Niue 3rts.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.
(Fourth Notice.) _ The new spirit which animates our art—that of seeking strong interest and pathos in the rich but latent resources of the life of the present age, is forcibly shown in this exhibition. Mr. Wallis's picture, which is the best, and Mr. Egg's, perhaps the second best in the collection, are both painted in this spirit. And various other artists—as Mr. O'Neil, Mr. Stone, Mr. Horsley, Mr. Rankley, Miss Turck,—work from the same feeling, with various success.
The dead stonebreaker of Mr. Wallis is a picture of the sacredness and solemnity which dwell in a human creature, however seared, and in death, however obscure. It is painted to express the thought which is thus worded in Carlyle's Sailor Besartus : "Hardly intreated brother ! for us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed : thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and, fighting our battles, wert so marred. For in thee too lay a God-created form, but it was not to be unfolded ; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labour ; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom." A pauper in an agricultural parish, working at his allotted task of stone-breaking, has passed from this world of "guar- dians of the poor" to another. There is nothing to show how he has died: his hammer has been plied up to the last moment, and, slipping from his horny hand, has at length left him, rather than he it. He is not a stunted or emaciated man, but a sturdy labourer; not "a mute in- glorious Milton," nor yet degraded, but a man whose life has been all hard work, honest work, and who has speculated upon little more recondite than where he should find the next job, and the next meal. In the grey sunset-shadow, his dead face, which the immor- tal spirit has left, looks familiar and peaceful ; yet it would hush you to look at, if you came upon it casually ; even the gliding pausing weasel stares upon him with its brilliant eye, as upon something at which it thought wonders. The well weighed emphasis, with which the painter has thought out and realized all these elements of his subject, is both note- worthy and admirable ; and equally so the judgment with which he has merged its painfulness in solemnity, by association with external nature —the bank under which the dead man lies, with its drooping oak-spray,
e dreamy blue darkness of the hill-line reflected in the silent river, the
en sky which over-canopies all. We rate the effort and the attain-
in this picture so high, that we care little to enlarge upon its execu-
e details. Some of these are very extraordinary—as the broken granite the foreground; others high in scope, but not quite perfectly given— the blue and the gold of hills and sky. Mr. Egg's picture may be re.properly termed painful than Mr. Wallis's; though he also has great discretion in deciding what to present, and what to with- hold, of his miserable theme. In three scenes he tells the story of an unfaithful wife discovered, and crushed to the ground by her dishonour; next, humbled, through grade after grade, even into the dust of the Adel- phi arches, and staring with lightless eyes at the mellow moonshine and the cold Thames ; while her daughters, their father now dead, gaze upon the same moon, which lights their evening prayer in a scantily furnished chamber. All is told with earnestness and vigour ; the prostrate figure of the wife in the first section being remarkably powerful, and the mild sweet glow of the moonlights at once lu- minous and tender in an uncommon degree. The thoughtful accu- racy with which the artist has modified these two views of the same moonlight seen under different conditions—a tinge of murky purple dis- colouring the sky over the housetops—should not be passed unnoticed; nor the many points of allusive incident and detail throughout—the card-building of the children shattered by their mother's fall, her volume of Balzae, the apple rotten at the core—the prints of the Expulsion from Paradise and " The Abandoned" of Stanfield—the portraits of dead father and lost mother transferred to the daughters' home of poverty— even the printing on the street-placards, " Victims," "A Cure for Love," " Excursion to Paris." Few persons could see this picture without re- specting the feeling and the power with which Mr. Egg has done it, whatever they might think of the subject as a thing to be done.
If Mr. Wallis and Mr. Egg have risen through the earnest spirit in which they have applied their art to sad realities of our own time, Mr. O'Neil has actually become a new man under the same influence. Last year few cases appeared more hopeless, in respect of limited faculties exer- cised and blunted upon conventional forms of art : this year we have a living man before us who can see, feel, and interpret too. "Eastward ho ! August 1857," represents a regiment embarking in the transport- ship for India ; the giving of the last kiss, and the last handshake, and the utterance of the last goodbye, to wives and children, sweethearts and parents. Many forms of human relationship and cf the bitterness of parting, many phases of emotion, truly conceived and delineated, make this a picture of incontestable interest and widest appeal. There would be much to describe in it, but every one reads it for himself. We should have liked to see something to individualize this as the Indian convoy of righteous retribution, something to typify the stern resentment, the thirst for vengeance aroused even in women's breasts by the history of their sisters' wrongs. But such an omission cannot perhaps be fairly advanced as any charge against the artist. Mr. O'Neil is not yet free from his hardness of touch and unloveliness of colour; but he has advanced considerably in these respects—hugely in all others. Mr. Stone is in similar case as regards feeling ; his " Missing Boat, Pas de Calais," bringing sensibly home to us the anguish, the heart-sunken foreboding, and the sickly gleams of hope, of the throng of fishermen and women who people the stormy shore to which one of their boats, with its freight of precious lives, has not returned. We heartily congratulate the artist upon the taste which he seems to be at last acquiring for a more bracing atmosphere of art; and we hope he will find yet within him some power of execution correla- tive with power of feeling. However this may prove, Mr. O'Neil and Mr. Stone declare themselves this year recruits in the ;links of truth, in preference to continuing veterans on the staff of fallacy.
It is not easy, at this advanced date, to say anything yet unsaid of the picture which all the world and his wife concur in proclaiming the pic- ture of the year; that strange obstinate boy of their's, True Taste, grunts that it is not, but he is always in his minority, and need not be attended to. Countless colloquies of seniors and juniors at morning call, dinner-party, and evening party, have had Mr. Frith's "Derby Day" for their theme; countless small change of conversation has been paid out of that betting-booth ; that thimble-rigging group, policeman and all ; that innocent youth who fancied himself fast, and a man of the world, till he found his pockets empty ; that acrobat group, with the wistful eyes of the little boy directed to the cold chicken and lobster-salad ; those aesthetic Germans who look upon the scene from the socio-philosophic point of view ; those men about town, and ladies from Belgravia ; that dame du demi-monde who finds no charm in the fortune which the gipsy offers to tell her ; those crowds, and racers, and jockeys, and cor- rect-card men, and grand stand, and swarms of holiday life. Why, the Academicians have had to fence the picture off with a barrier, as the race-course itself is fenced off from its multitudes of eager gazers : can fame be more visibly trumpeted ? Nor is the picture undeserving, in its way, of the excitement it creates. It is eminently truthful and lifelike ; crammed with easy cleverness, effervescing vivacity, pleasant play of sun and shadow, frivolity and seriousness, good hits, sparkling points, real portraiture of fact, action, and motion. Only it is not a great work. It is the picture of the year in the same sense as the Derby Day is the event of the year—to sight-seers and people in search of amusement. There is grave business going on meanwhile, and heart-joys and heart- aches, and life and death compass us on the right hand and the left, and don't create nearly so much fiz and fluster as a Derby Day; but they elicit deeper thoughts and higher faculties of human nature, and of art too. Mr. Frith is well entitled to his triumph; so is the owner of the winning-horse. And the crowd go home from the race, and find that it was no such great matter after all ; and the laudation of Mr. Frith sinks at last into silence, and it is sooner or later discovered that a clever pic- ture has been painted, evoking no powers higher than those of a quick eye, not deep, and a light hand, not great ; and no sympathies higher than those of curiosity and entertainment. However, we would not be mis- understood as in anywise grudging Mr. Frith his due and large meed of praise : this is a capital picture of what it professes to represent, and the materials, if not lofty, are difficult.
Mr. Hook constitutes himself, year after year, a public benefactor. He interests every class of people who look at pictures ; he delights them with a heartiness which few other painters can command; and whatever thoughts and affections he engages them in are thoroughly healthy and beneficial. His two rural pictures of this year rank with the most en- joyable which he has produced. Criticism certainly could find some
points to object to • but Mr. Hook makes the critic indulge himself with a charitable mood, which would rather " cover a multitude of sins," were they perceptible, than dilate upon one. The third picture, "The Coast-boy gathering Eggs," is simply the most delightful work, in the gallery, (we do not except even Mr. Lewis's " Inmate of the Hhareem,") and one of the most delightful ever painted. The open sunny freshness of the sea air, the fathomless liquidity of the sea-green, as spaikling as
crystal, and as deep as the zenith it reflects, the unnumbered families of sea-birds, settling, fluttering, screaming, or hatching, among the rocks, almost transport us to the scene itself. Mr. Cope sends one of his in- fantine subjects, " Upward Gazing," marked as usual by a certain depth of expression, a little lumbering ; and a Scotch angler and his lassie at " The Stepping-stones" of a mountain stream. There is much endea- vour and strength in this picture, and all the truth which Mr. Cope gets into his work is always got in a manly unconventional way : still, he lacks the frank unstudied charm which commands equal frankness of approval. Mr. Webster is unusually excellent in two of his three contributions—" Sunday Evening," and " Grace before Meat." The religious domesticity of both is genuine and unforced, the painting delicate and sweet in its subdued key : the illtimed pretty laughter of the little girl in " Sunday Evening" could hardly be better ex- pressed. " Nearing Home " is a very superior work by Mr. Luard. An Indian officer, still languid from his wounds, is returning to Eng- land, accompanied by his wife ; " Some of our English land-birds, settling on the ship, told us we were nearing home." The quiet stately composure of the officer, who lies outstretched on deck, his careless Eng- lish self-respect, and soldierly repose, are admirably given ; and there is an efficient unstilted directness about all that Mr. Luard does which makes him one of our most surely rising men. He should be cautious, however, to unite completeness with simplicity : a little harshness in the early stages of art, arising from the effort to complete, is soon more than compensated for by the power and resolute will it leaves in its wake. Mr. Luard's other picture, " The Girl I left behind me," has merits of the same class, though not conducing to quite so satisfactory a result. Of Mr. Robert Carrick, who has painted heretofore with truthful ear- nestness, we can say nothing in approval this year. " Weary Life," a country-girl contemplating the tired slumbers of a mountebank and his child, is vulgarly conceived and painted, untrue in effect, hot and coarse in colour, heavy in handling, with more pretence than real elaboration of detail. The subject is one of those which combine a good deal that is repulsive with some genuine appeal to the sympathies ; and, to be treated successfully, it must be done with mind as well as truth, and totally without parade. "Behind the Curtain," by Miss R. Solomon, is another exhibition of the troubles and affections of the mountebank, under a form more confessedly vulgar than Mr. Carrick's, and certainly true in its way; we incline to find it the less distasteful picture of the two.
Messrs. Clark, Halliday, Morris, and Hodgson, send a quartett of do- mestic pictures distinguished by quiet unexaggerated sentiment and faithful painting. " The Doctor's Visit," by Mr. Clark, is, however, less interesting in its distinctive details, and in no respect better, than his " Sick Child " of last year; and, high as its excellence of expression is, we find less satisfaction in that than regret at the tendency to self- repetition which it betrays. Mr. Halliday's subject is " The Blind Basket-maker with his first Child" ; his hand guided by his wife over the features of the infant which it is denied him to see. The inci- dent is touching and natural; the minor points of the treatment care- fully thought for; the painting forcible. Mr. Morris's "Peaceful Days" fulfils with delicate exactness the promise of its title. It is an old sol- dier, at peace with his conscience and the world, who dandies on his knee the little grand-daughter who has filled his battered helmet, now long useless, with primroses. Unaffectedly beautiful is the mild face of the scarred veteran who has waded through blood and death to this tran- quil cottage nook, and will lay down his old worn life whenever his Saviour may call him as cheerfully as he would long ago have laid it down for country and duty in the battle-field. Mr. Hodgson has ac- complished one of the most tender and difficult pieces of expression in the gallery; though we fear very few visitors can have noticed it, placed where the picture is on the staircase. It is the face of the widow, with her chubby boy ; the bluff fisherman tells her "He'll be his daddy over again." The wan smile, which has as much sorrow as pleasure in it, and may break next moment into sobs, is a triumph.
We must now quit the domestic pictures; not, however, without call- ing attention to the Scotch enjoyment of preaching, and Irish enjoy- ment of whiskey and devilment, in Mr. Harvey's " Sabbath in the Glen," and Mr. Nicola " Shebeen house"; the quaint humour of Mr. A. Cooper's corduroyed boy dolefully piping "Away with Melancholy "; the breadth of Mr. G. Lambdin's picture, " Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought," (an American contribution); and the truth, always genuine and sometimes vigorous, in the works of Messrs. Watson, E. Davis, Field, Hayllar, Emmerson, and Jerichau.
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