ART.
VARIOUS EXHIBITIONS.
VERY different kinds of art jostle one another in Bond Street at the present moment. Messrs. Dowdeswell once more earn the gratitude of lovers of painting by an exhibition which in- cludes examples of most of the successive French " ismes," from Romantisme to Vibrisme, and other things as well. And alongside of this muster of the pioneers and skirmishers of modern painting, is brought up the Old Guard of English Pre-Raphaelitism in the shape of Mr. Madox Brown. Place, then, first to the veteran who has been persuaded at last to come up for a London review ! And whatever has to be said in criticism of the painter, all honour to the fighter ! The thin ghosts of Barry and of Haydon, if the ideal of mural painting still vex them, must be glad ; for Pre-Raphaelitism, dead and gone though the formula be, is not really an old enough name for the art Mr. Madox Brown practises. Before the English Pre-Raphaelites were the German Pre-Raphaelites and their historical frescoes. And they gave fresh spirit to the old Raphaelesque ideal of Barry and Haydon, and brought about the Westminster Hall competition, and English historical fresco as we have it in the Houses of Parliament. And from all that Mr. Madox Brown survives. For years
he has been at work decorating the Town Hall at Man- chester with historical paintings ; and the last of these, and some other sketches, he exhibits here. Now, these historical paintings are to painting pretty much what the Manchester Town Hall is to architecture. In the one case, the formula is to revive Gothic architecture ; in the other, to revive the art of historical mural painting. And, as always, the formula is neither here nor there,—the man is everything. Mr. Waterhouse is conscientious about his Gothic, but is little of an artist : so his Town Hall is a well-meant failure.. Mr. Madox Brown thinks historical painting a fine thing, and it is, with a Baron Leys to do it. In Mr. Madox Brown's hands, the art is hardly good enough to save the formula. We are bound to say, however, that, as we remember them, some of the subjects already in place at Manchester are much better than the canvas in question, whose subject is the escape of John Kay, the inventor of some kind of shuttle, from a mob of conservatives in the matter of shuttles. The drawing of the figures can only be called childish, and the colour is—well, perhaps "Coloration "—we do not quite know. But with these heavy technical deficiencies, Mr. Madox Brown has always had a certain sense for drama and for design. The drama here is tellingly set out, and the design is in several respects happily conceived. The little boy, especially, stretched over the working-bench, is good, and the knot of figures—John Kay, his wife, and two men— has its points, though it is rather overwhelmed by the large, scowling man who is lightly sacking the inventor. In one particular we are reminded of Rossetti,—the beautiful type chosen for the wife's face.
How little it matters what the formula may be in com- parison with the powers of the artist who adopts it, is illus- trated by the representative of Pre-Raphaelitism in a later generation, Mr. Burne-Jones. Before the work of the greatest of living designers, the previous question of the more or less antique lines on which the design runs hardly troubles our head. The thought is suggested by a piece of work exhibited this week and next by Messrs. Morris and Co., at 449 New Orford Street. It is a piece of Arras tapestry representing the visit of the Three Kings, and is to hang in the Chapel of Exeter College, Oxford. It is a revival of an old art to which Mr. Morris has given years of patient experiment. The invention of the figures is Mr. Burne-Jones's, the rich detail, colour and execution, Mr. Morris's. The child and angel are beautiful inventions, and the whole thing a triumph of workmanship. Exeter College Chapel, again, is a dreary example of the Gothic revival; but it must have been a pleasure to both artists to do something for their old college, and to illustrate one of the kinds of clothing that Gothic buildings used to have, and have still in some eases, as in the Cathedral of Reims.
Among the French pictures at Messrs. Dowdeswell's, the Corots are delightful. With them is a good example of' Corot's imitator, Mr. Peppercorn. Other familiar names are represented—Rousseau, Diaz, Troyon, Daubigny—and some less familiar, such as Hervier (note No. 81, "Farm Scene," and No. 83, " Sheds "), and Michel, the painter who is to Hobbema and Ruysdael for French landscape very much what Crome is for English. Boudin, a pupil of Troyon, bathes his shipping scenes in a fine blue atmosphere. Then there is a brilliant pastel by Degas, painter of the ballet ; several works by Segantini, the Italian Alpine painter, fresh in motive and in colouring,—Alpine labouring people and their flocks, cold blue waters, and bright green fields ; and seven works by Mr. R. Noble, the young Scotch painter, who, by virtue of his affinities, is well at home in this gallery. He has a tender feeling for trees (see the bit of willow study in No. 133), and for the brown water of linns (131 and 131). His mannerism is to force the red note. One end of the gallery is hung with pastels and paintings by Mr. Henry Muhrman. It is interesting to see how the prac- tice of pastel seems to have reacted on his oil-work, so that at a distance it is hard to tell which medium has been used. The broken, beautiful greys, and dusty greens, and crumbling touches of light are reproduced with the brush. The technique is legitimate enough, and the effects in both mediums are extremely fine. For outdoor atmosphere, the hay scene and the landscape below it are admirable; and the glimmering dusk of the interior," The Evening Meal" (47), is equally good.
Some weeks back, in writing of Mr. East's Japan at the Fine Art Society's Galleries, we expressed a wish that we
might have to put over against it London as seen by a Japanese. How he might give us the men streaming from a City station in the morning, or people getting into a 'bus in the rain, or waiting at a theatre-door; the Row, the Strand, the Sandwich-man, the Aerated-Bread shop ! For the present, the Fine Art Society gives us not that, but some drawings by Mr. Herbert Marshall of London as landscape. It is true that Mr. Marshall conscientiously dots his streets with figures ; but they are not his subject. What is more serious is that they do not always fall into their place as part of the land- scape whole. There is one exception to this, the "Van Accident in Whitehall," where the crowd and the horse itself are cleverly put in, and help the effect of the sunlit street. In this drawing and in several others—e.g., "The Law- Courts and Temple from the River" (28)—there are signs of more original observation than we commonly get in Mr. Marshall's work. Too often we are reminded that a stronger man has been that way before. But in his own line and till a. stronger comes, Mr. Marshall is a fair illustrator of Words- worth's sonnet. It is an exasperating thing for the painter to notice with what ease literature can deal with the pictorial' side of towns by its art of suggestion. The painters of London lag hopelessly behind Charles Lamb and De Quincey, and even in Paris the artist of " L'CEuvre " is only a brave literary- dream in the studios.
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