ART.
THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER- COLOURS.
[FIRST NOTICE.]
THIS exhibition is a first-rate one, the best which has been seen at this gallery for several years. The members have certainly made a struggle to do their best for this Jubilee year ; and have, moreover, been reinforced by several new members, of whom two at least are decided acquisitions to the Society. There is also to add to the importance of the exhibition a large figure-work by Mr. Holman Hunt, who has hitherto only contributed very occasionally, and then pictures of comparatively slight significance. Mr. Hunt's picture is entitled "Jesus among the Doctors in the Temple,"—a subject which our readers will remember formed one of the most celebrated of his earlier works. It is difficult in the brief space at our disposal to criticise this picture adequately, since though it has many considerable merits, and is executed with all the seriousness which usually marks Mr. Hunt's work, it shows also his failings in a very marked and peculiar degree. The verge between the sublime and the ridiculous which it is proverbially so easy to pass, has been overstepped here ; and it is difficult to avoid, on first looking at the picture, experiencing a feeling of repulsion. Christ is depicted kneeling in the centre of the composition, the doctors seated on the data in a half circle around him, with one or two children on the step of the dais. The Saviour has the fingers of one hand pressed upon his forehead, while with the other he is unrolling a long scroll ; and the somewhat goggle-eyed priests behind him are apparently waiting for the reply to one of their questions. The picture, we understand, is to be reproduced in mosaic ; and probably some portion of its crudity of colour, and harsh, strong lines, is due to this fact. But whether this be so or no, the truth about the work is that it is both violent and unpleasant ; and what is worse from an artist of Mr. Hunt's character, is that it is untrue to Nature. No human beings under any light that ever shone upon the world, could have looked as these doctors and this Christ look in this picture. The details throughout the whole work are mapped out rather than drawn, and this with a hard, photographic precision which is wholly inartistic. We, who yield to none in our admiration of Mr. Hunt's genius in his best work, and who have written so fre- quently in praise of that work, must, with regard to this picture, express a strong opinion that it is wholly unworthy of his ability and his reputation.
Let us turn to more successful paintings, and in especial to one large work by Mr. North at his very best, a most beautiful landscape, called "The Monks' Fishpond." This represents a woodland in early spring, with two small vilely drawn little figures, which, however, one hardly seems to mind, so fit and necessary are they in colour. It is the colouring of the whole picture which forms its greatest charm ; and, further, the marvellous suggestion of the mystery and beauty of the leafless twigs and branches, and the sense of the deep wood- land behind them. There is also to be gained from this picture another pleasure not so easy of characterisation, springing from the genuine artistic feeling which marks the whole work. It is not only a beautiful woodland, but it is a woodland seen as no other artist but Mr. North could see it ; and every detail of grams, or branch, or cloud has received just a gleam of personal feeling to assist in its delineation. This woodland is a lovely little poem of colour and form, such as any artist might be proud to paint, and any picture-lover be glad to possess. The world of Art-patrons goes by too hurriedly to allow itself to stop and enjoy the beauty of delicate work such as this,—work, that is,. which does not hit them between the eyes at first sight. But in our opinion, many a long year after Mr. Leader's sunsets, and Mr- Brett's purple rocks, and Mr. McWhirter's fir-trees have gone the way of many other popular paintings, these delicate pictures of Mr. North's and Mr. Alfred Hunt's will be likely to live to their artists' honour. Speaking of Mr. Alfred Hunt, he has here, we are glad to notice, several small pictures more worthy of his ability than any which we have seen for some time past. Nearly all are- concerned with Robin Hood's Bay,—from the east, on the west, on the north, and on the south; indeed, he seems to have painted; it from above, from beneath, and from every side. It is hard to say which aspect of the little fishing-village he has rendered most successfully. But the drawing which we personally prefer- most is a grey sea, called "A Stiff North-Easter." In it we see the village on its cliff overhanging the sea to the left;. while on the right of the picture, a vast expanse of grey sea merges into a misty sky. This is a drawing of most exquisite colour-quality, full of poetical suggestion, and executed with that apparent ease which is so frequently a mark of a master's work.
But the largest drawing in the gallery is by a Mr. Robertson,. who is a comparatively new member, and who has rather, we should imagine, from a popular point of view, taken the wind- out of the sails of Mr. Carl Haag. This artist choose& exactly the same style of subject as the older painter, and- executes his pictures with a surplusage of Oriental gorgeousness.. Highly coloured stuffs, luxurious trappings, jewels, armour, pottery, and Oriental bric-a-brac of every possible description,. abound in this gentleman's work ; and all are rendered with a precise detail, and an almost morbid desire for covering the- canvas with all the brightest colours he can lay his hands upon. The whole picture becomes a patchwork of the most vivid possible tints—a heterogeneous jumble of Sheiks and donkey- boys, carpet-sellers, Pashas and Arabs—as if the whole of the East were nothing but a perpetual rainbow, lighted up with. electric-light. Personally, we must confess—as far as our remembrance goes—that this bright kaleidoscope is singularly unlike the reality of an Eastern Bazaar. It is especially so- in its want of depth in colour. This special picture of Mr. Robertson's seems to us to be overdone and confused in detail, and though vivid in colour, singularly inharmonious. Looked at from the other end of the gallery, it is the one garish' spot on this end.wall, and produces, in fact, upon the eye much the same effect as the ear would experience if it tried to listen at once to twenty bands each playing a different tune. Turn for a contrast to this to Mr. George Fripp's large, cool drawing of " Lynton, North Devon," one of the most delicate pieces of draughtsmanship in the whole exhibition ; and though a little deficient in the strength of Nature, fall of truth, of aerial effect, and perfect harmonies of faint colour. A rather old.fashioned work, perhaps, without any brilliant dramatic effect, and without sentimental name or incident to recall it to mind; and yet none the less pleasing on that account to quiet, old-fashioned people, who are a little tired of having their sympathies awakened abruptly or unnecessarily.
One of the new members, a Mr. Phillip, sends a large land-. scape of very remarkable quality. It is a most unaffected, straightforward piece of work, its special beauty being one of deep colour, and very subtle rendering of atmosphere. It is a scene on a loch, in Ross-shire, towards the close of a rainy day ; and the drawing has a delicious atmospheric effect of rest and quiet—one almost listens to hear the rain- falling. What shall we say for these pretty girls of Mr.. Arthur Hopkins's, with their pink cheeks, and blue eyes,. and delicate stockings and buckled shoes, writing on Chippen- dale tables on the groundfloor of a mill, or skating swiftly in the most becoming of fur-bordered costumes with their" rein- deer-sleigh ?" Well, Mr. Arthur Hopkins has yet to learn that the way to make beautiful women is not to paint their flesh like sweetmeats, nor to draw their costumes from the point of view' of Worth or Madame Flise. It is a great pity that he should not learn this, for he has really great dexterity, execution, and —granted his perverted ideal—considerable sense of feminine grace. His pictures are even now harmonious, and might be beautiful, if he would learn a little from Mr. Marsh in
this respect ; and Mr. Marsh, too—who paints those big- armed women in dresses which will not fold at all, so stiff and ungainly are they, might learn something from Mr. Hopkins. Bat Mr. Marsh's contributions to this exhibition do not show him at his best. He began by painting only the rough, black side of Natare and life,—very grimly, it is tree, but with a very genuine sense of pathos. It seems to us now as if this were degenerating into mere mannerism ; and his works in this gallery show a desire to combine the rough bodies and limbs of his peasants with faces of unnatural delicacy. He mast beware of falling between two stools, and, either have the courage of his opinions in delineating his peasants, or leave their rough, dirty outside entirely out of the question.
Sir John Gilbert has a very large and important picture here; but as it presents but little variation from his usual style, we shall not criticise it in detail. The subject is Cardinal Wolsey on his progress to Westminster Abbey, Mr. Stacey Marks, RA., and Mr. E. I. Poynter, RA., send small works, chiefly remarkable as being from their hands ; and there is a very fine, small architectural Roman landscape-subject by Mr. Carl Haag, far superior, in our opinion, to his more ambitious work of "The 'Sphinx by Moonlight," a picture which Mr. Carl Haag has placed in a double frame of gold and silver. We must here, too, utter one further word of protest against the abominable habit which this painter has adopted of late years, of surrounding isis figure-subjects with a bright chrome or lemon-yellow back- ground. Anything more meretricious, in this respect, than his
Head of a Nubian" in the present exhibition, we rarely remember to have seen.
Mr. E. K. Johnson sends a group of several figures, entitled "The Pod with Nine Peas "—an allusion to some rustic super- stition by which maids choose a husband—a picture which is remarkable for its clever painting of a kitchen-interior and grouping of the three women, and its earefal detail, but which is hardly so successful in its delineation of the male figure who is coming in at the door. The same artist has a small single. figure subject of an old politician who, seeing the bills of the rival political party in a shop-window, characterises them as finch Stuff !" which is quite one of the best of the smaller -figures in the whole exhibition. One of the rare contributors of water-colour drawings to the gallery, and yet one of the most earnest and painstaking of modern artists, is Mr. Frederick Shields, who sends a contribution this year of "Christ and the Blind Man of Bethsaida," which, if not wholly successful in its very elaborate scheme of rich colour, is fall of beautiful quality, and full, too, to an extent very rare in this day, of thought and aspiration after the highest forms of Art.
We should like to put in contrast to this, as an example of the very lowest kind of work which a young painter should try to imitate, a largo society picture by Mr. E. J. Brewtnall, -of a fashionably dressed young lady and an elderly gentle- man listening to a nightingale in a modern garden,—a -composition as utterly vapid and trivial as Mr. Shields's is intelligent and meritorious. It is a strange thing that Mr. Brewtnall, who has many artistic qualities when he paints landscapes, should insist upon painting these fashion- plate presentments of people who have not even the solitary recommendation that they look like ladies and gentlemen. If we must have young ladies' petticoats and stockings, and men's drese-olothes and patent-leather boots, at all events let us have them of the right shape, and put on people who look as if they were accustomed to wear clothes of that description. The many remaining works of interest in the gallery we must leave for a further notice.
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