FINE ARTS.
PROUT'S VENICE, ENGRAVED BY LE KEUX.
Nusreaous as are the views of Venice, we never tire of repetitions of her sea-paved streets of palaces. We welcome any representation of " — the sea Cybele, fresh from ocean
Rising with her tiara of proud towers."
and the sunny brightness that gilds her fading glories,lighting up her beauty as when she was
" A ruler of the waters and her powers."
Venice has been and will always be a favourite subject with the painters, and its splendours have been reflected in the magic mirror of their canvass—cool and fresh RS in CANALETTI'S, clear and brilliant as in BuNINGTON'S, and steeped in a luminous glow of colour as in Traemes. TURNER paints her charms with hues of jewellery ; from the emerald wave rise her gemmed and burnished walls into a sapphire sky: in STANFIELD'S, they " fade into the light of common day." We shall shortly see how HARDING will embody them. How PROM' has painted them we have seen ; and-the shadow of his beautiful picture is now before us, in the elaborate line engraving of HENRY LE Kzux. It is one of PROUT'S most forcible and perfect paintings in water colours ; not like many of his works, a mere tinted drawing. Venice, however, is yet in too perfect a state for the broad and broken line of Pnorr's pencil, which traces best the crumbling surfaces and blunted outlines of Gothic ruins. He has, however, restrained the devastating tendency of his time-touching brush, and scattered fewer wrinkles that usual on the marble brow of fair Venice. He has roughed out bee features with a degree of finish unusual with him ; though neither the sharpness of BONINGTON'S outline nor the transparent warmth of Tunsua's colouring is here. That stately and rich old Moorish build- ing, the Ducal Palace, and the far-famed Bridge of Sighs—with which we seem almost as familiar as with the Tower and Traitor's Gate— the Place of St. Mark, with the lofty square tower, and the two gra- nite pillars ; " the winged lions of the marble piles" washed by the Adriatic, and haunted by flights of sea-fowl ; the gondolas, like floating hearses, contrasting with the bright colours of every other object, and especially the gaily-painted mooring-posts and the striped barge awn.. ings,—these are the objects represented in PROUT'S view. The scene is one whose:rare beauty alone would charm, even without the aid of those witcheries the associations of history, the fancy of the poet, and the fame of TITIAN have thrown round the ocean city. The execution of the plate, firm, clear, and finished as it is, deserves the highest praise from the admirers of line engraving. For our own part, we do not think this manner so well suited to Paotrr's style ; which being hard and stony in itself, takes a metallic coldness from the engraver's imitation ; while the picturesqueness of his man.. nerism is lost, and his crusty touch is exchanged for a wiry precision. LE KEUX has only followed the example of Doo, in NEWTON'S " Shy. lock and Jessica," and of HAI3IBACH, ill WILKIE'S " Parish Beadle ;" which in sled!, hardness surpass Pnour's " Venice." When will our engravers forsake this pedantic fondness for defeating the true end and aim of their art, by an ostentatious display of means ? The substance and colour of every object should alone determine the mode of imi- tating them : instead of which, we have one texture pervading all. We shall next have them printing on an enamel surface, like fashion- able cards,—indeed, we have seen such atrocities perpetrated in the case of etchings : that's the way to show off the engraver's line at the expense of the painter's feeling !
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