ART.
ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER- COLOURS.
Tux exhibition at the Royal Society in Water-Colours open to the public this week, is, we regret to say, a very indifferent one, and falls distinctly below the usual level of the Society's shows. It is an ungracious task to find fault with any considerable quan- tity of work which has been honestly done to the best of the artists' ability, and we shall not in this article attempt to point out in detail the causes to which the comparative inferiority of the present exhibition is due. Nor, indeed, is it necessary, for they lie upon the surface, and those who " run may read " them. One thing, however, is quite evident,—that this Society should change its name, and call itself the " Society of • Land- scape Painters in Water-colours," for practically there is no figure-work in the whole exhibition. We confess that this is a little irritating, that it is annoying to us, to find a large body of men honoured with the Royal diploma, and possessing a numerous and influential clienAle, whose thoughts and feelings seem almost wholly bounded by the trees, the meadows, and the sky. There must be something " rotten in the state " of any artistic " Denmark " which refuses to find motives for its work in the life, either joyful or sorrowful, elevated or sordid, of the world around it. Nothing is more certain than that picturesque little bits of scenery, and pretty little dresses and mob-caps, are not the raison d'gtre of great pictures. Nothing is more certain than that the artist, —if he be an artist at all, — must feel more and not less than those amongst whom ho lives ; and that when his work is fitting mainly for the chromo-lithographer, or the pub- lisher of Christmas Cards, it will cease to be work which is in the true sense worthy of the doing. "Making stone dolls," as the great statesman said, " is in itself a somewhat trivial occupation ;" and staining paper or canvas with blobs of paint, is open to the same condemnation, and may be dismissed with equal contempt, unless it be that the man who carves a statue, or paints a picture, puts into it something of that ardour, that energy, and that love, by which the work of the world is carried on. The language of art has this strange peculiarity, that though it is most fitly applied to every-day matters, yet it describes them in its own terms, and affords us the means of expressing those qualities of the subject, for which our ordinary language has no equivalent words. The whole difference between base and noble realistic art is this,—that the former shows us the world and its doings as it might be seen by the eyes of a brute, or the lens of a camera ; and the second shows it as it is seen by those who can grasp its finer threads of meaning, and sympathise alike with its joys and sorrows.
Let us to the gallery. Almost the best sketch here is a little one, four or five inches long, by Mr. Thorne-Waite, of a wind- mill on a windy common. It is one of those drawings which could never have been made had not David Cox lived, but it has caught the very spirit of its original ; it is fresh, bright, and English. Above all, we feel, as we look at it here, that it is easy. The painter has not slaved and worried, and niggled, and washed-out, and rubbed-down, and all the rest of it ; there is none of that semi-plastered look, which the abuse of body-colour so frequently gives to modern water-colour painting. It is simply the impression of a capable man doing well what lies within his power. Perhaps no more perfect contrast could be found to this sketch, than the large picture by Mr. North (which the Society has very rightly hung in the place of honour), entitled " An English Water- mill." This is a big, yellow drawing, in which the water-mill stands amidst a mass of foliage, through which peep here and there light flowers such as we find in all Mr, North's paintings. The work is faint, and sweet, and rather sickly in the impression it produces,—" That's not England," we say to ourselves ; "that's half Algeria, and half North,"— and yet, for an opium-dream of an English woodland, the work is beautiful, penetrated with a single harmonious motive, beau- tifully executed, singularly free from all vulgarity and all com- monplace,—and from all trick.
Some little sketches by Mr. Henry Moore we must pass over with the remark that they are but average examples, from a technical point of view, of this painter'sakill, and hardly of suffi- cient interest to deserve exhibition. He has no important work in this gallery ; but a very beautiful picture of sea and sky in the- Institute of Oil Painters, of which we shall speak next week. What can be said that is new of Miss Clara Montalba's " Venice," except that it grows more specially her own every year P- The material is all subdued to this clever lady's peculiarities of colour, and contrasts of light and shade ; and indeed there is no essential difference between her pictures of London, Venice, or Dordrecht. England, Holland, and Italy, seem to- give her the same colours,—if we may judge from the effect of her pictures. In fact, the work, though delicate and vigorous, is ruined by its mannerisms. No better example, perhaps, could be found of what a figure-painter should en- deavour to avoid than the work by Mr. Edward Brewtnall, entitled, " All on a Summer's Day." Many beautiful things in Nature are here,—sunshine and blue sea, and flowers of variegated colour, and old trees, and quaint costume, and a pretty girl, &c., and all mean nothing, or rather less than nothing, because it is easy to see, that no artist who loved flowers could have painted these, and no artist who knew anything about the sea, could have given it us as it is here; and no artist who was really intent on showing us youth and beauty, would have concentrated the majority of his attention upon his figure's gown, stocking, and shoe. When will artists and the public see this apparently self-evident truth, that if a picture is insincere, it must be bad; if it is meaningless, it must be worthless. The worst painting of the Fortuny and the Madrazo school, vicious and even bestial as it is, is, in some ways, from an artistic point of view, preferable to this motiveless trifling to which English artists are so prone. At all events, these Italian and Spanish painters are genuinely fond of luxury of silk stockings, marble-topped tables, and gorgeous costumes, and though we condemn their preference, it is at least possible to understand it.
But re cannot speak further on this subject. There are some beautiful drawings by Mr. Albert Goodwin here, but none that call for special notice, for nearlyall of them are simple studies of places. The finest, probably, is one that represents- the bed of a stream with a quantity of gray rocks, half- covered with moss and lichen. Mr. E. K. Johnson has a larger picture than usual, representing a pretty girl in a farmyard, with a quantity of little pigs doddling about in front of her, and cows, and hens and chickens, &c., in the back- ground. We have seen it all before ; but it is pretty and delicate, and in a great measure true—a little too smooth and pretty, perhaps, and a little deficient in its perception of " values," but with a certain character and charm of its own. Probably it would be correct to say that even where it is not true, it is sincere. Of Sir John Gilbert's large picture of the: Prince and Princess of Wales going to the Drawing-room, we can only say that it is hardly a subject for art, and that the painter has not succeeded in making it attractive. The most pleasant things in the exhibition on the whole, are the little drawings by Mr. Boyce. Though they are scarcely larger than sheets of note-paper, they are full of character, full of patient work, and full of truth. It is curious to note, on the same- screen as these, two landscapes by Mr. Edward Poynter, in which that artist, Royal Academician as he is, has attempted, work of a similar character, and comparatively failed ; and yet about the last-named there is a peculiarly blundering truth, a solidly hard, though unpleasant veracity, which sets them apart from most of the work here. On the same screen there is a. little sketch by Mr. Holman Hunt which deserves attention.
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