He can apparently do almost anything he chooses, and he chooses to paint "Hoydens."
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