ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[FINAL NOTICE.]
Is our previous notices of this year's Exhibition, we have taken the pictures in the order in which they are arranged in the gallery, and given a general notice of the first rooms, but we do not intend to follow that plan in this concluding notice, but to men- tion as briefly as possible the remaining pictures which deserve special attention, irrespective of their places in the exhibition. We are led to do this because the works in the last five or six rooms are, as a rule, of very inferior merit, and we should but weary our readers unnecessarily if we described many of them in detail. We shall still endeavour, however, to follow the order of the catalogue, as far as possible.
The two large landscapes of the year are Nos. 273 and 946, J. E. Millais and Brett respectively. There are other reasons besides those of size and ability why these pictures should be classed together which we will try to explain to our readers. Good landscape art may be broadly divided into two classes,— imaginative and realistic, of which the former naturally holds the highest place. In these two the difference is something akin to that between a perfect statue of a human being and the human being himself. The living man may not be, in all probability will not be, so finished in his contour, so perfectly symmetrical in proportion ; but he will have one gift of inestimable value, which will far more than counterbalance such individual drawbacks,—he will have life ! And so in a piece of true imaginative landscape, the beauty, which will atone, and far more than atone, for any lack of individual detail, will be that which is gained by the work bearing the impress of a living human intelligence. It must be remembered, however, that such imaginative painting can only be the result of a knowledge and skill which would be adequate to the most minute realistic work. For it is as impossible for the painter to produce a work of true imagination in landscape, with- out understanding down to its most minute characteristic the nature of every herb, or tree, or rock which he paints. And so we see that in reality these two classes are not in opposition to each other, as we might at first suppose, but that the first is but a fuller development of the second—that true imaginative landscape painting must have for its base true realistic painting ; that we could'nt, for instance, have had a picture like the " Ulysses deriding Polyphemus " from a painter who couldn't have painted " Welsh
Scenery" or the English harbours. With reference to the two pictures before us, it may be said at once that they belong to the school of realistic landscape, and there is, we think, this great fault to be found with them,—that while exhibiting a very high degree of reproductive skill and great industry, neither attempts in any way to give us more than we might obtain from a well• coloured photograph. Mr. Millais's landscape entitled " The Sound of Many Waters," and taken, we understand, above the rumbling bridge at Dunoon, shows the river interspersed with moss-covered rocks, and surrounded by an open glade of feathery trees. But we beg our readers to observe that the first feeling which this picture excites is not pleasure in the scene, but ad- miration of the painter. It is not, " What a lovely spot ! How I should like to be there, bathing in those cool waters, or fishing in that still pool 1" but, " What a wonderful piece of painting ! Look at those rocks, Maria !—don't they seem solid ?" and so on, and so on. With all its ability, this is not a pleasant picture, and so let ua turn to Mr. Brett's "Mount's Bay." There is an improve- ment here at least. Mr. Brett likes the sun, and gives it us in his pictures as strong and dazzling almost as nature. Far the finest picture of the two is this, in our estimation, and for this reason, that it grapples successfully with difficulties which the other either shirks or does not attempt. It is comparatively simple to copy a moss-grown rock, if we compare the diffi- culty with that of rendering every ripple, reflection, and shadow on a calm sea under a bright summer sun. Per- haps there has never been so magnificent a piece of calm water painted as the one in this picture of Mount's Bay.
You can see each different current rippling round the rocks and headlands, and the cloud-shadows on the distant water are exceed- ingly beautiful ; the only part of the picture which is unsatisfac- tory is the immediate foreground, with its sheep and gorse-bushes. The sheep look unnaturally small in comparison with the gorse, and we have never seen gorse in flower when the yellow flowera have not been the most striking pieie of colour in the landscape. Nor, we think, would the gorse, seen from some little distance, as it is here, present such a " knubbly " appearance, if we may be permitted to use a word which Mr. Byron has made classical in Our Boys. In spite of these slight defects, there can, we think, be no doubt that Mr. Brett's is the finest landscape of the year There is .a fine portrait by Watts of .Miss Dorothy Tennant, who was painted by Mr. Millais some years since, in his picture of " No or Yes," or " Yes or No," or one of those arrangements of negatives and affirmatives of which this artist is so fond.
Those who like Mr. Pettie's seventeenth-century portraits will, no doubt, be pleased with No. 272, "A Lady" of that date, but we cannot describe it at length. No. 265, "Easton Broad, Suffolk," by J. Aumonier, is a thoroughly well painted, unpretending landscape, a quiet, faithful transcript of one of Nature's most peaceful scenes. No. 266, " In Time of War," by Faed, is not without a certain quiet beauty, but Mr. Faed's work has been so much overrated that it is sure to command sufficient attention. No. 254, "Deserted," by R. Redgrave, is a most brilliant little landscape, noticeable for its bright sun and the care with which the heavy green foliage is rendered. The sentiment is the usual mawkish one, suggesting ruin and deser- tion to the poor country maiden, and the little landscape would have been decidedly improved by the omission of the figure and quotation appended to it in the catalogue. No. 289, " The Last Worshipper," by E. Benson, a picture of the semi- historical, semi-sentimental kind, of an Egyptian in whom has survived some tradition of the ancient religion of the land, prostrating himself in adoration before a head of the Sphinx. IT this is intended to represent the Sphinx near the Pyramids of Ghizeh, we should recommend Mr. Benson to go and look at it But we suppose it is an entirely imaginary picture, and as such has certainly the merit of an idea, which is more than can he said for many of the surrounding works. 307, " The Roman Campagna," by Otto Weber, is a clever landscape, carefully painted. No. 313, " The Spider and the Fly," by H. S. Marks, shows a young gallant consulting an old lawyer as to the best means of raising funds,—not one of Mr. Marks's best pictures, but as usual with him, carefully painted throughout, and the faces of the strangely assorted couple full of character. No. 337 is the worst Hook we have ever seen, and one which should by no means have been admitted into the Exhibition. It is a large picture of a lot of wild - fowl lying on the bank of a river, with a cottage in the background ; the- birds are enormous, and take up a quarter of the picture, but are not painted with any great care, and the landscape is coarse- and smudgy. No. 354, ".Date Palms and Bananas, near Cairo," by E. W. Cooke, is probably the finest piece of tree-drawing in the exhibition. 'There is no living English artist, as far as we know, who can render the character of a palm-tree as well as Mr. Cooke. 368, " High-level Bridge, Newcastle-on-Tyne," by John O'Connor, is a careful painting of a somewhat unpromising subject—the High-level Bridge, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, evening —and shows that beauty can be found even amongst the high factory chimneys, by those who know how to look for it. No.
374, " The Heir of the Manor," by P. R. Morris, is one of those humorous pictures for which Mr. Morris is becoming celebrated,— a very young child, toddling with wide, open eyes, up to a herd of deer in an English park, scarcely an incident worthy of immortality, perhaps. No. 379, "The Lass of Richmond Hill," Mr. Leslie's.
diploma-work, a wholesome English maiden seated upon a fallen tree in Richmond Park,—not quite so ethereal as Mr. Leslie's maidens
have since become, but bright and rosy. No. 403, " Burns's Auld Mare, Maggie," by R. Ansdell, R.A.,—one of the most unpleas- ing pictures of equine sentiment which we have ever seen, with nothing to redeem its ugliness. There is in No. 416 a correspond- ing picture, entitled, "His Grace the Duke of Rutland, K.G., on his shooting-pony, on his Devonshire moors, with two of his- keepers, Mr. Mansell and Mr. Charity." (The italics are our own.) We do not know whether his Grace or Sir Francis Grant
is responsible for the naming of this picture, but it is " excel- lent good fooling" in either case ; and the portrait of this poor gentleman, overweighted with possessive pronouns, cer- tainly deserves to rank high among the humorous pictures of the exhibition. No. 428 is a rather heavily painted but fine picture, by J. E. Hodgson, illustrative of Tennyson's " Break, break, break." " Their Haven under the Hill," the picture is called, and represents a harbour, with ships lying at anchor at sunset. On the opposite side of the room is a somewhat similar picture, by
Vicat Cole, No. 432, of "Arundel," which should be noticed' for its fine evening sky. No. 454, "The Street and Mosque of the Glasreeyah, Cairo " (unfinished), is the last picture on which Mr. Lewis, R.A., was engaged before his death, and shows no sign of failing power. Had it been finished, it would, we think, have been one of the finest of the series of colour-poems which we have had from his hand. No. 464. " A Reader," by Albert Moore, is a delicate female figure, in light dra- peries, with an open book in her hands. As we have said over and over again, Mr. Moore is the only artist of the present day who thoroughly understands the beauty of soft flowing raiment, and joins to this the most exquisite sense of delicate colour. " Christmas Eve," by Heywood Hardy, No. 464, is one the most complete and spirited of this artist's works. It represents a postman in his mail-cart making his way across a desolate high- road, in the teeth of snow and wind. The drawing of the horse is particularly good, and the whole picture tells its story thoroughly well. No. 489 shows Mr. Henry Moore at his worst. The sea has strength and freedom, it is true, but is here divested of all form and liquescence, and seems all muddled up together. The sinking boat (the picture is called "Loss of a Barque in Yarmouth Roads "), to jpdge from the angle at which the rigging descends, must be almost as broad as she is long, while the colour of the whole is that peculiar livid shade of grey- ish green, which Mr. Moore has painted so frequently. No. 509, by Albert Goodwin, A Baptism of Flowers," is a very truthful and beautiful record of an English wood in spring-time, the ground being covered with primroses and hyacinths. Mr. Goodwin has been doing very good work of late, and this landscape is, we think, the finest we have yet seen from his hand, and is no small triumph for a young painter. No. 503, by E. J. Poynter, R.A., " The Fortune-teller," is his diploma- work, but it is little more than a very elaborate life-study of a woman ; as such it is remarkable for all Mr. Poynter's skill in drawing the naked figure, and if the truth must be told, also for his unnatural colouring of flesh. No. 589, " Lazarus," by Briton Riviere, is the best work we have had from this artist since "Tommy's Dead." Mr. Riviere has not taken what we imagine to be the conventional view of the story, and painted Lazarus as an amiable-looking old man in picturesque raga, but has chosen instead to render him a kind of prodigal son, whose expression is one of sullen defiance, as he lies with his head resting upon his hands, too careless to disturb the dogs who are licking his sores. There is a fine dramatic touch in the picture, in indi- cating the presence of guests at the feast only by showing the sandals left at the threshold, and indeed in dramatic power this artist is scarcely ever wanting. We cannot call " Lazarus" a pleasant picture—no painting could be which treated frankly such a subject—but it is a very fine conception well worked out. The lean Eastern dogs are especially true to life, and must, we should think, have been studied from nature. Nb. 601, " Still Waters," is Mr. Fahey's landscape of last year, with the excep- tion of the love-torn maiden ; we cannot say that we like it better than we did then, but we dislike it less, for there is less to dislike. No. 614 is one of F. Goodall's Egyptian scenes, very bright in colour, but of hardly sufficient importance to deserve treat- ment on so large a scale. It is entitled, " The Water- carriers," and represents Egyptian women in blue robes fetch- ing water from the stream. No. 623, " Scene in Rome," by T. Ethofer, is the most brilliant piece of colouring in the Academy, and one of the cleverest street-scenes we remember. It is a group of figures variously engaged and costumed, at the foot of one of the great stone staircases with which Rome abounds. We suppose it is the work of an artist of the school of Fortuny, for its resemblance to that master is very striking. No. 640 is a group of muslin-clad young ladies in a wood, over- taken by a snow-storm. This is painted by G. H. Boughton, and is a sad contrast to some of his earlier work. Mr. Boughton apparently intends for the future to forswear nature altogether, and to have become intent on making a little world of his own.
We have omitted to mention in the proper place Nos. 574-576, a triptych, by T. M. Rooke, representing three scenes in the story of Ruth. These three small pictures are full of feel- ing and good painting, and should be noticed by every visitor to the Academy. They are, as far as we remem- ber, the only true pre-Raphaelite paintings in this year's Academy, in the sense of being an attempt to depict a historical scene as it might actually have occurred. The figures of Ruth and Boaz are full of grace and dignity, and the little bits of land- scape behind, with the gleaners, &c., natural and unaffected. Mr. Rooke, we believe, is a young artist, and we congratulate him
upon his success. Here we must conclude our notices of the Royal Academy for 1877, an exhibition which, we are grieved to say, is, on the whole, far below average merit.
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