FINE ARTS.
PICTURES AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION.
The exhibition of the British Institution, which opened on Monday, con- tains 560 works of art, and in the Catalogue the Directors state that 400 more have been omitted for want of room. There is another remarkable feature in the exhibition: although we have seen worse pictures than any we noticed in the room, we never saw this gallery so destitute of works of striking ability. Even the artists of established repute who now exhibit are not seen to advantage. Mr. Creswick has a few landscapes, of which one, "A break in the River," (359) is probably the best in the collection; but they are flat and tame in comparison with what the same artist can do. The most like complete productions are some representations of horses by Mr. J. F Herring, especially "The Frugal Meal," (259); and "The Straw- yard," (354,) by Meatus. W. and H. Barraud; in all of which there is some degree of life and reality, though hard and literal. When you turn from landscape and animal-painting to the human form, the deficiencies of the collection become more lamentably apparent. Mr. Etty contributes, we think, three pictures of naked females, of such execution as he would not have liked to show a few years ago. The Scripture pieces are mere ex- posures. The two most successful attempts at historical painting are "The Fronde Riots," (89,) by Mr. J. Gilbert; and " The Last Moments of Mary Queen of Scots," (365,) by Mr. Alexander Fraser; both of which possess action and some dramatic expression. Mr. Gilbert's picture is the more living and expressive in design, but harsh and violent in its colouring— with men whose faces and hair seem composed of coloured silks. Mr. Fraser's is the more sober and finished, but feeble. Glanciug around, one never escapes from an oppressive sense of the raw snatatiaL It is not landscapes one sees, nor beasts, nor human beings and living events—but pigments, everywhere, all raw from the colonrman's. The figures are not living, but set in a mock semblance of life. One defect reigns over all—the artists have not possessed the capacity, or else the in- aptly, to perform thoroughly and fully the work of imagination. For, though it seems to be forgotten, imagination is a part of the artist's work. It is a part of the work in all the liberal arts, but most obviously so in painting. It does not suffice that -the artist should contrive his design, gather his models, study his figures, and put them together with journey- Man handling: besides all that, he must in his own mind conceive what he has to reproduce. The actions of life are transitory; those most charac- teristic of life are so transitory that they pass away on the instant. The most vigorous action of a muscle, for example, ceases the moment after movement has commenced; its sharpest swell of outline disappears in the wink of an eye. These highly characteristic traits of life, therefore, can never be arrested to be copied: the artist must observe them as they pass, retain them " alta mente," and reproduce them by an act of imagination. The model may supply a guide for general forms; but the set model can- not furnish those striking traits of vitality; and the artist who sees the created figure of his own imagination less distinctly than the set model be- fore him, will be misled into substituting a lay figure for the actor in the scene to be represented.
So it is with Mr. Fraser's "Mary Queen of Scots." It looks as if he had followed the common process with English designers. The painter asks himself, as he comes to each figure, "How would a person in such a pre- dicament act and look?" He sets his model in the posture, contrives a face on-the rules of anatomical expression, or copies a face "pulled" for the occa- sion; and that is what he paints. His figure is the portrait of a counter- feit or a stage-player "in the part of" So-and-so—not the real person un- dergoing the real event. The result is, that the design is a collection of separate studies: the figures look all abstracted—" appropriate" enough in the set ensigns of the intended expression, but deaf and heedless to the other actors in the scene. It is not thus with great masters, but it is with roost English painters; and the present exhibition forcibly illustrates the tuitional defect.
. ,A. ludicrous instance of this abstraction is furnished by Mr. Goodall's "Irish Courtship," (23)—in many other respects an able picture: various silnificant glances are meant to pass between the dramatis persome; but not one of the persons is really looking at any other; most or all of them are looking out of the picture; many, with pupils unconverged, are gazing at nothing in particular, but slyly looking at vacancy.
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