The Life of Henry Dawson, Landscape - Painter. With Plates from some
of his Works. Compiled and Illustrated by Alfred Dawson. (Seeley and Co.)—This is an account of Dawson the landscape-painter, in the shape of an autobiographic sketch, with interpolated notes and additions by his son. Dawson himself had an exaggerated idea of the value of his work, and in this he is naturally enough followed by his son. He doubtless had a right to feel aggrieved at the way his work was treated by the Royal Academy, but it remains for a more impartial hand than the Academic or the filial to justly estimate his art ; and such a hand is unlikely to write of him thus :—" His effects in a superficial sense may be said to be between Turner and Constable, but in a true sense not so, because he is more simply natural than either,
To gather up all, we might claim for Turner, poetic fire ; Constable, power and dash ; Dawson, muscular complete- ness." The plates, thirteen in number, are rather dark and dull, and are not likely to commend the painter's art to those who do not already admire it.
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