ART.
ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS.
[FOURTH NOTICE.] IN this fourth notice of the Royal Academy Exhibition we pro- pose only to note here and there the most important of those pictures which we have as yet left unmentioned. We will, in doing this, chiefly follow the order of the catalogue. First, let us look at the very large picture, entitled " Dawn," by Mr. Peter Graham, which is hung in the place of honour in the first room. A. pool of still water, a dark boat in the midst, a yellow- and-grey sky, a span of mountainous landscape,—such are the
materials of the picture. It is not really a picture at all, but a magnified sketch, giving an impression of the time and place. When will these Scotch artists learn that to magnify a sketch- does not make a picture A purely realistic study such as this, is only tolerable on a large scale when it reproduces some wonderful effect or very lovely scene, or is carried out to the utmost artistic point,—as, for instance, when Mr. Brett paints every ripple on the water and every crevice in the rocks. But here neither is the case : the scene is a very ordinary one, and it is done in a very ordinary way ; the soft, cotton-wool sort of water has not one clear reflection, one real bit of transparency. The sky is treated much in the same way, without clear individuality of cloud or light. The hill-side might be anywhere—but nowhere in particular. " Look at my works, ye mighty, and despair !" Mr. Peter Graham might cry to the shades of Gainsborough and Constable, Cox and Turner; and it is a curious reflection to those who think at all about English art, that work of this kind in landscape is what our enlightened nineteenth century cherishes and rewards. It appears impossible to make people understand how futile such painting is,—how it is really but an inferior kind of scene-paint- ing, and no more fit to be considered as serious art than the " back-cloths " which Mr. Hann paints for the Lyceum Theatre. A passing glance at the "Eve of St. Bartholomew," by Mr Riviere, shows us a young lady in a crimson gown, clasping a bloodhound round the neck. The name is too big for the subject, and the dog, which has evidently been the chief reason for the picture, is not a success. He is at once stiff and stagey. The work, nevertheless, is notable in that it is an attempt at paint- ing a subject with a strong human interest ;—it fails, but it is an- honourable failure. A landscape of (artistically) much-enduring " Streatley-on-Thames," by Mr. J. Whittle, is a conscientious and pleasant piece of work, deserving of considerable praise- Since George Fripp began painting this part of the river, say thirty years ago, there are few landscape-painters who have not tried it. Little wonder; for of all places on our river, this is perhaps the one which combines quaintness and beauty most- closely.
Mr. Colin Hunter's " As they roar upon the shore," is another of his splendid " sloshes " (if we may coin a word) of rough water. It almost passes the bounds of permissible art in its intense unevenness and ruggedness of painting ; but it has, we confess, to us more attraction than the work of almost any other Scotch painter of this school. There is a cer- tain strength, we had almost said grandeur, about Mr. Hunter's conception of wild weather and tossing water which goes far to redeem his work ; and though the painting is apparently done " with a shovel and pick," it is nevertheless done delicately, and the result has a clearly defined truth which is often conspicuous by its absence in the work of the Scotch landscapists. " A Study :- Cairo," by a Mr. (or is it Mrs. ?) Mazie Giles, representing an Egyptian in a fez, standing under a palm-tree, is a good, true bit of work. We can speak from personal experience of the local truth of atmospheric effect in this little picture : it is genuinely Eastern, a quality which is rare in English delinea- tions of the East. And here, as we are on the subject, let us say a word upon the large " Flight into Egypt " of Mr. Frederick Goodall. A comparison of the two works will show the defect of which we have been speaking. Mr. Goodall's picture is. carefully painted and composed, and has a considerable amount of thought about it, and would be impressive were it not that it is so- essentially English in its feeling, the while that it pretends to be purely Oriental. It is the sort of Bible illustration which was popular with our forefathers when all the traditional occurrences were treated in a traditional way,—where every per- sonage in the history had a certain expression of face, certain appropriate actions and gesture, certain modifications of the same ample sweeping robes. And perhaps it is impossible to feel much sympathy now-a-days with art of this kind_ " Vestigia nnlla retrorsum." We care no more for such work than we care to sit down in the pastry-cook's and eat the "butter- scotch " of our childhood.
" On Morcambe Sands" is another big Scotch landscape by Mr. Hope McLachlan, which has a quality of its own : strong, and a little solemn in its conception,—a piece of effective rough work, bearing traces of a painter who thinks as well as he paints —perhaps better. And at Mr. Gregory's " Intruders," which we, intended to notice before, and notice at length, folks ought to pause and try to understand how it is that a painter such as this—a man who is an artist to the tips of his finger-nails—can
do nothing better for us than vulgar girls in coloured dresses and jerseys, against a mahogany house-boat, with rushing swans and blue water, and blue sky, and willow-branches making a lace- work against the sunshine. The picture, small as it is, simply shrieks with cleverness : it is fresh and bright and easy, full of life and delicate sense of beauty ; it makes no account whatever of difficulties of colour, and sunlight, and movement, that nine- teen out of twenty artists dare not attempt,—it is genuine, individual, and, from its own point of view, "right," in a way in which scarcely another picture in the gallery can be praised. But it is, nevertheless, as vulgar as a soap-maker's advertisement, as insolent as an Eton schoolboy ; and it seems to us little short of maddening to find such faculty of colour and power of drawing as this artist possesses, turned to no account, while all round him in the gallery hang these hundreds .of good, dull, painstaking, but futile pictures,—pictures which want but the ability which he neglects so -freely, to be fine works of art. However, we have said all this so often of this artist, that our readers are probably tired of hearing it ; and in conclusion, therefore, we only wish to state our opinion that from the technical point of view this picture deserves very high rank ; its brilliance is something extraordinary, and its truth to the difficult effects of light with which it deals is moat admirable.
Mr. Nettleship's picture of " In the nick of time "—a lioness fishing her cub out of a torrent—we alluded to last week in our notice of his work in the Grosvenor Gallery ; but we must repeat here that it is a good, strong piece of action, thoroughly thought out, and skilfully composed. A little more truth to nature in water and landscape, and a little more refined draw- ing in the animals, would have made this as fine a picture as it is already an interesting one.
And of the great Alma Tadema, of "Hadrian," there is little that need be said. It is, as usual, beautifully painted ; it is wilfully ugly in its composition ; it is most interesting in detail. It shows that mistaken sense of beauty which goes far to rain much of this great artist's work, and which always betrays him most when his figures are on a sufficiently large scale for us to care about their faces. The artist's imagination and desire serve him for sculpture, drapery, and composition ; they never soar to the regions of passion, feeling, or thought. There have been in his artistic life one or two exceptions to this, but they have only made the rule more perceptible. A curious little matter-of-fact genius is Mr. Tadema, bristling with know- ledge, combativeness, and strength ; but his sympathy is only with the outward and visible form of antiquity; nothing could have less of the true Greek and the true Roman than have his brilliant records of the outward life of each nationality.
We had had hoped to finish the notices of the Academy in this number, but we find it is impossible within the limits of our space ; and we must close this notice with the mention of Mr. John Collier's large portrait group of the daughters of Colonel Making, M.P. Mr. Collier may almost be called the Tadema of modern portrait-painting ; for not only was he a pupil of that artist, but he paints somewhat from the same point of view. The truth is that he has a very singular talent for painting anything he can see, and an almost equally singular deficiency for seeing anything which does not lie upon the surface. The result is that all the surroundings of his subject are done vividly and well. All his dramas are "well staged," to use theatrical parlance. But there the • interest ends. If you can imagine a looking-glass which would reflect a man or woman's dress and features, and yet give no hint of the per- sonality beneath, you would have something analagons in effect to Mr. Collier's portraiture. In this picture, for instance, of Colonel Makins's daughters, there is everything which one can desire from the superficial point of view,—pretty, healthy, English girls, brimming over with life and spirits, in nicely posed attitudes and pretty dresses; rich and becoming surround- ings of furniture and flowers; plenty of light to see it all by; and good, clean, dexterous brushwork and 'careful drawing. What would the most captious critic want more ? Go back again to Mr. Gregory's "Intruders," and the question answers itself. There, stripped of every grace of feeling, every quality of gentleness and care, is the clear, genuine, artistic ability and insight,—coming out, one might say, almost despite the artist's will, and making the work, with all its drawbacks, live and breathe. The truth is that here lies all the difference between art and manufacture. You may have art which is reckless, restless, as in Mr. Gregory ; and you may have the mann factored article which is everything that it ought to be, as in
this portrait by Mr. Collier. And yet the first has no price, and the second no value ; and between these two there is eternally,. a great gulf fixed.
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