ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[SECOND NOTICE.]
A GLANCE at the Academy as a whole shows us that the chief strength of the collection is in portraiture, the chief deficiency in imaginative work, the chief mediocrity in scenes of modern domestic life, and the chief decline in the department of landscape.
Some of the portraits are excellent, notably three by Mr. Roll, each of which is good enough to make a painter's reputa- tion; and we here take great pleasure in saying that we are too glad to find that the slight decline in Merit which has been occasionally observable for the last two years in Mr. Roll's work, has this year been not only arrested, but that the artist in question has attained an average excellence higher than in any previous exhibition. The sitters for the three pictures in question were Mr. Gladstone, Lord Spencer, and Sir William Jenner, so that the artist had no lack of interesting subjects for his pencil, and he has done them justice. It is worth while noticing that Mr. Roll has this year re- placed in some measure the sharp chiaroscuro effects— reminding one of electric light—of which he has hitherto been so fond, and adopted a quieter method and a richer scheme of colour; and attention should be called, also, to the magnificent painting of the hands in Sir William Jenner's portrait, and the strength and solidity of modelling in the portrait of Mr. Gladstone. In expression, Lord Spencer's picture is perhaps superior to either of these.
Those of our readers who think that Art should be restricted to the representation of pleasant and mildly sentimental stories, will probably be much pleased with Mr. Frank Dicksee's "Within the Shadow of the Church," which may be described on the one hand as being cleverly painted,
graceful, and popular ; and on the other, as being theatric and superficial, both in its representation of natural fact and emotional feeling. This picture raises the whole question— which we have no adequate space to go into here—of how far it is permissible (artistically permissible, we mean) to paint merely for the purpose of catching the applause of the unthinking portion of the public. If a plebiscite were taken of the works in the Academy this year, it is quite probable that Mr. Dicksee's picture would be named as the most popular one in the Exhibi- tion, as was the case last year. On the other hand, if a plebiscite were taken only of the opinion of the artistic and intellectual visitors to the Gallery, it is probable that this work would be placed in the lowest rank. This is the subject : a fair-haired young mother leads a fairer-haired young child past the gate of a church, into which a monk entering pauses for a moment to look at them regretfully. The monk is in shadow, the child in sunlight, the woman in mingled light and shade, and above the child's outstretched hand, relieved against the dark robe of the priest, two butter- flies are fluttering. Now, it is evident that the sub- ject of this picture, though ordinary enough, and painted perhaps a thousand times before, is still a genuine and pictorial motive, and it may also be granted, with a fair pre- sumption of certainty, that seven out of ten uninstructed people will be, in the vulgar phrase, " fetched " thereby. Fetched either by the pretty girl's face, the pathetic glance of the priest, the fluffy golden hair, sunlit, of the child, or the pretty colours of the draperies, the butterflies, and the rose-bush. So that we have here a man who can paint cleverly and draw adequately well, choosing a subject which affords him full ground for the development of his artistic faculty, and pro- ducing a picture with which the majority of people will be pleased; and it would seem hard if all these capacities and achievements did not make up a work of art. And yet they have not done so in the present case. In these days, when critics are so closely watched, it would be too rash to use the only word which could rightly characterise this composition, from an emotional or intellectual point of view, and call it "bosh." But though we do not dare to say so, "bosh" it is. Every- thing in it is really wrong. The rose-bush is a property rose-bush, the monk has strayed from the Lyceum Theatre, and the angelic innocence of the fluffy-haired child is, thank goodness, unknown on earth. The truth is this, that when a painter chooses an ordinary subject, which thousands have taken before him and thousands will take after him, a subject
which deals with human feelings which are as old as the race itself, he may do anything he likes with it except one thing, and that is to be conventional. Mr. Dicksee has heaped together pretty things and graceful postures, and chosen a well-worn theme for the opportunity it afforded him to arrange such matters in a becoming way; but he has not thought out his subject, nor has he found in it anything sufficiently new to warrant him in telling us this old, old story, in such an old, old way.
In this same First Gallery, Mr. F. D. Millet has what is probably the best genre picture in the Academy after Mr. Orchardson's. It is called "A Love-Letter," and shows us the interior of an old-fashioned room at breakfast-time, with a crusty father reading the newspaper, and a pretty daughter who has just received her love-letter. The work is remarkable for its delicacy of touch, both in the rendering of the subject and in its technical treatment. Fancy one of Mr. Marks's pictures, which had been copied and a little altered by Mr. Marcus Stone, and you would have a work not altogether unlike the one of which we are speaking. In these days, it would perhaps be thought a term of abuse to say that this is a piece of Dutch painting ; but to those who, like the present writer, remember with pleasure the clear, solid, unhurried per- fection of the old Dutch work, the term may perhaps convey something besides reproach. This is, indeed, a picture which you do not take in at the first glance, and one which does not pall upon you at the second. You may look about the room here, and notice the different things therein, and even be interested in their arrangement, and consider whether it is likely that that arrangement is the ordinary one, and how much trouble it must give the servants to keep the old furniture up to such a state of polish. In other words, one is impressed with the reality of the things shown to us ; a belief in their existence, and therefore an interest in their quaintness or their beauty. Nothing recalls the painter,—we do not feel that there is an easel somewhere on the premises ; no shadow of the white umbrella falls across the picture. Still, technically, the work is as dexterous as could be desired, and shows a fine perception of harmonious colour, and a very clever rendering of subdued light. On the whole, an excellent picture, and one which, like all really good artistic work, will never be fashionable and never out of date.
Take, as a contrast to this, Mr. John Pettie's "Clash of Steel," a street scene of bygone times, wherein a woman in a Mary Stuart cap is trying to prevent her lover from joining in a brawl. The picture is full of dramatic force of a certain kind; but, in our opinion, it belongs to a class of art almost the exact opposite to that of which we have been speaking, and though it is likely to be popular enough, and arrests the eye in an exhibition, the work possesses no quality of per- manence. One feels inclined to say, Yes ; that's a fairly good Pettie ;' but we never for a moment believe that these things were so, nor care, indeed, to consider whether they could have been. And as the sentiment, so is the technical character of the painting,—at once able and careless, dirty and brilliant, successful and imperfect ; everything in it forced a little too far for the sake of effect ; action, colour, chiaroscuro, senti- ment, all with their i's dotted half-a-dozen times, so that no fool who passes by can fail to recognise the letter. This is the curse of so much of our painting nowadays ; triviality enforced by emphasis, as of a child shrieking at some one who stepped upon one of his toys.
Let us look at a very different composition. Here is Mr. Orchardson's "Her Mother's Voice," a quiet piece of feeling, and a first-rate piece of art, waiting to welcome us when we have escaped from the solid rose-showers of Mr. Alma- Tadema's " Heliogabalus," or grown tired of listening to Mr. Armitage's very prosaic "Siren ;" a maid who surely would never have tempted Ulysses, his master-mariners, and not even the little cabin-boy. Mr. Orchardson's picture has been sufficiently described : we need not linger over its details. We would only ask our readers to consider this picture with reference to the work by Mr. Dieksee of which we just now spoke. For here, too, is a well-worn theme,—a daughter singing to her widowed father one of her mother's songs. We might have had here, too, any amount of " property " surrounding, and prettily contrasted light and shade, and grace- ful poses, and general bric-a-brac, had the painter so wished it. This artist, however, was thinking of other things. We might almost fancy that he had forgotten how to compose a picture
if, on looking at his work, we cared to remember that such a thing as artistic composition existed; and what could be more stupid, from the point of view of cheap melodrama, than to let the girl be a comparatively insignificant figure in the back- ground, and have the uninteresting old father in full light in the front of the picture ? Still, somehow we do not think of these things in looking at this work. We do not think of Mr. Orchardson at all ; we do not care a bit about him, Royal Academician though he be ; but we do wonder about the girl and her fate in after-years, and are more than a little sorry for the father, and enter into his feeling and his memories, and all that long, dead drama which is over now for him, as everything, in Thackeray's words, "is over in life; as flowers and fury, and pride and passion are over."
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