Art

The Royal Academy

tfx the whole, the Royal Academy remains very inueh like itself, and the portraits of the King and Queen, which hold the places Of honour in the large room, are in the undisturbed' British tradition of the last hundred years. But a place is found for the new, and the hanging committee have wisely relegated to Gallery XI. whatever approaches to the latest movement. Sculpture is too often relegated to the end. So I begin by complaining that the central room devoted to it is ill arranged : life size studies set beside others on a larger male cause a confusion to the eye which could be avoided if the studies above life size were juxtaposed with those definitely below them. Sir W. Coseombe John's statue of the late Arch- deacon Buckley takes the eye at once : it is so like an arch-

deacon, so square, so upstanding ; it might have come straight out of a Trollope novel and it must surely have been a good portrait ; but it is hard to find beauty in its rectangular lines.

Across the room is a beautiful thing, a group in stone called Man and Woman, by Charles Wheeler. The, two truncated figures—headless and cut off above the knee are simplified to the last degree, but their curves fall into line dignified rhythm. Next them is the figure of a nude youth with eyes bandaged, by Mrs. Hilton Young (Lady Scott) : and here all is wrought in detail ; the tip-toe poise gives tension to the

muscles in the slender limbs, down which the eye goes sliding. This is the only large piece of statuary which develops the

sensuous charm of bronze as a material. In the lecture room Mr. Jagger has a big Garden Group which shows a naked nymph (a nymph of the Rubens type) straining up to be kissed by a squatted satyr. The whole has the individual character which Mr. Jagger never fails to give his work - -except, indeed, when he undertakes portraiture. There is a bead of Lord Reading by I • which might be. anybody. Subtlety is not in his line. Nobody should miss Mr. Richard Garbe's statuette in ivory of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, nor fail to note how the tall draped figure is bent to correspond to the :lave of an elephant's tusk.

Coming to the paintings, one meets at once a work of the late Ambrose McEvoy, 3Irs. Lawson, beautiful both in design and colour, having dignity as well as lightness and grace of

youth. Sir John Layery's pendant to it, Mrs. Beverley Ramilton. Lyon, hiss lightness; also, but eonveys a restless,

ultra-modern personality. One could praise rather his study of Mr. R. B. Jacomb, which suggests the weight and force of a magnate. Mr. Gerald Kelly, painting Mr. Keynes in robes as

a Doctor of Science, produces perhaps the best portrait in the show : all character is given, yet the head falls into its place as part of a pattern made ingeniously by arrangement of the highly-en:loured robes; and the dash of these colours is subdued.

Sir William Orpen is terribly dexterous, never more than in

his portrait of Mr. Oa-en awl how rich a quality he gets into his black. But one is thankful to find much more than his dexterity or his acuteness in After the Ball,

Picture of maskers seen by electric light, relieved against starlit sky this is work done in the gaiety of invention : rather hard, but there is a hard quality in his vision, as well as the freakish turn that gives to the masks a somewhat sinister suggestion.

Mr. I. M. Cohen sends a full length picture of Sir Austen (lamberlain in robes, about which it is natural to infer that head and figure were painted at different times as they do bot appear to correspond in scale.

Mr. Spencer Watson's Nude in the large room is one of the things on allich the eye rests with most pleasure ; so satisfying

in the line, and so sure in the intricate pattern vvhich the body makes, that 'one thinks of 'Itigres---- perhaps a little because ihe colour is not equal to the form. Mr. Harcourt's diploma pieture of Miss Anne Harcourt is also good to look at ; its (10;y-flowing curves suggest. a dance movement. la the .room of the moderns, Mr. Dod Procter's Morning lands out the girl, lying asleep, is very solidly presented in .yr tones ofgrey : all is treated with the broadest simplicity,

but the modelling of the face is both subtle and tender. It is interesting to Compare this with Mr. Ernest Procter's Sleep, painted in almost the same kind of grisaille, but much more academic and elaborate in design.

Mr. Harry Watson sends two studies or Riviera scenes-- Breakfast-lime, River and The Gardens, Rim, which really catch the elegance and the airy charm of these pleasant places.

No landscape stood out at one's first look through, though Mr. Sydney Lee's Village Bridge in the first room was a piece

of solid painting and rich quiet colour. Lcstox GREY.