ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[SECOND NOTICE.] To estimate fairly an artist's success, it is above all things necessary to ascertain his intention. Hence it may be inferred. that the best classification which A reviewer can make of the pic- tures in an exhibition is that which a painter would make of his own works. Now, setting aside for the present both portraiture and landscape (although these, and animal pictures too, are really divisible in a similar way), and setting also aside the motives of ideal beauty and pure imagination which we have already partially- dealt with, we believe that the mass of artists who paint for exhi- bition at the Academy would divide their works broadly into the- two classes of " Studies " and "Subject Pictures." These two products of the studio differ both in the objects for which they are painted and in the process of manufacture. Both, of course, are made to sell ; but to the class of "Studies" belong in general the large order of works made more directly with that object, and hence familiarly known as "pot-boilers ;" while the "Subject Pictures" aim at a wider popularity, and at the same time, higher prices. In its process of manufacture, the " study " is usually a copy or imitation, more or leas modified by the artist's fancy, of some selected object, or of something which falls casually in his way,—a hired model, perhaps, or a member- or members of his own family. A little dressing-up in fancy attire or conventionalising in one way or another easily adapts a painting so made to the demands of the market, more especiaaly if the painter is in the dealers' good books, or have an after his name. To fit the picture with a title is the final procesS, and then the work is ready for the trade. If the painter be it successful one, the article is sold and resold, engraved and multi- plied, and sometimes turns up again miraculously in several places atonce, like the relics of a saint. It needs no tedious search to find examples in this year's exhibition. Seven out of the eight pictures sent there by Mr. Frith come distinctly within this category. Mr. Millais's best picture belongs to it. A healthy. looking young lady, with a pink cheek, and neatly dressed, holds a letter in her hand—the same lady and the same letter, which she held behind her (if we rightly recollect) some years ago— and seems in some doubt respecting its contents. The former- picture was called "Yes or No," and the present one (262) was- first announced under the name of "Yes;" but, on second thoughts, it must have seemed more expressive of "No," for under that monosyllable it appears in the catalogue and will go down to pos- terity. But the picture is a pretty and attractive one, for all that, and we are far from saying that the " study " system of painting may not be made, on occasion, the vehicle of great beauty and charming sentiment which could not he otherwise conveyed. Mr. Boughton's two figures of a fair young girl in a garden of roses (182) and a young widow pausing by the road-side (198) are aptly named "A Path of Roses and "Grey Days," in accordance with what the painter must have meant to express from the first moment when he laid his brush upon the canvas. Mr. Leslie's "Path by the River" (488), which corn- bines in pleasant unity of feeling a tender study under trees with a sweetly-pensive figure, is all the better for its unpretending title. Mr. Fildea's inil1nnid, " Betty " (1221), Mr. Prinsep's un- affected little girl saying her creed, "I believe" (235), Mdlle. H. Browne'a " Pet Goldfinch," and Mr. Macnab's " Amongthe Ripen- ing Corn" (449), are agreeable pictures, with the slightest possible subject to give them interest.
In the "Subject Picture," the above-mentioned process of manufacture is generally inverted. Here the first consideration is the choice of a motive, if not a name, and its effective treat- ment is the task to be accomplished. Now there are three kinds of motives which exercise the minds of painters in three different ways, and their several natures should be considered in esti- mating the value of artistic work. The first is derived directly from the artist's own experience and observation of life and nature, and 'impels him to impart to us in a pictorial form some- thing that has attracted and interested him therein. The second is founded on an observation of the tastes of other people, and results in the choice of a popular incident rather than the true portrayal of character. The third attaches itself to other people's inventions, or to the narratives of historians of -which the painter seeks to give pictorial illustration. It may be questionable whether the second or third class should be ranked the higher in artistic importance, but in the first we have certainly more chance of insight into the artist's mind than in either of the others. The second would seem to demand more originality than the third, but not necessarily of a kind peculiar to the artist, for a telling incident may be chosen at least as well by a. novelist as by a painter. And again, as Shakespeare and -Scott oould stamp their minds on an historic narrative, and as Hogarth was as much a humourist as Fielding, so is it possible to make both these branches of subject painting the vehicle of a delineation of humour or character as universal in its type as that which belongs more purely to the first class of motives. On the -other hand, it is only too possible to paint real life and nature so as to add nothing to the common-place view of an inartistic mind.
Of the first class of works to which we have referred, we have -a- thoughtful and beautiful example in Mr. Boughton's "Bearers of the Burden" (101). It is a Surrey scene, combining a bit of open ground and a roadside cottage in the half-distance, with a group of labouring folk that give the picture its name. A big, selfish navvy, with his pipe and bull-dog, trudges ahead, leaving his overweighted woman-kind to follow as they may with baby and bundles. The subject is a painfully suggestive one, but its painfulness is neither forced nor overdone ; indeed, the central woman of the three is depicted as a sturdy wench, quite able, if need be, to hold her own. These figures are painted simply as the artist may have come across them in a country walk, though the manner in which the characters are portrayed implies also a -degree of generic observation which we have not recognised in his pictures generally ; and indeed, there are many painters Who could- have set this group before us as truly as Mr. Boughton. Where he rises above the common-place and shows himself an -artist is in the power with which he controls the spectator's mental view of the subject, and compels him to regard it, painful as it is, in a frame of mind which is the reverse of painful. He spreads a delightful sentiment of repose over the scene, which accords with the element of peace and calm endurance also involved in the subject, and so raises us to a position, half-moral and half-artistic, from whence the husband's roughness is seen only as the contrast- ing element of evil that makes a world more fair and sad. Mr. Frederick Walker has sometimes given in the same way a mental impress of refinement to a scene which would be common-place in ordinary hands, but his single contribution here is unimportant, and the incident of a child frightened by a sheep near a meadow- path—whence the name, "The Right of Way" (25)-4s of too slight an interest for the main subject of the picture, and yet too pro- minent for a mere incident in the studied landscape behind. Mr. P. R. Morris, without idealising or displaying too much senti- ment, confers a pleasant interest on two harvest scenes ; the one a-group of "Mowers" (1192), the other (37) an English farmer's widow, not wholly disconsolate, with her children among the sheaves of paternal acres ; while of another agricultural subject, the "Sheep-shearing Match" (202), by Mr. Crowe, all that can be said is that it is carefully painted and faithful in its facts. Mr. Hook continues to impress his own vigorous individuality upon his British-coast subjects, and has long survived a host of imitators, to whom the simple truthfulness of his work seemed more easy than they found it. "Hearts of Oak " (47), where an Aberdeenshire sailor makes a toy-boat for a child, and "The Samphire-gatherer" (439), a Cornish girl on a cliff-path, are de- lightful bits plucked out of nature. But-they would be far more agreeable if the painter did not insist on discarding from the square piece of the scene which he puts upon his canvas the in- fluence of what surrounds it in nature. In neither of these pic- tures have we the means of judging readily of the relative dis- tances of objects, which the most elementary devices of artistic treatment would give us. Mr. Hook's pictures generally give us an impression like that of cut flowers,—freshly cut, no doubt, but only so far suggestive of their natural surroundings. Still, they are very admirable specimens of the generic realism which char- acterises the class of paintings we are now dealing 'with. "The Land of Cuyp " (308) is no less true to the scenery and people of Holland, though Mr. Hook sees them from an entirely different point of view from that of the great painter of Dort. We should be glad of a more noteworthy example of the Dutch master Israels than his "Waiting for the Herring Boats" (850), to illus- trate his strong but sombre colouring of peasant life in the same country. A little scene in London back-gardens, called "Old Neighbours" (63), by Mr. C. Green ; a happy Surrey family "Starting for a Holiday" (228), and chasing butterflies, by Mr. Redgrave ; and a farm scene of feeding calves (1181), by Otto Weber, are among unpretending pictures of various kinds where the painter has so entered into the spirit of the scene, as to raise his work above the level of the mere copying or imitation in which we have no communion whatever with the artist. In a popular branch of this kind of painting, that which deals with the domestic and infantine, and which is only too apt to merge in the conventional, Mr. J. Clark has rarely painted for us a more unaffected set of pictures of the quaint ways of simple middle-class children than "A Quiet Afternoon " (55), "The Sick Chicken" (1164), and better than either, the pair of schoolgirls whisper- ing something "Private and Confidential" (375) behind their slates. An Italian painter, G. Chierici, also sends two capital pictures of the same class, in one of which, while "Mother is ill" (574), a bearded peasant feeds his young family, who stand round him open-mouthed, like birds ; and in the other, the artist enters into the children's fun in their enjoyment of that un- wonted luxury for a modern Italian peasant, "The Bath" (607). Among characteristic scenes or studies of real life of very various kinds are Mr. Herkomer's regiment of admirable portraits of old Chelsea Pensioners in chapel at their "Last Muster" (898) ; M. 'Besot's preliminary "Hush 1" (1233), at a fashionable private concert, where a lady violinist is about to sweep the strings ; Mr. Nicol's fat old Scotchwoman walking down a hillside to kirk on a rainy "Sabbath Day" (1159), one of several pictures—" The New Vintage" (245) is another—in which this artist comes out with renewed strength; and Mr. Robertson's peaaant-womansawing logs in " Winter " (144). Artists there are in plenty who seek their sub- jects in foreign lands, among the "flashing forms and bannered pro- cessions" so dear to Mr. Disraeli, but they generally rely upon the novelty and picturesqueness of what they paint as the only sources of attraction. Pictures like Mr. Halsvrelle's "Lo Sposalizio bringing home the Bride" (512) ; Mr. F. W. W. Topham'a "Market-day, Perugia" (851), and Mr. liennessey's Normandy "Votive Offering" (431), tell us but little of what the artists thought of the things they painted. Mr. Calderon's pictures of the pretty maidens of Arles (210, 250, 319) are made pleasant by the buoyant spirit and evident delight with which he paints them ; and Mr. Hodgson gives interest by the variety of expression which he puts into his figures in his African scenes, "A Barber's Shop in Tunis" (141), and "A Cock-fight" (241). The last- named painter seems to throw himself thoroughly into the life he depicts ; but we regard it as a loss that with such power of ex- pression, he should give himself up to the portrayal of a race of people in whom we have comparatively small interest, and employ that power upon a much more limited set of types of feature than we see round about us at home. All these pictures belong to the first class we have referred to. We must defer the consideration of the others to another occasion.
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