THE ARTS.
ROYAL ACADEMY : STORY MITRES.
For some years the distinguishing power of Fhglish art, beyond the province of landscape-painting, has shown itself in the treatment of: what we have usually called story or narrative pictures—pictares that. tell a story or incident of the romantic or satiric kind, without rising to the grade of historical painting ; and this year is peculiarly strong in pro- ductions of that sort. There are many of merit which. do not call for. special notice : we shall rather take the opportunity of an unusually good display to point out the defects to which the school is peculiarly prone ; not, as some idle minds may suppose, because we take any invidious plea- sure in detracting from full praise, but because a time of vigour is pre- cisely that in which wholesome castigation is least unwelcome and is most useful. Of those whom we are about to mention, there is not one thathat not made an advance upon himself ; not one, we think, that in this par- ticular style has not carried it beyond the stage which it had attained bop- fore hia tune. If each has his peculiar foible, it may be held as the cox% relative of his peculiar genius; but true discipline in art is ever enabling, power to encroach upon weakness, gaining to itself at the expense of its correlative. We welcome lEaclise home again to common sense in design earl colour:. His picture of "The gross of green spectacles" is worthy of Goltionith.. In. point of colouring, compared with the " Stricken Deer" or the. . "Noah," this is a Rubens to a paper-hanging : but the painter has only recommenced the attempt at verisimilitude-Ate has not succeeded ; he has condescended to follow the suggestions of local colour—but ho has not yet learned to observe and follow the modifications of interception, reflection, and refrat ion of half-shadow, cast-tint, and transparent texture. His tints are harsh, independent, singleminded creatures, isolated from their fellows. But having begun to deal with real colours, instead of imaginary messes, Mediae may yet acquire some art in this line. The design is good : Moses is expatiating, with expanded limbs and counte- nance, on the beauty of his bargain and the benevolence of his merchant ; the Vicar is lost in silent annoyance and disappointment ; the women look on, half amused at the ingenuous greenhorn. Perhaps a more thorough conception of character would have given Moses a position less indicative of loud-voiced potency ; and it most certainly would have given Dr. Primrose a greater simplicity of mien : this grave and vigorous gen- tleman is evidently destined to rise in the church. Mediae wants to castigate his design of a pervading element of swagger. Leslie realizes all the spirit of the gallant without this too truculent display of reckless physical vigour. His "Tom Jones showing Sophia Western herself as her best security for his good behaviour," may be called a fac-simile of Fielding. Tom Jones is the very man : young, handsome, rather splay-featured than moulded to classic compactness ; goodnatured, spirited, easy, not too intellectual ; a very loving, loveable fellow. Sophia is a shrewd, sensible, buxom girl; a lady every inch of her, but a charming, blushing, blooming piece of genuine flesh and blood ; a bride-elect in every trait, and quite the woman to master that undis- ciplined scapegrace. The repetition of her figure in the glass is very pretty—like the echo of a sweet melody, which the rich composer turns over and shows you on the other side. With all his power of design, however, with all his painstaking effort to follow nature in the closest imitation, Leslie still labours under a fatal weakness in his colouring : he has no resource for his lights but bare white, and hence every light sub- stance approximates to chalk. You must grant him as a postulate, that all things, from furniture to flesh, belong to the chalk formation, and then he will present you a verypretty world.
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The two versions of "Griselda" challenge comparison, and both profit by it. Elmore is of the more vigorous turn : he inclines to the robust in mould, the tense in action. In designs past, before he came to maturity, there was a starting, convulsive, cramplike energy in his contour, which detracted from the strength : an anatomist would say that his limbs lacked the fascia which strengthens the muscles by binding them into compacted columns. He has nearly outgrown that tendency ; though his joints are still apt to be redundant in the twist, his eyes to turn a thought more than is easy. Redgrave has barely outgrown a peaking feebleness of com- position ; and as Elmore is a sallow so Redgrave is a raw colourist : in the ".Griselda" of Redgrave, the colouring is marred by a preternatural prepon- derancy of reds. The differences of the design correspond. Elmore sympa- thizes with physical overbearing': Redgrave with gentleness, and conse- quently with the complaint against overbearing ; and he is given to point his satires at social oppressions of the pettier order. The " collision ' of the tragedy in his design is conveyed in the vulgar haughtiness of the court ladies as compared with - the gentle peasant whom they are dressing. In Elmore's design the "collision" is that of the robust, handsome, voluptuous, saturnine Marquis, with the simple, large-eyed, strong-souled Griselda. The Marquis is a man of strong passions, mistrustful mind, and tyran- nical temper : as he approaches the beautiful peasant, with confident courtesy, she, bending to the well, gazes upon him as though she con- fronted her whole destiny and accepted it. The story is a baser one than it is often thought, for the demoniac sacrifice of a woman's life to a man's whim is shocking, and merited hate : but both artists have done much, as both Italian and English writers did, to redeem the villany by beauty—great redeemer of all vileness. Both painters seize great and beautiful types of woman. In Elmore, Griselda is a strong, large-limbed, dark, firm-fleshed woman ; ample in her affection and her devotion, in her placid but not passive steadfastness ; hers is a will to accomplish duty without yielding up its own vitality of goodness, as weaker natures will In Redgrave, the fair girl is collected meekly into herself; the bosom, half seen through the rich lace that first visits it, is exquisitely designed, as the very type of youthful softness and gentleness ; and slightly drawn in, it expresses the yielding submission of the girl. This Griselda pos- sesses the exhaustless sweetness of Boecaccio's heroine. Her character- istic is submissive gentleness ; that of Elmore's, self-possessed steadfast- ness. Redgrave's is the one to outlast the other : Elmore's Griselda would have judged the infamous Marquis, despised, and hated him : Red- grave's would judge nothing, but submit always, forgive always, and withhold her own goodness never.
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