I int art s.
THE OLD WATER.COLOUR SOCIETY.
No apology is needed for drawing attention to the exhibition of pictures at the Old Water-Colour Gallery, even at this some- what late period of the season ; because, if there be any who have not yet devoted two or thres hours to their study, the few remarks that follow may serve as a notice to them of the good things they have hitherto foregone ; and as to that more numerous class who have already seen the exhibition, they w:ll not grudge a small space devoted to what they have, doubtless, admired. For, in fact, this, whatever it may be besides, is the place where the English schosl of landscape-peinting is beet represented, and where, thanks to the catholic tastes of' its members, the salient characteristics of its very various professors may most advantageously be studied.
Not that landscapes are the only pictures exhibited ; on the contrary, the figure subjects are among the best things here. Mr.
F. W. Burton's little nameless picture (239) representing a golden- haired young girl dressed in a cloud of muslin, and reclining against a green pillow, who gives her attention dreamily, yet not idly, to the flower she holds in her hand, would need a poet to describe it, and pia in words the world of thoughts which are suggested by gazing on it. It is one of a series of drawings presented by the members of this society to Edwin W. Field, Esq., whose good fortune in possessing such a work, if he were one whit less true a friend to artists, might well be envied. Close by hangs another drawing by Mr. Burton, called "German Lilacs" (234), in which a German girl, in picturesque costume, offers her spring- tide flowers for sale—sold, doubtless, long since. Mr. Burton's painting of flesh leaves nothing to be desired. With a detailed delicacy. which notes all the tenderest and subtlest gradations of colour, as well as of light and shade, there is combined a freedom or looseness of handling that suggests, and almost realizes, the transparent bloom which is as far as possible removed from the smooth enamelled surface produced by less misterly hands. This is a difficulty which Mr. F. Smallfield, in his conscientious desire for accurate imitation, has failed to overcome, especially in his pretty "Farfallina" (255), and in a less degree in his " Stiffly-Shelly' (210), repre seating a boy half.stripped for bathing, but whose courage, tinder the cooling influence of an English summer, is rapidly oozing out at his fingers' and toes' ends. Both pictures, how- ever, exhibit much that is pleasing aud unaffected in expression. In a different manner, and in a different class of subject from Mr. Burton, Mr. Alfred Fripp achieves a success equally great and legitimate. "Watching the Porpoises" (125) is drawn straight from nature and straight ferm the sea- side. Three sun-burnt fisher-boys, with eyes brimful of glee, watch from their station on a shelly rock the gambols of those mysterious monsters, whose motions the hindermost boy (the least successful of the three) seems to imitate with his hand. Mr. A. Fripp's pictures have something of the same sentiment as Mr. Hook's, R.A., but they are better drawn and painted. His other picture, 'Boy with Game" (254), is less pleasing. The game overpowers the boy (in more senses than one), and, though well painted, is unfortunately composed with the dog. 133fore leaving the figure painters, the advance made this year by Mr. W. Goodall, especially in his more than usually forcible " Le Reliquaire" (148), should be noted for commendation ; and the masterly sketch of "A Young Woman's Head" (253), by the veteran W. Hunt, worth all his fruit and all his flowers, must not be overlooked. , Admirable as the landseapes of Mr. George Fripp always are, he has never outdone, if he has ever equalled, the pictures which he exhibits this year. A true artist, he is ever learning, and striving more and more nearly to reach the ever-rising standard which he sets before him. His views of Scotch and Welsh hills are particularly good. He is imbued with the very spirit of the mountains, whether it be their gloom and terror, as in the "Mountains at the Head of Glen Etive"(49); or their more mysterious grandeur, as in the "Scene on the Heights near Ben Cruachan" (146), with the rain-swollen burn sliding and leaping over its rocky bed in the foreground ; or, again, the serene solemnity of the Carnedds David and Llewellyn, with the quiet little town of Llanogwen reposing peacefully below, that engage his pencil. This last picture (24) is of large size, and as remark- able for vigorous drawing as for delicacy of tone ; and the eye is led with increasing pleasure from the village, with its quiet columns of smoke, over the richly-wooded plain, to the gigantic. mountain behind, on whose sides fern and heather, rock and grass, glow with the tender and varying colours of the evening sunshine, and to the distant glen on the right, where the faint blue hills fade into the rising mists. The large and massive forms produced by the composition of the mountains with the clouds, the broad effect of light and shade, and the spacious atmosphere of this picture, bespeak an artist of equal imaginative power and skill. Simpler in subject, but not less consummate in treatment, are the "Old Windmill, near Eastbourne" (110), a delicious morning effect on the Sussex Downs, and the "Deer Track, Lech- nagar" (152), a triumph of luminous and tenderly-contrasted colour.
Mr. Dodgson is another artist of sterling metal and true stamp, whose aims are as high, though it must be conceded that his powers of execution are less vigorous than Mr. G. Fripp's. Among the pictures exhibited by him this year, which, by the way, are not an average sample of his work, "The Haunted House" (262), with its "cloud of fear," and its mysterious wreaths of night dews rising on the stagnant moat, and "Summer Evening" (295), where a group of majestic elms are dimly seen through the heavy air of twilight on the opposite bank of old Father Thames, are among the best.
Mr. Haag seems to have lost in the desert much (but let us hope not all) of his love for figure painting, and now asserts his rank among the most impressive of landscape- painters. He exhibits a grand picture of the gleaming marble columns which are all that is left standing of the city of Zeno- bia, whose short-lived splendour was followed by so many cen- turies of oblivion (186). The sultry atmosphere of the desert hangs like a curtain on the place whose title to the name Palmyra (Tadmor) depends, now at least, on the scanty evidence of half- a-dozen palm-trees growing among the ruins. Mr. Haag is, I believe, the first artist who ever made coloured sketches on this spot, and his picture is not a fanciful collection of broken columns, but an accurate as well as artist-like view of the very place. The picture is, unfortunately, not in a good light.
Good progrees has been made by Mr. Whittaker since his election to this society, particularly in the "Glyders from near Capel Curig " (L41), in which the watery gleam of sun on the distant hill is most happily caught, and throughout there is broader treatment, with greater delicacy of colour and nicer gradation of light and shadow than heretofore. Mr. A. H. Hunt appears still to labour in a purgatory of experiment, producing in his happier moments such drawings as "The St. Gotherd, with its Two Bridgee " (32), wherein he has successfully- accomplished the difficult feat of painting the prismatic bow hovering in the spray of the torrent as it dashes between its granite walls ; at another time uttering the harsh discord of green and raw purple that shocks the eye in his " Rokeby " (192). There are power and promise in most of his work, which gives hope of his speedy and final deliverance. Mr. A. Newton is another of the younger artists who is • still feeling his way . Into his picture, "Shades of Evening" (202), he has thrown much of the solemnity of the hour, though in the execution of the work be has not throughout been equally suc- cessful. The beautiful colour and arrangement of Mr. Hol!and's pictures, the "Rialto" (84), and the "Small Chapel of S.S. Giovanni e Paoli at Venice" (136), the pleasant pastorals • of Mr. Palmer, especially the "Return from Sea" (229), Mr. Naftel's conscientious though somewhat rawly-coloured drawings from Peesttim (211 and 233), Mr. Glennie's refined and tender "Ruin at Pole" (205), Mr. CollingwoOd's "Sunrise on Snowdon" (116), and " Pont-y-pair" (143), especially the mingled gold and gray of the turbid river in the latter, and the works of Mr. C. Davidson, remarkable for close study of nature, but not all equal in colour to his "Wray Common" (50), and "Near Nutfield " (60), all deserve praise. 'There is less than usual to admire in Mr. Duncan's pictures, careful and workmanlike though they are, especially the " Goodwin Sands" (77). Mr. '1'. M. Richard- son is satisfied, as usual, to rest for Success on skilful arrange- ment, without troubling himself over much with the nicer refinements which distinguish water-colour drawings from chromolithographs', and Mr. F. 'rapier, the president, pleases more in his stnaller studios of dogs (78) and Highland cattle (281), than in his larger and more ambitious composition of "Hawking" (140). little other purpose than to tell of the peculiar danger tolwhich landscape-painters in water colours are exposed. It comes from the dilettanti sketchers who go to them for instruction in the art, and seek to be guided into some royal road to proficiency which shall save them the trouble of diligent study. This tempts the master to invent receipts for doing what can on!ar be truly done by brains ; until the nestrum which was intended originally only to satisfy the very moderate ambition of the pupil "returns to plague the inventor," who thenceforth becomes the victim of Iris own invention. He ceases to be an artist in any worthy sense of the word, and must be contented with the title of draw- ing-master, and with the profit he derives from the sale of his
pictures to pupils whose taste he has formed. V.
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