Sint krio.
THE NEW WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY.
The most ingenious writer, supposing him to be an habitue of the Gallery, would be puzzled to say anything new about the Now Water- Colour Society this year. He has over and over again summed up the characteristics of a Bennett or a Haghe, a M'Kewan or a Whymper; and has hardly an alternative beyond either saying the same thing over again, or leaving the bare mention of the artist's name to represent his style and performances to the readers, for a vast number of whom this would amply suffice. Two demons haunt our water-colour painters and galleries—(we might say, the whole range of our art)—self-repetition; and self-indulgence. Self-repetition makes the hundredth work which a man dues of the same kind not only uninteresting because it is the hun- dredth, but actually worse than its predecessors; the artist's perceptions having become meanwhile utterly blunted, and his system of realization. mechanical in proportion. Self-indulgence allures him into regarding so much painted paper as simply the commercial equivalent of so many, guineas. The guineas come in, whatever level the thing has been painted up to, high or low. It is "quite good enough"—for sale and oblivion ; and is done, not for the art's sake, or the subject's sake, but to produce in the cheapest, and sell in the dearest, market The result is that England, with great traditions in her water-colour school, and with an amount of potential skill in that school beyond comparison with any other country, has at this moment scarcely a water-colour painter who is thoroughly an artist. To go on in its present path can only bring the school lower and lower; and we see little chance for it, save in the pos- sibility that our best men will practise water-colour painting concur- rently with oil, and with an equal aim at completeness. Otherwise, who is to keep up the school ? Who is to succeed—we do not say to such an unique and creative genius as Turner—but to Lewis, who' has already seceded from this branch of art, to David Cox, or to William Hunt ?
As usual, we find in this gallery of 333 pictures, many of them large and eye-catching, nothing to equal two little bits of landscape by Miss Fanny Steers. There is no extreme elaboration about them, no start- ling. originality of study : but every touch in them is the touch of an art- ist—of one in wham sight, feeling, and the longing to express both 1.9r. visible representation, are natively and inalienably blended. Deli- cious in warm and tender feeling, exquisite in glowing colour, and with that kind of finish which shows that all has-been done with enjoy-
ment and nothing as a task, these landscape glimpses should afford genuine delight to every unsophisticated taste. The quiet happiness of a warm afternoon, with the yellow sheep browzing the grass hard by the cottage-gate, is renewed in the " Cottage near Malvern Hills " ; in the "Showery Weather," the cheerful range over green fields and blue distance—all the colour in a plum-like bloom, and a couple of contented donkeys to come across, or a man and woman in repose under a hedge. Amid so many colleagues who paint their pictures " as a matter of business," Miss Steers stands out as an artist 'by vocation, in virtue of her liking what she treats sufficiently to give it her best, and of her very lovely feeling for colour, which makes her best always charming.
Mr. Bennett, as we have already intimated, is quite hiniself—in skill and pleasantness, as well as manner. His woodlands and forests may be left to themselves; but there are two studies of sea (49 and 244) entirely out of his usual range of subject, and so capitally grasped as to show that it is rather habit than necessary bias which limits him. The boiling breakers of the former sketch especially are excel- lent, and give more the look of the sea than anything else in the exhi- bition. Mr. Edmund Warren's beech-free " In the Forest of Dean" is his masterpiece as yet; full of effective strength and cleverness, and re- markable, among pictures in which the quality of relief has been particu- larly sought after, for its avoidance of consequent vulgarity. The che- quered sunbeams glance bravely along the thick-lying russet leaves of the old years, and the delicacies of representation in the ferns in light and shadow are very sweet. Other works by this painter proclaim his un- common ability, but stop so far short of beautiful or true colour as to be somewhat provoking. Mr. Sutcliffe has not sensibly improved upon last year ; but a man who studies so positively, and means so well, always is improving, in or out of sight. He has to guard against a certain raw- ness of colour, connected with his addiction to blue and yellow, and their respective tones of green, and against too sharp and detached a picking- out of lights. Few men, however, promise better. "Wensley, York- shire," is very nice and exact, with the grey eddying river which carries a broken bough rapidly down the stream. The " Study in Spring," and "Study in Winter, Adel Moor," are perhaps even better—singularly faithful and elaborate. The complicated ruddy hues of the leaves in which the block of stone in the latter is imbedded are an attempt suchas Mr. Sutcliffe should persevere in, aiming continually to attain greater breadth and richness, without a sacrifice of variety. The large view, " Mill at Wensley," is mainly an example of his weak points—the depth of the blue sky being represented by mere darkness and opacity, and the relations of colour, chiaroscuro, and atmosphere, being consider- ably dislocated. Looked upon as a thing achieved, this work can be of little service to Mr. Sutcliffe : but, if he will regard it as a compendium of deficiencies, honestly combated already, but not yet conquered, and will set himself to rectify each in its turn, it may prove valuable. Mr. Mapleatone, whose drawings will always repay inspection by their indi- viduality and largeness of sentiment, is more than usually fine this year, but, it must be confessed, more than usually founded upon Cox's style also. The " View in Surrey " is a conspicuous instance. The " View from Munstead Heath " has delicate fusing of hazy yel- low light in the distance, and very pleasant colour in the heather under this effect—a thing not to be accomplished without a true sense of colour. In the " Dolbadern Castle, from the Pass of Llanberris," the two opposing masses of hill—this orange-tinged in sunset, that blue in twilight shadow—meet majestically on the narrow winding road. Three painters who work upon similar principles and subjects are Messrs. Cook, Philp, and Mitchell. Were this the first time we had to praise them, we could praise them heartily and at length : but there is little to distinguish their present productions from those of former years, unless it be a decline in solid completion, which, if not checked at once, it may soon be too late to deprecate. Mr. Cook's "Gathering Sea- Weed, Morning after Squally Weather, Bosseney Bay, North Corn- wall," and "The Serpentine Rocks, Kynance Cove," and Mr. Philp's "Gull Rock at Mullion, Cornwall," may be singled out for encomium. Several agreeable views by the Secretary of the Society, Mr. Fahey, give him a good status among his brethren ; we do not recollect any pre- vious works which he has not here improved upon. In the very meri- torious drawing, " The Summer Bed of a Mountain Stream at the Foot of the Stye Head Pass, Wastdale," the stones, rounded and water-worn as they have a right to be, are still somewhat too lumpish. "The Val- ley of the Thames," by Mr. Pidgeon, is a drawing of about equal merit. Mr. Whymper, extremely prolific, is uncertain, but generally above me- diocrity. Some of his works are express imitations of Mr. Bennett, yet clever enough to have been done spontaneously ; " The Common O'er- grown with Fern," could scarcely be distinguished from its original. " The Home of the Sea-Fowl—the Bass Rock, Early Summer's Morn- ing "—has less skill of execution than some others ; but has been chosen with a true eye for the grand and picturesque, which invests it with a higher interest. The "Bay of 1:Tri, Lake of Lucerne," by Mr. Telbin, is soothing in its tone of purple grey, and looks true to the atmospheric effects of the country. In the way of architectural subjects, spite of Mr. Boys's cleverness, we find nothing so satisfactory as Mr. Penson's " Inner Court, St. Donat's, Glamorganshire," which is thoroughly unaffected and solid, and contrives to avoid barrenness of effect, though dealing only with such uniform material as the deep copperlike brown of the castle- walls in shade and light, and an upper glimpse of luminous orange in the afternoon sky. The figure-pieces are in even a more decided minority of number and merit than usual. Mr. Warren's "Song of the Georgian Maiden," from Moore's Light of the Harem, looks like an attempt to outdo Lewis, by combining with an equal multiplicity of brilliant objects a stronger general body of bright colour. The attempt is not successful, however ; the strength of colour degenerates into glare, without anything to control or neutralize the chaos; the most pleasant portions being those in which Lewis's tone is most nearly approached, such as the stand bearing fruits and vases. The "Georgian maiden" has a throat massive enough to sing half-a-dozen songs at a time. We prefer to this Mr. Warren's "Lingerer by the Sweet Nile," a camel and camel-driver at the ancient stream in the nocturnal mystery of moonlight. " The Vicar of Wake- field's Family-picture" shows decided advance in Mr. Kearney. The whole is well put together, presented with artistic competence, and in parts decidedly good. The back view of Moses's juvenile figure is sim- ply and nicely designed ; and the "limner who travelled the coun- try, and took likenesses for fifteen shillings a head," is a well-hit bucolic
Reynolds. Mrs. Primrose is in all the importance of sitting to the painter ; the Vicar has not quite got out of his pose yet. Olivia is un-
fortunately a shopgirl-looking chit, and Squire Thornhill ridiculously vulgar and grotesque. Of other artists identified with a similar line of subject, Mr. Absolon is wholly absent, Messrs. Mole and Lee in very shabby trim Mr. Tidey falls extremely fiat in his large " Field Dayy in the Last Century," but is somewhat better in the rustic damsel, " die_ ness." Mr. Corbould's only work of mark is " Noah—a Miracle-Play performed in the streets of Hull in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries." This bears exactly the same relation to real intensity of couleur locale, such as the French are masters ot, as Mr. Charles Kean's revival of Richard the Second bears to the authentic presence of the chivalrous age. It is meditevalism read up and painted up to stage require.. ments, and no more. Nor do we find much greater satisfaction in the jack-boots and plumed hats wherein Mr. Hagho luxuriates and stag- nates : we are tired of his guard-rooms and burgher-halls, and have long ago discovered them to be not only vapid in subject but mechanical though skilful in execution. These subjects are varied by one or two from Venice, in which the solemn and enchanted splendour of the inte- rior of St. Mark's, the theme of so many writers, is traduced into a compound of jalap and tinsel. Mr. Wehnert confines himself this year to works of topographical interest and minute dimensions, the fruit of an Italian tour, such as " The Ponte Vecchio and Lung' Arno, from the Palace of the 1Jffizj, Florence," which has a good deal of the defined precision and parcelled light and shade of Canaletto. A new exhibitor appears in the person of M. Morin, the French designer known in seve- ral of our illustrated books and journals. M. Morin is ragged and flimsy in style, and gives little evidence of solid study or thought of any kind; but he has the artistic genius of his nation, which can prank out any- thing in a certain show of picturesqueness and vivid activity. " Los Poisson Rouges—Marly en 1760 "—a kind of Boucher hash of senti- mentalism and dandyism, is flashy and-clever in no common degree ; and there is capital composition in the equestrian group, " Feeling the Pulse." We conclude by directing attention to a quaint and truthful study of " Pelicans " by Mr. Weigall, whose detail of form, action, and colour, a visit to the Zoological Gardens will verify.
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