ART.
THE SOCIETY OF PORTRAIT-PAINTERS, AND OTHER EXHIBITIONS.
THE galleries of the Royal Institute are filled with a collection of portraits, the works of a new exhibiting Society and of others, not members, who have been invited to contribute. The greater number of the portraits is familiar, and it may be asked why "old, unhappy, far-off things "from the Academy and elsewhere should be again exposed. But to ask this would be beside the question. The Society consists of a number of fashionable young pottrait-painters, who, we may take it, for the convenience of their customers, are prepared to bear the cost of this annual exhibition. Beauty or Fame or Wealth about to be painted, will visit the gallery, will
satisfy itself about the rank of the previous sitters of this or that painter, the care with which he portrays a costume, the absence of anything " peculiar " in his treatment of a subject, the aggressiveness of his likenesses, and so forth, and will then, on receiving other needful information from the Secretary, negotiate with the chosen painter for the desired portrait. There is nothing to be said against all this, which may prove itself a first-rate business arrangement. Nor would it serve any purpose to criticise singly the practitioners of a woeful art: it is the grave of a good deal of talent, but if a man is to thrive by painting, bad portraits or bad pictures of another kind he must paint. Portraits are the more paying, and between the huge difficulties of the art, the impatience and caprice of sitters, the demands of the sitters' friends, and the conventional style dear to ignorance that he must practise, he must be a strong artist who survives. But a mixed charaater has been given to the present show by in- viting celebrated portrait-painters outside of the Society to contribute. These are foreign as well as English : Bonnat pairs off with Millais, and Carolns Duran and Boldini take the place that might have been occupied by Sargent. In the midst of all this, a great artist suddenly intrudes ; you catch sight in the debauch of crude colour and undistinguished arrangement of a tempered light, like what might come through water or green leaves, and you pass without transition from half-a-wailful of Stuart-Wortleys to two Whistlers. Much may be forgiven to a Society that has brought those two immortal works into a public gallery ; but was it a prudent thing for themselves, since guests like these reduce their neighbours to hopeless vulgarity ? Still, there are degrees ; and a pictorial sense may be recognised here and there, as in the work of Messrs. Londan, Tom Graham, and C. A. Furse. Two works by Mr. Jan Veth tremble between colour gone right and gone wrong. There is also some good black-and- white work shown, notably a sketch of Edwin Long by Renouard.
A third Whistler has been on view at Messrs. Goupil's, and in the same galleries a number of pictures and sketches by Mr. Lavery have been brought together. Mr. Lavery's work has been abundantly praised in these columns, and there are few things in this collection that would not attract attention in an ordinary exhibition ; but the result, on the whole, is not likely to add to a reputation that has become considerable in London and Munich as well as Glasgow. It is a temptation to an artist who is becoming known, to display all his work to the public ; it is the better way that he should be doubly severe with himself, and only let his best work be seen. What other justification, for example, can there be for the large, ill-considered sketch in pastel called The Siren, except that it was to compete for notice with other large works in the Salon ? It has done this successfully, and been medalled. Another large work, the equestrian portrait at the opposite end of the gallery, shows plenty of drawing capacity ; if completely successful, it would be successful as a tour de force, hardly as a picture; and even as a tour de force in sunlight painting, it does not convince,—the lady has not the effect of having been painted in the same light as the horse, and the lights on the horse strike crude. But, on the other hand, the little Twilight at the Glasgow Exhibition is charming, the vulgar buildings are transformed in the dusk to something beautiful ; and one or two of the Tangier sketches, like No. 23, with its roof-tops and faintly flushed sky, are taking. The two Hamilton Park Race Meetings (29 and 32) are bright impressions, and the dancing girl (17) is conceived in B beautiful scheme of colour : pity that the form and action are so mean.
Professor Legros exhibits at Mr. Dunthorne's a large number of drawings, etchings, and sculptures. Mr. Legros is largely a disciple of Millet. Like him, he seldom has execu- tive charm, and seldom the realism of close observation ; his treatment of nature is summary and abstract. The talent is for contriving something grandiose or affecting out of simple or squalid material, and rendering it in the roughest and barest way. Le Mort du Vagabond, in the present exhibition, gives the type. The portrait-heads are in rather a different vein. Here a more suave technical intention comes in, as in the Enfant Italien (40); but at the best the method is a little cast-iron and inflexible, and while a strong note of character is selected and conveyed in each head, there is something of the "postage-stamp" in the flat and airless treatment. It may be noted that a pastel version of _Millet's Angelus has been added to the Hanover Gallery. The colour is bad and dirty, and the technique unpleasant; the merit of suggestion in arrangement and expression that the picture has is to be found with less disturbance in the black-and-white repro- ductions.
At the Fine Art Society's galleries, there is a collection of Mr. Walter Crane's work in various kinds. The result on the visitor is a wish that Mr. Crane had continued to work the admirable vein that he first struck in his children's books. Never a strong draughtsman, he had an admirable playful invention, and something of the Japanese gift of contriving out of a creature or thing a decorative abstract with both fun and beauty in it. In those early drawings, again, the colour is often pleasant, and seldom distressing. The whole series for Bing Luckieboy's Party is delightful, and the illus- trations to "I saw a ship a-sailing," in the same volume, were masterpieces of their kind. How admirable in design are the white-mice sailors at work on the yards, and the drake captain,—almonds in the hold ! But Mr. Crane seems to have been drawn away from this extremely original and perfect line of production by the distraction of other ideals, none of which he has realised with the same success. His attempts at semi-naturalistic painting are childish ; the drawing weak, the colour hot and poor, the sense of air and light and relation absent. The effort, on the other band, to set his illustration to a more serious strain, has merely denuded it of its virtue of playfulness, and strained and overworked a not very strong gift of drawing. Who would wish to believe that the cover of this catalogue, with its rough, weedy woodcut work and commonplace device of palette stuck against the corner of a frame, is by the hand that produced the quaint fancies of the Baby's Bouquet? And who, even with the author's commentary to help him, will care to puzzle out the limp allegory of the Bridge of Life, or the wooden morality of the Triumph of Labour? But who, in the dearth of designing talent, will remember these lapses against a delicate fancy of the fairy kind, when it loses its way, and hurts itself, whether on Parnassus or in the pulpit, in Nature or Trafalgar Square ? To have been once welcome in the Land of Toys is a, great distinction, and to disguise oneself thereafter as a Serious Person, a common form of false
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