FINE ARTS.
SECOND NOTICE OP THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION. THE FIGURE DESIGNS.
THE sure way to test the intrinsic merits of an exhibition of works of art is to return to it after the gloss of novelty has worn off; for when curiosity
is satisfied, intellectual qualities alone excite interest, and sterling excel- lence only produces a satisfactory impression. Judging the display at the Royal Academy by this criterion, the result is very unfavourable to the progress of painting even in those departments wherein English artists were wont to be successful—namely, tableaux de genre, landscape, and portraiture. The elder artists are rarely equal.to what they were, and the younger do not progress steadily. This is attributable not to any want of encouragement, but rather to indiscriminate praise and the flatteries of - cliques and coteries. When an English artist has made a reputation, he is apt to draw upon it, and the influence of his name secures admiration for
productions that really damage his reputation. Etty and Turner are iu- stances too glaring to be overlooked. So with rising men: a first SUCCESS' is often fatal to future fame. We hope it may not be the case with Good- all: we fear it will be with Charles Landseer. But this alone is not the - cense of the retrogression of the great and the failure of the lesser
geniuses. The British school of painting has gradually been deteriorating since the time of Reynolds and Gainsborough; and the influence of' the
modern Continental schools—France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany, have each had their share in the corruption—has gradually undermined the sound basis of principles, derived from the old Italian schools, on which it
was raised by its great founder Reynolds. In its present transition state the predominance of accessories over principals, the concealment of bad drawing by costume, the sacrifice of character to prettiness, and of natural truth to pictorial mannerism, are signs of debasement that cannot be viewed without regret, and ought not to be noted without warning. There is scarcely picture in the Exhibition but affords examples of imperfect knowledge of the human form, and of partial if not total disregard of the laws of light
and shade, reflection of colours, and aerial perspective; while breadth of
effect, transparency of tints, and solidity of representation, are qualities seldom met with. Nor are these radical defects often atoned for by lively
imagination, power of hand, delicacy of perception, or originality of idea.
Most painters repeat themselves, and follow each other, both in choice of subjects and peculiarities of manner. Want of vigorous conception or lofty
imagination does not deter them from essaying to embody the poet's ideal
creations or the great characters of history with a feeble and gross mateszial- ism bolstered up by academic reminiscences of the antique statues and the rococo finery of the curiosity-shop. The world in which they live, teeming with animated scenes and varieties of character, seems to them little else but a blank; and the objects that daily meet their eyes are meal:. vulgar, impracticable, or nopicturesque, and left to the caricaturist. Tbs.- real reason why contemporary subjects are so seldom treated by designers is, that few have the skill to make them attractive and satisfactory. Reality is at hand to compare with their pictures; and rarely will they hear the comparison. Our painters are not properly educated: they are neither taught to draw with correctness and facility nor to compose pictures on sound principles of art; and instead of being accustomed to think for themselves, they are content to depict the thoughts of others. To this sweeping charge of deficient training there are exceptions; but these only prove the rule. We appeal for proof of the justice of these strictures to the present Exhibition. It exemplifies with equal force the effects of the inadequate instruction of this Royal Academy of Arts and the scandalous mismanage- ment of the Exhibition. There are daubs hung on the line of sight in the principal room (the East) that would scarcely find admission even at Suf- folk Street—so painfully bad that a feeling of pity for the imbecility of the painters of them overcomes one's sense of the ludicrous; while works of real merit are hung in disadvantageous places or out of sight altogether. The artists have only to thank themselves for the injustice done to them: they fixed the Academic yoke on their necks when they might have thrown it off, and now each one is content to wear it, however galling, until it be- comes his turn to impose it on others. The art itself, too, will suffer little; so long as the Royal Commission holds out the prospect of encouragement to talent irrespective of the magical letters R. A., which within the walls of the Academy and in some fashionable coteries make shallow pretenders and servile dullards pass for great artists. But the public and foreigners, viewing an exhibition got together by a so-called Royal Academy in a public building, are apt to suppose that the finest works of the most dis- tinguished men occupy the best places; and the result will be a contempt for British art, operating most injuriously ou the prospects of the rising ge- neration, and creating a distaste for their productions. It is always painful tomer the pleasure that should be derived from the sight of exhibitions of pictures, by attacks on those concerned in their management; but when, as‘in the cases of the Royal Academy and the Suffolk Street Gallery, the enjoyment of the visiters, the hopes of meritorious artists, and the reputa- tion of the art itself, are sacrificed to the selfish and interested motives of those who assume arbitrary power to " burke" the efforts of others who might be their rivals, it becomes the duty of honest chroniclers to speak plainly, however disagreeable it may be.
Among a score or so of designs of figures representing subjects of past times, requiring imaginative conception of character, poetic feeling, and dramatic force of expression, there is not one which realizes satisfactorily the ideas that arise to the reader: Sir Thomas More and Lord William Russell, Charles the First and Prince Rupert, the Due De Biron and Henry the Fourth, William Tell and Robinson Crusoe, Shylock and Ophelia, Peter the Great and Napoleon, St. Gregory and St. Augustin, Dr. Johnson and Lord Chesterfield, Guelph and Ghibelline, nymphs, fairies, and angels, not to mention Christ and Satan, all are figured more or less un- satisfactorily in pictures, some of which are cleverly designed and carefully finished. But where the character of the principal persons is so poorly depicted,. the sentiment of the subject must of necessity fail to impress the liehelder: the very elaboration of costumes and accessories only serves, by attracting attention to ornamental details and subordinate persons, to show still more strikingly the want of soul and vitality in the most important figure. We have not space to enumerate the several instances of failure; and are not sorry for it, for fault-finding is an odious duty. Let us instead illustrate the validity of these objections—which will be but too obvious to the visiter—by instancing the few designs in which painters have de- picted incidents, they have seen. These will be found to be the best pic- tures in the Exhibition. It needs only to name them: Edwin Land- seer's Shepherd at his Devotions; The Heiress, by Leslie; The Governess, by Redgrave; Connemara Girls, by F. Goodall; and last and chiefest, The Dame's School, by Webster. These pictures were all studied from living character: and the artists' sympathies with the incidents have animated their pictures with true sentiment. The painter's mind is naturally most poiverfully addressed through the eye; what he sees excites his fancy to activity and his skill to its happiest exercise. He not only succeeds best in depicting what he knows, but in so doing he gives freshness and lasting interest to his work. The creative faculty is not given to all: the power to project the mind into the past and recall the spirit of antiquity in shapes that shall impress the fancy belongs to but few. But all men have ideas of their own; and that artist succeeds best who is content to give expression to those that present themselves vividly to his imagination. Hogarth and Wilkie both made their own subjects and drew from their own experience, as the Dutch painters ffid; and their fame will last while the art endures. Even the great Italian painters drew their holy families from the women and children around them. With a world full of beauty and interest ap- pealing daily and hourly to the eye and the heart, our painters need never lack subjects, or patrons either, if they would but exert their skill on the living materials before their eyes, instead of "reading nature through the spectacles of books."
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