ART.
THE SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER-COLOURS. Tars exhibition of finished drawings hardly fulfils the expectations which the last winter exhibition of sketches would be likely to raise. Indeed, in many cases, the sketches differ only in name from completed work, and in some others completion has tended rather to the weakening than the improval of the pictures.
The works of Naftel, Collingwood Smith, and David Cox, jun. (son of the celebrated artist) are examples of this latter peculiarity. There is in their painting ability of various kinds, but it is ability which only pleases in a brief and professedly slight rendering of nature, and the shortcomings of which are painfully evident in all finished work. David Cox, jun., for instance, will give you in a few hours' sketch a vivid, if a somewhat coarse impression of a country scene, as looked at by a mind perfectly subdued to one method of artistic observation ; but let him attempt to finish his sketch, and he practically attempts an Impossibility, for all true finish, as Ruskin has long since explained, is but "added fact," and it is impossible to add facts to a sketch whose very existence is due to a falsifying of them for artistic purposes. For instance, if an artist thinks it right to treat trees as con- fused masses, he cannot finish them, because be cannot add details of stem, or branch, or foliage, without altering his scheme of treatment. And so it is that Cox's rough sketches of fresh blue skies, with white clouds, and a few trees tossing about in the wind, may win admiration from some people for their freshness and rough picturesqueness, but directly the attempt is made to elaborate them into finished pictures, the falsehood of detail becomes painfully apparent, and the work therefore fails. The same may be said of Collingwood Smith ; he is a sketcher pure and simple, and his sketches are clever and bright, and one does not much perceive the suggested untruth ; but directly the work is elaborated we recognise at once that Nature's not at all like this, and that the painting is simply a feat of manual dexterity, uninformed by real knowledge. Such reasons, amongst many others, account for the finished work of many artists being less impressive than their sketches ; and with this short preamble, we turn to the exhibition before us. The first picture in the gallery is by Thorne Waite, a young painter who has already made himself some name by his delineation of rustic maidens engaged in various picturesque occupations, and has here six pictures, all pretty and all clever. Indeed, for a sort of tableau-vivant rendering of agricultural and peasant life Mr. Thorne Waite is facile princeps, and has in addi- tion a bright, pleasant method of colouring very attractive to the average young " lady." To real life, his works bear almost as much likeness as a Chelsea china shepherdess bears to the peasant of reality,—but that, after all, does not matter. We do not want to be shown how things and people really are ; they might wound our delicate nineteenth-century susceptibilities, so we recommend all visitors to this gallery to examine for themselves Nos. 1, 82, 97, 128, 152, 226. Let us pass to No. 9, by H. Stacey Marks. This is the only figure-painting the artist sends,—a middle-aged man and youth walking side by side, the young one engaged in reading "a woeful ballad made to his mistress' eyebrow." The dress is mediaeval, the tone of the picture quiet, and the figures and faces, if somewhat stiff, are still instinct with life and a certain individuality, which Mr. Marks generally contrives to pourtray. Not exactly art, and not exactly nature, this painter's works occupy a place of their own, in that queer, debateable land in which life is a series of comic incidents, or affords opportuni- ties for quaint representation. Mr. Marks is one of those artists who, starting with high, if not the highest promise, has never advanced a single step beyond it, and paints no better to-day than when he first roused Academic admiration seventeen years ago. His pictures always seem to us something like Dickens's books ; they say,—" Come and laugh with me at these people I'll show you ;" but the laughter leads to nothing, and leaves us just where we were before. The two small land- scapes by the same painter in this gallery are minutely faithful to quiet effects of-nature, and could hardly be excelled for thorough- ness of execution. No. 14, " Whitby Harbour : the ' Crazy Jane' in her last Berth," by Alfred W. Hunt, is another view of Whitby, inferior, however, to those which were in the winter exhibition, though somewhat larger in size and more ambitious in subject. The same inability to paint more than one phase of nature which holds so many of our painters powerless, except for infinite repetition, seems to be coming over Mr. Hunt's work. He seldom now cares to paint anything away from Whitby, or except in that atmosphere of misty beauty which envelopes like a cloud his water-work. No. 15, " Ilfracombe " (before the improvements ?) by Alfred Goodwin, is a clever little sketch, full of true feeling for the beauty of colour and cloud-shadow on the sea of Devonshire, but painted with a coarseness of touch which appears to us to resemble wilful negligence rather than lack of ability. Nos. 21 and 22 are both good, the one a sea- scape, by Francis Powell ; the other a mountain scene, by H. Moore. No. 30, " A Hunting Morning,—they're all coming !" by Fred Taylor, is a notable instance of how unlike anything in the world a famous artist's work can be. No. 39, by Tom Lloyd, is pretty and interesting. No.42, by George Boyce, "Ancient Tithe- barn and Farm Buildings, near Bradford-on-Avon, west view," is one of the ugliest subjects possible, painted as well as it is possible to paint. Why Mr. Boyce, who used to feel so keenly the beauty of colour, has lost himself in this slough of ugliness we cannot understand ; however, we will pray for his ultimate rescue.. No. 68, "View in Rome," by Arthur Glennie, is a careful, pains- staking piece of work. No. 72, " An Ancestor," by Carl Haag,. is one of the most extraordinary specimens of misplaced skill and wasted labour that we have ever seen. That an artist of such power could paint such a picture seems to us perfectly pitiable- No. 73, " Unlicensed Hawkers," by Edwin Buckman, is full of ability, but it is not a pleasant picture. The bronze gold back- ground is not suitable to the crude, somewhat coarse method of colouring; and in places, as, for instance, in the basket of toy-balls, the colouring is positively distressing to the eye in its harshness and want of gradation. The figures are well drawn, and full of character, and the work would have made a fine woodcat. No. 90, " Lady Macbeth," is a liver-coloured woman advancing towards the spectator from behind two dirt-coloured curtains, and may be fitly recommended to any one who admires what Mr. Ruskin not inaptly terms " the School of Clay." It is really an insult to an old-established exhibition to send a work of such little meaning and such insolently coarse painting, and it is the more to be regretted, as the artist (Mr. A. H. Marsh) is by no means destitute of ability. No. 114, " Going to Bed," by E. K. Johnson, is a pretty . piece of domestic sentiment, laboriously worked out. It represents a nurse carrying a child into its bed- room (the bed, if we remember rightly, may be seen through the open door). The nurse's dress is as neat as possible, the child's face• rosy and clean, and its dear little curls of a bright yellow colour altogether this is a work of high art, and will be very popular. No. 121, "A New Purchase," by Birket Forster ; one of the most labori- ous and skilful interiors that we have ever seen painted in water- colours. It represents an old-curiosity and china-shop, with the owner engaged in examining the mark on a delft dish, "recently purchased." The painting of each individual piece of china or- pottery is most masterly, and the whole picture as a specimen of handiwork clever in the extreme. No. 125, " Come on, Come- Along," by Otto Weber, is the finished study for the large Academy picture of the same name. It suffers, as does the oil-painting, from an excessive purple tinge over the sky, but the cattle are beautifully drawn. Mrs. Allingham sends several small works, all of them full of beauty,. but of most excessively minute size, the largest being No_ 265, "London Flowers," a flower-girl sitting in front of the railing in St. James's Park, with a little girl beside her. This picture is pretty, perhaps even beautiful, but it is so on account of its beautiful flower and leaf drawing, and not because of the- figures, which are tame and insipid ; nor is the work to be com- pared for feeling with the one of last year of the old pensioner's garden at Chelsea. In fact, it has missed its point, is unreal and affected, and only just escapes vulgarity of sentiment. Compare, however, with this the very masterly study of " Hollyhocks' (253), by the same artist. Alma Tadema has a good single figure, lying prone on a marble seat, thoroughly clever, if somewhat slighter in work than is usual with him. George Fripp is as refined and delicate in his grey skies and yellow fields as ever ; Lamont, Gilbert, Duncan, and Smallfield are good in their several ways;. and R. W. Macbeth has a little picture of a lady coming through the snow, laden with presents for the children, which is pleasant and original in treatment.
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