ART.
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY.
IN this ensue mirabilis of Art, when the national collection of pictures has first found elbow-room, and the Academy (or it is its own fault) has done the same ; when schemes are afoot for establishing a real School of Art in England, and through the munificence of an individual supplying the shortcomings that ought long ago to have inflicted on the Academy a forfeiture of that Royal patronage which brings to it fashion and a full purse, but nothing else, the Society of Water-Colour Painters has successfully roused its best energies to show that sixty-five years of popularity has not bred carelessness, nor disabled the present members from keeping alive the flame that burnt so clearly in the days of Cox, De Whit, and Barrett. All, with one exception, have united to insure an unusually good exhibition ; and though Mr. F. Walker's name is absent from the list, his place is well filled by Mr. Pinwell. Mr. F. W. Burton (a too sparing exhibitor) ha a taken for his subject "Cassandra Fedele " (20), the learned and philosophic lady whose name in the fifteenth century was almost as famous as that of the Venetian Republic, of which she was an honoured subject. Mr. Burton has painted her young and beautiful, standing absorbed in contemplation of the sound produced by fingering the strings of a violin; and if credit may be given to her biographers as well as to the meditative and intellectual brow of the picture, it may be supposed that she is not only or so much pleased with the sound, as intent upon the natural laws according to which it is produced and varied. She is clothed in white, a colour which no less than black gives a good colourist like Mr. Burton full employment for a varied palette, and which he has contrasted with a richly painted background, including a frieze of medallion portraits in relief of true and sage women, like Penelope and Lucretia. The picture is labelled "unfinished," and if it be so, it yet lacks those final touches which are to give it crowning harmony, and which, above all others, require to be laid on with Opie's favourite vehicle of brains. But though it may be expedient thus to account for certain inequalities of finish, the artist may be sure that none are so conscious of them as himself ; and, undoubtedly, no allowance is needed on that score to entitle him to have his picture pronounced a work of great thought and beauty, vigour and refinement. Nearly opposite hangs Mr. Haag's picture of the "Samaritan High Priest reading the Roll of the Law " (131) ; not an imaginary person, but him who fills that office at Nablous. He is a noble black-bearded figure, completely enveloped, even to the hands that hold the book, with a long white robe. The crimson of an embroidered curtain that hangs across the building at his back is repeated in the brighter crimson trappings of a wooden chair (or whatsoever else may be its properer eeclesiological designation). A quiet green background balances the reds ; not to mention a certain artful bit of blue in the curtain, which again is set off by an equally artful bit of yellow in the head-drapery. The drawing is an excellent example of Mr. Haag's thorough mastery of the brush; but probably the portrait of his dragoman (73), a coalblack Ethiopian, will be at least as popular, if indeed it be not the better picture. "'The Acropolis at Athens" (143), by the same artist, is a good specimen of his precision in drawing, though as a landscape it leaves something to be desired in the way of imagination.
Though neither Mr. Holman Hunt nor Mr. Pinwell is unknown as a water-colourist, yet new curiosity is awakened by seeing their works in a new place. Mr. Hunt paints "Moonlight at Salerno" (255) and "Interior of the Cathedral at Salerno" (263), both remarkable for that strong and vivid colouring which specially distinguishes the artist. The broad track of pale gold which the moon (unseen itself) sheds on the lightly ruffled water, and into which the horns of the harbour piers stretch in mid-distance, is a triumph of imitation, and deserved a better conclusion than the clumsily painted cross-ripple caused by the splashings of halfa-dozen bathers in the nearer shallows. But this latter is an appearance which calls for daintier and more varied execution than Mr. Hunt is master of. With a larger share of this quality he would excite our lively admiration, where now he often wins only our respest.
Of M.r. Pinwell's three drawings, "A Seat in St. James's Park" (297), is a medley of character and circumstances commonly enough seen in that locality. It is a somewhat trite subject, and in the present instance, though the workmanship is good, there is little to interest in the treatment. Not so of the same artist's illustrations of Browning's "Piper of Hamelin" (282, 260). In the one, the piper, in old-fangled vesture of red and yellow, is in the act of ridding the town of its plague of rats ; in the other, of charming away the children of the ungrateful burghers who refused to pay him his stipulated rateatcher's fee. Both are redolent of the true flavour of the poet's quaint story. 'rho rats trooping by scores out of every house are not more desperately bewitched in the first than the little boys and girls dancing after that uncanny piper in the second, none more so than the little cripple hobbling painfully behind his nimbler playmates. There is the most playful fancy unalloyed by the least feebleness or affectation. In the rat picture are some very graceful figures, and the woman on the right is something more. Both pictures are carefully painted, and with a certain style, but in the opaque vehicle, which here, as so often in other cases, robs water-colour painting of its distinguishing charm. What the loss is may be estimated by reference to the transparent colour of Mr. A. Fripp's pictures. The opaque vehicle may produce brightness ; but it is generally of a hard, staring kind, and destitute of that ringing quality with which transparent colour rouses and delights the sense. Neither does the latter material yield to the first in brilliance, and of this there is proof, if proof be needed, in the juvenile piscator on the left hand of Mr. A. Fripp's "Saturday Half-Holiday" (±39); a picture which abounds with the nicest discrimination of character, from the meek youth who sees his chosen fishing-ground under a rotten bank suddenly invaded by a blue bully froumi the neighbouring charity-school, to the gleeful youngster who loudly proclaims his delight at having caught au eel, as well as with that truthful beauty and delicacy of workmanship which never desert this artist. Of these last qualities the attentive spectator will note many instances in this picture. Suffice it here to mention one, namely, the perfect relation of tones that exists between the right leg of the boy in blue and the ledge of sand behind it. It is worth while also to observe that Mr. Fripp preserves some of the old-fashioned frankness of painting which requires that the mind should be active in determining beforehand what the hand shall do, in order that the colour once laid on should be left in all its freshness, not tentatively rubbed and scrubbed till it assumes the semblance of worsted work, or smoothed and stippled into a halfpolished or enamelled surface. The stooping girl in the centre of Mr. A. Fripp's " Gleaners" (3(16) may be noticed as a good specimen of this frank painting ; while the ill effect of those worsted-like surfaces on pictures otherwise well-meant and commendable, is to be seen in such drawings as Mr. A. Newton's "Loch Leven" (201). Before leaving Mr. A. Fripp, attention must be called to the tender beauty of his Dorsetshire coast scene looking seawards from the Swanage chalk-cliffs towards the Isle of Wight, that gleams faintly through the summer ham (267).
Mr. Burne Jones is the most considerable member of that knot of painters whose sole aim appears to be to counterfeit the appearances of an ancient picture. True it is that time brings to good pictures a mellowness which in some may more than compensate for the freshness and splendour they have lost, and a hearty admiration for that rich and ripe harmony is the best excuse Mr. Jones and his followers can allege in defence of their practice. But these copies are but curiosities, after all. Mr. Jones has a colour-sense not to be denied (197) ; but affectation is odious, and the unreal nature of his conceits is proved by the monotony of expression in every face, the inappropriately lacrymose physiognomy of St. George slaying his funny little dragon (33) being repeated in the lacrymose aspect, equally inappropriate, of " Autumn " (184) and "Spring" (207).
It is pleasant to escape from this unhealthy and enervating atmosphere to the immediate and original readings from nature of
Mr. A. W. Hunt. A more difficult subject could scarcely be found than "Loch Coruisk ;" difficult in itself, and difficult by reason of its having been already treated by more than one great artist, and amongst them Turner and Robson. But the old-fashioned simplicity of Robson's art has little in common with the more detailed variety of Hunt's, which has grown naturally out of the innovations of Turner's genius. But Turner's Coruisk, though not without signal marks of that master's power of seizing on the characteristics of a scene, is not faultless ; and to the dentated peaks of the Cuchullins, and the long dark water lying deep in a rift of the mountains, and its strangely narrow barrier dividing it but by a stone's-throw from the sea, it still remained to add those bare slopes of rock that clothe the hills as with plate-armour, and to give a local truth and a form geolologically possible to the whole scene. This Mr. A. Hunt has done with marvellous power (155) : and amongst the local truths expressed, not the least impressive (because so characteristic) is the transient gleam of sunshine which struggles in from the southward, lighting up with rainbow hues a thin shower that travels across the chasm, but failing to reach the gloomy cloudclapped ridge that incloses and darkens this "water in a hollow." In dealing with the materials that go to the composition of this landscape, the bulky shoulder that divides the fresh water from the salt would seem to present a difficulty ; especially its line of junction with the loch, forming the water-line on that side. It is not clear that this line is not unduly prominent, as tending to diminish the breadth of the composition and the grandeur of the scene. However, it is a noble picture. Hung a little lower, its effect would have been greatly enhanced. Mr. A. Hunt sends also a drawing of "Ben Eaich" (13), with his bare quartz head glowing through a thin veil of summer cloud. The tufted moor, with its monumental tree-roots and broken banks of a dry watercourse, is excellently understood and painted.
Riper in experience and more thoroughly master of his materials, standing almost alone, too, in his knowledge of light and shade, and of its importance to every artist, Mr. George Fripp has more than any other understood how to reconcile the largeness and simplicity of the older artists with the greater particularity of modern practice. He succeeds in conveying an impression of fullness and various detail without ever forgetting that the essence of all works of true art is unity, oneness of idea, and that without it all the object-painting in the world is vanity. Therefore, whether he paints a hay-field or a deer-forest, sunshine or gloom, the impression produced is distinct ; the subject is in the best sense realized. His colour, too, is admirable ; sober yet vivid, transparent, but full-bodied. "Carting Hay in the Shiplake Meadows" (290), " Dunstaffnage Castle" (298), "Loch Aline " (86), "On the N. W. Flank of Carnedd Llewelyn " (135), and "The Forest of Glenorchy " (16), are among the most admirable works exhibited by him this year, and attest his power and versatility.
It is not to be supposed that the foregoing notes have nearly exhausted the good pictures at this exhibition. The names of Dodgson, Holland, Palmer, Danby, A. Glennie, Powell, Evans, and Boyce, good and true artists, hardly need mentioning to be remembered. They are all well represented, and their pictures furnish matter enough for another article. V.
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