FINE ARTS.
ROYAL ACADEMY : HISTORICAL PICTURES.
Its the state of art in this country were judged by the historical pictures in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, the estimate would not he high. Those which most challenge attention, whether on subjects sacred or secu- lar, are those which most lamentably fall short in all the requisites of his- tory painting. A great painting ought to be executed with competent skill in the technical parts of the art, especially in the drawing, action, and ex- pression. Or some deficiency in technical excellence may be pardoned if the subject be set before the spectator, suggestively, in its essential attri- butes. A cleverly-contrived assemblage of studies will not make a great picture. All men enjoy more or less the faculty of imagination; many possess it in a high degree, who yet lack that sense of external objects in their visual attributes which is peculiarly the painter's sense: the great painter, possessing that power, possesses also the poet's faculty of imagining the event and the scene; and he can set before you in visible and palpable reality that which you can only call up dimly. But wo to him if his vision be less grand and exalted than the sentiment which the tale of the event has raised in you. Hence, the artist's first task is to imagine, not, as too many do, his intended picture, but the event: that once conjured up before his mind's eye, he brings it forth upon the canvass for your bodily eye. If he is only dfinking upon the picture, he can produce nothing but acento of studies and theatrical properties.
Tried by this simplest canon of criticism, thehisborieal paintings at Tra- Alger Square must be accounted failures in proportion as they challenge notice; and we shall endeavour to make good the terms of judgment which we used respecting them in our first hasty notice.
The most ambitions picture in the collection is Mr. Ma.clise's " Sacrifice of Nash." It claims to compete with the great pictures of Italy; only, an admirer might say of it, that the artist, though as severely simple as Ra- phael, is a truer imitator of nature—his accessories are more carefully exe- cuted, his beasts are more zoologically correct. We will allow that the greatest of all painters fathered, if he did not paint, some very indifferent pictures; a question, however, into which we will not enter now But in the immense multitude of great subjects which he handled, the essential parts are executed with a power unequalled: they are faithfully, modestly, and simply copied from a plain conception of the event or the scene; and the accessories appear simply as the needful helps to make out that scene. The essentials are perfectly defined; the accessories, in proportion to their nearness or remoteness from the cardinal point of the design—nearness in respect of moral relation rather than mere contiguity—are more or less in- dicated. The rule is so simple that the humblest historical painter may be tried by it. Now, in Mr. Maclise's picture this canon is inverted. A general bald imperfection reigns over the whole flat surface of the picture.; nothing is brought out completely; it is rather a flat-coloured outline than a finished painting; but if there is elaboration or completeness, it is be. stowed rather upon the accessories, and upon them in proportion to their remoteness from the essential. We will enumerate the traits of the pic- ture; and those who have seen it will bear out our description.
We pass over the fact that the mode in which the ark rests on the bill is not accounted for; we wilt admit that the animals are cleverly "touched in." The greater part of the background is a reeky hill, painted with tints as flat, as opaque, as innocent of aerial perspective, as those of the cons- Mon paper-stainer. Above the mount, in the sky, is an avenue of angels, resembling figures of wood, ranged on each side in a curved pos- ture like the ribs of a ship; and at the end of the avenue is a kind of whitish mist, intended, we presume, to represent a Divine effulgence.. En- circling the terrestrial scene below, is a rainbow, drawn with indifferent exactness by rule and. compass, anil coloured with dead heavy tints to re- present the prismatic colours, as a child would colour " a rainbow." You know that it is meant for a rainbow, just as you know that the brown streaks of paint on a doll's head are meant for hair; and there is about as Much resemblance to the original. In fact, Mr. Maclise has committed a gross abuse ou the very questionable doctrine of mere "representation " in painting. At the foot of the mount stands Noah—one list on the altar, the other baud hanging by his side and holding a censer-box: he is a somewhat spare man, with white beard and white robe; his face is raised, with a beardAhaking action, like a bass-singer expatiating in the upper past of his voice: his features are half averted, and are not made out so much as his hands; his beard is less like hair than his robe is like cloth; and the bit of the whole figure which approaches the nearest to finish-and verisimilitude is the censer-box. On Noah's right hand are hie sons and wife; of that group the most remarkable is the second son, who is kneel- ing in a contorted attitude, leaning towards the patriarch with open mouth, and so "posed " as to display, very ostentatiously, a bracelet on his left arm, with a large stone-in it that looks like a mock jewel, it is of such glassy lustre. That jewel fastens oil the eye of the spectator and will not release it. On the left,. of Noah is a group, of Irish girls, lira daughters, with dresses untidy, -by way of being primitive and natural. In front, at the feet of the sons, are a lamb and goats with dogs, some very lustrous jars, a plate, and Fruit—all executed in rode emulation of Mr. Lance; the painter of still life. There is no part of this picture that is brougbt to that state of finish at which painting begins to resemble nature; the rudest parts are precisely those which are most immediately concerned in the Divine action. Without professing to. transfer absolute reality to Genres*, apainting should raise in the mind ideas similar at least to those which the scene or event would ocessioac the essential parts should in themselves,
serve the imagination without disturbing its faith: but in this picture the most essential parts precisely are those which most shock the sense with palpable imperfection and naked unreality; while the lowest accessories are the most vivid and prominent. It is needless to say that the expres- sion is trivial and incoherent; the subject reduced to a mockery.
The little picture by Mr. Herbert, " Our Saviour subject to his Parents at Nazareth," far less pretending, fulfils the canon in many respects. Tile figure that commands attention is that of the Divine youth. Although the air of trouble in his face is somewhat too human and trivial for the class of subject, it is not literally inappropriate; the meekness, the grace, the sweet- ness, really partake of the divine. The ostentatious and prescient anxiety of the Virgin watching her child is also too literal; but it is subservient to the design. The background—an and torrid waste—is a modest copy of- the true place. In all its essentials, some such scene as that depicted by Mr. Herbert might really have happened in "Joseph's humble shed": there is no internal evidence to contradict it; nothing to jar the faith, much to mote it. It is the painting of a man imbued with the true spirit of his great art:- and if Mr. Herbert repeat these works, taking care not to attempt in the painting to go beyond what his imagination can evoke of the unpainted scene, he will do something more like genuine historical painting than the flaring pattern counterfeits of great pictures which have been our eulati- tutee for it.
The most prominent work in secular history is Mr. Etty's triple picture. The side pieces—Joan of Arc finding her sword in the chapel of St. Cathe- rine de Fierbois, and her death at the stake—are mere wings to the prin- cipal picture, where "-Joan makes a sortie from the gates of Orleans, and scatters the enemies of France." Let us criticize this by describing it; again appealing to the testimony of the careful spectator. The scene is a bridge over the meat; you the spectator being at the outer end of the bridge, the city-gate at the other end. Joan is prancing along on a white horse--a horse of that white which partakes of what is popularly called " flesh colour." Ranged at her feet are some men naked all but a kind. of drapery wrapped round their loins; which men, we suppose, are intended for English soldiers! One she has passed; she seems to have stricken him down; and he remains painfully fixed in a falling posture, and raising his shield as a defence against nothing—for her assault is a thing past, and no other has yet arrived. One of the men at her feet is feebly shielding him- self from the hoofs of the prancing horse. Joan holds her sword suspended in air: her attitude is fixed; the victim of her intended blow is nowhere to be seen. In the distance some knights seem to be riding forward after Joan, as coolly as if they were in procession. There is a " sortie," with no present action going forward! The expression is a blank. The only face well displayed is Joan's : she is looking downward with an expression of slight attention, much like what may be seen in a lady's face when she is pinning some part of her dress. The picture resolves itself into a com- position of colours. As a work of artistical " colouring," it is very imper- fect. It is best in the more opaque parts. The most complete is the white horse: a brown horse fallen with one of the naked Englishmen is a daub, in colour and form like the image of a horse such as we have seen in a. saddler's shop; but the white horse is carefully painted, with a conscien- tious attempt to convey the varying tints of the several parts; and it is executed by a painter who has a strong perceptive sense of colour. That his judgment has not enabled him to devise a systematic method of colour- ing according to a natural principle, is proved by the result in the flesh. tints. Much of the skin in the-shoulders of the oddly-dressed private sol- dier possesses the lustre and glow of living flesh: the face of the heroine, instead of being more brilliants-more transparent, and more delicate, has the blackneis, opacity, and coarseness, of paint laid upon abiorbent leather: it is the face of a leather doll, painted like a lady. Mr. Etty's picture can pretend to no excellence in anything but the single technical branch of colouring; even in that it is imperfect, and limited to the rudest kffieleif excellence. The white horse, some large pieces of coloured cloth, and a generally ingenious array of pigments, give it as a whole—as so much variegated superficios—a considerable amount of richness and brilliancy. The treatment of M. Biard's picture, " The Liberation of Slaves on board. a Slavek captured by a French Ship of War," may be deemed to bring it within the class of historical paintings. It is the very antipodes of 'Mr. Etty's picture. There is no attempt at constrained action, but the power of the draughtsman is shown in the perfect freedom with which figures are thrown into various postures and views: take for example the foreshortened' figure of the sick man lying on a mattress with his feet towards you. The action of the picture is perfectly made out: there is no mistake about the slaves pouring out of the hold; about the sufferings that they have endured, and betrayed in their feebleness or their convulsive exultation. The ex- pression of the faces is not of the very highest class: in the Negroes it is excellently caught; it is quite natural in the officers and crew of the libe- rators; but in the Europeans it fails in sentiment. You would be inclined to say, not that the artist had failed to represent the scene, but that the living originals were not persons of much feeling. Of course, the fault is still_ in the imagination of the artist, which falls short of the highest ex- cellence in this branch of his task; but he has succeeded in throwing se many traits of truth into the picture, that you are inclined to accept the seeeteimilbre You as a feet, and to shift any shortcoming from the painter to the aotoese It is, however, in the colouring that M. Biard's picture is the most striking and instructive contrast to Mr. Etty's. There is in the French work no studied agglomeration of pretty-coloured pigments; the preponderant hues are the dusky flesh of the Negroes, the blue and white or greyish colours of the European clothing; the tone of the picture, we have said, is sombre and almost disagreeable: the beauty is of another, a deeper, and more refined order than were gayety of tint. It is a fault in the mode of execution, that the artist has plodded away at producing a sort of unbrokenly even surface as smooth as a varnished table; which helps to impart an aspect of monotony to the painting in itself as a coloured object. But the plodding industry has been animated by a real spirit of truth, endowed with real power. The atmo- sphere is a thick hazy air, warmed by the lurid glow of a setting sun. -It conveys at once a sense of mournfulness and of suffocating heat, and tells of hideous suffering in the hold from which the wretched Negroes are coming. This is a very simple and a very fine instance of the way in which the most shadowy accessories may be made to tell by a reflex action upoet the main pond of the design: if the eye glauces for an instaut beyond the bulwarks of the ship into the thick stifling ter, it is sent back again to that crowded hold with an inteuser feeling of the passion of the scene. Tim warm red anti falls almost horizontally. on the backs of several officers and men, on the dusty skins of the Negroes, on the deck, and glows al- most like fire on a straw hat which has dropped upon the floor; from the op- posite side shines the cold reflected light of the grey night, which falls upon the breast of the chief officer, within the shadows that flicker across the deck, and shares every object with the het lurid light of the sun: the contrast between the two lights is brought out with all the force, all the harmony and delicacy of nature: in regard to the design, it acts not as a contrast but as a cumulative array of mournful incidents: the introduction of the cold reflex light in the shadows amid the s"mbre glow is like that of the minor interval in a chord of music. Now the same care, the same spirit of living truth in the colouring, pervades every part of the picture; no accessory as- serts an absurd prorninency ; the artist obtrudes no feat of skill : every object falls into its place, and you will not appretiate half the painter's power and industry unless you follow him into the details of his modest labour. Take as an instance the mattress on which the sick Negro is lying: as a speci- men of oheeked bed-ticking it is perfect; the folds and wrinkles in it have all the fottuitous play of nature; a cold shadow lies across it with all the un- solid-mobility yet the fidelity of a shade: the mattress is a triumph of still- life-painting; but it does not catch the eye any more than the real mattress would were the real drama of a captured slave-ship before your eyes. This is what the true artist does, whether in poetry or painting: he is able to arrest fun you a moving scene, for contemplation when you are not moved as you would be by the event itself; so that a thousand traits and beauties which you would be incapable of entertaining at the time are preserved for your delight and improvement. A more revolting object than a slave-ship cannot be imagined: art converts it into a source of beauty and of consola- tory reflections.
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