ART.
WATER-COLOUR ART AT THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
THE Water-Colour portion of last winter's Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery was chiefly devoted to the works of the founders of that branch of Art ; this year, Sir Coutts Lindsay has, as his catalogue informs us, set aside the large gallery "to the display of the works of Living Masters." It would, perhaps, have been more instructive had it been possible to have admitted into this collection a few of the works of deceased artists—notably, Turner, Cox, and Walker—as at least half the drawings have distinct traces of the influence of one or the other of these men ; but even as it is, the collection is one of great use, as well as merit, and forms probably the most adequate exhibition of modern water-colour work which has yet been made. There are a few, both omissions and admissions, that would have been better for alteration ; and as has been before remarked by us and others, it is a mistake to hang amateur work side by aide with that of professional artists ; nor have the pictures always been selected with judgment,—as, for instance, in the examples of Fred Taylor and Birket Foster, the examples of whom are both bad pictures, and bad representations of the artists' style of painting. Small blemishes like these are, however, almost in- separable from any large collection, and it were ungracious to dwell upon them ; let us rather try to give some idea of what may be found here, confining our remarks in the present article entirely to the English Water-colours.
Following the order of the catalogue, we first come to Poynter's drawings, twelve in number. The majority of them are small, highly-finished landscapes, as a rule, rather blue in colour, and excessively minute in detail. Always careful and correct in drawing, the colouring of this artist has considerably improved of late, and though still cold, wanting glow and life, for dull days and grey skies it is peculiarly suitable ; and in most of these little pictures, there is a quiet harmony and truth which, at- tained as they are by most laborious and conscientious work, throw into the shade nearly all the rest of the landscape-painting in the Gallery. There is also in Mr. Poynter's work a breadth of subject and conception, which removes it far above the pretty little studies of sunlit rivers and village streets, to which many of our young artists turn their chief attention. It seems likely that the effect of Fred Walker's work is becoming positively injurious to many of the weaker artists who have followed in his foot- steps, and that they imagine, because they have been shown that there was a beauty in common every-day life and landscape, that therefore the beauty consisted in the common- ness of the scene, or the petty details of its treatment. There is an ancient proverb to the effect that "we can't all be King Solomons and Queens of Sheba," and there is no doubt that all artists are not qualified either to understand or paint the beauty which Walker saw ; and if not, no amount of imitation of his method will gain his effect. Very h propos to these remarks are two drawings here by J. Parker, called, "At Hurley, Bucks," and "Hurley Lock" (804 and 818). Any one looking either at the village street, which forms the subject of the one, or the rough wooden lock in the other, can see clearly how the artist has failed in the clear perception and grasp of his subject ; how, for instance, he has omitted all the depth of shadow which is so cha- racteristic of the rough beams of which the lock is composed, and smoothed everything down into a pretty pinky brown. It seems a very simple truth, that if an artist chooses a subject of little special attraction, his picture must depend for its interest on the faithful accuracy with which he has reproduced this every-day object or scene, and by so doing shown us that in it lay beauties hitherto unsuspected by us. It is not that detail for the sake of detail is wanted, but that perfectly accurate detail, when skilfully and earnestly painted, produces upon the spectator the same pleasurable effect which he gains from nearly every natural scene ; the pleasure which he has in the picture increases, as he finds first one thing and then another which he would have found in nature. There are two drawings by E. G. Gregory here, Nos. 802 and 805, both fanciful scenes on board-ship. The two elements of merit which this young artist possesses in perhaps the highest degree of any English artist, strength of colour and daring originality of concep- tion, are strongly present here, but his usual shortcomings are still more marked. The drawing of the nude limbs of the "Pet of the Crew" is a wonder of ugliness, if not actual deformity; and so are the legs of the Norse pirate, who is reefing the sail in the second picture. They are not only ugly, but wilfully hideous, hideous apparently of malice aforethought, and absolutely de- structive of all the beauty of the rest of the picture. But we look round these walls in vain for any other figure-painting which has the power (and to use a Yankee word) " grit " of Mr. Gregory's. Right or wrong, his pictures are alive, have a definite meaning and interest, and take one quite out of the atmosphere of the studio and the draped model. If we wanted to convince our readers of this, once for all, we should take them to the other end of the room, and show Mr. Linton's Middle-age "confections." "The Lover's Disguise," "Man in Armour," "1798," "Washing the Beggars' Feet on Maunday Thursday," and so on, Nos. 1038 et seq. Take any one of them as an example, and compare it with Gregory's Work. The colour is not bad, rather dirty perhaps, but still harmonious, and occasionally rich ; the figures are fairly well drawn, with perhaps a little general elongation of the limbs.; the subjects all afford opportunity for picturesque and romantic treatment, and the " properties " are correct and well painted. Alto- gether, Mr. Linton is beyond the average of our figure-painters, nor would we wish to deny his ability ; but he has the defect of nineteen-twentieths of English figure-painters,—he is "never possessed by his subject." His works, however we may admire their ability, tell us nothing, except that the artist is a clever and industrious painter ; they never allow us to lose sight of the artist altogether. Now this is the very first essential, and this it is which the French understand so well in painting, acting, and literature ; and as I said before, this is the secret of the interest which all Gregory's works possess, irrespective of other merits and draw- backs.
Let us turn to work of a very different kind, also by one of our younger artists. This is No. 814, "Lord Foppington's Levee," by A. C. Gow. This is a very carefully-studied composition of about a dozen figures, the drawing and painting being both very good. The colour is, perhaps, a little weak, and the whole effect somewhat too smooth ; but there is great variety of attitude and expression amongst the crowd of Lord Foppington's dependents, and the picture has evidently been thoroughly thought out. We confess that to us there seems to be rather a waste of good work, owing to the choice of such a subject. We are not sure that the interest is sufficient to sustain the execution ; but as an example of the dress and manners of a bygone time, it may have its sufficient motive ; in any case, those who care for clever genre painting could hardly have a better example. Close to this are bad examples of Millais' (825), Alma Tadema (830), F. Powell (828), and Clara Montalba (827). All these drawings are especially unfortunate specimens of the artists, and would have been better omitted. E. Backman (829) sends a clever study of "Charity- Girls at St. Paul's," but heads without bodies do not interest one so much as the usual subjects of this artist, who is seen at his best in his clever designs for decorations, of which 938, "North- Country Wrestling," is a fair, though not first-rate example.
E. Brewtnall's "Called before the Curtain" is to be noticed more for its promise than its actual achievement, its chief defect being, we should say, a certain coarseness of colouring and forced style of composition. H. Macallum sends two pictures, 852 and 853, examples of his earlier and later style. Little as we care for this artist's works, we must say that we much prefer his present to his former style ; indeed, No. 852, "Return of the Beer Fleet," is a pretty picture, with the usual reddish-brown boats and shining yellow-and-green sea. The "Beer Fleet," as a matter of fact, are not half so picturesque, the boats being a dull black, and having small iron bow-sprits, instead of these rough wooden ones ; but the picture would be as pretty by any other name, so we need not mind such small inaccuracies. Basil Bradley sends four large drawings of oxen, hounds, and horses. All of these works are carefully drawn and well composed, but the colouring of them is, in our eyes, eminently disagreeable and unnatural. The most crude, raw yellows, reddish browns, and greens are used, and in none of the pictures does there seem to be an atom of shade, or a place where the eye can rest for a moment from the prevailing dazzle. Especially is this the case in No. 861, "Oxen Ploughing, Sussex," where the oxen are of a staring, raw-beef hue, which is positively distressing to the eye.
To turn to Joseph Knight's "Morass," which hangs next to the above picture, is a positive relief, and its sombre hues of moor and evening have considerable truth ; the whole effect, however, is, as in almost all Knight's work, spoilt by a woolliness of tex- ture,—a fault which this artist carries to excess.
H. S. Hine sends one of his best works, No. 865, "On the Downs near Lewes," exhibited some years since at the Insti- tute. Perhaps no living painter has a truer perception than this artist, of the beauty of those swelling lines of cliff which encircle the east coast of England, though we think hehardly gives the grandeur and desolation which are among the chief character- istics of the Sussex Downs.
No. 873, "Waves by Moonlight," by Arthur Severn. This is in some ways a very beautiful picture of a rough sea breaking on shore. Let us take its merits first. It is nice in colour, being of a rich blue, very skilfully managed and gradated ; it has a certain amount of dreamy, poetic beauty, and the lines of curvature of the breaking wave are very finely and truly drawn. Its great fault seems to us to be the drawing of the waves which lie imme- diately behind the great breaker. They are not inshore waves at all, being much too full of motion and far too much broken in line ; if any one will take the trouble to compare them with the waves in F. Powell's "Grey Day at Sea" (No. 828), he will dis- cover this for himself ; and the second great fault is the relative darkness of the foam, which we do not hesitate to say is impos- sible. Any one who has watched a rough sea, even on the darkest night, must have observed the peculiar manner in which the foam seems to retain its whiteness, even amidst surrounding obscurity, and of course, this would be much more the case under bright moonlight.
A. B. Donaldson (876), "The Walls of Nuremberg ;" a very poetical and pleasing little drawing ; the red roofs and grey stone walls are perhaps a rather unnaturally crimson and blue in tone, but the drawing is good, and the vista of the long walk very per- fectly rendered. Indeed, this drawing has in a high degree the one merit which a landscape or architectural picture should possess. It is a faithful and adequate record of a beautiful place.
Samuel Palmer sends several works, and though none of them are of his finest quality, they are all interesting and, to our minds, beautiful. He is an artist who reflects upon paper more of the spirit of Keats, than any opinions or influences of the present day. His work belongs to a past generation, one where he was over- shadowed by the glory of Turner, on the one hand, and buried beneath the rough naturalism of Cox and Be Wint, on the other. In his works may be seen the last fading rays of the classical ideal of landscape, the remembrance of the Grand School. H. Moore sends five small examples, all good, the most interesting being Nos. 899 and 905, both landscapes, and both chiefly studies of sky and cloud. None of our living painters can excel Mr. Moore in depicting the freshness of nature, there is a thorough out-of- doors look about all his work, and some of his rainy skies approach more nearly to the work of David Cox than any other artist has approached as yet. The name of F. W. Barton will be strange to many of our readers, as it is some years since this artist exhi- bited ; he having retired from the Old Water-Colour Society (of which he was President), at the same time as, and we believe in consequence of, Mr. Burne Jones's resignation. In the technique of water-colours this artist has never been surpassed, and the four pictures he exhibits here are all excessively delicate pieces of colouring, executed with the greatest skill. His great fault has always seemed to us a mistaken sense of the proportion between means and end. In manner his pictures could hardly be found fault with, in matter they could hardly be praised. There was a time when beautiful, languishing faces were supposed to constitute a sufficient subject for Art,—when "Books of Beauty" were supposed to interest. Well, Burton, it seems to us, should have lived in those days, for his pictures are simply the apotheosis of such a creed, though we are bound to. say that they are free from the insipidity and mawkishness of most of such productions. As far as we know, the artist made only one noteworthy attempt at a higher class of subject, and this is in this Gallery, and is entitled, "The Meeting on the Turret Stairs." It represents a mail-clad knight kissing vehemently the blue sleeve of a lady who is passing him, on her way up the turret stairs. The action and sentiment are absurd enough,—as the lady is evidently only too willing that the knight should kiss her fair face, and the colouring is unpleasant, as half the picture is taken up with the lady's violently blue dress, which is of a singularly disagree- able hue, very much that of the substance washerwomen used to put in their water, to make "the things a good colour." This work, if we remember rightly, was done some ten years ago, and shows very strongly the influence of Barne Jones and the Pre- Raphaelite School.
Alfred and George Fripp are both survivals of the old school of what is sometimes called by its admirers pure water-colour paint- ing, perhaps because the effect depends more upon the use of pure water than anything else, the picture being washed down and sponged out and washed in again any number of times, till
the requisite softness and gradation are obtained. Alfred Fripp's drawings are not deserving of particular mention, apart from their skill of execution, as they mostly consist of what may be -described as sweetmeat-box subjects, treated in a thinly pretty manner. George Fripp, however, is a much more talented artist, perhaps the most talented of this school. His great strength has always appeared to us to lie in his cliff and rock drawing, but 'there is in the examples here (972-980) no quite first-rate specimen of his work. Boyce's pictures take us back into the most typical work of the modern school. The delicacy obtained
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