ART.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY. [THIRD AND LAST NOTICE.]
IN this our last article on the Grosvenor Gallery of 1885 we will, as far as possible, complete our notices by a few words about the chief pictures which have as yet been unmentioned.
Alma Tadema's "Portrait of a Physician" is the first picture numbered in the catalogue in the Exhibition, and is perhaps.
taking it all in all, the best portrait, though it is conceived in utter defiance or disregard of all artistic traditions. Surely never before
in the history of modern Art has been seen so skilful a piece of painting, so wilfully and almost absurdly ugly in all the surrounding detail, as is the head of this yellow-haired physician, stook in one of the lower corners of an upright picture —with nothing but a mass of bedclothes and the partially-seen hand of some sick person, as a background. Contrast with this Mr. Wattee splendid portrait of Mrs. F. Myers (done, if we remember right, some years ago), in which the gorgeous crimson dress and luscious background of flower and leaf, and the beautiful face, with its dark hair and rich colouring, are all one in beauty and fitness of effect. After all, "Beauty should go beautifully," as the grim earl said in "Enid ;" and we have some right to feel aggrieved that Tadema should even occasionally use his splendid technical skill to show us bow wonderfully he can do something which is unworthy of the doing. Look at the little Frank Miles seascape, which hangs above this portrait of Watts's, called "The Last of the Sunset." It is only an effect of mist and fading light, with a dark fishing-boat against pale water ; but the little sketch has a good deal of delicacy and truth, and renders well its attempted effect of peace. Mr. Miles might be a good landscapist, we fancy, if he chose ; his work has certainly improved in this respect under the influence of—Whistler. Near this hangs a small study of " Diadumene," by Poynter, the same subject as that of his large Academy picture, and better, because loss laboured.
"At last he beat his 111Deic out,"
would be an appropriate quotation for much of Mr. Poynter's work. It seems coldly hammered into shape, like one of Parnell's speeches. Mr. Herbert Schmalz has several of his women's figures here, the pictures being mostly of very small size, and somewhat affected sadness. This young artist's work is, indeed, always imperiously overshadowed by the atmosphere of sorrow ; his young ladies, with their pale faces and darkly-shadowed eyes, are sad for the want of fresh air and something to do,—sad, perchance, from sheer delight in sorrow. The best of these is the one which hangs in the entrance-hall, and is called "Souvenir de Blankenberghs," opposite to Mr. Stuart Wortley's " Chez None," a lady in a light tea-gown, lying at full length on a very sumptuous sofa, with surroundings of equal luxury. This is as bad a specimen of Mr. Wortley's painting-taste as the portrait of Miss Ethel Waller in the East Gallery is a favourable example. The large picture of brown oxen on a chalk down, by Mr. A. Lemon, is remarkable, not only for its unusually good drawing of the beasts, but for a simplicity of style which approaches genius. It is good painting, and appears almost absurdly quiet. with its present surroundings. The truth is, that Mr. Lemon is an artist who is learning his business slowly but surely, from Nature and the great bygone masters of painting, and has not fallen into the prevalent quagmire of forcing his pictures with the exaggeration necessary to make them tell well in an exhibition. Nevertheless, if we might say one word to him, it would be that he should not forget there is another error to be avoided, and that simplicity is not in itself an end in Art, but one of the means to an end. Of the Alfred Parsons here we will say but little ; it does not show him at his best—it is little but a comparatively uninteresting work from an accomplished artist. Indeed, here, too, in another way, one is tempted to feel that the work is better than its conception, that the notion of how it should be painted, and the artistic reticence and completion of its painter, have to some extent taken the place of any more intellectual or emotional aim. Mr. Parsons is painting well and drawing exquisitely at present ; but he has not yet painted one picture which has been really successful, except from a technical point of view. Artists like his wolk almost in proportion to their knowledge; but on the mass of picture-seers it. makes little impression, because it does not tell any actual story or appeal to any special sympathy. And of the two Albert Moore pastels which hang by the great picture of " Eypatia," we shall
say nothing, save that the artist's hand does not seem at home with this medium, and that we miss in them nearly all the beauties which his graceful arrangements and thorough draughtsmanship of drapery have made familiar to us. Disheartened, perhaps, by his continued exclusion from the Academy, as we said in a former article, Mr. Moore is not this year seen to advantage. But his brother, the sea-painter, has a beautiful grey picture here, full, not only of truth to Nature, but of that apparent ease of workmanship and suggested poetry which were for so many years the chief characteristics of Mr. Moore's work. His great pictures some years ago had the facility, or rather seemed to a casual spectator to have the facility, of rough sketches, and they had, too, a strong, though somewhat rough, emotional quality, which separated them miles from the purely realistic painters, no matter how perfect. Mr. Moore's Nature of late has seemed to lose a little of its humanity, though he has immensely improved in the technical dexterity with which he has rendered it ; and we are glad to see in this grey moonlight, traces of the former feeling coupled with the later skill.
By the side of this hangs a fresh little subject-picture by Mr. Prinsep which shows him at his best, a girl in a "well got-up" muslin dress, looking over a corn-field. Girl and landscape alike are perhaps a little over-dressed, not in the best taste ; but still the picture has a strong English quality about it, and is full of clear light and wholesome air. The young lady looks as if she " tubbed " regularly, if we may mention such a thing,—a fact to be appreciated when we compare her to Mr. Schmalz's beauties, and those of several other painters in this Gallery. Indeed, not to speak it irreverently, soap and water is somewhat at a discount in the Art of the Grosvenor Gallery ; and in no one's work is this more conspicuous than in that of Mr. John Reid, an artist of great ability, who is simply ruining his art by the extraordinary delight he has in painting all his subjects a sort of dirty brick-dust colour. There is a picture of his here as clever as could be desired, with a couple of children in the foreground, and the faces are forced into a colour which, to the best of our belief, is absolutely and entirely impossible, and resembles nothing but a cut-open pomegranate dipped in soot. This artist has a really fine gift of colour, but has exaggerated it to such an extent that, for the sake of getting his reds and browns and deep blue-greens, he will ignore everything else, and make a natural landscape look like a dirty kaleidoscope. He gives us a rich and harmonious effect of colour even now, but all else, even the drawing of the picture, he is inclined to disregard. There is a little picture of Arthur Hughes's here called " Autumn,"—a peasant girl, of the conventional kind, clean, comely, and, alas ! somewhat unnatural, resting on her way to market. This should be noticed for its completeness ; it is pre-Raphaelite work, and is, moreover, though a little artificial, very free from the usual pre-Raphaelite failings,—not quite a successful picture, but done in the temper which produces good work. For the temper which produces pictures of, well, of an opposite kind, we cannot refrain referring our readers to Mr. Jopling's "Little Bo-peep," one of those irritatingly mock-simple portraits which irritate all those who look at them. Some of Mr. Eugene Benson's little landscapes here are pleasant and suggestive; but his big picture of the "Cumulus Cloud" is unfortunate in that its cloud is badly drawn, and in consistency rather resembles rock than vapour ; the drawing-, too, of the water in the foreground is simply preposterous. Look at the picture, nevertheless, to get a notion of what the Lagoon at Venice does look like on a hot afternoon,—the atmosphere, with its hot, still brightness, is perfectly true; the glare of the water, the flame-like colour of the Venetian sails in sunlight, the utter stillness and great expanse of the Lagoon,—all this is well and truly done. Cut off the foreground water, and chop up the cumulus cloud, and one would have a pleasant picture.
A fair portrait of the late Postmaster-General, by Mr. Harold Rathbone, shows that that young artist is gaining power as well as knowledge of drawing. Miss Tennant's little studies after Renner are as pleasant as ever, and very like her master's work,—seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Mr. Morris's two babies and their mother, which he entitles "Eve's Second Paradise," is ambitions, and is, after its kind, successful ; but its sweetness is a little tawdry. Mr. David Murray has a fine landscape, and Mr. Inchbold has a clever rendering of lake scenery, which seems to us just a trifle forced in its colouring.
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