ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[FIRST NOTICE.]
THE Royal Academy will open its doors on Monday next to the public, nearly a week later than usual. The exhibition differs little in character from what is ordinary, and is, upon the whole, an averagely good one. The Academicians and Associates are, if anything, stronger than usual in proportion to the outside contributors ; and the usual miscarriages of justice in the matter of selection and rejection of pictures are, if anything, more numerous than usual. It is not often, for instance, that two such popular favourites as Mr. Keeley Halswelle, the landscape-painter, and Mr. W. L. Wyllie, the painter of the Lower Thames, are rejected in the same year. (Mr. Wyllie writes, somewhat bitterly, that his picture was a rather imaginative one, and so he supposes they disliked it.) And amongst the sculptors, also, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Andre Brouillet, one of the most noted of French con- temporary artists, has been sent to the door, and (we hear from Paris) his astonishment and indignation knew no bounds. But all this is old news ; why should not the Club " do what they like with their own ?
Let us see what their " own " is in the way of pictures actually hung, and for the most part done by themselves. The first thing that strikes the eye on entering, for it faces us as we pass through the turnstiles eager for our annual pictorial surfeit, is the great gilt " Queen " who sits in the sculpture-room by aid of Mr. Gilbert's genius, over three times the size of life. Here she sits, with broad, ample folds of drapery swung round her, in an elaborate throne-chair, above which a crown is suspended, with a ball and sceptre and all other insignia of Royalty,—sumptuous, splendid, and powerful. The work is a great one—great not only in conception, but in achievement—one more proof that genius can transcend the commonplace and beautify the ordinary,—can do this and yet leave every essential fact un- touched and unidealised. Compare her Majesty as she appears on Mr. Boehm's Jubilee coinage, and as she is here in Mr. Gilbert's statue. Look also for demonstration of this artist's genius, at the mingling of delicacy and power in the work. Here sweep the broad folds of robes, which a giant might have planned; there on the winged figure which stands upon the orb of Empire, is work which would not disgrace the most delicate handicraft of the goldsmith. On the one hand, a living, and, to tell the truth, a not too beautiful human being sits in the chair of state ; but on the other, the person depicted looks, as she is, the Queen of half the world, of a- " Chain of Empires spread from dawn To set of sun."
This is a great achievement.
Sir Frederick Leighton this year sends one of his most important pictures, a picture of which it is perhaps almost sufficient criticism to say that it is such as a President of an Academy should send. It is academic, refined, unemo- tional, well drawn, carefully designed, elaborately executed,— a long, low picture of classical subject, " Andromache" (cap- tive after the fall of Troy), drawing water in the market-place. This picture is chiefly pleasant to us in its isolated groups, as, for instance, the group of women at the fountain on the right, and the whole would perhaps be better if woven as a tapestry than executed in the present medium. It is little use pointing out minute faults in such work as this. A criticism of this picture, to be worth having, demands considerably more space than is at our disposal ; but it is worth referring, as a curious instance of mistake in the scheme of colour, to the bright yellow of the woman's robe in the foreground, and the crimson fez of the man. These strike discordant notes, and injure greatly the colour effect of the picture. Exactly opposite to this hangs Sir John Millais's single contri- bution to the Gallery, a large Scotch landscape of reeds and pools and tufted grass, bordered in the distance by a belt of firs, above which appear blue mountains,—a slice of Nature, unsympathetic, but softly bright, and only wanting a little less of the painter and a little more of the man to render it as interesting as it is accomplished. Note, for an instance of carelessness very characteristic of Sir John's work at the present time, that there is a long sausage-shaped piece of ground in the middle of this work (as large as some of the smaller pictures, here), which has no gradation of colour, no detail of form; were it cut out, no human being could tell what it represented. And it is so much out of tone with the rest of the picture, that when the eye has once seen it, it is impossible to look elsewhere. For the rest, the beauty of the work is its brilliant and yet soft light, light filtering through the thin grey veil of cloud which overspreads the sky ; and the defect of the work is its lack of choice, its saying to the spectator,' I really did not care what I painted, and so took the first thing that come to hand.' The ' first thing' happened to arrange itself badly in parallel lines from foreground to zenith, and, consequently, in parallel lines we have it. Still, a fine picture; and one that perhaps no one being but Millais could have done so well, or would have done so (in a measure) badly.
One other great work must be mentioned here, and that with the more need as its painter has often been criticised in these columns on the side of harshness rather than appre- ciation. Mr. Vicat Cole has sent one of the best pictures of the year, and probably, taking into account the difficulties of the subject, the best picture of his life. This " Port of London" is worth a hundred of his " Artmdels," sunny cornfields, and sticky reaches of the Upper Thames,—it is full of life, of movement, of strength, of thought. The mere composition of the picture stamps it as the work of a master, and its execution is solid and, if we may use such an expression of technical skill, dignified. No sloppiness, no affectation, and no self-proclamation are to be found here. This is simply a picture of what the Thames—the commercial Thames—looked like in the year of grace 1887, and Englishmen, I think, will feel a little proud when they look at it and say,—' Well, it's not such a poor matter, after all, to belong to the country that owns that river, and to the nation who made and manned those ships.' Had the colour been as fine as the composition, had there been just a wee bit more transparency in the water and brilliancy in the sky, this picture might have competed not unworthily with Turner. Even as it is, we venture to predict that this will in a short time become a memorable picture, and one which will stand as a typical representation of the scene it depicts. And the reason is evident : it is true to fact, and at the same time true to Art, in that it gives not the fact only, but the fact with some touch of magnificence. It endows Nature, not in the richest way, with intense human emotion, with the keenest human feeling, but still with a good strong perception of the meaning and scope of the facts which it seeks to convey, and gives them their utmost significance and grandeur, not simply depicting them as they might appear to the eyes of a clear-seeing idiot.
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