ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[FOURTH NOTICE.]
WE will, in this article, sketch, as briefly as possible, the sub- ject and scope of some of the pictures which attract notice in passing through the various rooms at Burlington House. For the sake of brevity, in this notice we omit the numbers of the pictures, but as we shall mention the room in each case, and. follow strictly the order of the Catalogue, our readers will have no difficulty in identifying each composition. In the first room,. "Autumn Leaves," by Mr. Vicat Cole, A.,—a fine landscape of the picturesque order of painting, very clever, and very faithful to what Mr. Cole imagines to be nature ; subject, still water, yellowing trees, fallen leaves, and a little blue kingfisher to light up the picture. "Norwegian Midnight," by Alfred Mint, is a fine effect of sunset; the subject is hardly, we think, quite so suitable to Mr. Hunt as the quieter English, landscape which he generally paints ; and, after all, it is a greater triumph to extract beauty from our homely scenes, than from those of which every amateur sketcher can feel the beauty. If a person paints mountains, we want some added power of sympathy and insight quite beyond ordinary powers, or else our own experience of their beauty goes far beyond the painter's representation. "The Waning of the Year" is a landscape by a young painter, or, at all events, one young to the Academy exhibitions, and has been bought, along with several other landscapes by the Royal Academy, "according to the terms of the Chantrey Bequest." It would be interesting to know what these terms are, for the pictures purchased "according to them," are as diverse as the three noted charac- ters who are generally represented as "standing naked in the open air." The landscape in this picture is however a fine one, painted very much in the French style, and more remarkable for delicate greys and yellows skilfully combined, than any special merit of interesting subject or good drawing. Mrs. Butler's picture of "Listed for the Connaught Rangers" is a. combination of landscape and figures, which will probably be of interest to some visitors to the gallery. It is well painted, in somewhat staring colours, but reminds us of one of Tennyson's verses, in being,— " A tale of little meaning, though the words are strong."
"The Gordon Riots," by Mr. Seymour Lucas, is a painfully careful picture, without one particle of spirit. It cannot be
called ugly or beautiful, or interesting or uninteresting. All we can say of it is that if these were the Gordon Riots, well, they must have been a very poor affair. It would be interest- ing to compare with this picture that, in the French Salon of Henri Rochejacquelein leading a somewhat similar mob, with the famous, " Si j'avance, suivez moi ; si je recule, tuez moi ; si je meurs, vengez moi !" But we cannot spare space, and must turn to the next work, "A Water-frolic," by Mr. Hamilton Macallum. This is a picture of boys bathing from rough fishing-boats, in bright summer sunlight. Very clear and brilliant are the sky and water and the reddish-brown of the boats and the flesh of the boys, and altogether this is a very pleasant picture to look on, once. It is, however, identically the same effect of sun and sea as this artist has painted for the last five or six years, and it will be appreciated most by those who know his work least. The best one can say for it is, that it is a pretty trick of colour well carried out. "Charity," by Mr. Frank Dadd, a little sketch of a child knitting, by Kate Perugini, and the river-mouth of Mr. J. W. Oakes, A., are all worthy of notice, the latter especially for its bad drawing of waves, and their colour also seems to us a little forced. " Summer Breezes," by Mr. P. H. Calderon, R.A., is a notable picture, but not a good one. "A Narrow Way," by Mr. W. C. Horsley, son of the Academician, is a carefully painted scene in Cairo, in the bazaar. "The Foolish Virgins," by Mr. Arthur Hill, is a large, thoughtful, and original picture ; if it is not quite a success, it is a very worthy attempt, and one which is worth more in an artistic sense than most of the successes of this gallery. "Alice in Wonderland," by Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A., is a fresh picture, the subject of which is a girl reading aloud to her younger sister, and the most prominent object a striped blue and white chintz-covered sofa. Mr. Henry Moore's "By Stress of Weather Driven," is one of his rougher and less successful sea pictures ; in the next gallery, however, he has another, entitled, "Calming Down," which is in many ways most admir- able. We never remember to have seen stormy sunshine more vividly painted than in this latter picture.
In the second room, "The Lee-shore," by Mr. Coffin Hunter, with which we must couple the artist's other work in Room 5, called, "Their Only Harvest." Both these pictures are fine, and, indeed, Mr. Hunter's work alone, of all the rough- and-ready painters of his school, has in it a tinge of poetry and feeling which is sometimes very remarkable. A little bit of sym- pathy with the rough lives and frequent perils of the Scotch fisher- men is nearly always perceptible in his pictures, and in the one of Their Only Harvest" this sympathy is very intense. The dark boat and figures of the sailors, the waves gleaming with greenish-yellow light, the waste look of the sea and sky, and the absence of all other signs of life than the small rowing-boat and the labouring fishers, give that peculiar impression to the spectator, that tells him the artist has not only painted, but also understood the scene, grasped its real meaning and its essential beauty. "Fresh Lavender," by C. E. Perugini, is a well-painted picture by a clever artist, but one who, we think, is hardly doing justice to his own ability. The subject is a young girl putting "fresh lavender" into a cupboard, where various old curtains, tapestries, (lc., are carefully put away. It is all well painted, and thoroughly pleasant and unaffected,—the sort of picture one would be able to live with in placid satisfaction ; but the motive is hardly sufficient, and the whole work is, perhaps, a little too dependent upon the careful painting of the accessories,—the cupboard and folded curtains, the basket, the maid's dress, "Leafy June," by Mr. Alfred Hunt, we should have men- tioned before, but it was forgotten. It is a landscape which in its truth to nature is worthy to rank with Brett's "Camp of the Kittywake," which picture, by the way, we are amused to see, has given great offence to many of our worthy contem- poraries, because it represents "such a hot day !" Well, Nature is hot sometimes, says Mr. Alfred Hunt, as well as Mr. Brett, though the latter loves to revel in the full glow of the sunshine, the former to choose a shady nook, whence he can see with pleasant distinctions the "shadow dark and sunlight sheen." "Leafy June" appears to us to have only one defect which is of much consequence, and it may be that in think- ing it to be a defect we are mistaken ; but at all events, as far as our present knowledge goes, Nature is never so pinky in her foreground as Mr. Hunt has here repre- sented the water and rocks. The colour is excessively delicate, but nevertheless the prevailing hue of the foreground of this
picture is a pinky-purple, and it seems to us to be a mistake The only other fact we should notice in this work is that it has lost a great deal by being in oil instead of water-colour ; there can, we think, be no doubt that Mr. Hunt's style of work is essentially that suitable to the latter medium. Close- to this is a picture of "A Venetian Ferry," which is carefully painted by Mr. Henry Woods ; and one called "The Sleep of the Just," by E. J. Boks, both worthy of attention. " The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington," by E. F. Brewtnall, hung somewhat out of sight, must be mentioned, if only because it is a distinct endeavour at painting a beautiful picture. Most of our artists forget that, after all, the first essential of a picture- is to be beautiful. "Cutting Forage on the French Coast," by Mr. H. W. B. Davis, R.A., is a breezy landscape on the edge of a cliff, only remarkable for its good animal painting and fresh sky. "Portrait de mon Frere," by M. Bastien Lepage, is a small work by a very talented French artist. "The Gifts of the Fairies," by Mr. Frank Roll, is a rather unnecessarily pathetic picture, of two children finding presents of toys on the nursery hearthstone ; we do not quite understand what the artist meant by this work, for why should the children look so woe-begone ? Of Mr. Holl's other pictures here we have already spoken in high praise. "A Country Studio," by Mr. Henry Woods, is a bright little sketch of Mr. Fildes painting his "Return of a Penitent." "Doles," by C. Gregory, is a rather interesting picture of a country churchyard, with an old woman and her daughter in the foreground, and various other recipients of charity coming down the path from the village church.
In the third room, "Interviewing the Member," by Mr. G-. Nicol, A., is a clever character-picture of Irish tenantry engaged in what may be called " ballyragging " their Member. The expressions of the various faces are clever and varied, but the whole picture is too like a stage representation of life, and there is little real humour in it. "'['he Bathers Alarmed," by F. R. Morris, A., shows conclusively, to our mind, how dangerous it is for a painter whose forte is low comedy, to attempt a scene which requires delicacy and refinement of treatment. These half-undressed young women huddling on their clothes are simply vulgar. "The Music of the Woods," by Mr. Val. Davis, is a quiet and well-painted landscape, showing a beautiful aspect of nature. Mr. E. Armitage's work of "The Woman Taken in Adultery" is to be noticed, as showing how utterly uninteresting good Academic drawing and com- position are, when unsupplemented by any sense of the beautiful, or any sympathy and comprehension of the
meaning of the subject. Here is, perhaps, the most dramatic and one of the most touching episodes in the whole of the New Testament,—here is an artist who has been a Royal Academician and the professor of painting to the Academy schools for years, and as a result of the applica- tion of the skill of that artist to the treatment of that subject, we have this work, which is ugly in colour and absolutely un- interesting in conception. Into this slough of despond of Academic painting fall, year by year, dozens of our young artists ; it freezes their blood, and benumbs their hands, and deadens their hearts, till at last, after years spent in studying the "grand style," in trying to bend half-a-dozen figures into a circular line, and, so on, they produce a work more or less of this kind, which, while it is accurate with a maddening accu- racy, and pretty obedient to what are called the "great laws of composition," produces upon the mind of the spectator much the same effect, as the play of Hamlet might produce, if it were represented by silent pasteboard images of the various char- acters, instead of by living people. "Stella," by Mr. G. F. Fennell, is a clever picture of a single figure in old-fashioned dress, chiefly noticeable for being painted in a very low key of yellow-grey colour, which is particularly well managed. "The Night Brings Rest," by Mr. G. Clausen, "View of the Alhambra," by Mr. O'Connor, and "A Suffolk Marsh," by Aumonier, all are worthy of attention, especially the latter, which is a very unaffected and pleasant landscape. "Little to Earn and Many to Keep," and "The Mushroom- Gatherers," by H. Hook, R.A., both interesting pictures, wanting a little, perhaps of the glow of this painter's earlier work, but still fresh and out-of-doory, if we may coin such a word. "The Close of a Midsummer Day," by Ernest Waterlow, is a calm river under evening sunlight, with well-painted rushes and lily-leaves, but it should be noticed that for a work on such a large scale there is hardly sufficient subject. "The Rev. Thomas Stevens," by E. J. Gregory, is full of this
most clever young painter's faults, and with few of his excel- lencies. The colour throughout is what artists call "hot," with- out being really good, and the most respectable founder and warden of Bradfield College is represented with a happy-go- lucky sort of air, more suitable to a well-disposed prize-fighter than a divine. We must notice also, as one of Mr. Gregory's faults, which is absolutely inexcusable, his habit of making his sitters look as if they never washed their hands.
"The Matterhorn," by Sir Robert Collier, is the finest work which we remember to have seen from his hands, and is indeed as amateur work very remarkable. The great fault of the picture is its absolute coldness and photographic appearance ; it might have been painted by a very accurate machine, instead of by a human being. We had hoped to conclude our Academy notices to-day, but we see it is impossible to get through all the rooms in this notice, so we close it here. In one more criticism we shall finish our account of this exhibition.
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