NEW PRINTS. t.
IT is so long. since we took a " peep at the print-shops," that instead prying through a pictured. pane here and there,We have the whole es. of shop-windows from Threadneedle Street to .Pall Mall to pass review, with their array of mezzotints, aquatints, litho-tints', and tint's? of all hues that print-daubers delight to lay oa when they make atf fine with their motley suits of many colours formidable task, if we were to gaze at all, but light and easy since we need only regard tlsoii that really deserve notice as works of art. Passing over the winner of the Derby and the last prize ox—Bouvinn's portrait of Fanny Eisler' dancing the Cracovienne, and looking like a drummer in petticoats PATTEN'S lithograph of the British Queen steam-ship (the best print extant,) and the whole tribe of coloured mezzotints, at once livid and glaring—we come at once to the plain black and white. Here, too, we may run our eye over a file of noble personages as expeditiously as the tellers of a division count noses in the House ;—the Duke of Rutland ruffled and robed, the Marquis of Westminster looking cold in a cloak, and Lord Roden wearing his riband; which last, in particular, is a good portrait, and well engraved. GEORGE HATTER has given Lord Mel-• bourne a knowing look, as if he were telling his Royal Mistress one of his good stories ; Mr. SULLY has represented the Queen about to take her seat on a very commodious sort of throne, and looking round fur- tively as if to see that she is not observed; and Mr. S. W. REYNOLDS has put an effigy in riding-habit and cap on horseback, surrounded with a troop of horses' heads and a forest of military plumes, so that what is intended for the Queen luckily escapes notice. Mr, KNIGHT has shut up Wellington and Nelson in full uniform in a room together, whereat the Admiral looks gravely remonstrant, while the General, wag as he is, seems to be leering slily at the artist as he shuts the door upon them: Nelson seems inclined to bolt, but he cannot move, for both his legs are evidently of cork ; which may account for Wellington not recognizing him, despite the empty sleeve and the naval uniform, may also and ex- plain why the hero of the Nile appears nearly as tall as him of Waterloo. The excuse for this pair of portraits, called " The Army and Navy," is the fact that the two commanders happened on one occa- sion to be cooling their heels in a Government waiting-room at the same time : the poor artists must be hard put to it for subjects to be reduced to such an occurrence as this, and badly off for talent to treat them so ludicrously. It is quite a relief to turn to the shaggy and sagacious hound Odin, whom we long to take by the ear that hangs so tempting to the touch, while his mild eye is turned upward as if watching for the recognition of his master : of coarse it is EDWIN LANDSEER who has given us this life-size and life-like portrait ; and his brother THOMAS has imitated the painter's touch in mezzotint and etching, with wonderful power and brilliancy of effect, and texture almost palpable. lIsnoreo's powerful drawing of The Grand Canal, Venice, that was a principal attraction of the Water-colour Exhibition two or three sea- sons back, has been engraved with delicacy and freedom by DAVID Lucas : but though the spongy clouds are aerial, and the light breaks through them on the leaden domes of Santa Salute brightly, the atmo- sphere looks too hazy and moist for the sunny brilliancy with which Venice is associated by recollections of CANsLorri, Bosasogbs, and HOLLAND: there is too much of one tone over the whole, and the print wants both substance and colour ; the lights do not sparkle, nor are the shadows so full of variety as is desirable. We think, however, that the fault is more in the style than the engraver : such a picture as this ought to have been engraved in line, as Paotsr's and nits:Hies are. Foremost among a group of miscellaneous prints, Cm/stores portrait of the Countess of Jersey attracts notice, for the fascination of his style, with all its coxcorubry : we see the bust and arms of a lovely woman of fashion in full dress, supporting a precocious infant swathed in satin and swansdown, while a long wisp of flounced muslin, from beneath which peeps out the toe of a slipper, gives a hint to the fancy to ima- gine a body and limbs beneath, of which there are no visible denotements. The engraving, by F. C. LEwis, is remarkable for purity and the skill with which he has imitated the touch of the artist ; no milliner handles silks, and rihands, and gauzes more dexterously than Cuatox. A Lancashire Witch, painted by \V. BRADLEY, and etched with bold- ness and spirit by THOMAS L. Gauxoy, has a coarsely vigorous cha- racter, that is welcome if only for a change in these days of namby- pamby. Nor should we omit noticing a sketch of the Reverend David Arnott, of Dundee, by Miss STEELE of that town, lithographed by HAstmerox : the Reverend seems what ladies call " a fine man "—and not uuccuscious thereof.
Two or three new Picture Periodicals also come in for notice. The Portraits of Eminent Living Divines is handsomely got up, in a style to correspond with the Conservative Portraits : the First Part contains the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, and that popular preacher the Reverend Henry Melvill,—all of them well drawn and en- graved by first-rate artists, and apparently good likenesses. Woodland Sketches, a set of studies of trees, drawn on stone from nature by
GEORGE Cnxims, with descriptive letterpress, is a cheap and pretty publication, and deserves to be popular ; but it does not supply the want of a good and complete work on trees. Mr. CHILDS, like most
other sketchers of' trees, is content to indicate their superficial charac- teristics—his sketches do not represent the substance or colour of the
foliage : instead of a mass composed of a variety of smaller forms of light and shade, we have some visionary shapes of white and black of various outline, each scribbled with a different trick of hand, and con- veying an idea of what the artist means, but not of the objects them selves.
In continuation.of their series of popular works of British and Foreign scenery and antiquities, Messrs. FISHER have followed up the recently- published views of Constantinople, Syria, and Palestine, with fie Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean, comprising Sicily, the coast of Barbary, Calabria, Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Isles. The views of Sicily are by Mr. LEITCH, an artist who resided there two years; those of Algiers, Tunis, &c. by Sir GRENVILLE TEMPLE ; and of the Northern coast and its islands by Lieutenant ALLEN; the talent of BENTLEY and PROUT being occasionally called in aid of the pictorial effects of the amateurs' sketches, and some Turkish views by ALLOW being added. The .variety in manner as well as in subject resulting from this arrangement is favourable to the interest of the plates; but the distinct and forcible drawings by LEITCH, though displaying no gfeat refinement of style or brilliancy of effect, are more satisfactory and Ant, leie attraltive than the embellished sketches: The engravings are unequal hi, execution, not in all eases rendering full-justice to the ori- gliAs bet, the cheapness of the price considered, the plates are on an average 'superior to what might be expeCted. It is not so much as works o? the pencil, but rather as faithful representations of strange and beau- tifiil sights of nature and art at sea and on shorethe streets of cities and the interiors of dwellings, the sites of buried empires and the frag- Ments of ruined buildings-that these pictures appeal to the eye, which in works of higher pretensions is too often diverted from the objects themselves to the skill with which they are pictured. Ma's British Atlas. though not strictly pictorial, may be noticed here, foi the beauty of the engraving and the neatness of the colouring entitle it to a place amongst productions of art. The Second, Third, and Fourth Parts support the high character of' the first : it will be concluded in seven, and will then be the completest, handsomest, and cheapest atlas of any, and, for its size, the most comprehensive and con- venient of reference. The plan of dividing the larger countries into two plates, instead of folding plates-and the addition of statistics, and key-maps of reference when required, as in the case of Germany-are novel features of great utility.
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