"Vie ,pectator," Aar 11111, 1850
ROYAL ACADEMY: STORY PICTURES
FOR some years the distinguishing power of English art, beyond the province of landscape-painting, has shown itself in the treatment of what we have usually called story or narrative pictures—pictures that tell a story or incident of the romantic or satiric kind, without rising to the grade of historical painting ; and this year is particularly strong in productions of that sort. . . . We welcome Maclise home again to common sense in design and colour. His picture of "The gross of green spectacles " is worthy of Goldsmith. 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 recom- menced the attempt at verisimilitude—he has not succeeded....
Leslie's " Tom Jones showing Sophia Western herself as her best security for his good behaviour," may be called a facsimile of Fielding. Tom Jones is the very man: young, handsome, rather splay-featured than moulded to classic compactness ; good natured, spirited, easy, not too intellectual ; a very loving, lovable 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 undisciplined scapegrace. . . . With all his power of design, however, with all his pains- taking 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 substance approximates to chalk.
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