ART.
INSTITUTE OF PAINTERS IN WATER-COLOURS. THE present Institute exhibition differs little from its usual -character, and is perhaps not below the accustomed average. There is a great deal here which, whilst it may afford the general public a considerable amount of enjoyment, yet renders the task of the critic difficult, owing to an absence of salient points on which to lay hold. The Institute Buffers also by the absence of Herkomer, Macbeth, Gow, and Small, besides others of the better figure-painters.
English and Scotch subjects are, of course, largely pre- dominant among the landscapes, and there is little or nothing that has not already been painted usgue ad nauseam. Yet it is hard to tire of Sussex downs, Surrey commons, beechwoods, and cottages, Yorkshire dales, Cornish coasts, Welsh wastes, torrents, and llyns, Irish lakes and bogs, and Scottish moor- land and mountain, or even of beauty so near our doors as the tamer levels of the Thames-side meadows, from such com- petent hands as H. G. Hine, Keeley-Halswelle, J. Aumonier, Frank Walton, Joseph Knight, Wyllie, Cyrus Johnson, and Alfred East. The mere reading of these names will call up to frequenters of water-colour exhibitions the drawings to which they are appended, and they may take our assurance that they will fmd the examples of these well-known men up to, and in several cases above, their usual level of power and pleasurable- ness. Still, there is a great absence, both in figure and landscape subjects, of work so striking as to assert its supremacy and -compel a first place in critical recognition. Going carefully round the room in the order of the catalogue, we come to a succession of clever and pretty drawings, differing only in their degree of attractiveness, not in the essential character of their inspiration, and almost fatiguing in the uniformity of their merits and shortcomings. The merits are on the surface ; the shortcomings are negative rather than positive, and are due to a want of originality and freshness, which leaves the mind =re- freshed, and the attention =stimulated. Probably imaginative or intellectual faculty in Art does keep definite proportion with the increase in technical accomplishment ; but the in- erease in skill, care, and dexterity, being marked in large numbers, is at once apparent, while that of originality is set 'down in figures too low to be easily appreciated.
Our readers will easily understand that on account of the absence of important works demanding exhaustive criticism, our endeavour will chiefly be to point out excellences where, in our opinion, they are to be found. On entering the gallery, we notice a representation of fashionable life at sea, "Deck- Quoits" (5), by Mr. Hatherell. Notwithstanding an obvious imitation of the French flip-flap brushwork, and that the officer playing is in a state of deshabille that argues badly for the smartness of the ship, the picture has considerable aerial perspective and cleverness. "Brothers of the Rod and Line" (14), H. R. Steer, is a most highly wrought little picture of two old lovers of the gentle craft mapping out the ground for their day's excursion, with the promise of a fine morning seen out of the window ; their expression and grouping are good and the detail is wonderfully carried out, without becoming obtrusive; the drawback of the picture is an overpowering tendency to a greenish-yellow, into which everything runs. Two other pictures by him here have the same merits, and, alas ! the same defects. "Something Wrong "(48), is a picture which should delight the patronisers of the "Don't tease baby" school. A young lady who has obviously only very temporarily taken the role of cook, is peering into a mysterious culinary prepara- tion; it must be admitted that she and all her adjuncts look delightfully clean, and so far promising for the results of her cookery. Two little landscapes of the Fyrnwy Valley, by Mr. Biscombe Gardner, are very careful, accurate studies, with no body-colour used ; the water is very well drawn, and the shadows on the hills pleasant, the clouds rather laboured and woolly. It is curious to reflect on so much loveliness being now at the bottom of the vast reservoir !
Mr. Walter Langley has two large figure-subjects, of which we prefer 710—" The Disaster "—a scene in a Cornish fishing village, in which there is considerable variety of expression, and clever grouping and action displayed. The foreground principal figure is, as is so often unfortunately the case, the least successful thing, to our thinking, in the picture.
" Morning " (152), by Mr. Joseph Nash, is one of many costume figure-subjects here, in which we cannot help feeling inferiority to the French treatment of the same subjects. A chief merit in pictures of this kind is excessive accuracy in detail, and also that the personages should appear to be at home in their costumes. This is one of the secrets of the success of Meissonier in these subjects. He makes his models live, eat, and ride for days in the actual dress he intends to paint them in, and only in this way can a costume figure be made to bear the real stamp; and, of course, this entails expense fax beyond the means of most. A man who could have afforded a sedan-chair would never have been seen out in as bad a pair of shoes and stockings as the hero of Mr. Nash's picture, in which, however, there is a good deal of quaint humour in the expression of the two sedan-chair carriers. The same thing may be said of nearly all our costume-painters, though, of course, the defects are chiefly to be felt by those who, like the writer, have more or less studied costume. It would be far better to paint every-day dress, which really affords considerable variety, than to put the first model who comes to one's studio into any costume one may have on hand, totally irrespective of fit, and call him a falconer or a highwayman. A picture here shown to which these remarks on inaccuracy of detail of costume do not apply, is "Mr. Mantalini and the Brokers" (409), by Mr. C. Green. The costume is faithful, and the relative values are well kept; but the whole picture seems rather dead ; Manta-lines head is like an old-fashioned miniature, but it is not alive.
Mr. Carlton Smith has two clever, rather tricky pictures, "A Few Days to Michaelmas" (636), in which the soft, floating goose-feathers are admirably rendered ; and another, "Recalling the Past" (789), a young, forsaken damsel poring over her love-letters. Her surroundings are well chosen and well painted, but the heroine looks and is dressed like a maid- servant.
The President has only one picture, " Bettina " (323), a careful study in costume, which, in his ease at least, is always accurate. By elaborate stippling and sponging, the painter has almost obtained the depth and strength of an oil- painting. Admitting the artist's commendable pains, and the force and finish of the result, one is tempted to ask whether it be wise to resort to one medium for the effects proper to another ; whether work so like oil-painting had not better have been wrought out in oil, and water-colour been resorted to for what it is especially suited to convey,—brilliancy and trans- parency. There is also only one small picture, or rather study, by that most individual of artists, Mr. Gregory. This is hardly one of his best ; but still, there is work in it that no one but himself could do,—notice the lady's parasol, and how the weight in the hammock is given ; it is a pity the lady has such an ugly foot and ankle. Mr. Wyllie's pictures, with their ab- sence of affectation and self-proclamation, are always refresh- ing; he has three here,—the most important representing the building of an ocean steamer, an admirable and faithful presentment of the scene ; we seem to hear the clang of the
hammers, and feel proud to belong to the nation which makes and mans those ships.
That eminent foreign member of the Institute, Josef Israels, in whose pictures, after the affectation, triviality, and extrava- gance of so much contemporary art, it is a refreshing rest to find serious, solemn work which makes no hasty bid for popu- larity and no melodramatic appeal to our sympathy, has two here, of which we prefer 585, the old woman wending her way homeward with her harnessed dog. Mr. F. Dillon's "Colossal Pair, Thebes" (572), a representation of the two gigantic seated figures, with a sunset behind them, is, in spite of the hack- neyed effect of light, impressive, and is unfairly handicapped by being hung with so much cheerful, often trivial work, in close juxtaposition with it.
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