,fint Arto.

THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.

To the few general remarks which we offered last week upon the cha- racter of the present Academy, Exhibition we have not many more to add now. This is exactly the tenth year since Prieraffaelitism announced it- self in Millais's " Isabella " and Hunt's "Rienzi" at the Academy, mid in Rossetti's "Girlhood of the Virgin" at the National Institution; and it has revolutionized our art. The age of " cleverness" in painting, with its results of facile picturesqueness, bright effects," and an empty in- side, is past, or rapidly on the wane. That which is well done now is done, at lowest, with affectionate labour,—if a step higher, with genuine thought and purpose. Invention and large ambition are still of the scantiest. One is apt to be provoked, and to disparage our art on this ground ; yet, after all, and however provoking, it is in great port only the normal condition of things. Invention cannot be propagated in ail proportion to the growth of the artistic profession : it is always the gin of the very few—a man or two in a generation, a small band of great

spirits in a century. Even in the greatest ages of art, the really inven- tive artists living at one moment throughout Europe might be counted on the fingers. We are the last to deny our present dearth ; but it is neither surprising nor so humiliating as first thoughts may make it seem. Without invention, ambition is rather pernicious than otherwise. More ambition might be worse art for us at the present moment : still, our lack of it is to be deplored, and, if continued, will dock our conscientious study of its proper use. In this respect, we certainly are behind many • precedent and contemporary schools, not only in degree, but in essence ; the greatest schools of all having dealt with no subjects whatever save the most ambitious. The blame of our own poverty is shared between the producers and the patrons of art; but into that aspect of the question we cannot enter further. In the present exhibition there is exactly one worthy religious picture —the "Nativity," by Mr. Hughes. It is not a grand work in any sense—small in size, condensed in treatment, slight in execution; but it is exquisitely pure in feeling, sand delicious in colour. Reverence and joy are the soul of it throughout ; and, aided by the chaste sweet young faces, and the glow-worm radiance of the angels, give it a certain look truly heavenly. Mr. Hughes's is not precisely a naturalistic treatment of the subject, nor precisely an abstract treatment ; but a something be- tween the two, of which he is not indeed the first to furnish the type in the school whereto he belongs, but which, as here embodied, we con- ceive to be very nearly the right medium for our own day. The more robust principle of giving simply the human facts of the event would fail in any save the most powerful hands, and perhaps would scarcely even realize this subject so truly. One point which the painter has felt and expressed very charmingly is the contrast between the supernatural- ism of the angelic figures and the merely natural effect and treatment of the stable, the scene of the Nativity, and all that pertains to that. In conception and design, as well as in the aim though not the complete- ness of its execution, we rate this little work higher than anything heretofore produced by Mr. Hughes.

"Know thyself" has not been Mr. Leslie's motto this year : and it is melancholy to find an artist, in his own line one of the very best whom the English school has ever produced, literally stultifying himself by getting beyond his depth. In treating the subject, "Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them," Mr. Leslie only too well exemplifies in his own person those other words of the text, "If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all." We neither need nor can say much of the picture ; vacancy af- fords no stuff for description. There is nothing good here; the little boy not bad as a study of a shy child : but surely the feeling of that man must be very blunt who could think of representing the child as holding back from the benignant presence of the Saviour. " Athaliah's Dismay at the Coronation of joash," is one of the largest pictures which Mr. Hart has produced, and not one of the worst: but it is merely a scene at a theatre. Up with the curtain : let us have plenty of priests with white beards; the young king duly raised on his throne ; the soldiers with the proper retributive scowl, and superfluity of action in arms and legs ; and let Athalieh's arms "branch like a spectral candlestick." That will do. In one of the soldiers to the right, there appears (for it is but sorrily expressed) to be a conflict between his habitual reverence for the queen's majesty, and his avenging impulse of the moment ; which is a good thought. The "costumes and properties" too have been carefully got up, and the subject is a fine one for scenic pomp and dramatic inte- rest. So far, Mr. Hart is entitled to credit. Mr. Richmond's "Agony in the Garden" is a solecism of exactly the same kind as Mr. Leslie's subject, only more offensive. A small picture by Mr. Goldie, "The Publican and the Pharisee," looks like the work of a superior man ; the self-absorbed contrition of the Publican very well expressed—the Phari- see not quite so well, as he gesticulates as if talking to a visible auditor. Mr. Dobson is so competent, so well-meaning, so acceptable to a large class of the genuinely religious, that we would fain be less indifferent to his productions than we are. But it is not our fault : they want sturdi- ness and vitality. "Hagar and Ishmael sent away" is about his most successful scriptural incident. Abraham is less of the stony patriarch than he has often been represented in this subject : the painter shows us that he is fulfilling a bard duty, under a strong sense that it is imposed on him. The last kiss which the dejected Ishmael takes of his hand is well thought of : but we see, in this pretty-behaved young penitent, nothing of him "whose hand will be against every man." "The Holy Inno- cents" are a batch of very commonplace little boys, of the well-soaped classes. However, if we read Mr. Dobson's intention aright, he has aimed to imbue their faces with the look of infantine pain in which they "were redeemed from among men," and of infantine wonder at their new abode ; and this is a sweet human thought, not to be passed with- out sympathy. The visitor who keeps watch for the first fruits of ge- nius will not overlook the picture by Mr. S. Solomon of Abraham about to depart with the boy Isaac for sacrifice. The strange precocity, and endless ease of multiform invention, displayed by this extremely young artist are familiar to artistic circles : it is extremely satisfactory to find that, in this his first exhibited picture, he has set himself to hard work and rigid realization, and does not venture upon the privilege of leaving anything to a happy chance. The work is that of a mature executant, firm in style, and full of mark in colour. So far as we can judge from the picture's very unfavourable position, there is a great deal of the fa- ther's bitter tenderness in the Abraham : but unfortunately it has an odd air at first sight—Isaac, in his curious dress, looks so exactly like a little street acrobat of Hebrew parentage. We honestly believe, however, that, if Mr. S. Solomon persists in doing his own genius the justice which this work shows him resolved upon, there is no painter of the pre- sent generation who will reach farther than he. Two other Bible pictures evince an analogous aim at accurate truth—the "Good Samaritan" as treated by both Mr. P. R. Morris and Mr. A. B. Wyon. The figure of the evil-intreated Jew is the best point in both—as he faintly drains the water-cup in the first, and lies relaxed and piteous in the second.

In quitting the sacred art of the gallery, we pause for a moment to consider what are the qualifications which may entitle a painter to un- dertake any such "high argument." The first is that without which all the others are vain—a real impulse towards the undertaking ; an aw- ful reverence and urgent love for holy things. No painter who does not assuredly feel these ought to make the attempt. The sacred painter as- sumes a ministerial function just as the preacher of the gospel does ; and men ought to be equally strict in requiring from him something beyond mere professional efficiency and conscientiousness—in requiring a real vocation and a real devotedness to the work. Besides this, there shauld of course be the mental and the art power in apt development. We do

indeed find it affirmed that praise is perfected " out of the mouths of babes and sucklings" ; but if it is a man who professes to praise, he

must not speak, understand, or think, as a child : he must have " put away childish things." Nevertheless, weakness in such cases is far more pardonable than coldness ; and there is even such a thing as " de- livering the burning message of prophecy with the stammering lips of infants." Based upon these great qualities, the sacred art of each age will partake of that age's spirit, and still be right, or with the germs of right within it. But the more widely that principle is admitted, the more stringently does it forbid any merely traditional adherence to form. The nimbus-painting of the thirteenth century was right for the thir- teenth, the monastic quietism of the Umbrian school for the Umbrian, but would be both offensive and ridiculous, because false, for the nine- teenth and the English. At the present day, we know a good deal of the manners, costume, climate, and other outward circumstances, of the Biblical times; and the tendency of the age, which is towards the posi-

tive and the demonstrable, requires that such knowledge be used. In a general sense, therefore, that sacred art is the most impressive for the present day, which deals with sacred events in their human and historic aspect. Still there are many such events, and many associations of

sacred thought, which can scarcely be treated otherwise than typically, and for which that treatment is felt at once to be the most reverent and the most thoughtful. There lies the test. The painter shall be justified in every case by his reverence and his thought, and shall clothe them in such form as his own deeper instinct teaches him to be the best : but it must never be done by masquerading, whether the masque be the correct Oricntalism ascertained from Champollion and Layard, or the traditional mediwvalism repeated by rote from Angelico and Raffaelle. The high historic walk furnishes Mr. Cross with a strong subject and a fine picture—" The Coronation of William the Conqueror." "On the Conqueror's being proclaimed king, the loud shouts of the English and French were mistaken for hostile tumult, and the Normans, thinking the whole population of London had risen against them, fired the near Eng- lish houses." William, left alone with a few priests, "most resolutely re- fused to postpone the celebration, and held the crown of England in his grip as though no mortal hand should ever wrest it from him." The figure of the Conqueror, in which the full interest of the picture centres, is grandly conceived, and presented with masterly force. In his clutch of the crown with the left hand, his own brave sword with the right, in

the compressed curve of his mailed foot, there is the action of a royal

eagle ; he is scared for the moment, but seared only into a terrible frown, and he collects himself to front the worst, and singly crush it. Our

Saxon friends and progenitors may be quite sure that he has not the least

intention of leaving the coronation half done either in act or in fact. In consonance with his course of French study, Mr. Cross shows consider- able affinity to Delaroche in this picture ; and we think that distinguished master would not have been reluctant to own it. The story is thought- fully told throughout ; and the general manner and the colour, albeit somewhat too positive for beauty, will come nearer to the sympathies of an English clientele than anything produced by Mr. Cross since his great opening success in the Death of Coeur de Lion. "Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower," and the regicide "Henry Martin in Chepstow Castle," con- tinue the series of episodical illustration of great lives to which Mr. Wal- lis has devoted his firm and disciplined power. Raleigh, gaunt and en- during, pauses in his writing to muse introspectively over the bubble- blowing of his boy; and Martin nerves himself, book in hand, to gaze on sunset across the prison-bars which deny him a man's native right to its purple glories. Two grizzled men who know how to suffer and to die. Both works are honourable to the painter ; but we say the leas of

them as his greatest work remains to be spoken of in another class. The boy in the Raleigh picture is not a successful figure; the unstudied grace

of childhood appearing to be uniformly one of the latest attainments of art. Of Mr. Ward's three contributions, the "Concealment of the Fugitives by Alice Lisle after the Battle of Sedgmoor " purports to be "the original design for the fresco in the Houses of Parliament," of

which we have before spoken. It is a bold rough-and-ready tableau, not a little coarse; and, if we remember aright, has been improved upon in

the fresco. The other two are court-subjects; a species of art most diffi-

cult to make even tolerably interesting, pictorial, or lifelike. "The Emperor of the French receiving the Order of the Garter at Windsor from

her Majesty the Queen," is, we think, a very respectable example of its class; 'broadly and strongly handled, cleverly disposed without a sacrifice of official orderliness, and including some very telling portraits—as especially of the Earl of Aberdeen, Lord Lansdowne, and the Bishop of

Oxford. Queen Victoria looks to us a little glum in arraying the hero of the 2d December with the badge of knightliness . the seated figure of the Empress is graceful and imposing. In colour, we rate this as one of Mr.

Ward's most satisfactory efforts. Not so "The Visit of Queen Victoria to the Tomb of Napoleon I," which is a stagey, flashy, vulgar affair, with scarcely a redeeming point, unless it be the clearly diversified na- tionalism of the French and British agents. Yet the subject has na- tional and historic bearings which might almost have raised it above the level of court-painting. We hear it stated that the two incidents of the Princess Mathilde shedding tears, and of the.storm of thunder and light- ning, are correct to the facts, liable as they are to be taken for mere painter's tricks. Another Napoleonic subject is Mr. Lucy's "General Bonaparte, on his Voyage to Egypt, 1798, holding a Discussion with the Savants." It is a fine theme : the incipient world-conqueror point- ing to the sky—" Vous avez beau dire, Messieurs, qui a fait tout cela ?" But it is not among Mr. Lucy's best efforts ; deficient in that look of strict quiet fact, and in that completeness of carrying-out, which give the truest value to such treatments. However, it takes a respectable place in the historic art of the collection. "The picture contains portraits of Menge, Berthollet, Geoffiny St. Hilaire, Larrey, Desgenettes, Denon, Kleber, Louis Bonaparte, Andreassy, Caffarelli, &c."

Mr. Noel Paton brings us to the history of our own day. Ilia "In Memoriam" is the slaughter-house of Cawnpore, crowded with its cow- ering women and children, and the glaring devils of Sepoys trooping in to their butcher-work. The central figure is tearless, though her strain- ing eyeballs almost crack she holds the Psalm-book open at the pas- sage, "Yea, though I pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Deaths I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me," and her strength of sea seems somewhat to sustain the other bloodless women. One crouches ashen-lipped, and clasps her wedding-ring: one, in her night-gear, holds the soft hand of her sleeping boy : one huddles with a last long kiss over her babe and her little girl, who trembles at the frightful faces, and the nnbetraying ayah is still at her side. It is a tragic spectacle; and the painter, without becoming revolting, has done as much justice to it as could well be demanded of any save the very highest powers. On the opposite wall Mr. Armitage gives an ideal version of the same horrid subject a stage further on. His "Retribution" (already known in a photograph) presents a matronly Britannia plunging her falehion hilt- deep down the reddened gullet of a tiger which ravens over a torn wo- man and infants. The monster's claws press on Britannia's arm, but draw no blood-which may perhaps be a point of intention in the alle- gory, however opposite to pictorial truth. This is a vigorous thing in its way; yet it is scarcely so just in allegorical form as the popular design to which it is an afterthought, and in which the British lion was the avenging conqueror of the tiger. Brute for brute. Indian atrocity may be fitly symbolized in the tiger ; if so, British rage in the lion, rather than the human personage. For "a man's a man for a' that," though he may sometimes make himself very nearly a fiend ; and the relation between the savage and the avenger is better preserved by the contrast between the traditional characters of tiger and lion than by that between the brute animal and the human.

[Want of space compels us to postpone the paper on the Lombardi and Baldi Pictures.]