ART.
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY.
'THE Winter Exhibition of sketches and studies by the Society of Painters in Water-Colours has opened a month later than usual, by reason of alterations, still in progress, in the Society's house. These changes do not affect the exhibition-room, which was im- proved some years ago, and has since remained, among our London galleries, one of the best adapted to its purpose, as well as what it has always been,—the home of the healthiest and most purely national branch of British Art. A scaffolding and signs of workmen still encumber the entrance in Pall Mall East, but after having surmounted these obstacles to progress and escaped up a tortuous stone staircase, the traveller emerges half-way up the old familiar flight, and thenceforth it is all plain sailing, and the aspect of things is unchanged. The show within appears to us to be of more than average merit, notwithstanding the absence of several of the most distin- guished and best artists among the Society's members, and to be of more than usual interest, in that it is more largely made up of what are strictly "sketches and studies." It often happens that the strength of a painter of marked individuality, which is apt to run into mannerism in finished pictures, is best appreciated in his sketches. This is the case in the works of Sir John Gilbert, whose method of using the brush is distinctly founded upon the use of the lead pencil or pen. In slight memoranda this mannerism is not with- out a value, and even possesses a certain kind of charm in itself. It is a real privilege to be allowed to turn over the pages of the President's sketch-book (177, 370), and see how the strong lines, and energetic turns and convolutions of his pencil do really accord and assimilate with natural forms, and how they seem to gain in force when every touch has been the expression of something actually before the eye. Even the celebrated " Gil- bert tree " is brought nearer to known types of vegetation, and we are shown how there is a true foundation, in the aspect of our common scenery of the home counties, for that kind of rugged landscape of old to which Sir John imparts so much poetic charm in " Prisoners of War" (34) and " On the Look-out" (201). There is a singleness of purpose with an unity of senti- ment in these drawings which transports us to the scenes and times they represent, and their colour is very harmoni- ous. So, too, are the golden flames of torchlight under which Jack " Cade and his Rabblement " (306) march in ragged array up Fish Street and down St. Magnus Corner. These drawings are the opposite extreme in Sir John Gilbert's art, from the conventional old man with a large family (169), their eight heads set in an oval, which reminds us of George Cruikshank's illustration of Philoprogenitiveness, only Sir John omits twelve of the progeny, whereas the immortal George, in a space of four inches by five, includes eighteen, together with their papa and mamma, with as much family likeness, of a more pronounced kind, and far greater variety, both of incident and composition. It is worthy of notice that about a page of the catalogue is occupied with two quotations from Longfellow's poems. One of them forms the title of this drawing by the Society's President, while the other introduces the work of one of its youngest Associates. Both are examples of what we find to be the case in all exhibitions, that the less matter a picture has in itself, the more is it thought entitled to voluminous illus- tration in words. Some stop ought to be put to this kind of advertisement, though it is less offensive than the endeavour to kill one's neighbours with the display of bright colours and startling effects, a species of fratricide from which the Water- Colour Society is happily in a great measure exempt. What good taste does not exclude is here for the most part counteracted by good hanging. There are certain forms, however, which will catch the eye, and one of these is Mr. Houghton's " Enchanted Horse" (72) flying in the air. We shall be glad at once to dismiss it from our mind, with the acknowledgment that it happily com- bines the idea of a wooden horse and one that can go. In other respects it is beneath criticism. It is impossible, however, not to rejoice in the attractiveness in every respect of such solid work as that of Carl Haag, whose powerful study of a head of a " Howareen Bedawee " (17) is remarkable not only for the splendour of the strong sunshine and the telling relief of in- tensely blue reflections in the shadow, but for the skilful applica- tion of the method whereby these effects are produced. Mr. Haag's principle of painting in water-colour is precisely the reverse of that adopted by practitioners in oil, who give solidity to surfaces in high light by a thick impasto of paint, and transparent juiciness to their shadows by their glazings in
varnish. Here the source of light is the white paper,
which is far more thickly covered with pigment in the shadows than in the lights. The luminous effect of the delicate grada- tions of the higher tones, which this use of the pure paper renders possible, is perceptible in the beautiful study of a " Door of a Mandarah at Cairo" (183), where each little projection that catches the light is so treated; as compared, for example, with
Mr. Ruskin's " Acanthus Capital " (227), where dabs of opaque white, in similar places, give the appearance of snow. In an
admirably painted head of " A Nubian Youngster" (222), where Mr. Haag has not had recourse to his usual force of contrast of light, he shows us the purple tint upon which he grounds the complex colouring of a negro's skin. A sweet little picture, full of delicate grace in form and feeling, of two gentle girls gazing at a " Rainbow" (326) out of the win- dow of a room furnished in the quaint, old-fashioned style now a hundred years gone by, is from a hand too rarely employed on
contributions to our galleries, that of Frederick Walker. It would have been better not to have painted the rainbow itself,
and there is a slight sickliness in the general colouring, but the sentiment is so lovely and the finish so exquisite that these blemishes are reduced to very minor importance. If Mr. Walker
exhibits too little, Mr. Watson gives us rather too much ; and
although there is considerable beauty as well as good workman- ship in every one of his twenty-three contributions, most of them single studies of rustic figures in fragments of landscape,
they possess few qualities of merit that we find ourselves able to express in other than general terms. The nearest ap-
proaches to subjects are in the tart reception given by a somewhat antiquated shrew to a jovial spouse who has " Only been with a Few Friends " (50), and The Elopement " (252), both of which subjects the artist has treated before. "Near Haslemere, Surrey" (67) is an essay in pure landscape, and a true and agreeable ren- dering of an evening effect. " Homeward " (94), the largest and most complete of the figure groups, represents two girls in quasi- Roman costume returning from their employment of picking up sticks. We remember nothing so good from the hand of Mr. R. W. Macbeth as the traveller on a white horse and other figures in sunshine of "Mid-dap at a Country Inn" (104). Mr. Pinwell sends two street scenes (153, 190) at Tangier, which, though defective in drawing, give what is probably a truer impression of an African town, in its dirt and discoloration, than the smart costume-pictures of similar subjects with which it is so much the fashion for artists of our day to enliven the exhibition-rooms at home and abroad. Mr. Topham's best contributions are his simple studies, from nature, of Welsh children (195, 215). An important element of strength in the figure department is wanting, in the absence of Mr. Alma-Tadema, not to mention Messrs. Dobson, Lundgren, and Lamont, but that of landscape has to be sustained as best it may against the effect of more numerous desertions. The two Fripps, Alfred Hunt, Samuel Palmer, Boyce, and Glennie are among the names we miss with regret. But we have still Mr. Powell in two delightful sea pieces, one of them called " No. 135. G. K." (99), the distinctive mark of a Scotch fishing boat, which ploughs the pure salt waves that this artist knows so well how to paint, and which here preserve their crispness and look of motion under all the softening effect of a mist that seems to cling to the very sunbeams that are melting it away. It is always the objects least palpably defined that the eye most delights to trace and to detect. It seeks its focus here in evanescent vapour, but it strives to penetrate the denser veil of morning fog that shrouds the "Loch Fyne Herring Boats" (149), and to rest there upon the dimly gleaming surface of the water. The three small sketches (322) and " Moorland " (336), by Mr. Powell, should also be looked at and admired. We have still, too, Mr. Dauby, whose sketches are very distinguishable in their crisp touch and consequent look of clear air from his finished drawings, where a similar quality has to be recovered through much worrying of the paper. "The Llugwy " (372) is simply delicious. And then we have Mr. Dodgson, who, in the very fine work, " Crawley Woods and Oxwich Castle, S. Wales" (30), evokes one rich, harmonious, all-pervading glow out of a mosaic of contrasted colour ; and who, in another, blinds as with the spray through which his fisher-folk look out so anxiously for the boats that are exposed to the " Coming Storm " (165). Both he and Mr. Duncan show us what good sketching-ground is afforded by the Gower country, in South Wales. "The Great Tor, Oxwich Bay" (38), by the latter, is from that coast. But " Study of an Old Tide Mill near Havant, Hampshire" (148), is in Mr. Duncan's happier vein, and alto- gether excellent. Mr. Naftel's sketches in Arran show yet more strongly than heretofore the elevating influence on his art which has been the result of study, now for a series of years, of Scotch mountain scenery. In " Across the Moor to Loch-na-Oich" (89), "Our Cottage on the Moor" (113), " Cior-Mhor " (164), and " Evening, Corrie Arran " (291), we see nothing of the prettiness that used formerly to mark his studies in the Channel Islands. Mr. Hale, in " At Pontresina " (154), and "View in Ross-shire " (207), and Mr. North, in " Sketch at Sunset " (296), and " Summer" (346), remind us of the beauty as well as the manner of painting of Alfred Hunt, and Mr. Marks, in " Land- scape Sketches " (349) and " Twilight " (364) recalls the depth of colour and conscientious truthfulness of Boyce. Miss Clara Montalba, one of the youngest of the Associates, displays a fine and varied power of colour in the painting of a gilt altar-screen in " The Choir, Westminster Abbey " (21), some crimson bed-cur- tains at the " Had de Cluny" (367), and some silver "Birch Trees at Niias, Sweden" (96), the last of which has a touch of Corot about it, without, however, that sense of the wonderful gradation which is essential to the expression of light and space. This Miss Montalba does not appear to possess, and hence her skies are fiat, and her sketches on the Thames (88, 272) are heavy and opaque. Last among the landscapes, but by no means last in merit, we must direct attention to the refined and beautiful drawing, " On the North Coast of Cornwall" (325), by Mr. Prescott Hewett, which possesses in an eminent degree the all- important quality just referred to. Two good specimens of animal painting should also be noticed,—namely, the chalk draw- ing of two Highland bulls in combat, called "A Sudden Attack" (20), by Mr. H. Brittan Willis, which has unwonted spirit and action ; and " Sketch of a Young Lion and Lioness in the Zoological Gardens " (180), by Mr. Basil Bradley. Since Landseer's death, all our animal painters have been trying to paint lions, but we know of none who have expressed mme truly than Mr. Bradley, in this drawing, the lithe movement of the animal. Here, too, the action is modified, as it should be, by the narrow dimensions of the menagerie cell.
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