ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER- COLOURS.
THE Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours have this year made a valiant• attempt to justify their title, and produce a really typical collection of pictures. The attempt has been attended_with considerable Success ; and we have much pleasure in being able to say that the present exhibition is, in at least -one great department of art, that of landscape, considerably above the average. Figure and 'subject paintings have never been the strength of this Society, and have become less and less remarkable of late years. What new blood has been intro- duced into the " Old Society " has been mainly landscape blood ,(if such an expression be allowable), until the exhibition is at present almost entirely restricted to pictures of towns, and scenery, and little incidents of rural, domestic, or urban life, in which the figures are chiefly used as adjuncts to the background. We do not grumble at this being the case,—we simply state the fact. Nor is it the case that the few exceptions to this rule are such as to make us desire that they should be more numerous. Mr. Hen- shall's young ladrreading in a library in a most uncomfortable attitude, apparently chosen for its opportunity of exhibiting a good deal of shapely leg and stocking to an admiring public, is tame, conventional, and distinctly fails to hit its mark. Mr. E. J. Poynter's "Psyche " is still more unattractive, and we have seldom seen in a picture in which the object has simply been to paint an ideal head and bust, such a piece of sheer ugliness as the hand and arms and the ill-arranged drapery 'upon the shoulder. As a companion to this hangs Mr. Brewt- nail's " Fatima," a front view of the same subject of which he painted the back in the Institute of Oil Colours ; and this work, too, is as feebly commonplace as it is possible for a picture to be.
There is a very elaborate Eastern subject, by Carl Haag, of " Eliezer Returning from his Mission," in which the camel and its head-gear is finely drawn and painted ; but the figures are the merest poppets, and the whole picture is unreal to the last degree. There is a beautiful little study of a single figure by Tadema, called " A Street Altar," and a garish and most theatric " Cid and the Five Moorish Kings " by Lockhart, the member of the Scottish Academy. Mr. Buckman sends more of his strolling acrobats, and Mr. Parker his picturesque peasantry—both of the same theatric, unreal prettiness, and both, therefore, missing the real beauty which they might have had. And really the most interesting, and, artistically speak- ing, the best figure picture in the Gallery, comes to be one by a Mr. Wainwright, one of the newer Associates, who . sends a cleverly expressed study of the interior of an artist's studio, called " His Model." In this, it is true, we only see the back of one figure and the distant face of the other ; but the work is excessively clever—in a brusque, rather coarse way. The manner in which the painting is executed and the truth of the "values " show thorough skill and knowledge, and the whole picture has that amount of force and " chic " which we find more frequently across the. Channel than at home. Especially good in this picture is all the still life. The bunch of brushes in the pan, the portfolio, and the silk coat of the artist, are all rendered with great skill.
)3a if this is the ease with the figure work, nearly the exact contrary may be said of the landscapes ; they are as good and- interesting as the others are the reverse; their average is as high as the others' is—low. Perhaps of all the perfectly pure naturalistic paintings of which he has done so many, Mr. George Fripp has produced no finer example than the large one which he sends to this exhibition, of " The West Coast of the Isle of Sark." It is not only a beautiful piece of drawing and a most skilful specimen of the old water colour-wash style of painting, but it has an atmosphere of peace and unpretentiousness ; a free- dom from the effort to be smart or to be eccentric, which is very refreshing. It does, indeed, rest the eye, much in the same way as the scene it depicts would rest heart and brain ; and that praise is no mean one. Look, for instance of a differing talent, at.Mr. Goodwin's work, two large examples of which—one of sea, one of river-acape—hang near Mr. Fripp, and two others of sun- set over a shore and over a manufacturing town, are at the end of the Gallery. Quiz'. artist, Mr. Goodwin has nearly everything which Mr. Fripp lacks,—daring, originality, imagination, poetry, and keenest sense of _beauty of colour. His work is as crammed with meaning and hints of thought as the other is free from them ; he is for ever feeling something, or wanting us to feel something, about sea, and sky, and
moorland, and river. And yet one can imagine that for many " care-encumbered men " Mr. Fripp's gentle piece of sun- light and summer sea would tell a more pleasant story. " One can't allus be work-in', Thqnire ;" and at the times of rest we could wish for no quieter companion than such work as this of Fripp's. Well, each has its use. Our space is far too short to moralise, and we must point out as quickly as possible the remaining pictures, merely premising that we must in this short notice leave unmentioned many meritorious works. Mr. Henry Moore has never been so fine in water-colour as he is this year in the large drawing of " After Rough Weather"— blue sea after storm, seen in bright light, and with a sky which is one of the most magnificent we retnember since Cox's " Hay- field." Words can hardly be too strong to say how good is this work ; we must leave it with the simple expression of the pleasure it has given us. Two examples of the late Mrs. Angell's flower- painting, one of which is the last drawing upon which she worked, have, owing to their artist's recent death, a somewhat sad interest to enhance their beauty. They are very beautiful, and, even for Mrs. Angell, unusually perfect in their manipu- lation.
There is a study of a corn-field, by Mr. Tom Lloyd, called " Ready for the Sickle," which deserves mention for the perfect success with which the artist has rendered a subject of intense difficulty. In this golden corn you can see every ear in that softly distinct confusion which offers a maddening problem to the painter. Mr. Lloyd has rendered not only the form and the wavy grace of the ears, but their individuality in detail, and their brilliancy in mass, with great fidelity and success.
To take another kind of beauty, that of " London Town." Mr. Marshall has never, within his range, been so fine as in this Gallery. There is a drawing of Hyde Park Corner, with & contrast of the daily life below, and the glorious sunset breaking through the clouds and smoke above, which is a triumph of dealing with a subject which most folks would think uninteresting. This artist at least deserves the praise of one who has found his beauty in things which lay unheeded at his door, and has taught a good many of us that our smoky old city was not less picturesque, rightly viewed, than many a famous sketching-ground. We hope to return to this Gallery, and say a few words of Mr. Marks' " Captive Prin- cess " (in which the birds are as good as the princess is feeble), of Mr. Watson's landscapes, and Mr. Charles Gregory's elaborate rustic pictures, of Mr. North's " Apple Garden," and Mr. Alfred Hunt's " Deserted River-bed "—a beautiful desolate landscape this last ; but for the present we must leave all these undescribed.
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