ART.
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETIES.*
THESE two exhibitions have been open for some time, but owing to the pressure on the slight amount of our artistic space, we have been unable to notice them sooner. This is perhaps the less to be regretted, as neither gallery presents a favourable specimen of what its members can do. Nominally the winter exhibitions are of sketches and studies, but in fact, as has always been the case of late years, the majority of the works are finished as minutely as the capabilities of the artist would permit There is in neither collection any work of very special merit, but the old favourities of the public send similar works to those which have gained them their distinction, and the result is respectability. We propose to glance quickly round the room of each Society, following, as usual, the order of the catalogue.
Clara Montalba is, as usual, represented by a dozen or so of Venetian sketches, full of the usual reddish-browns and black- greens to which she is so addicted. Her work, though faithful in drawing and very harmonious in colour, is more suitable to the Thames than the Grand Canal. It represents Venice on the dullest of spring days, rain falling, and a suspicion of coal- wharves, somewhere just round the corner. None of these sketches merit special description, No. 52, "The Salute, Venice, Sirocco Day," being the best. Albert Goodwin's landscapes are becoming a prominent feature of the exhibition, and his 161 and 170, " Venice " and "Venetian Sketches," are noticeable, as being pos- sessed of the very qualities which Miss Montalba lacks, and vice versa' ,—they are bright in colour and poetical in feeling, gently suggestive of the beauty which is associated in our minds with the very word "Venice," rather than faithfully reproductive of its narrow canals, and weed-grown landing-places. Naftel, Bran- white, Fred Tayler, and George Flipp send work of the usual good quality in their peculiar styles, but are not so well repre- sented as usual, Fripp's drawings being, for him, excessively poor and uninteresting. W. G. Lockhart, of the Scotch Academy, sends half-a-dozen landscapes, remarkable for the brightness and apparent ease of the painting, and with a cer- tain amount of open-air freshness and life about them, which is not at all unwelcome, in the present state of Water-Colour Art in England. Besides which, they are genuine sketches, not highly-finished studio works. Of them we like best No. 36, "The Birthplace of Robinson Crusoe." Matthew Hale sends us a fine poetical landscape, entitled " Oysterraouth Castle" (No. 79), and W. Collingwood a series of Engadine sketches, which would be very pretty, if they were a little more • Society of Painters in Water-Colours.—Inatitute of Painters in Water-Colours.
natural. Almost the only figure painting of any size in the exhibition is Henry Wallis's "Sextet in the Reign of Terror," a group of musical amateurs fiddling while "Rome is burning." This is a character picture, full of ability, but utterly spoilt by the abominable style of colouring adopted by the artist. No. 104, E. K. Johnson, is, as usual, in a garden, with a beautiful young lady, and some of the best painted shrubs and flowers in the gallery. We never can under- stand why it is that Mr. Johnson, while painting flowers with such minuteness and delicacy, always fails to impress us with any feeling beyond admiration of his skill. Perhaps it is because he always makes all his subjects,—girls, children, old men, flowers, shrubs, trees, grass, gravel, wheel-barrows, cic., too uniformly pretty, and we have no means of comparison ; however, the fact remains.
Mrs. Allingham is here, as usual, with plenty of small summer sketches, finished as beautifully as possible, and very pleasant to look upon. Like most of the members of the Gallery, she is rather devoid of subject; but her execution is so delicately true, that she can hardly paint anything without rendering it inter- esting. Carl Haag sends only small sketches, very inferior to his best work. Otto Weber's cattle landscapes are as well drawn as ever, but his colour is becoming rather more pretty and less natural.
Of Alfred Hunt's and H. S. Marks's landscapes we have nothing fresh to tell our readers, though the decorative designs of the latter here exhibited, entitled, "Wine and Water," show a decided falling-off from his work in former years, the figure being meant to be comic, and being stiff and ugly. The best things in the exhibition are undoubtedly two sets of" Outdoor Studies," by R. Thorne Waite, which are quite magnificent in many ways, especially in their strength and freedom.
We must now turn to the second Water-colour Gallery, com- monly called "The Institute." In this gallery the exhibitions of sketches are generally much better than those of finished pictures ; and so it is with this winter collection,—it is decidedly better than the summer one last season. Two or three artists, however, monopolise most of the attention. No. 75, "The Cup of Tea," by J. D. Linton, is perhaps, on the whole, the best figure-painting here, though subject and treatment are of the most conventional kind; a young woman of the un- mistakably model type, looking rather uncomfortably well dressed, in a low, white satin robe, elbow-high, white gloves, &c.,.
is sitting on an artistically uncomfortable sofa, such as may be found in many houses just now, stirring a "cup of tea." This work has that sort of dirty richness of colour for which Mr.
Linton's pictures are peculiar, and an amount of graceful arrangement, also a characteristic of the artist, which redeems it from the common-place. Hubert Herkomer's "Siegfried Capturing the Bear" (for which incident we are referred by the catalogue to the " Niebelungen Lied"), is practically a dark-wooded landscape, with trees, somewhat of the mystic and Dord style of architecture. Siegfried and the bear are tumbling about in semi-obscurity in the middle of the picture, and after some minutes' inspection we failed to discover which was which.
Remembering, however, the showman's advice as to the latitude allowed to those who had paid their money at the door, we "took our choice."
We are unfeignedly sorry to notice a great falling-off in the work of one of our most promising young artists, one, more- over, who was the backbone of this Society. We refer to the pictures of Mr. E. J. Gregory, concerning which we have written a good deal, at one time and another, in these columns.
Last season, his "St. George" was beyond comparison the finest work in this gallery, and we believe it excited almost as much admiration in Paris as it did here. It was "genius in the rough," it was true, but it was undoubtedly the work of genius,—and now the four sketches sent here seem to us to have all Mr. Gregory's faults, with none of his virtues ; the dirtiness of work remains, but the strength has been replaced by coarse- ness, and in the "Study of an Interior," No. 320, there is only a faint remembrance of the rich colouring which was perhaps the most marked peculiarity of this artist.
After Linton and Gregory, the cleverest subject painting in the exhibition is No. 252, "The Invalid," by Miss Gow, a work which, though hardly quite satisfactory in its principal figure (a mother bending over her sick child), is full of thought and. tender feeling, and is thoroughly well painted, in a perfectly unpretending manner. The thick blanket wrapped round the sick child, and all the little etcieteras of the chair, fire-place, and sick-room are *singularly truthful, without having any undue,
prominencergiveri to them. Harry Johnson sends some pleasant sketches, of which No. 292, "Purple and Gold, Roborongh Downs," is the best; Tezmiel, some drawings for Punch; and Townely Green, a large work, "Actors in an Inn-Yard," in which the principal figures are sadly wanting in interest, though the' painting is good and careful.
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