ART.
LANDSEER AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
WE confess to have shared with other persons daring the last few months a doubt whether the exhibition of all Landseer's pic- tures together would add to his reputation as a painter. That doubt has been happily dispelled. There is no more severe test of an artist's originality and strength than the display of his life's work at one view, and Sir Edwin passes well through this posthu- mous ordeal. Comparison, side by side with other artists, may in most cases be necessary to settle a painter's rank among them, and to detect their influence upon his work; but in Landseer's case it would do little more than help to define the field of his labour, and proves right where no one disputes the possession. Few artists, in- deed, have been less indebted to other masters, ancient or modern, for their sources of inspiration. Edwin Landseer came to the front so young in life, and so distinctly made his mark by a direct inter- pretation of Nature, that there was no need for him to lean for support upon recognised models. From first to last he was looked up to as an original painter, and he must from an early period have felt himself entitled to be regarded as leader in his own walk of Art. This being so, it may be taken in proof of the sound foundation on which his originality was based, that he did not content himself with copying his first successes. During the best years of hie life his manner of painting was formed under the guidance of an earnest and minute study of nature, and it was only in his later time, after he had acquired and gradually brought to perfection a consummate mastery of hand, that he began to rely on the most superficial and therefore the most popular qualities of his art. The great value of the present exhibition does not consist in the bringing together of the pictures of the last thirty years, but in the opportunity it affords of corn. paring these with the much greater work which preceded them. It is greatly to be regretted, however, that the Academy hangers, apparently quite unconscious of having in their hands the materials for a great lesson on art, have, as usual, confined themselves to the task of making the rooms look pretty enough for a shilling ex- hibition, without any regard to chronological sequence. Were it not for this one clue to their principle of arrangement, they would seem to have made it their study to throw obstacles in the way of a connected view of the life's work of the one modern painter who this winter is made to take precedence of all the greatest of his predecessors. The catalogue is, if possible, more meagre and full of mistakes than usual ; and to render the whole affair as incomplete as circumstances would permit, an extremely valuable and almost perfect collection of the engraved works of Landseer, brought together by the industry of Messrs. Graves and Son expressly for exhibition at Burlington House, has been refused admission there, and consigned to a quite inadequate gallery on the opposite side of Piccadilly. This col- lection of upwards of 400 prints is of peculiar value in illus- tration of the career of Landseer, on a great deal of whose work the adaptability to the requirements of the engraver must have had special influence ; and it contains many interesting book illustrations, woodcuts, and etchings, about twenty of which were executed by the painter himself between the ages of 7 and 23, and in which one may trace the gradual development of his freedom of touch. Here, too, the arrangement and catalogue are models of what they should be.
We must do what we can to sort the Landseer Exhibition without Academic aid. As far as we can ascertain, in its confused state, Sir Edwin Laudseer's pictures may be historically divided into four or five distinct manners, more or less successive, and bearing more or less relation to the classes of subjects which he dealt with. In the first, his painting was rough and vigorous, and heavily coloured, but with conscientious care in the detail, and the animals he studied were full of bone and muscle and strong sinew. "Fight- ing Dogs getting Wind" (422), exhibited in 1818, when he was sixteen years old, and bought by Sir George Beaumont, a really marvellous picture, in its way unequalled by any subsequent work of the artist; the "Dogs of St. Bernard reanimating a Traveller" (299), painted in 1820; the British "Boar Hunt" (381), and "Impertinent Puppies dismissed by a Monkey" (204), both painted in 1821 ; and the large roaring lion (238), are the most conspicuous pictures in this first manner. "The Rat- Catchers," 1821 (301), though belonging to the same period, gives warning, by the greater delicacy of its handling, of an approach to the second manner, which comprises what is in technical quality and completeness of painting by far the most valuable portion of Landseer's work. The greater part of the paintings in this manner were executed between the ages of 20 and 35. To this period belong the following subject-pictures :— " The Cat's Paw," 1824 (281) ; the exquisitely comic "Travelled Monkey," 1827 (369); "High Life and Low Life," 1829, now at the National Gallery ; the "Breakfast Party," 1831 (460) ; the "Jack in Office," in the Sheepshanks collection, 1833; the "Shepherd's Grave," 1837 (362) ; and the "Shepherd's Chief Mourner," 1837, at South Kensington. These pictures are all well known by engravings, but there were others of the same period upon which Edwin Landseer must have employed himself with much greater relish, and which contributed far more to give him the extraordinary facility in painting which ensured the popularity of his later style. In 1824 he made his first visit to Scotland, and about the same time he extended his range of subjects to those connected with more refined sport than dog-fighting, bull- baiting, and killing rats. The results of his study in this new field are to be seen in the extremely valuable contributions by Mr. Unwin Heathcote and Mr. Wells of Redleaf. At this time he acquired a mastery in the expression of textures of fur and feather which is simply marvellous. There are a luminous richness in the coat of the "Stag just Shot" (161), and a depth and mystery in the glossy plumage of the keen-eyed raven that soars down upon the carrion, which stand out in brilliant comparison with the smooth sweeps of the brush and oily sparkle of the later and slighter work. "The Fox" (160) and " Woodcock" (162) are not less excellent. The figures, too, when introduced in pictures of this class, seem to be painted con amore and to belong to the subject. See, for example, the natural action of the stalker in "Dead Stag" (132), looking after the hinds that are making off over the brow of the hill. Another very thoroughly painted picture of the same period is the "Hunter and Hounds" (283), from the same collection, where the landscape background, too, is carefully put in.
Mr. Wells's magnificent series, chiefly of studies of game, occupy nearly a whole wall in Gallery 5, and extending to a somewhat later period, show us again what Landseer was when at his very highest as a painter. Except in the picture of 'Chevy, Chase," painted in 1826, which remains at Woburn, he appears at this time to have abandoned, almost for good, the class of sub- jects demanding the portrayal of vigorous muscular action, for which he showed a capacity in earlier'days. The time was soon to come when his art was to feel the combined influence of aris- tocratic patronage and the demands of popular taste ; but there are occasional pictures, painted when he was between thirty and forty years of age, which seem to indicate a desire to adopt a more robust style of painting than any which we find him practising in subsequent years. To this class, which, we think, is entitled to be regarded as a third manner, belong the remarkable study called the "Sleeping Bloodhound," in the Bell Collection, which was painted in three days from the dead animal, and the grand mastiff-bloodhound called " Odin " (200), which, the catalogue tells us, was "painted at a single sit- ting within twelve hours, with the object of showing the superior effect of one continuous effort over more elaborate work." A few years before, he had painted for Mr. Wells, in two hours, as the Cata- logue does not record, but as an inscription in Sir Edwin's writing on the picture does, the life-like study of a "Dog aud Rabbit" (330). These are not merely wonderful examples of the power he bad now acquired of rapid handling, but tend to show the kind of work he was inclined to produce when left to his own resources. 'There's Life in the Old Dog yet" (224) is perhaps the only subject-picture which probably belongs to the class we have just referred to. Fourthly, we have the polished manner of painting which is chiefly known to the present generation as the distinctive characteristic of Landseer's workmanship, and which it is needless to describe further. It arose gradually out of the deftness of hand and mastery over material which the painter had acquired, and its adaptability to the well-groomed and silky skins of pet animals, but it sank in time into a sort of conventional method of sketching which took account of certain qualities of texture exclu- sively. Nevertheless, some of the most deservedly important pictures, including most of the stag series, belong to this period. But later on there came a clay-cold colour, and finally, a livid hue over yet slighter works, and lastly, an apparent loss of power of hand and eye. It would scarcely be right to designate as a fifth manner what was too evidently the result of physical failure.
No study of the works of Landseer would, however, be com-
plete without a careful inspection of the drawings and scraps in t4
Gallery 1, particularly the series of pen-and-ink sketches, slightly tinted, bearing date 1840. For grace of line and grouping, sparkling effect of light, suggestion of the varieties of texture, expression of character, right application of material, and general refinement and ease of execution, the small Geneva drawings (44, 45, 52, 54, and others,) are not to be sur- passed. The same kind of power is to be seen in the following wood-cut illustrations exhibited by Messrs. Graves :—The sea (124-128) by Thompson from Rogers's "Italy ;" the little dog begging on a title-page, for the "Royal School of Industry (230) ; and the well-known " Boxer " (315), from the "Cricket on the Hearth." It is more particularly among these sketches and drawings that we seem to see a capacity of develop- ment in other branches of art than those in which Sir Edwin acquired his great name, and which sometimes seems strangely at variance with the defects of his larger works. There is nothing in their whole range to be compared, in its way, with the varied and true expressions of the two priests and their con- gregations in the "Sketch at Mechlin," 1840 (31), and "Pulpit in Belgium" (37). The vein of fun apparent in many of the smaller scraps, and the inimitable humour of the "Travelled Monkey," seem quite inconsistent with the sentimentality of some of his most admired works. How, too, are we to reconcile the melancholy failures of most of his royal portraits with the unquestionable merit of several of the- examples of portraiture which we also see here, notably those of his father, "John Landseer" (241), "Jacob Bell" (157).
"John Gibson, R.A." (189), "Sir W. Callcott, ILA." (214), and above all, those of Sir Walter Scott (407 and 457) ? Some of his.
portraits of children are very charming, as in the "Beauty's Bath (415), "Little Red Riding-Hood," 1831 (432), and that, a year later, of the same spirituelle young lady as "The Little Actress at the Duke's" (443). But it is evident that some of Landeeer'e work was gone through without his heart being really in it, and/ then it sank to a lower level than that of painters without a tithe of his genius. There is one surprising feature in this exhibition.
which the mixed hanging does not destroy, namely, the greab variety of motives with so narrow a range, and the individuality which is preserved in almost every one of the pictures.
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