ART.

THREE PAINTERS AT THE GROSVENOR GALLERY. WE felt compelled last week, in our notice of the Royal

Academy, to express a strongly unfavourable opinion upon the quality of most of the work there exhibited, especially that of the Academicians themselves ; it is therefore with unfeigned pleasure that we can give, in our first notice of the Gros- venor Gallery, an opinion of an exactly opposite kind, and can thereby infer that it is not the case, that our Art is in the decrepit condition, which an examination of the chief works at Burlington House would lead us to suppose.

It may not be flattering to our national vanity to discover, that what our costly institution for the promotion of Art has failed to accomplish, despite the prestige of a hundred exhibi- tions and the stimulating glory of Royal patronage, has been done by a private individual, at his own cost ; but, flattering or not, the fact is patent to all. The struggling artist of the day, turns for help and encouragement not to the Academy, which is supposed to exist for his ecation , but endeavours to gain a place for his pictures, in the private gallery of a wealthy amateur.

We are not amongst the number of those who derive any satis- faction from the triumph of Sir Contts Lindsay's exhibition over that of its gigantic rival ; we rather feel a deep annoyance with the management which has caused such a triumph to be possible, and which has succeeded in driving from its doors every artist whose work is not of the most common-place and hackneyed kind. No reproach, no diatribe even, against the way in which the Academy has been conducted would be so powerful, or so damning to its pretensions as a body gathered together for the promotion of the best Art, as the simple facts that such works as "The Annunciation," by Mr. Burne Jones, the great landscapes of Mr. Cecil Lawson, and the pictures of Holman Hunt, are exhibited elsewhere.

Let us look a little at the work of the three artists whom we have mentioned, and first at that of Mr. Burne Jones. There is a comfortable sofa in front of his pictures, so we are able to examine them at our leisure. Five works in all, a series of four telling the story of Pygmalion, and a large "Annunciation." We will take the series first :—

"The heart desires." "The hand refrains." "The Godhead fares." "The soul attains."

Such are the four incidents of the legend here illustrated. In.

the first, the sculptor stands musing in his studio, thoughtful and dejected. In the background, through an open doorway, iS seen the street, along which pass two girls, who look in to- wards Pygmalion, half in mockery, half in entreaty. No incident of the story is more perfect in its rendering than this. The artist's self-absorption and earnest gravity ; the girls' light wilfulness and careless abandon ; the sunlight and gay dresses of the street ; the subdued light and quiet robes of the studio and the sculptor,—no contrast could be more subtle or more powerful. Every detail of this picture leads us towards the comprehension of the passionate artist-nature of Pygmalion, finding in his thought alone that ideal of life and beauty which he could gain from no reality, however fair. Let us turn to the second of the series. Here the ideal has taken shape, and the sculptor stands before the statue, not as a lesser artist would have made him, with passionate admiration of the beauty he has created, but with a far more natural feeling,—sorrow, sorrow that his conception is finished, and that his hand can do no more. Half stooping towards him, but cold and grey as death itself, Galatea stands waiting for the touch of Venus to wake her into life.

In the next picture we see the awakening. The dim room is flooded with soft light, flashing in streams through the open doorway, and in its midst stands Venus, rose-crowned, stretch- ing one arm towards Galatea, who clings to the outstretched arm of the goddess, as the power of movement is bestowed. No description of which we are capable can convey in any adequate degree the intense beauty of this work. As in all supreme painting, we lose sight altogether of the artist in the vision he has created for us, and it needs a severe effort of the mind to bring itself back to the consideration of the marvellous skill which is here displayed. But when this is done, we hardly know upon what to bestow our greatest admiration, whether upon the soft effulgence of light in which the picture is enveloped, the little bit of azure sky on which Venus stands, and the delicate iridescence of the doves' plumage ; - on the stately strength of divine beautw and power in her figure, the clinging dependence of that of Galatea; or on the expression of the living statue, which is probably the most wonderful painting of all,—surprise, joy, and helplessness strug- gling together in one woman's face. And then there comes the last of the series, "The Heart Attains,"—Pygmalion standing be- fore Galatea, about to kiss her hand. Worship, not love alone, is here expressed, and the fear which accompanies the possession of any priceless treasure ; but the woman is marble still,—marble, that is, not in her soft beauty of womanhood or warmth of rosy life, but in the soul which looks out through the grave eyes anti in the whole expression of the face. Perhaps she is hardly awake yet to the full meaning of life.

We will now speak of "The Annunciation," which is a tall, rather narrow picture. The Virgin stands by a circular well, close to the threshold ; on the extreme left is the angel, hovering beside the branches of a laurel-tree. The whole tone of the work is light, and there is hardly any positive colour, save that in the robes and wings of the angel, which are painted in the burnished hues of purple and gold, somewhat in the manner of the robes and wings of the angels in the composition of "The Six Days of Crea- tion." The Virgin is simply clothed in plain white robes, pale of face, with light grey-blue eyes and brown hair. The greatest tribute we can pay to the beauty of this painting we give, when we confess to our readers our intense disinclination to dwell upon its merit in detail. No praise that we could here bestow would be adequate to express our opinion. We do not like to hear any one talk of a perfect poem as rather pretty ; we do not like to catalogue the virtues of any one we love very dearly ; and we, at least, cannot talk of supreme work like this with any "impertinence of praise or blame." One person has told us that the angel's robes are too involved, another that the Virgin's eyes are too light, and a third that the positions are awkward. It may well be that these things are true, but for us there only exists the poem, which made our heart beat and our eyes moist when we first saw it, and whose influence has grown rather than waned on closer acquaintanceship.

Without quitting the sofa on which we have seated ourselves for the inspection of the works we have men- tioned, we can see the solitary contribution of Mr. Holman Hunt, which hangs immediately upon the left of Mr. Burne Jones's works. This is called" The Ship," and further described by a verse from "In Memoriam"

"I hear the noise about thy keel, I hear the bell struck in the night, I see the cabin-window bright, I see the sailor at the wheel."

A starlit night on a tropical sea, shadowy masts and sails striking across the deep blue sky, and beneath a great awning the deck of a "P. & 0." boat, with its usual litter of rugs, easy. chairs, &c.; a few figures here and there ; a steady English sailor steering, an Anglo-Indian leaning upon the bulwarks, opera-glass in hand, a woman with clasped hands looking up to the sky, and a Lasear talking to some one in the saloon below through one of the sky-lights,—such is the scene, and such the cha- racters of the picture. And now how shall we cause such of our readers as have not been " Eastwards " to under- stand the quiet charm of the time and weather which Mr. Holman Hunt has reproduced so magically. For, indeed, it seems to us little short of magic, that a painter can with a few touches of his brush transport us a couple of thousand miles, make us forget the "bleak wind of this December day," and shed round us in lieu thereof, the balmy ails of the Indian. Ocean. But the charm of which we have spoken is not that alone of kindly weather on a quiet sea ; it is the sense of perfect repose of mind, which can hardly come save under these circumstances. The artist has caught the very essence of the scene. The smooth deck, the tumbled confusion of passengers' belongings, left in undisturbed confidence in the continuance of fair weather, the lights of cabin and binnacle, the dark- ness of mast and sail above the huge awning, and the silent, mysterious depths of the deep blue sky,—all these are combined so as to render the scene with a realism which does not, like that of Tissot, attract the attention to itself, but only heightens the intended impression. Let us not be misunder- stood, in our praise of this work, to place it upon a level with that of the other artist we have mentioned ; it is undoubtedly of a lower rank, but in that rank it is as supreme as "The Annuncia- tion," being the most perfect piece of realistic painting which we have ever seen, and in some respects belonging to a higher class of work. We are sorry that we cannot afford space here to show this more clearly.

We must now pass to the landscapes of Mr. Cecil Lawson, and first to his large contribution (No. 19 in the West Gallery) called "Kent." In many ways this is a beautiful picture, in all it is a work of very great power,—greater power, we should say, than exists in any other landscape painter of our time. To say that it is at all perfect even in its way, would be both to mislead the public, and do the artist the greatest possible harm; indeed, we fancy

if the latter told us his opinion, he would be the first to say that his method of work was at present scarcely more than experimental. And in many minor points, as, for instano, in

the painting of the nearest flowers and foreground, the work is greatly deficient in delicacy; but for grasp of a subject, in power of depicting worthily a broad stretch of varied landscape, and in the freedom and vigorousness of the whole painting, this is a very remarkable work. Its similarity to Rubens' landscape is so great that we cannot help noticing it, though we do not like drawing attention to such resemblances, and attach little if any importance to them. The likeness, however, is to the strength and freedom of Rubens, quite as much, if not more, than to his manner and choice of subject. Several othei small landscapes has Mr. Lawson scattered about these rooms, and one in the East Gallery, of considerable size, No. 141, called, "The Morning After," a lurid landscape, with a grand, stormy sky. This is a picture which tells more of the artist's powers, and is even more original than the large work which we have just mentioned ; the sky being worthy, in many respects, to rank with that of Turner himself. Will Mr. Lawson forgive us for saying that it rather resembles the work of Turner in his decadence than that of his prime, and that it is somewhat dangerous for a young painter to begin where our greatest landscape painter left off.