ART.
MR. ALFRED HUNT'S PAINTINGS.
AT the rooms of the Fine Art Society,* there is being held at the present time an exhibition of pictures and water-colour drawings by Mr. Alfred Hunt, which we can strongly recom- mend to the' attention of those amongst our readers who care for landscape art. It has been our province more than once to speak of this painter's work, and to remark upon the narrow eclecticism which has prevented the Royal Academy from recognising its merit. And we should be glad that this collec- tion had been made by the Fine Art Society, were it only for the reason that it is likely to give the public in general a fairer notion of the beauty and significance of this artist's painting, and in all probability to react upon the councils of Burlington House, and pave the way for Mr. Hunt's being made an "Associate."
The landscape painters of England at the present day (of course, we speak only of those whose work appears to us to be of real importance) may almost be numbered on the ten fingers, —Hook, Brett, and Henry Moore, all more concerned with sea than land ; Albert Goodwin, Boyce, and North (chiefly water- colour painters), Graham and Davis, wedded to Highland cattle and Highland mist, and perhaps Alfred Parsons and Keeley
• 148 New Bond Street.
Halswelle, to complete the number. Who is there to be added to. this list, except Mr. Alfred Hunt, whom for the moment we will: leave out of the account? Mr. Vicat Cole, with his conventional prettiness of arrangement, or Mr. MacWhirter, "hurling tem- pestuous glories o'er the scene," like (and unlike) a modern Tintoretto P The smooth, meaningless sweetness of the first's, and the coarse, vain-glorious audacity of the second's painting,, are equally alien to us. And behind these come other spirits whom we need not name in detail,—painters who give rough im- pressions of Nature, like Colin Hunter and Macallum ; or fiddle. exquisitely with little bits of it, like Mrs. Allingham and Birket Foster ; or use it to exhibit their mastery of tone, like Mr. Mark Fisher ; or as a background to their humanity, like Mr. Mac- beth; or, in short, in one way or another shirk the difficulties or narrow the range of landscape.
It is Mr. Alfred Hunt's great, perhaps his chief, praise, that he does none of these things,—that he aims only at perfection,. and at the widest and fullest perfection which he can conceive.. He has been called an imitator of Turner, and the accusation,. though false, has, like many another false accusation, a ground- work of truth. He is an imitator of Turner, in so far as, being. a great admirer of that painter's genius, he chooses to work upon. the same lines as his predecessor. But the resemblance is entirely one of similarity of aim, and by no means extends to similarity of detail. Hundreds of little mannerisms and peculiarities which. Mr. Hunt might have easily introduced, had he really wished to. imitate the form of Turner's work, are entirely absent from his painting. It is the spirit alone in which the likeness consists,. the general idea of the manner in which a landscape should be treated, and the scope and manner of subject which should be chosen.
But here we come to a great difference between the two. artists, a difference which is unconnected with the technical superiority of the earlier master. On looking at all carefully at Mr. Hunt's work, especially where many examples can, as- in this gallery, be seen together, one becomes aware of a deficiency for which it is at first somewhat hard to account.. This defect hardly seems to be connected with any special picture, but to be in some ways spread over the whole collection. The pictures seem to be like and yet unlike those of Turner,-- essentially unlike, as they are essentially like. The truth is, that they lack that fibre of feeling and love for humanity which formed perhaps the greatest glory of Turner's work,—a glory never more manifest than when the love turned, as it did fre- quently in his later life, to scorn or indignation. Whatever was the subject or the manner of Turner's work, the one thing that it- never was and never could be was cold or motiveless. On the contrary, the motive was so powerful that it frequently overrode the execution, magnificent as that was, and led. the artist into- exaggerations of all kinds. It is this which is so wanting in Mr. Hunt's work. His perfection is cold, his beauty is meaning- less, his Eden has no serpent in it, he cannot conceive of an Eden which should have. With great delicacy of hand, with a fine percep- tion of colour, with a spirit which is sensitive, if it be not soaring,. and a mind which is cultivated, if not acute, with no grain of coarseness in his intellect, and no trace of indolence or hurry in his workmanship, he yet leaves us, as, to the best of our belief,. he leaves all admirers of his work, absolutely unmoved by its beauty. Theie is no trace (in the vast majority of the works) of Mr. Hunt's having .been anything more than a passive agent in their production. Cloud forms and rock forms, the flutter of the foliage and the falling of water, mist and sunshine, light and shadow, seem to have. filtered through his mind, to have been arranged in a certain manner by that mind, coldly and calmly, and so- set down. Looked at carefully, it will be seen that these pictures are, with all their merits, as little truly imaginative as- they are simply realistic. It is not imagination which has altered them ; it is deliberate, methodical intention. On looking_ at Mr. Hunt's work, one never feels tempted to say,—" On such a day, at such an hour, that place looked like that." Nor does one wish to say,—" I don't care whether that place ever existed,. or not, whether that effect is possible, or not; for I see what the painter meant, and that is true."
We have probably dwelt so long upon this defect of Mr. Hunt's as to give our readers a somewhat false idea of proportion, but it is only this which has prevented the painter in question. from being a great artist. There is in his painting much of Turner, but almost more of Ruskin; he has no grip upon humanity, or landscape as affected by humanity ; ha has-- -never dared to "let the horses go," as Kingsley puts it. Something of the restraint of Oxford feeling hangs over the work, something of what his gentle panegyrist, Mrs. E. W. 'Gorse, calls "the scholarly and literary vein coincident with this passion of painting." All the pictures here are interesting, the oils, perhaps, more so than the water-colours, as showing more clearly the limita- tions of the painter's art. The picture of Whitby at sunset is, taking it altogether, the finest, because it attempts to render, and renders with very considerable success, an effect of intense beauty and intense difficulty. Knowing the effect as seen in this place well, the present writer can speak on the matter of fact wiih considerable certainty. The picture, too, is beautiful, and on the whole faithful in detail, and shows a fondness for -the thing painted and a certain energy in its presentation rather rare in Mr. Hunt's work. The same remarks as to motive and beauty refer to the very dissimilar composition called "Unto this Last," which is a picture of the old church and churchyard at Whitby in the evening. As we said of this picture when it was first exhibited at the Academy, this is a beautiful work, im- pressive without being morbid, and sad without being dreary. It is essentially true to the character of the place it de- picts, and true also to the sentiment of its title. After these we should be inclined to place the fine picture of "De- bateable Land," which hangs in the centre of the gallery. It is full of delicate drawing of the distance of a flat country by the sea, of the most varied and brilliant colour, and has a touch of desolation in its beauty in harmony with the title.
The "Summer Days for Me," which was, if we mistake not, painted for Mr. Ruskin, and at all events altered (in the sky) at his suggestion, is a somewhat annoying picture. It has many merits—note especially the brightness and clearness of the atmosphere—but there is a certain monotony and tameness about the whole work, and the sky is poor and weak. The "Leafy June," which was in the Academy about five years ago, is perhaps the most delicate of all the artist's larger paintings, and leaves nothing to be desired, except a little extra sharpness here and there, a little less photographic-like impartiality of finish ; even a little error might have improved it. In conclusion, we must say of Mr. Hunt's work that its merits are such as to demand for it a more public recognition than it has yet obtained. Its faults are more faults of the artist's temperament than technical deficiencies, the greatest of these last being that the painting smacks too much of over-elaboration in the studio.
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