ART.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
[SECOND NOTICE.1
and well conceived picture, exceptionally clever in the pose and arrangement of its figures, and failing only where so many clever women fail,—in that it is almost over-masculine. It would have gained quite wonderfully by being a little more delicate, and it need not, therefore, have been a whit less strong. Mr. Tadema's portrait of Signor A.mendola shows the artist at his very best. It is a really exquisite piece of workmanship,—life- like, vivid, and beautiful in its refinement of detail. Mr- Gregory's " Startled," a frightened rabbit scudding away at the sight of a little girl, who peeps through the branches above his hole, we must class with his " Backwater on the Thames," two girls, idling amongst the rushes on a summer's day, in the stern of a boat. The artist seems this year to have taken-a vow to be more trivial than ever. It is simply wasting time to criticise so clever a man who chooses to do (practically) nothing. The work is delicious; but in absolute objectlessness it might rival the silliest country print, or adorn the feeblest illustrated paper. And there is, besides, about it an element of almost studied vulgarity—a desire to paint velvet, and feathers, and shoes, and jerseys, such as is really sickening. Mr. Macbeth, too, is going the same way, and seems to delight in a single female figure whose clothes are the most interesting thing about her. Both his contributions to this gallery have little or no other interest; and it is worth noticing how utterly Mr. Macbeth's knowledge and truth to nature are failing him under this evil influence of making enlarged fashion-plates. The background of one of his pictures here (we forget which it is called, but it is the one in which the female leans against a tree in the foreground) is about as coarse, hideous, and unmeaning as it is well possible for it to be. The yellow and orange splashes which are, we suppose, in- tended to express sunlight upon the leaves, are as formless, careless, and insolent as any work we have ever seen; and the -whole picture teems with passages of colour which are intro- duced entirely for effect, and are without any relation to truth of tone or probability of chiaroscuro.
Two very little delicate pictures by Mrs. Alma Tadema bring us to Mr. H. Boughton's "Cutting Herbage, Brabant,"—a very good specimen of this master. It is on a small scale, and only represents a woman at work in a field, with some red roofs in the distance. Simple as the subject is, the picture is full of interest, and the work upon it is singularly complete. In fact, a great change has come over Mr. Boughton's painting of late, and a change for the better. Instead of the large- eyed damsels in Puritan garb walking in the snow, or the old- fashioned lovers quarrelling in a half-real landscape, he gives us these delicate studies of real life, which have just a touch of quaintness in their treatment sufficient to redeem them from insignificance. His painting has grown both more natural and more complete in proportion as its scale has diminished, and in his pictures the forced drama of the studio, is now perceptible only by its absence. Mr. Weguelin's " The Bath " is one of the best of the sham-classical pictures which abound at the present time, and for the prevalence of which wehaveto thank Mr. Alma Tadema's example,—pictures, that is to say, which find their motive and their cause, not in any affection for the " glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome," but in the power of painting varie- gated marble, and mouldering bronze, and diaphanous drapery, and half-naked models. This is, perhaps, the easiest, as it is one of the most futile, forms of art, and it is natural enough that at the present time it should be one of the most popular. A Dictionary of Antiquities, a few rags of India muslin and " Liberty " silk, a visit to the British Museum, and a pretty, half-dressed model,—these are all the requirements ; and so we have here, and in every exhibition, dozens of similar works, in which Greek women wash themselves, or go for a walk, or enter a theatre, or sit in a bath, or lie on a sofa, or stroll in a market- place. Do not let us be misunderstood on this point. We have great respect for any artist who, sincerely feeling the beauty, freedom, and grandeur of life in ancient days, tries to revive some little bit of it for us of to-day ; such anachronism is noble enough. But for those who, essentially modern in all prejudices and practices, go on repeating, year after year, the outside trappings of the old life, whilst they are wholly without sympathy for all which gave that civilisation its real meaning, we feel neither sympathy nor, as far as their painting goes, respect. Mr. J. R. Reid's "Rival Grandfathers" is much as was his last year's picture, with the same faults and the same merits,—and we might almost say the same subject. The work is good and strong, though a little defective in delicacy, and the -motive of the picture is feeble. There is a sort of over- domesticity about Mr. Reid's work which is very apt to tire the• spectator,—like literature of the Band of Hope style, one seems to smell a moral in everything. And of Mr. Richmond's por- traits, what can we say that will be new P They are very fairly and smoothly painted ; they show great care and some sense of •beauty; they have many traces of study and elabora- tion. Perhaps the pleasantest is the one of a girl playing- the piano, which is also the simplest in treatment. It is not exactly natural, but it is graceful and refined. The draw- back to all this artist's portraits is the intrusion into- them of some qualities of affectation : there is a sort of artistic pose about the style. We cannot help associating the work with a broad-brimmed hat and long hair, and a little fine desultory talk about Tintoretto and Perugia°. Another fault, connected with this, perhaps, is the want of nature. Flesh in Mr. Richmond's portraits is something quite different from real flesh ; it is delicately-coloured wax-work —of an inferior kind to Sir Frederick Leighton's, say, as the Mats& Grevin is to Madame Tussand's. Nevertheless, as we said above, the work has many admirable qualities, and the. portraits are never vulgar, and never coarsely or carelessly executed.
What of Mr. Calderon's " Aphrodite,"—a fat, nude woman, reclining upon the bluest of seas, with fluttering sea-gulls above and around her P Well, chiefly this,—that the artist has fallen between two stools. This is neither a natural nor an ideal picture: This very robust specimen of womanhood could never have floated half a yard out of the water as she does here ; those thick masses of yellow hair would never have lain undamped upon the wave, as we see them. It is the old defect: an artist who paints an ideal subject, and not being able to treat it ideally throughout, carries his naturalism as far as is convenient, and then drops it abruptly,—in the wrong place. Give a glance at the two or three little landscapes by Eugene Benson, all of Italian subjects, of which the " Morning on the Pisan Coast" is the best. They are notable for a frank use of beautiful and delicate colour, of a kind rarely seen in an English gallery. For Mr. Strudwick's " Ten Virgins " we can say little in praise ; it is but a dull echo of his master, Bnrne Jones, wearisome in its enfeebled iteration. Mr. Strudwick has been exhibiting for about ten years, and we see in his work no signs of progress. Why does be not throw aside the pre-Raphaelitism which sits so ungracefully upon him, and do some original and straight- forward work ?
Let us close this notice with the mention of Mr. W. Stott'a " Atelier du G-randpere," a good picture with a somewhat affected title. For this " Atelier " is a carpenter's shop, and " grandpere " is plying his trade in a corner thereof. The work is good and simple, carefully studied in its contrasts of light and shade, and wholly unspoilt by affectation of any kind. Such as we see it here, this carpenter's shop was ; and it is impos- sible to say how great a relief such a bit of genuine (and un- conscious) pre-Raphaelitism is after all the affectation and insincerities which abound in this Gallery. It is a treat to find a picture which seems to have been painted by a man without any arriere pence, and with, as the schoolboys would say, " no nonsense about it." For in truth this Gallery is in many ways. very "faddy," and more than a trifle " high-falutin."
Previous page
