ART.

THE ART OF EUROPE.—IV. (ENGLAND.) SIXTY or seventy years ago two influences were doing their best to ruin the Art of England, and these were the influence of the romantic and the picturesque, which had practically reigned supreme in England since the time of Claude, but, fortunately for Art, their time was come, and their fall rendered certain by two men, who, within a very short period of each other, made two important discoveries, or rather rediscoveries. Joseph Mallord 'William Turner discovered that "the Sun shone," and David Cox that "the Wind blew." Strange as it may seem, in a short time these simple natural phenomena, which had existed unsuspected, and yet plainly evident, during all periods of Art, overthrew the ruined castles, classical aqueducts, dancing nymphs, and scowling brigands, banished them, let us hope for ever, to that limbo "where all dead things lie dead." Of course there was a struggle, and a fierce one ; the professors and disciples of the old order, said all manner of witty and bitter things, at the expense of those who were foolish enough to believe that Nature could have a place in Art. Nevertheless, Turner and Cox, two single-minded and fortunately very imperturbable men, went on painting the sun, and the wind, and the rain, and in spite of ridicule and neglect of their works, till at last popular recog- nition came, and their opponents ceased to trouble them. Such was the beginning of the Natural School of landscape painting in England,—the first dawn of the conception now grown so common, that Art is not really more beautiful than Nature, but less beautiful,—that it is only by adhering as closely as pos- sible to truth that we can gain beauty. I must pass over with a few brief words the development of this notion,—how, round Cox and De Wint, the old Water-Colour Society grew up and prospered ; how Turner went on adding achievement to achieve- ment, till his pictures reached a dazzling height of skill and beauty, such as the world had never seen, and could hardly understand ; how Ruskin poured out pamphlet upon pamphlet, and book upon book in vindication of truth in Art, as opposed to conventional theories ; and how, lastly, out of all these conflicting theories and practices, rose a society of artists calling themselves, foolishly enough, the "Pre-Raphaelite Brethren," which was destined to carry to a hitherto undreamt-of perfection the school of Nature. Turner had loved the sun and mist, and Cox the rain and storm, but the gigantic genius of the one had soared on the wings of the imagination into an ideal world, and the humble, rough earnestness of the other, had scarcely admitted any other feeling into his work than that for breezy skies and fresh fields. The Pre-Raphaelites went very much farther than either, they I did not violate the ordinary practice in this or that especial case, —they refused to acknowledge its laws at all. They started with the doctrine that nothing was really ugly that was natural, and that no artifice was required to make it beautiful.* I must not delay longer upon this point, but would beg my readers, if they have the faintest trust in my words, to believe this,—that everything which is really first-rate in the English landscape art of the present day, is the result of what is commonly spoken of as the Pre- Raphaelite movement, and the works of Cox and Turner ; these two artists formed the necessary link between the Old Romantic Picturesque School, and the School of Realism that was to suc- ceed it.

I said in the first article of this series, that the English painters had one great merit. What it is, my readers are now in a posi- tion to guess. It is that they alone of all the world, have really come face to face with Nature, resolved to see her and paint her, as she is. In England, with many artists at least, 'nature is reproduced for you to the utmost of the artists' power. If all we had to ask was absolute fidelity to what they saw, we need go no farther than English Water-Colour Art, for there you can have meadow, bill, and stream, painted with un- flinching accuracy and care ; there a blue sky is indeed blue, and a green field green, and so on to the end of the chapter. In so far as we excel in landscape art, this is the reason. For truth of detail, and truth of colour, we stand easily the first amongst nations, and for these results we have to thank the once despised, • and now nearly forgotten, Pre-Raphaelite brethren. I will now go through the English gallery, as quickly as possible.

In this notice, I will follow the alphabetical order of the Cata- logue. "Saturday Night at the East-End of London," by F. Barnard, and "Mount's Bay, Cornwall," by J. Brett. Well, here are two realistic pictures,—very typical ones. The latter is a summer sea, with purple cloud-shadows, seen from the top of a gorse-clothed down ; the former is a narrow street, lit with flaming gas-lamps, crowded with costermongers' barrows, drunken women, and—the most prominent object of all—a butcher's shop, with beef and mutton rendered to the life, or rather to the death !—Nature at her greatest height of loveliness, and man at his lowest depth of poverty and vice ; and both chosen by English artists as fit subjects for their art. And yet, with all its error, there is a touch of sympathy about the London picture which Brett's "Bay" lacks, magnificent as it is in execution. Its realism is beautiful, but cold as ice ; while Barnard's work, though it is as coarse in execution as in subject, is human and interesting. If you want to see something between realism and traditionalism, look at Vicat Cole's three works here, —44 Golden Autumn," "Rain in Summer," and "The End of the Day." "How beautiful !" I believe every one says, the first time he looks at one of this artist's pictures ; "How false !" when he has looked again. And yet one hardly knows what it is that is wanting, except that there is an undefinable made-up look about the whole composition. Clouds, river, reeds, trees,—everything belongs to Mr. Cole, and not to Nature. I have taken, as an example, one picture of a subject which should hardly have been painted ; let me take another which, if painted at all, should have been done in another fashion, "The Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy," by C. W. Cope. Who does not know this picture, in- teresting in every detail, from the President, with a very shiny hat on, to the important carpenter, ready to mark the accepted picture with a bit of chalk ? As a work by a distinguished artist of a body of distinguished artists, I think it can have no parallel in the world, but I do not wish to enter upon its defects. I have only mentioned it here as another specimen of the perversion of realistic painting. The fact is that no artist could have chosen a subject like this ; it is immeasurably lower in the scale of Art than Barnard's "Saturday Night," for there, there are many of the elements of the beautiful, since there are pathos, action, and diversity of emotion. And since we have had so much about realism, let.me say a word here about the coldest realistic work

have ever seen, and which is almost as perfect in its way as that of Brett. This is the work of H. W. B. Davis, a recently elected Academician, well known to the English public as a fine painter of animals and landscape. Davis seldom strikes us with such vivid effects as those of Brett, but is more fond of declining light, or else an equally, but not brightly, lighted scene, where every detail tells. I remember a picture of his in the Academy, two years ago, called, I think, "A Summer Morning," which was wonderful in its painting of grass and foliage, but which gave one the same dull satisfaction that a good coloured photograph causes. Both Cotman and Walter Crane I should

• Here, as elsewhere in this series, I must ask my readers to bear in mind, that do not intend to give an adequate description of the style and raison ditre of any school, but only a rough hint, sufficient to render my meaning intelligible.

like to speak of,—the thoroughly earnest, simple style of the one, and the pleasant fancy of the other, rendering their work notable amongst that of the younger school of British artists ; but I must pass on with this word of mention. Calderon and Elmore must not be wholly omitted, if only because their names are so familiar to the sight-seeing public ; but they are really artistic anachronisms. They belong to the worn-out costume school of painting, which has had its day, and must make room, with the best grace possible to it, for another and a more vigorous style of art. I will pay it the respect that Brennus gave to the old Roman Senator, and pass on in silence.

I mention Fahey's "lie will not Come" and Fildes' "Casuals" together, for despite the vast gulf between the mock sentiment of the first, and the intensity of dreary emotion in the second, they are alike in two ways. Both are intended to appeal to the spec- tator's pity, both are remarkable for an almost total absence of colour. In Fahey's picture of the poor young woman waiting in vain by the mill-stream, everything is of a sort of greenish brown, which is absolutely inconceivable as a true representation of nature, and utterly ugly into the bargain. In Fildes' picture rags and dirt are the only surroundings of the figures. There have been a good many fine phrases written about these "casuals," "broken-down spendthrift," "weary mother," "street Arab," &c., but I doubt very much their being fit subjects for a painting ; nor should I like it less or more were it divided into four or five strips, with a casual or two in each. A variety of scattered emotion does not necessarily produce a single emotion of any intensity, and I doubt whether any one who looks at the "Casuals" derives any impression beyond that the artist must be a clever fellow, and that there certainly ought to be some place out of the rain for those poor people to wait in.

Frith and Gilbert are here in great force, the former sending four of his largest works, "The Salon d'Or, Hamburg," "The Derby Day," "The Railway Station," and "The Last Sunday of Charles II." Of these, probably the four finest works the artist has ever done, I can only say, what I have said over and over again in reference to his smaller pictures,—they are the finest examples in the world of the school to which they belong ; and that is the school which, if it had its own way, would destroy English Art. If you can imagine the worst part of the Stock Exchange turned into gilt frames and clothed in diversity of costume, you would have a fair idea of the men and women that Frith paints. I know his pictures well, and thinking over them at the present moment, I cannot remember one where the senti- ment has risen higher than gratified vanity. I should be the last to hold that Art should be only concerned with what are called the Upper Classes, but for Heaven's sake, if we must have pictures of them, in all their foolish eccentricities of dress and manners, let the copy be something like the original, and do not give us Betty the housemaid and Maria the cook masquerading in their mistress's dresses ! Sir John Gilbert's works are very difficult to speak of briefly, there is about them a nobility of conception, and it seems to me a simplicity and purity of thought, which are hardly to be paralleled in work of the present day. I do not know whether this would be noticed so clearly by those to whom his book-illustrations were unfamiliar. Certainly that was where the strength of his ability lay ; the gentleness of his heroine's beauty, and the lusty strength of his hero, will, I fancy, come back ta many of my readers. In oil he always seems to have worked hurriedly and unsatisfactorily, but some of his water-colours are fine in colour, and he has always had a sense of the mystery of wooded landscape, somewhat akin to that of Gustave Don. E. J. Gregory and Hubert Herkomer are two young artists whose fame is already established, and both of whom first became known to the public through their works in black and white in the Graphic. The effect of this drawing for wood-engraving is still apparent in each of them, in a certain coarseness of style, and (in Herkorner especially) exaggeration of light and shade. The French appreciate the work of the latter artist immensely, and awarded him one of the only two medailles d'honneur gained by the English school, for his 44 Last Muster." Every one will probably remember this work, which excited so much attention in the Academy three years ago, and was engraved in the illus- trated papers. Indeed, I am not sure that it was not as a wood- cut that the picture made its first appearance. Gregory's chief work is called " Morning,"—a tall girl, in orange drapery, leaning against a piano, in a ball-room, talking to one of the last guests. The room is brilliantly lighted within, and the cold, grey light from without is just forcing its way through the chinks of the shutters, and giving a rather ghostly appearance to the lamps and evening dresses. I should do Mr. Gregory very much less than

justice, were I merely to say this is a clever picture. It is simply, considering its aims, a perfect success. I have never seen such a triumph of " light " painting as this, and the audacity of the cofouring (the orange dress is backed by a pink azalea) could only have been justified by the result obtained. And yet,—well, it is a gaslight picture, with a gaslight aim about it ; and surely the painting is too good, and the artist's ability too great, to be squandered upon such trivialities. I looked at this painter's work entitled "St. George," which was exhibited at the " Institute " in the spring, and it produced upon me exactly similar impressions to those caused by this picture. How is it possible that with the power to paint like that he does not aim higher? Why is the strength of the work marred by such apparent defiance? I know nothing personally of the artist, but if the internal evidence of these works is to be trusted, he might be, if he chose, one of the greatest painters in England ; as it is, he is the most audacious, and amongst the young artists the most talented. Frank Holl, Alfred Hunt, Burne Jones, Sir Edwin Landseer, Leighton, Leslie, Lewis, and Marks I must pass over with the mere mention of their names. They are well known to my readers, and as I am only seeking to give a slight summary of English Art, I may omit the better-known features. R. W. Macbeth should be noticed, as a young painter who is doing good work, all of it marked with earnestness, though sometimes run- ning into extremes, as in the "Sedge-Cutters," in last year's Academy, in which the women were all of a gigantic height and breadth, and a sort of black-browed beauty ; which, as far as I have noticed, is as rare in Lincolnshire as elsewhere.

With regard to Millais, I am in douht whether I can make my readers clearly understand, in a few words, the extraordinary merits and defects of his work. Every one knows what his early work was; every one remembers the " Ophelia" and "The Hugue- nots," and perhaps some have even seen the "Apple-Blossoms," the most typical works of this painter in his younger days. Many of my readers are probably also readers of Anthony Trollope's works, and if they will take the trouble to turn to Framley Par- sonage or The Small louse at Allington, or best of all, Orley Farm, they will be in a position to judge of what Millais might have done, as well as what he has done. In those early Pre-Raphaelite days (Millais was one of the three original "Brethren ") there were three things that Millais did better than they had ever been done before. The first, and the greatest, was the expression of emotion ; the second was the power of in- vesting the most simple incidents with a grace and beauty which have only been equalled by one man (Fred. Walker), whose work I will speak of directly ; the third was the reproduction of animal and inanimate nature faithfully, and yet in perfect combination and subordination to his chief subject. Had he continued as he began, had he lent to the Pre-Raphaelite school the influence of his keen sense of beauty, both of emotion and nature, it is ha- possible to say what the English school might not have been at the present time. I do not judge of any man's motives, and I will not raise the question here, but from one cause or another, Millais forsook his old ways, gradually turned his attention to portrait and landscape painting, became fashionable, and threw his influence mainly against the school he had once belonged to. When I think of the " Ophelia " and "The Huguenots," and then of the series of pictures called "Yes," "No," and "Yes or No," the change seems to me almost pathetic, — that a painter should begin his work with the noblest deeds of self-sacrifice and heroism he can find for subjects, and end, by painting a "brown ulster" and a beefeater's uniform, for those are practically the chief subjects of the two last large figure-paintings of this artist ! The realism is still there, my readers will perhaps say. Yes ; that is just the whole point of the question. That is what I want to lead my readers to see clearly, if I may, in this article,—that realism is not noble in itself, if it have no higher object. Realising an inkstand or an ulster, will not give you a picture ; what you want to realise is the beauty which dwells in Nature, and also the relative degree in which various natural objects possess it ; and you cannot stop even there,—that will give you beauty, but only that of death. The next step is the all-important one, the one which can only be taken by one man in a thousand, and which he must take, unless he is false to his art and himself. This is simply the connection of material beauty with immaterial thought. I wish I had space to dwell longer upon this. I should like to try and show how all Nature really de- pends for its chief interest on humanity ; how dead and cold it be- comes the instant all trace of man's thought, interest, and emotion is removed from it. I once tried to show this (in an article devoted to the purpose) to the readers of the Spectator, and straightway a

lot of wiseacres, thought I wanted a man in the foreground of every picture, and set to and abused me for so doing. So it is with fear and trembling, that I let this sentence stand,—that the simple copying of Nature, no matter how minute or skilful, will never make a great picture, or a great artist. An artist must not only see more clearly than other people,—he must also see more ; he must, if he is to be an artist in anything but name, see those hidden significances in common-place things, that poetry of the ordinary which, in another form, is revealed to us by the poet- Like him, too, his work must be,—

" Bravely tarnished all abroad to fling The winged shafts of truth ; To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring Of Hope and Youth."

I cannot finish my article as I should like, but must end it abruptly with the mention of two men, both represented at Paris, and both unfortunately dead, who had, I think, caught clear sight of the true connection of Nature and Man, in so far as Art was concerned with it. These men were Fred. Walker and George- Mason. Of the latter's works I will not speak in detail, for all their merits are exemplified in those of Walker. The latter artist sends only one oil work to the Exhibition, but that is, fortunately, one of his finest, "The Old Gate," and has been several times. exhibited in London. Here is displayed in perfection the qualities I have spoken of above,—of sympathy and insight. Here, in one- autumn landscape, are contrasted, and yet united into one chord of meaning, age and youth, experience and innocence, sorrow and gladness, labour and rest. I am not exaggerating when I say that these emotions and qualities are here shown in the few figures. of the widowed lady, the playing children, and the tired labourer ; and it is literal truth that they are combined into one intense chord of feeling by the artist's genius. Were I asked what this feeling was, I should answer that the number of interpretations which can- be put upon an artist's work is no bad test of his rank. But if asked what this picture said to me, I should answer that it told me in another form what all life tells me,—that beauty is independent of culture and circumstance, that endurance and joy exist side by side ; that through the "old gate" of life pass for ever the

"Young heart, hot and restless, And the old, subdued and slow ; '

that childhood has its joys, manhood its labour, and age its endur- ance. A good deal, I dare say, my readers may think, to be said by a picture of an autumn landscape and a few country people. Well, believe me, in every great picture there are manifold meanings, often only to be discovered by patient study. The work that

presents to us one definite phase of emotion, which pins us, as it were, to only thinking one thing about it, is as surely as- possible an inferior work of art. And hard as it may seem, you-

cannot have a work of art explained to you. Speaking roughly, nothing worth the explanation can be explained. I find that I must close my article here, having said little or nothing about the short- comings and merits of our English school of figure-painters, nor, indeed, of the painters themselves. Watts, Barne Jones, Poynter, Leighton, and Albert Moore require an article to themselves, as- does also the speciality of English Water-Colour Art; but I thought that in a series of articles like the present, which, from their very nature, must be excessively imperfect, it was better to dwell upon the feature which is quite special to English Art,—and that is, as I have tried to show, a peculiar form of landscape painting, due to the influence of Cox, and Turner, and the Pre-