HARDING'S PORTFOLIO.
THE large size and price of HARDING'S Sketches at Home and Abroad, debarred many from being purchasers who would have liked to possess that beautiful and unique work of art. Its republication, in parts, afforded such an opportunity of possessing a few scattered specimens ; but a complete work on a smaller scale was a desideratum, which is now supplied, by his Portfolio of Drawings, twenty-four in number, exe- cuted in a similar style and by means of the same process of litho- graphy which enabled Mr. HARDING to give to the public his Sketches. These are fac-similes also, but of smaller and more finished drawings; not vignettes, but little pictures, like the plates of the Annuals : indeed, it is a Lithograpic Landscape Annual, (for annual we hope it will prove to be,) without letterpress's and the prints, instead of being steel plates, engraved by translators, are multiplications of the original sketches by the artist himself.
The subjects are miscellaneous,—consisting of landscapes, coast views, and street scenes in Italy, France, the Rhine, and England. The two bits from the Thames, Ludgate Hill, and St. Paul's, and the two views of Arundel and Little Hampton, are as picturesque and beautiful as any in the volume, and show that our artists need not go abroad for materials. The effect of the scene near Rotherhithe in the frontispiece—a group of boats among the piles in this part of the River —is very true and striking ; the water, too, is fluent, and the atmo- sphere light and moist, with a slight tinge of the London fog, that does not destroy the brightness of the sunlight. The crowd of carriages and foot-passengers, in the bustling thoroughfare of Ludgate Hill, is capitally represented; and the black shadows of the lithograph repre. sent the "London particular" smoke as well as the tint does its yellow atmosphere in the Thames scene. The church on Ludgate Hill, and the perspective of houses and shops, with St. Paul's terminating the brick-and-mortar vista, are made out by that union of actual slightness with apparent distinctness, which is the charm of a sketch. London streets are as fertile a source of the picturesque as those of Paris or any other old Continental city to an artist like HARDING. The bald and formal views of London that we see in cheap publications, so far from exhausting the subjects, have proved that they are as yet almost untouched. In short, we want London, smoky, crowc10, real, and alive. But we must not stop on Ludgate Hill. The view of skrundel, with the sedgy and tree-bordered banks of the Arun forming the foreground, and the towers of the castle crowning the woody heights in the distance— and that of the beach at Little Hampton, under an atmosphere golden with the light of the rising sun—are two of the most brilliant examples : they are monochrome paintings, glowing with light and air. Among the most remarkable sketches, are Fieldkirch Castle, with a bright sunny effect, though the harsh outline makes the tower stick to the background ; a group of Tyrolese peasants at Mentz; a street-scene in Trent, the very shadows made transparent by sunlight; Boppart, with a group of Rhine boats, their black masts standing in relief against a beautifully light background of fleecy clouds; "Croix d'Arrolet," an Alpine scene, in which the snow-capped summits of the distant moun- tains and the mists floating in vallies are beautifully imitated; Rocca- bruno and Sistron, two towns perched on rocky eminences ; and the Pont Neuf at Paris, with the washing-barges in the foregrouna. In all, we admire the elegance and mastery of HARDING'S style, the vigorous freedom of his pencilling, and the aerial brightness of the effects : the tinted method of the lithography gives solidity to the lights and transparency and warmth to the shadows. As a book of studies for the amateur and the artist, and an ornament for the drawing-room table, HARDING'S Portfolio is equally attractive. It is certainly the most original of theAnnuals ; for it has more of the paint- er's feeling and less of the mere mechanism of art in it. We have seen one of the coloured copies, in which the effects of the tints are heightened and varied by slight touches of colour, so artfully applied as to produce the lively appearance of a water-colour sketch. They look like "washed drawings," not coloured prints.
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