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THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.
"Nothing very particular" is the character of the Flrhibition of 1867: a creditable display it is, but certainly not a strong one. Few artists are at their very best, few subjects specially striking, and there is no new genius. Some distinguished men do not exhibit—Sir Charles Eastlake, Mr. Webster, and Mr. E. M. Ward, among the Academicians ; Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr. Linnell, Mr. Leighton, Mr. Hughes, and Mr. Windus, among the outsiders, with others whom one scarcely looks for now-a-days. But these absences are not by any means specially numerous—not such as to account for any want of strength or of interest in the exhibition. The fact is, that British art at the present day is too unambitious ; the materials upon which it works are meagre for a small collection and threadbare for a large one. Yet even want of ambition is , better than the ambitious failure which has nothing but its own overweening vanity to start from, and it may lay a solid ground of study and mastery for future higher efforts. Let us hope so ; and let us at least congratulate ourselves meanwhile upon the fact—a fact past question—that the solidity is here.
We now proceed at once to the Great Room of the Academy, pausing at the most noticeable pictures as each strikes the eye. "Her Majesty the Queen" and "H. It. H. Prince Albert" duly head the roll ; and, coming after the Emperor and Empress of the French painted by the same artist, Boutibonne and exhibited last year, show that a new man, and a feebler one, shares the patronage of courts with Winterhalter. "The Burial of King Charles I" is added to the number of historical subjects which Mr. Lucy has treated on a large scale, and with laudable gravity and resource. He has chosen the most pictorial moment—that where the Parliamentarian officer interferes with the burialservice, laying his hand on the Bishop's prayer-book. The incident explains itself at a glance and the emotions of the several personages are not caricatured. Of the st4us of this class of" historical" art we do not think highly ; but Mr. Lucy's work takes a respectable place among those in ,which Delaroche is chief master. Very clear and pleasant, with a multi city of detail which produces the effect of elaboration—as in the shingly beach, and with a blue sky marbled by white clouds—is Mr. Cooke's "Crab and Lobster Shore " ; than which we recollect no more covetable example of his skill. "A Syrian Scheik, Egypt," is but a slight effort for Mr. Lewis ; the stern face long and handsome, the shouldered carbine inefficiently foreshortened, if it is supposed to be of average length : another Eastern head carefully painted and expressive is "An Arab of Mocha," by Mr. F. Pickering. "News from Home" is the first of Mr. Millais's three contributions,—a diminutive one, hastily painted. It represents a Highland soldier in the Sebastopol trenches reading a letter which has just arrived; his gun held bolt upright under the left arm. The figure looks somewhat clumsy, owing to the heaviness of the gaitered feet : the pleased smile on the face, very quiet and subdued, is also very true. Many a brave fellow has Been that smile On his. comrade's Visage. "Dr. Livingstone, Explorer of Central Africa," ought to indict Mr. A. Craig
for libel : those way-worn indomitable features are far different from this hang-dog denizen of Madame Tuasaud's Chamber of Horrors. A full length hard by, "Sir John Fox Burgoyne," by Mr. Phillips, is a manly figure, stamped with steady thought; pictorially, the work suffers sadly from the frightful rusty colour of the soil, though this may be geologically right. Sir Edwin Landseer's " Scene in Braemar—Highland Deer, &c."—is the largest painting in the exhibition, executed by the square foot a minute : (by a slip of the pen, we called it "Sir Charles Lam:Lieu's " last week.) There is little save size to distinguish it from some former works ; but it is bold and free—verf masterly for its proper place, which would be the hall or staircase of some spacious country-seat. The hare, in his winter-coat of white, who starts up to join company with the big regal deer, looking half scared, half impudently familiar, is particularly. good. "Rough and Ready," further on, is a smaller specimen of Sir Edwin, immensely clever, but equally. (and unpardonably) slapdash in execution,—in fact, quite slovenly, as if the painter meant to tell you that his art is only a bore or a pastime, and he is ashamed of it, though it still serves for making money. "Peter the Great, Czar of Muscovy, working as a Shipwright, with his rough retinue' ' in the Dockyard at Deptford, during the winter of 1697-'8, is visited by William III; in attendance on whom are Lords Carmarthen and Shrewsbury, his President of Council and Foreign Secretary." Such is part of the descriptive title of Mr. Maclise's picture. A more splendid historical subject could not well be • one fuller of meaning, suggestion, picturesqueness and contrast : the wonder is that it is not already as hackneyed as &lithe and Harold, or Charles and his Children. The public, from its long familiarity with Mr. Maclise, can easily imagine that he has apprehended the points of the subject, illustrated them with crowded copiousness, overdone the thing, and spoiled it. However, the subject has so much interest, and the picture so much to look at, that we like it better than almost any of the artist's recent works. There is William, with his white gloves on, very straight, reserved, and keen; Peter, with his bare arms and just relinquished saw, his blue eyes and incipient moustache, looking full at him, frank and free, warm with his work, as who should say, "I'm not the less a King and a brother for all this"; Carmarthen and Shrewsbury, rather supercilious; Menzikoffs and Gehownins at shipwright's and porter's work, smoking their pipes, and one of them flourishing an adze which threatens, if the laws of perspective hold good, to bereave Muscovy of her Czar; and then "a dwarf, a Negro boy," (more like a Quadroon, and even then all out of drawing,) a monkey, and a young actress of Drury Lane "—whom Mr. Mediae makes almost a child. It is all better put together than the best tableau vivant, and as like an incident in life, with real genius given in gratis.
The Devil can quote Scripture, and Mr. Dyce can paint Titian; but you do not expect evangelical religion from Old Nick, and must not ask Venetian colour of the R.A. Mr. Dyce's subject comes from Ridolfi ; who " states that Titian, when a little boy, gave the earliest indication of his future eminence as a colourist by drawing a Madonna, which he coloured with the juice of flowers." The incident, at best, is not a happy one for illustration, for nothing could well show that the boy is Titian : and here we only see a boy looking at a white effigy of the Madonna and child, and having some plucked flowers by him. So fine an artist as Mr. Dyce cannot do anything without a certain excellence, and that of a high order ; but this is not a successful effort,—not living in colour, nor in the elaboration of its hortus-siccus details of flowers, grass, and foliage. The flesh-tints are positively ghastly—leaden-grey in the face, clay-brown in the right hand. The colour of the costume would be rich were it richly painted, and has probably been chosen with thoughtful intention as a further symptom of the boy's love of colour. "God save the Queen "—a family group of mamma at the piano, leading the choral voices of her children—is powerfully painted by Mrs. E. M. Ward ; the faces very nice and lifelike, the execution and coleur effective, but vulgarized by over-dressing in the lady's figure. "Kate Niekleby at Madame Mantalini's" is one of the puniest and commonest of Mr. Frith's minor works : another single figure further on, "A London FlowerGirl," is better, but still with nothing in it, whether by way of character or beauty, that deserved to be painted, and no painting that redeems the poverty of subject. "Mrs. Markham" is pleasantly conceived as a portrait subject by Mr. Grant; walking, with a fair fine English face, through the snow, in mourning-costume with red petticoat, and pulling on one of her gloves. "A Welcome Arrival" is a bit of unadulterated fact from the Crimea, painted by Mr. Luard. Three officers, who have had the time very heavy on their hands in the winter-bound army-hut, its walls pasted over with wood-cuts from the illustrated News, are roused from ennui by the receipt of a box full of things from home, which they are busily undoing : one looks with grave tenderness at a photographic portrait—to him its supreme treasure. Low in tone, and simple in execution, this picture is a sound piece of work, refreshingly free from carelessness, conceit, or affectation. "The Mountain Path" is an extremely pretty landscape by Mr. J. T. Linnell, bright and light in hue, but injured exeeutively by the husky texture of the background : and "George Combe, Esq., Author of The Constitution of Man,' "is a strong portrait by Sir Watson Gordon, showing the phrenologist large in frontal phrenological development.
As a matter of course' Mr. Mulready's "Young Brother" is the work of a refined mind and a consummate artist, as well as a conspicuous instance of veteran power. With all its grace and domestic sweetness, however, it presents various points open to criticism. The composition is somewhat artificial ; the child's face, and perhaps its limbs too, wanting in infantine mould and charm ; and, though it is something to have painted the back of the girl's head so prettily, the total concealment of the face is rather odd in effect, and is a loss for which nothing can wholly compensate,—the more so as the first idea which such a group suggests must naturally be that of a parental rather than a fraternal relationship, which might have been counteracted by family likeness, or a distinctly adolescent maidenly character in the girl's face. We cannot, on the whole, rate this among the admirable painter's chefs d'ceuvre. Mr. Hook seems finally to have abandoned Venetianisms in favour of Englishism, and mother-earth refreshes him like Antiens. He is now one of the most English of painters no other pictures in the Academy are so thoroughly national in their love of coast and coast life,—hardhanded fathers moist from the salt ooze, with chubby children, good mothers, and likely sailor-lads. In "A Signal on the Horizon," where an old mariner has his glass bearing upon the unseen vessel, up and up goes the cliff-scene, cottage above clump, and crag above cottage,—a peopled sunny home-view, delightful to every artist's and every British eye. The more of such painting the bettor. Very delicate and charming again is "The Confidante" by Mr. Gale,—a tender blonde confessing to her somewhat elder lady-Mend, in a pleasant forest-ramble, that there is a young man for whom she has a preference. The surface is as fine and beautiful as an ivory miniature ; the painting pure and curiously minute, yet not trivial ; the sentiment very engaging. Mr. Gale has got on the right track here; and, whether he perseveres in the same path or treads it as an avenue to higher ground, he cannot go wrong if he make as sure of his footing at each. step as at this. Hard by hangs another work of minute completeness, the "Faces in the Fire" of Mr. Brett ; the colour nice, the head and attitude of the young man, as he lingers over the hearth before going to bed, very faithfully realized, and the fire most successful for so difficult an attempt. We do not recollect having ever before seen flames so thoroughly drawn. "Breakfast-time, Morning Games," by Mr. Cope, which presents a little girl, who "opens her mouth and shuts her eyes" to receive the lump of sugar which mamma will bestow upon her, is not at all up to the artist's standard in such subjects—the expression ugly and exaggerated, and the painting poor.
"Sophia Western" is one of those pieces of delightful affectation of which Mr. Chalon possesses the secret ; so absurd, and so piquant, and so oldfashioned, that you cannot be angry with it. The fair Sophia languishes in her chair, the picture of health and sprightliness, with her high-heeled shoe poked forward, and her hoop bulging out underneath her white satin dress below the waist at both sides of the chair; while a ridiculous little Cupid has taken up his quarters inside her muff upon the table. The negligent but efficient ease of execution is pleasant to contemplate in these days of accurate work, as an exceptional case. "A Swiss Meadow in June" is a very sweet close study of landscape by Mr. Moore ; "Port na Spania, near the Giant's Causeway, Antrim," with the wreck of a stray vessel from the Spanish Armada, a large work by Mr. Stanfield, thoroughly characteristic of his knowledge and sure-handedness. The "Sir Roger de Coverley in Church" of Mr. Leslie makes you feel painfully cold at first sight, with its dry raw colour ; but after getting over this, you find that it is as full of his humour and good-humour, and of genial English country nature, as any of his other works of the same class. The knight, waking up from a snooze during the sermon, has sent a footman to rouse a smock-frocked countryman on whom the preacher has had the like somniferous effect : the congregation are divided between staid stolidity and an inclination to grin. One woman, between yawning and smiling, holds her handkerchief to her mouth ; and the little boy by her side is getting very fidgetty in his seat. " Craig-dulyn, Carnarvonshire," is a small specimen of Mr. Oakes's excellence ; but nothing could serve better to show how perfectly he succeeds in uniting the amplest truth of specific detail with breadth, harmony, and ease. It is a charming little thing. Graceful and pleasant also, especially in its foliage, is the large landscape of Mr. Creswick, "Autumn Morning, where brook and river meet"; the colour low, but in nice keeping, the cattle feebly drawn. In "The Dame's Absence," Mr. Rankley represents a school. room of boys and girls in free-and-easy though not uproarious emancipation from their mistress's control; the youngest boy has knocked over her ink-bottle, of which his pinafore bears tell-tale symptoms, and is.coaxing a robin redbreast which twitters on the threshold. The picture contains a quantity of elaborate painting, which passes almost unnoticed now, but would have been a nine-days wonder some seven years ago ; and it is altogether one of the artist's best. Thin and poor in the foreground and its figures is Mr. Herbert's view "On the Coast of France in the Autumn of 1853 "; but the azure-green sea, with pale glints of sunshine across it, is so exquisite a thing in nature, and so feelingly caught, that it atones for all. Even the oldest of the Academicians confess in their doings the influence of the principle which sends every hopeful aspirant among their juniors humbly and affectionately to the study of out-door nature : Mr. 1:Twins's "Langford
Bridge, Staines, from my Study-Window," is a slight thing, but genuine, and only requires some added steadiness of handling and elaboration. Not so Mr. Hanby, whose conspicuous "classical landscape composition" of the Claude type—"The Court, Palace, and Gardens of Alcinous ; a Ruddy Morning "—is as false and disagreeable in general tone as it is weak in invention and detail, and mechanical in manner. Here we take leave of the Great Room ; only adding a list of works which restricted space has compelled us to pass without more particular notice, but which the visitor should not fail to look into—some as respectable examples of well-known men, others as unpretentious, but valuable or promising studies.
No. 13, Mont Blanc, from Servos II. Moore.
53. From the Early Life of Queen Elizabeth tr. J. Grant. 64. The Jew's Harp C. Rossiter.
87. The Duke °rain° and Viola F. R. Pickersgill. 109. The Lone Church by the Sea-Shore X. Anthony. 135. Thoughts of the Future 11. Carrick. 144, The Reverend W. II. E. Bentinek G. Richmond. 180. Youth and Age J. C. Horsley. 235. The Bishop of Jamaica J. L. Reilly.
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