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THE BRITISH INSTITUTION.
THE art-season of 1858 opened, as usual, with the private view of the modern pictures at the British Institution, on the 6th instant. The
general aspect of the collection, though it has been favourably re- ceived, suggests, in essentials, nothing beyond what has been said a thousand times already on want of earnestness and elevation in
choice of subject, and of solidity, in treatment, aide by side with much
that is easy and attractive enough in its rather small way ; and we are glad to pass at once to the very few pictures which can be called in their several lines intrinsically good. For these we are indebted to the hands of Sir Edwin Landseer, and Messrs. Oakes, Dawson, and Clark ; to whom we may perhaps add M. Yves de St. Martin. Sir Edwin's two pictures are particularly satisfactory, not only for their own excellence, but still more for the confutation they give of the rumours, recently so current, of the failure of his great powers. These works, which have every appearance of being newly painted, are as masterly as ever, and as fully wrought as his other later productions. Burns's " Twa Dogs" which furnished Sir Edwin with a subject for one of his earliest works, is here again illustrated with a truth and zest to which no description less graphic than Burns's own would do justice. The other picture presents a wonderful collie-puppy chewing, with inimitable pertinacity and satisfaction, the tail of a grizzled old deer- hound, which looks down with tolerant superiority. The descriptive " extract from my journal whilst at Abbotsford," written "before Scott was the acknowledged author of the Waverley Novels," has an in-
terest by itself : Found the great poet in his study, laughing at a col- lie-puppy playing with Maids, his favourite old deer-hound, given him by Glengary, and quoting Shakspere, Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.' On the floor was a cover of a proof-sheet, sent for cor- rection by Constable, of the novel then in progress." Mr. Oakes's "Vale of the Dee, from above Pont-y-sylltau," confirms the position which he may now fairly claim as second to none of our living landscape-painters. There is a rich simplicity in the expansive view, a genuine English home feeling, and an. exquisite tenderness of working, combined with manly definition in every part—qualities now highly distinctive of Mr. Oakes—which mark it as the work of a very superior artist. With equal satisfaction, the eye rests upon or ranges over the furze and fern of the foreground. the quiet domesticity of the embowered houses, with their wreaths of 'blue smoke, and the swelling uplands of the distance half lost against the grey horizon. With nothing beyond the ordinary character of English scenery either in subject or effect, all is sweet and quiet ; the greens of the vegetation inclining per- haps rather too much to a dim yellow, yet scarcely untrue in their atmo- spheric relations. In "The New Houses of Parliament, Westminster," Mr. Dawson has effect as evidently in view as Mr. Oakes has truth. His sunset yellows and violets (rather perhaps suggestive of sunrise) send Sir Charles Barry's building out as a grander mass than its censors are in- clined to find it ; and the whole has a breadth, fervour, and scenic pomp, sufficient to constitute it, with previous works by Mr. Dawson, a kind of London epic.
About Mr. Clark, who only made his debfit at this exhibition last year, there was even then no mistake ; and his standing among our best domestic painters is now assured. "Grandam's Hope" is somewhat leas refined in finish and colour than the former pictures ; but it is equally faithful, and above all nonsense and vulgarity. Mr. Clark has sense enough to perceive that a common scene in common life can be looked upon in simple earnest, and need not be made either monstrously funny er pulingly sentimental, as the swarm of underbred painters who plague the walls with their pinafores and apple-stalls seem to imagine. "Gran- dam's Hope" is of martial aspirations. He neglects his bread-and- butter after the first bite, to drill his toy-soldiers ; has given grandam the job of mending his waistcoat, damaged in some fight ; and has stuck a feather into the flower-pot in default of flowers. M. de St. Martin's little Watteauish painting, "Un Cercle au 18me Siècle," has nothing higher in view than elegant trifling, nor is it better done than four out of five French pictures of the same order : still, amid the looseness and pointlessness of second-rate English art, it shines, recherche and mignon, with the French neatness and savoir faire. Every lady is flirting, and all the gentlemen flirting too, lionizing, or simpering. Two or three of the attitudes look very like reminiscences of Hogarth.
Mr. Noel Paton's elaborate ideal work, which excited so much en- thusiasm in Edinburgh a few seasons ago under the name of " The Pur- suit of Pleasure," appears here as "The Triumph of Vanity," in a posi- tion which, little as we sympathize with such treatments, must certainly be pronounced unfair to its deserts. Mr. Gilbert's subject of Rubens giving the juvenile Tethers a practical lesson in art has all his flourish and incomplete brilliancy of manner ; and Mr. Haghe sends two of his costume and still-life pieces, in which the human agents are the pup- pets to a plethora of accessory. Mr. Goodall paints Jessie Brown at Lucknow, catching the distant hum of "The Campbells are coming," in a picture of the "got-up "'style, as dexterous and second-rate as was to be expected. Mr. Ansdell's Bead to Seville " is strong, staring, and empty. Mr. Archer modernizes "Rosalind and Celia" into two ver5 commonplace damsels, with some vigorous superior painting. " Leaving Home " is the best of Mr. Collinson's recent pictures; the rustic lover who trembles to offer his nosegay to the departing maid very good, and the whole careful and praiseworthy, had it but more style and greater sweetness of colour : there is a real comic spice, too, in the exact- ing dame and the defaulting young sinner of an urchin in "Short Change." Mr. Wyburd's " Immortelles" has an alluring quaintness and naivete in the fancy of its costume and sharp bright colour, which we like much better than the effeminate semi-sentimentalism he com- monly delights in. Mr. Deane is to be credited with cabin-pietaresque- nessMr. Morris (in No. 204) with a painstaking and not unhopeful attanipt to draw a rolling sea, with its toppling breaker and shore-broken foam; Miss Sinnett with eager vivid childlike expression ; and Mr. Dell, in " Christening Pompey,' with a pleasant little childish group, who in- sist that their puppy shall take the water, in a pretty bit of close land- seeps. Mr Ritchie will be popular with his "Winter and Summer in St. James's and Hyde Parks," and Mr. Hall with his "Cavaliers and Puritans—a scene in a Hostelrie "; but the artistic eye will wince at the shallow caricature of the first, and the stage-glare of the second. The landscape department furnishes two conspicuous views of "The Leviathan,"—a striking dashing night-scene by Mr. Nieman, in which fire-glare contends with darlmess ; and a more panoramic day-view by Mr. ,Parrot, airy and lively enough, and very like the fact with which the eye of the up-river passenger was familiar last summer. Mr. Ro- berta gives two views of "Tyre " and " Sidon" in their dateless desola- tion,—interesting as records, and clever as the sketches of a bold and instructed hand, but very unantisfactory if tried by the test of art- istic self-respect or adequate realization. Mr. Holland brings us a bright bit from Genoa, the " Fountain di San Giorgio" ; and Mr. E. A, Goodall a glimpse, in sultry morning-mist, of " Venice from the Rive de' Schiavoni," (improved by the catalogue into " River Schiavoni.") " Wind against Tide, Ostend Pier," shows that Mr. Hayes appreciates the flurry and dash of a high sea which washes over creaking pier and shivering passenger,—although his rendering, very like the general look of the thing, has little of its art, and none of its high art. Mr. Thomas Denby finds light and colour, with little substance, on the "Lake of Como " ; and we fancy the landscape-studies of Mr. Linn and Mr. Nader, and perhaps the fierce crimson "Sunset on the Coast" of Mr. J. Roberts, would be found worth examination, did the hangers permit, as well as the modest little bits of Mr. Raven.
In animals and still-life,—besides the glare of Mr. Lance's "Peacock at Home," which startles you, even at the other end of the room, with its strength, and offends you with its coarseness and display on nearer inspection,—we have the tender feeling of Mr. George Landseer's " Paste- rd," marred though it is by a timidity of painting amounting to feeble- ness ; the natural truth of Mr. Earl's " Setter" ; the masterliness of Miss A. F. hintrie's " Honeysuckle " on its ferny bank ; and the un- conventional observation and straightforward manner of Mr. Perry-'s browsing donkeys. A cat may look at a king ; and a critic may look at a donkey with pleasure, in so careful and unaffected a portrait as Mr. Perry's.
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