ART.
NEW GALLERY.
Tun extremes of good and bad painting hang side by side with bewildering effect at the New Gallery. Pictures which would be a disgrace to a small provincial exhibition occupy positions of importance, and often hang side by side with works of the highest merit. How are such inequalities of hanging to be accounted for ? Do the Directors and the Consulting Committee, whose names figure on the title-page of the catalogue, seriously consider that the inevitable spaces between the best pictures have been filled as v.:A as might reasonably be expected? Of course the number of works of the first order is of necessity limited; but could not some rather more adequate filling-up have been found than the types of work of which Nos. 18, 143, and 240 are examples ?
The astonishing range of Mr. Sargent's power is demon- strated by two large pictures in the North Room. In one
the look and tone of a highly artificial society are put before us. Here the pet dogs are bedecked with bows, and the air we feel smells of scent and burnt pastilles. In the other work we are taken to the rocks by a sweeping Norwegian river, where a boy is resting beside the shining fish he has caught. With
so many painters a change of background brings no change of spirit. Not so with Mr. Sargent; he is a great painter not merely because of his enormous technical power, but because he can penetrate below the surface and reach the heart of his subject. In the Children of A. Wertheimer, Esq. (No. 251) the moral atmosphere of an opulent and exotic society has been seized and put before us. So in On his Holidays, Norway (No. 297) the freedom of life out of doors, and the joy of existence by those sounding waters, are fixed and made perma- nent. Owing to the fact that the background is mountain and water, and not the more familiar interior either of studio or house, the painter seems more interested and less desirous of reducing everything to its elements. In the Wertheimer group by means of an inspired shorthand we can hear the crackle of the chintz covering of the sofa on which the children are sitting. But the foam of the river is not treated in so summary a way. Most painters would have made their dispositions so that the white shirt of the figure should be separated from the largest mass of white foam in the water, to avoid a confusion of planes. Not so Mr. Sargent ; he puts them side by side, and since for him technical difficulties do not seem to exist, there is no such confusion. The two spaces of white stand apart and at their proper distances, while the gain to design of having this con- centration of white is great. The figure in this picture is both beautiful in itself, and in perfect accord with its surroundings. Graceful in line, it has the suppleness and spring of the fish the young angler has been catching. Regarded as a piece of painting, the face is as beautiful a piece of modelling as Mr. Sargent has shown us. The expression is wonder- ful. "Beauty born of murmuring sound" has passed into the face. The charm of this silver-coloured picture has been emphasised and compared with the warmer tones of the indoor group with no intention of disparaging the latter. Indeed, it is the finest of the three groups the painter shows this year, but it is what we should have expected had we been told the title of the picture merely. The unexpectedness of the other is part of its charm. The painter, diverging from the path he has of late been treading, shows a keenness and vigour in the exploration of new ground which give to his work a stimulating charm greater than is to be found in his more accustomed style.
In the South Room are to be found a group of pictures by artists who use egg tempera for their medium. Of these Mrs. Marianne Stokes is not only the best technician, but the most interesting artist. Her Snowdrop (No. 6) is in every way delightful. In old fairy tales there is that mixture of seriousness and fantasy which gives them a feeling peculiar to themselves. It is this feeling that Mrs. Stokes has exactly caught. The three little gnomes are as serious and as deeply in earnest as are children playing at a most convincing make- believe. The individual and lovely scheme of colour, with its greys, dull yellows, and blues, is just of a kind to give the proper atmosphere to the story. The charm of this artist's work illustrating folk-lore tales is that, while entirely in the spirit of the old stories, it is original and individual. Mrs. Stokes is really advancing the art of tempera painting by not trying to make her work look like that of a forgotten old master. If this medium is to be revived it will be by such work as this, which shows the wonderful range of effects which can be got out of it and applied to the needs of the present day. Mr. Adrian Stokes's Wild Cherry Trees (No. 73) is another instance of what this oldest of mediums is capable of doing in the way of intense and luminous colour. Mr. Southall's little picture in the same medium, A Barquentine Coming in (No. 4), has a delightful quaintness about it. It is an amusing stylistic exercise, and shows us modern English landscape seen through the conventions of the quattrocento.
In this gallery, just as at the Academy, the decay of land- scape art is painfully evident. Although not a very inter- esting work, Mr. Bertram Priestman in his Meadowland and Marsh (No. 108) shows some of the true spirit of landscape. The subject is a quite ordinary piece of pastoral scenery, but it is treated with dignity and breadth. The sky is beautiful and full of air, and the mass of shadow over the distant trees of excellent effect. There are many well-painted studies of the materials out of which landscapes are made; for instance, Mr. Arthur Tomson's The Messenger (No. 136), which has a very effective sky. Miss Bland's Haymaking (No. 84) is an effective and breezy sketch, and Mr. J. A. Toft's Trentham Hall (No. 152) has charm ; but for a landscape in the sense of the word as applied to Corot or Daubigny we look in vain. Mr. Alfred East when he leaves reality rushes on disaster. A Morning Sang (No. 230) is indeed a descent from the beautiful Gibraltar in the Academy. The ideal world seems to have been no farther off than the decorations of some fairy scene on the stage. Mr. Brough is a painter who certainly has ability, but he seems to do his best to make his pictures vapid by overdoing masterly tricks of execution. Indeed when looking at such a picture as A Fairy Tale (No. 161) we wonder why it was necessary to put these wooden children there at all. The picture seems to have been done entirely for the sake of the swoops of the brush. It is a pity, for Mr. Brough has some- times shown the true instincts of a painter. Mr. Shannon has of late developed a style of great splendour and meretricious- ness. He somehow manage l to make both the sitters and the accessories of his portraits look as if they were composed of some very costly material,---just like those boxes of bonbons of gaudy hues in which what is after all only coloured sugar is made to take the appearance of lavish wealth and riotous excess. Two examples of this style are to be found in Nos. 178 and 247.
Mr. Wetherbee's beautiful art is seen to full advantage in his Halcyon Days (No. 144). The temptation to over- colour, which so often brings work of this kind to grief, has been resisted. The picture is a very difficult one to describe ; it is so entirely a matter of colour and harmony. Suffice it to say that only a painter of a truly poetic tem- perament could have given us this vision of wine-dark sea into which the sun is setting. There is no question or doubt about the picture ; it is simple and direct in the impression it makes, and that impression is one of great beauty.
Mr. Austen Brown in his Haymakers (No. 222) has painted a very strong and a very dignified picture. The two figures are life,size or more, and fill up the greater part of the canvas. The identical movement of the man and woman enforces the Titanic spirit which informs the work. The breadth of the action and of the light of the low sun full on the figures and their impersonal- faces combine to give the feeling of primeval forces. They are hardly man and woman, but symbols of the ever-returning summer with its hay harvest. This picture with its noble simplicity and poetry would have made a suitable companion to the large allegory by Mr. Watts, Love Steering the Boat of Humanity (No. 149). The falling sail, the rebellions oars, and the storm clouds all bode ill for the symbolic figure of Humanity, who tries to navigate the boat ; but Love holds the rudder. Here we have the Titanic shapes this painter loves to create, and the deep rich colour which is so appropriate to them. Mr. Watts's splendid sense of design has enabled him to deal with these large forms and weld them into an imposing composition. How many painters are there now who could treat such a subject as this, and in such a grand and abstract manner, and yet retain that pas-
sionate force which is the life of a work of art ? H. S.
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