ART.
FRENCH AND FLEMISH PICTURES.* THE lamp of Art that one adventurous purveyor of amusement and instruction has laid down has been taken up by another, and by him trimmed with no less success than heretofore by his pre- decessor. An exhibition which has been repeated annually during fifteen years may be supposed tolerably well founded ; and it is almost superfluous to express a hope that it will hold its ground and continue to be so directed as to make it a real aid to the cause of Fine Art. On the present occasion the gallery contains the work of some of the best Continental masters, but beyond question the most masterly of all is " La Rixe" (73), by Meissonier. As usual in looking at this artist's work, one has assurance of a clear conception and a definite purpose embodied and carried through with thorough knowledge and technical skill.
• 120 Pall Mall.
What he has seen in his mind's eye as a complete picture he has translated to canvas with equal distinctness. He had a very precise idea of what he wanted to do, and has done it accordingly. These two brawlers with the ungoverned tempers of a licentious age broken into open quarrel over their cups, and hardly held apart by the main strength of their boon companions—one seems almost to hear as well as see them. On one side is the madder or, to speak more properly, the more drunken of the two, straining dagger in hand to escape from the arms of his two friends and rush at his more self-possessed and dangerous enemy, who, on the other side, throws himself into posture of defence, ready to draw his rapier, but withheld as yet from using it in an encounter which could have but one result. Wine is spilt, tables and chairs are up- set, and through a half-open door a sixth figure peers cautiously into the scene of tumult, from which, perhaps, he has but just made good his escape. In the whole range of modern art it would be difficult to find a hurricane of action and uproar more distinctly expressed ; and a certain coppery hue, which is Meissonier's besett- ing fault in colour, serves for the nonce only the more vividly to• suggest the reeking atmosphere and unhealthy fumes of this= drunkards' pandemonium. To say that the picture though small in, size is large in treatment is to repeat only what is characteristic off all the work of the artist. For it is no less true of him than it was_ said to be of another great artist, that he would paint you a bigger. picture on the palm of his hand than most men would do on the side of a house. For Meissonier, indeed, "La Rixe" is not a small picture ; it is very similar in scale to his later picture of the retreat from Russia, more euphoniously intituled " 1814, Campagne de France ;" but yet of a size that would be a danger to one who did not make his studies, as Meissonier is said to do, of life size. His imitators, it is pretty certain, are at no such pains ; a diminutive canvas and a Louis XIII. costume are, in the opinion of these gentlemen, all that is needed for the make-up of a Meis- sonier ; and they seem to find customers of the same way of thinking—witness two or three feeble productions by Escosura. Ruiperez is more successful in imitating the aplomb of his master's execution, and is withal a fair colourist. Besides " La Rixe" (which, says the catalogue, was given by Napolon III. to the Prince Consort, and lent for this exhibition by the Queen) there is by the same master the " Stirrup Cup " (69), a trooper dis- mounted from his grey charger taking his farewell draught at the door of a wine shop ; and a very unpromising attempt in water- colours (67), where everything seems to have been dipped in the meal-tub.
The most deeply moving picture that Gertime ever painted was " The Gladiators." Who but could be affected by the figures of those strong-limbed slaves led round the arena by their " enterprising" proprietor and trainer, and presented to a brutish Emperor before hacking each other to death for the amusement of him and his decadent Romans? " Ave! Caesar, imperator, morituri to salutant!" It is a bitter satire, with a good deal of Juvenal's sting in it. "The Bull Fight" (168) at this exhibition, though not to be com- pared to the earlier work as a picture, is a proper sequel to it in point of subject. In this case pity is transferred to the bull and the horse, and is scarcely shared by the picador, who, with his pads and stuffing, runs little risk. What would not a picture by GerOme of a British prize-fight effect towards the final extinction of that unlovely sport? Doubtless he would make it very horrible ; and it would probably be added to the list of evidences which to some people prove that Gerenne has a love for the horrible, and paints the horrible for no other reason than because he loves it. But that cannot be the true import of his pictures. Rather it is that he paints the horrible in its naked deformity to make it the more odious. And does he not in fact succeed ? Like all Gerome's animals, the picador's horse in " The Bull Fight " is perfectly well understood and drawn ; but the picture is not attractive in point of colour, and is painted in the smooth and even manner affected by the artist, which is somewhat too suggestive of machine work to be thoroughly pleasing or very expressive.
E. Frere is a far more popular artist than GerOme. And this is quite intelligible, since his subjects appeal to the general sympathies, and he treats them so that all understand and enjoy them. If his net is less far-reaching than Gerome's, it has smaller meshes. Frere has taken the trouble to acquaint himself with peasants and their life in France, and does not shrink from repre- senting them as he knows them ; not only as the wearers of a more or less picturesque attire, but as people who live literally by the sweat of their brow ; above the squalor of absolute want, but with little of the external ornaments of life. There are persona (or theyare much belied) who buy a cottager's clothes, bring them home to their studios, and dressing up a lay figure or a " model," assume
with these materials to represent cottage life. Unreality is, of course, the principal quality of pictures so manufactured, and in particular they wholly fail to convey the fact that the peasant's life is a hard one. The Dutch painter Israels errs, perhaps, in the opposite direction by giving the idea of poverty too abject and labour too hopelessly unremitting (39). But this is, at least, pre-
ferable to the play-acting view. Frere chooses a just mean, and sometimes gives the cottager time for something besides manual labour, as in "Learning her Lesson" (42) and " The Young Communicant " (6). These are not first-rate specimens of the artist's work, but they exhibit much of his rare insight and straight- forwardness. Duvergerfollows in his track with steps hardly unequal, though there is something not quite satisfactory in his flesh tints, and he wants a share of Frere's nice feeling for beauty of form, and for light and shade. Paul Soyer is another worker in the same field, who also gets to his point without affectation and without parade (58). The large picture by Bouguereau, with the Johnsonian title of "Maternal Solicitude" (20), deals with a subject that would equally well have suited Frere. But the treatment is different. In the enthusiastic faith and tenderness of the mother who has taken her sick child from his bed and set him in a chair before a statuette of the Virgin, helping him the while to hold a votive candle for her acceptance, and looking the thought—surely the Madonna must listen to us,—the artist aims at a mark above and more remote than those usually chosen by Frere, and the degree in which he has succeeded in portraying the emotion is likely to be disputed in proportion as the emotion itself is unfamiliar. This success is further imperilled by unat- tractive colour, a dry and hard manner of painting, and a flatness of relief which has been a peculiarity of a certain school, mis- takenly adopted through a desire to imitate the sculptor's bas- relief. On the other hand, the drawing is wonderfully correct ; every line is alive ; and the modelling, though insufficient as suggestive of roundness, is delicately expressive of a vital anatomy. On the whole, the picture is certainly a fine one, though it in- spires sincere respect rather than high admiration.
The polite (i.e., the well-dressed) world has also its own painters, first among whom the Belgian Alfred Stevens secures our admiration, not only by his masterly execution, but by his power of dealing with modern costume as material for pictorial purposes. The solitary specimen here exhibited, a young lady in light summer dress with a background of shrubs (16) is a pretty study of faint yellows and rose tints ; but though it would be surprising from another hand, it gives an incomplete notion of what Stevens can do. Another Belgian, De Jonghe, is better represented by his picture of two ladies in very confidential talk (45), a somewhat trite subject with this school; and the Frenchman Toulmouche, whose pictures too often suggest the infected atmosphere of the novels of his country, but whose workmanship is thoroughly conscientious and very effective, introduces us for once at least to quite unobjectionable company (12). Occasionally, when he ventures beyond the fence of semi-neutral tints, his colour becomes sickly, but this cannot be said of " Late " (27), which is both bright and rich. Neverthe- less, good colour is not a prevailing quality in the French school. It is commoner among the Belgians, as in " A Roman Dance" (105), by Alma Tadema, where the dresses of the two men are specially noteworthy. C. Bisschop (Dutch) is also a colourist of no mean quality. There are two small pictures by him that, in this respect, fairly represent him, " Rembrandt " and " The Letter" (162 and 118). The management of dark blue and blue- grey in the latter is worth study.
A very remarkable picture is that by Brandon of the " Interior of the Amsterdam Synagogue on 22nd July, 1866 " (171). The occasion, whatever it may have been, appears to have been of public interest, and is treated with admirable discrimination of character in the listeners to the speech then delivered by some notable of the community. The colour is inky ; but apart from that, the execution bears some resemblance to that of Zoffany in the boldness of its expressive touches. It is, however, more ragged and less careful than Zoffany's. Madame Henriette Browne (the painter of the well known " Sick Child ") exhibits a fine half-length of " A Young Rhodian Girl " (49), in which she deals not unsuccessfully with the scarlet and crimson of a pic- turesque drapery. And the Prussian artist Heilbuth gives another scene from a terrace that overlooks the country about Rome, and is chiefly frequented (for him, at least) by septuagen- arian cardinals and their equally ancient footmen. These latter, with their long swallow-tailed liveries afford him (and us) infinite amusement ; and the whole picture, including the distant land- scape, is distinguished by that prime quality, reality.
There is small show of landscapes, but yet a few of real merit. Of these " On the Seine " (126), by Daubigny (which might almost as well be named Mapledurham Lock, on the Thames ') is painted with immense vigour and unusual richness of colour. There is movement in the light flying clouds, and (an essential charm in landscape) the greys are pure. Some want of purity in this respect is noticeable in "The Road by the Sea" (26), by Lambinet. The greys are too pink ; but the landscape is broadly treated, and the subject—a free sea-side expanse, with clouds Bailing up from the horizon—must be badly treated indeed to be made otherwise than pleasing. The landscapes in which Auguste Bonheur sets his cattle are always good ; and this of " Cattle in the Pyrenees " (54), with its momentary gloom, soon to vanish before the sunshine that is coming from behind the dark screen of purple mountain, is no exception. Only the cattle are over- black. His brother Peyrol understands sheep, and paints them con amore. But instead of the irrepressible and pretentious Verboeckhoven, might there not another year be procured some of the far manlier pictures of the Prussian animal painter Brendel ? Those who have seen the best works of Clays (Dutch) will not consent to his being judged by the somewhat coarsely painted " Calm " (178) ; and Roelofs (also Dutch) can do more vigorous work than "Cattle Watering" (24), pretty as this showery land- scape undoubtedly is. As for M. Rousseau, it is impossible to admit the painter of such a picture as " The View at Fontaine- bleau " (11), to be worthy of the foremost rank among European artists assigned to him at the grand international scramble for
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