ART.
THE NEW GALLERY.
How far a symbolist painter, having painted his mystery, should mislay the key, is a nice question for the casuist. The resolution depends upon the public addressed. There are those, and the number of them is great, who, like the membere of the Browning Society on a famous occasion, resent an explanation furnished by the author of the work. This, they think, must needs be shallow and insufficient, for it comes under the sacred rubric that an artist cannot be conscious of all he means. This is the public that so modestly requires of a poet or painter that he leave things "to their imagination " (instead of presenting them by his own), that considers want of lucidity an evidence of thought, that revels in *hat is called " suggestive " treatment in writing, and before a picture must indulge a cow-like rumination of the platitudes of senti- ment. For the purposes of this public, the vaguer the intention of the artist, the richer will be the rumination, and a tog defined indibetroii of a meining WM interfere With that private operation. It is a public that has never yet been thoroughly
exploited; nothing would be too wild in collocation, and a canvas stocked with shoes and ships and sealing-wax, and cabbages and kings, would fill the columns of the news- papers with sonnets, and open the lips of church and chapel in solemn exposition. Then there is a meeker public that enjoys a certain amount of concealment, but likes to be met half-way ; the game of " I spy " bores and worries them if the thimble is not put on the mantelpiece. For the prouder sect a title is almost too much, for these it is too little ; and it is best to give them, at least, a reference to Rossetti ; their joy it is, book in hand, to ponder the junction of text and picture, the additions, omissions, variations. This, too, is a large public, and shades off insensibly into that largest which can do with a picture if it is an illustration of something in print.
M. Fernand Khnopff seems to waver in his appeal. Now he gives a title only, now a text, and again a reference ; and whether, in this business of symbolism, he is only the clever exploiter of a public, does not, as yet, quite conclusively appear. His talented fellow-countryman, M. Jan Van Beers, has exploited the photograph ; for an adaptable talent the symbol is no less easy to exploit, and for an artist the symbolic is almost as perilous and suspect a path as the photographic. But M. Khnopff most distinctly has talent. He draws finely, and some of his colour combinations are very beautiful, though in the work at the New Gallery the colour is conventional,—flesh being evaded. Above all he has invention in the design of his forms and disposition of his spaces. The human type is a little mumpish in feature and fishy of eye, and it is this, perhaps, which is at odds with the poetic subjects the painter affects. Bat when all is said, the work is interesting, and the directors of the New Gallery will do us a service in showing us more of it.
Mr. Burne-Jones sends a large cartoon for a mosaic to be put up in St. Paul's Church, Rome. The design is a very beautiful one, and in particular the invention of the tree behind the central figure, with its boughs that are half waves and half wood. The scheme of colour, too, is fine, except that the lily, with its pure white, starts out too much, besides fighting in its greater naturalism against the tree before mentioned. The figures, too, are brownish in effect and meagre for so large a kind of decoration, though finely designed in themselves and cunningly placed. The danger is that they may not tell when in position. The revival of mosaic for architectural decoration is an admirable move, and it will be interesting to see what will come of it when a modern takes it up. Its revivers are awake to the beauties of ancient work ; the simplicity of its treatment of form and colour, and the subtlety of surface, the play and coruscation obtained by a designed irregularity in setting the tesserae. But in their detestation for the type of mosaic produced at one period by attempting to reproduce oil-paintings, they are likely to be too timid in the range of effect they attack. If they will cast a glance at the modern painting, about which they are so nervous, they will find that the oil-painter of our time frequently paints in a mosaic method, and if they handle the limited colours of their tesserae with something of his skill in combination, they will be able to obtain the brightness and richness of colour-effect that the material is as capable of as is oil. The next great artist in mosaic is not unlikely to be a pointilliste. It is by such interplay of method that different arts are developed, and the only real limit on the use of a material lies in an artist's tact.
Many of the pictures in the present exhibition have been seen before. Among these an important place is given to Mr. Alma-Tadema's Hadrian in England. A picture like this is a capital crux for the student of painting. He is almost certain at one period of his study to admire it greatly. It is quite right that he should, for it has many obvious merits, and a greater painter than its author might well confess himself in- capable of producing it, even if he would. Its imitation of some of the facts about the object represented is extremely skilful, the nerve and patience of the execution are unsur- passed, the stagecraft is ingenious, the reinstatement of a past time is learned, and proves a certain imagination. And that is not all. The objects, taken piecemeal, are frequently pretty in themselves, and pleasing in colour. The bough of ivy in this picture, the bit of mosaic, the wooden tablet, and so forth, have charm as bits of still life. Where, then, does the misgiving come in that obstinately accompanies the recognition of these merits ? It is when one begins to look for the relation of part with part, and still more when one stands back and looks for the picture. Then one appreciates the difference between small imitation and large imitation,— or rather, that element which is not imitation in purpose, but which uses the imitations of things to build up a scheme of its own. The figures obsti- nately remain still-life studies put side by side; the things refuse to play with one another,—there is not the calling of colour to colour, the answering of form to form, which is the essence of great painting. There is thing by thing, pleasant colour by pleasant colour, but no breath to move and animate the whole.
Examples of a different art are to be found in Mr. Edward Stott's two pictures, The Bathers and Starlight. The first was once skied at the Academy, and one is glad to see it properly; the other has been here before. In these pictures there is no sense of laborious effort ; but in the first there is manifest a quick eye for the vital elements of a scene and a joy in sportive action. In the other there is the same assurance in the choice of an effect, as simple as it is poetic. The means of the artist do not absolutely keep pace with his intention, the eye has lapses of observation, and the gaps are filled with something too pretty, but the main thing, the picture, is grasped and held fast and presented.
Mr. Clausen has done such good work lately that it is a pity he sent an old school piece like his Labourers. Miss Flora Reid sends two charming little scenes ; Messrs. Buxton Knight and Lindner are worthy of themselves. Mr. Refitt-Oldfield and Mr. Arthur Tomson also deserve to be seen; and there is brightness in Mr. Leslie Thomson's work. There are some excellent qualities in Mr. Jacomb Hood's pictures. The drawing and character of his profile of Mr. Seymour Haden are admirable; but the slaty background and blue note in the signature are a curious mistake. The sketch of the Foundling choir of girls singing is a well-chosen motive, and Mr. Hood ought to make something of the de- lightful flutter of whites in this pyramid of aprons and caps and sheets of music. In the present sketch, there is a sus- picion of brownness in the colouring. In the balcony, there is a pastel by Mr. Reginald Hallward, which has a certain nail charm ; and Mr. Mowat Loudon sends a sketch for a child's portrait, in which child and background are indicated in blobs
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