FINE ARTS.
EXHIBITIONS are coming on thick and fast; and for the last few days that small section of society called the world of art has been as busy as an ant- hIll. Painters have been putting overcoats of varnish on their pictures, and giving finishing-touches to their drawings, preparatory to the private views to which they invite their friends, that their works may be seen and admired before they are submitted to the tender mercies of hostile hang- men and carping critics. Framers have been in an agitated frame of mind, and carriers have been urged to " weather their broad vans " unceasingly. Cart-loads of gilded wood and painted canvass were deposited at the Royal Academy on Monday and Tuesday; and hundreds of anxious artists now await their doom at the hands of the Academic inquisition. If their works be rejected, nine months must elapse before they can stand a chance of being publicly seen in London; and should they be condemned to the " black hole" or preferred to adorn the cornice of the ceiling or the skirt- ing-board of the floor, the only eourt of appeal from such injustice is to be found in the provincial circuits; where, it is satisfactory to know, jus- tice is often done to injured merit. This year the portrait-painters are especially apprehensive, for the " Hanging Committee" includes two prac- titioners in that branch of the profession, Messrs. Pickersgill and Knight; the third member is a landscape-painter, Mr. Turner. The selfish system of Academic proceedings makes it impossible for any set of men to act fairly'towards their fellow artists, by hanging the best pictures in the best places; and the task of allocating them is particularly ungracious under such circumstances. We shall be glad if the portrait-painters be agree. ably disappointed this year: the landscape-painters have nothing to fear.
The display is not likely to be very imposing, if report speaks truly;
and as the competition for the frescoes for the House of Lords vrill have engaged the attention of the more ambitious among the designers, them will probably be few historical and poetical subjects. Neither East- lake, Maclise, nor Cope, will contribute anything; Edwin Landseer has sent but one small picture; and we have not heard of any very remark- able works by Etty, Leslie, Mulready, or Redgrave. Uwins, we are .told, has a very attractive picture; Herbert has chosen a singular subject, Pepe Gregory Teaching Children to Sing; and Charles Landseer has one of his knife-and-fork history-pieces--The Eve of the Battle of Edge Bal. We have heard very flattering accounts of pictures by two rising artiste-- Lord Chesterfields Ante-room, by E. M. Ward; and the Village Carats of Goldsmith, by Frith.
The sculptors very naturally prefer Westminster Hall as a place of
aG-
hibition to the dark cellar in Trafalgar Square; and to the display of frescoes, cartoons, and sculpture, that is to take place in Westminster Hall in June, the public must look for evidences of what our artists can do. This is the national exhibition of British art; and it is gratuitous, as suck exhibitions ought to be.
Meanwhile, the shilling art-shows are about to open: the New Water- colour Society on Monday week, the veteran Water-men on the Monday following, and the Royal Academy on the succeeding Monday. Withint month, therefore, the extempore patrons that the lottery-wheel of the Art- Union may turn up this year, will have the range of five galleries, muster- ing between two and three thousand works of art of one sort or another,-1a choose from. Good taste be their guide! And let them beware of the salesmen of Suffolk Street.
The students of the Royal Academy celebrated the annual shutting-up of the school, for three months during the exhibition, by presenting the Keeper, Mr. George Jones, with a silver tazza, copied from an Etruscan vase. As a mark of personal respect this testimonial is well bestowed: but there are other qualifications besides courteous and gentlemanly manners required of a teacher of figure-drawing in a royal academy; and in these Mr. Jones is so deficient that the value of his instruction may be repre- sented by the negative quantity of invention shown in the design of this piece of plate.
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