ART.
THE GRAFTON GALLERY.
Tim newest of London picture-galleries is ample in size, large enough, like most of the others, to contain in itself all the pictures produced in a year in Europe that deserve exhibition. " Noble," which has been freely used, is not, however, the word for its architecture, and its decoration and furnishing are tasteless. The glare of the windows and woodwork above, the colours of the couches and carpets below, do their best to spoil the effect of a good collection of pictures. And the col- lection itself has the common fault of being smothered by the inferior work in it. Where is the sense, when you have a Degas and a Whistler and an Orchardson and a Raf- &till to show, of crowding them up with rubbish P A concert-giver who has Chopin and Schumann and Grieg upon his programme does not hurry an organ-grinder upon the stage to fill the minutes between two pieces of music. The publisher of poems does not cram the margins of the page with faits divers and advertisements. Why must a picture- gallery be arranged on the principle of a newspaper sheet ? Here, for instance, is Mr. Orchardson's masterpiece, the Portrait of Mr. Gilbey. Like all Mr. Orchardson's work, it has a parti pris of yellow, and this is easily forced into pro- minence by stupid hanging. It is hung, at the Grafton, beside a portrait by Mr. Lavery, whose prevailing note is purple. Both pictures suffer by the contrast ; and Mr. Lavery's picture, which has merits of colour, suffers doubly, when put so need- lessly close to the searching draughtsmanship and delicate quality of the other. The large Raffaelli, again, is so hung, at such a height and in such a light, that it is very difficult to see it; and the room where the Degas' are hung is so lumbered up with a screen, that it is not easy to get a general view of them. A gallery of this size ought to afford a handsome panel to each of the painters invited to exhibit.
When these drawbacks have been noted, it may be gladly admitted that the direction of the Grafton shows a good deal of independence and knowledge. The common Academician is absent, and in his place there is a very fair representation of what is doing in foreign schools,—French, Belgian, Dutch, and others, and in that of Glasgow. The country, indeed, that is most poorly represented is England. The show might, no doubt, have been stronger still but for the Chicago Exhi- tion, which has swept so much into its net ; but it will give a better idea than any recent London exhibition, of what is to be seen at the exhibitions of the Champ de Mars. The Whistler is a portrait of Lady Meux, not the pink one of last year's Goupil show, but another, in an equally beauti- ful arrangement of black and white. The head is doll-like and uninteresting, and the figure is muffled in a great fur cloak, but the painting of the black and white of this is of a delicacy that makes almost everything else in the room look vulgar. The way the white falls in a shadowy cascade with a large uncertain gleam here and there,. and finally ripples out at the edge of the black wave, like foam, is the kind of thing to make other painters despair. The large Raffadlli exhibits M. Clemenceau addressing a public meeting. There is little attempt at colour,—yellow and black, with a note of red; but the force and character of the drawing are superb. For colour, one has only to look below at a little picture of two Citoyens reading an affiche. In this, all the master's qualities appear ; the strong story- telling line that puts the essentials of the men and the place before you, and playing through this drawing the most dainty scheme of colour, brightening into a tiny nosegay in the distance, made of a soldier and woman grouped behind the railings. It is one of the gems of the collection.
But L'Absinthe, by Degas, is the inexhaustible picture, the one that draws you back, and back again. It sets a standard by which too many of the would-be " decorative " inventions in the exhibition are cruelly judged. It is what they call "a repulsive subject," two rather sodden people drinking in a café. There is a picture hung in the place of honour in the large room, by Mr. Stott of Oldham, which represents Tristram and Iseult drinking a love-philtre on a fairy ship. Mr. Stott thinks his people are heroic and beautiful, means them to be so, puts them forth as such. They have really the disagrees able prettiness of a Christmas card. It is a disastrous failure by a painter who has elsewhere done good work. He has maltreated. what, if you like, before he made it his subject, was a beautiful subject. M. Degas understands his people absolutely ; there is no false note of an imposed and blundering sentiment, but exactly as a man with a just eye and comprehending mind and power of speech could set up that scene for us in the fit words, whose mysterious relations of idea and sound should affect us as beauty, so does this master of character, of form, of colour, watch till the café table-tops and the mirror and the water-bottle and the drinks and the features yield up to him their mysterious affecting note. The subject, if you like, was repulsive as you would have seen it, before- Degas made it his. -If it appears so still, you may make up your mind that the confusion and affliction from which you suffer are incurable.
M. Besnard sends a portrait of a lady that is horribly yellow by day ; by gaslight, the colour is corrected ; perhaps he painted it so, and it is then possible to appreciate its merits of movement and drawing. His small Dianants, in the en- trance-hall, is a pretty piece of colour. Of the three Segantinis, the Meamcholy Time is the finest. The attitude of the woman and of the cow, the general design of the picture, and the effect of light are impressive ; the colour is original, and in parts fine, but the whole thing is tormented. M. Louis Picard, who is probably little known in London, sends several studies of one model, and a portrait. The thin painting and delicate outlines of the nude figures are attractive, but the general effect is a little wooden. The portrait, a woman passing apparently across a bridge with the river indicated lightly in the background, is very taking. Mr. Dannat senJs a Spanish Study, a dark head in a Velasquez-like scheme of colour. That occult artist, M. Rops, sends a striking bit of drama, Une Attrapade. The waiter is particularly good. There is one of M. Carriere's tender maternities. There is a poor Zorn, two Khnopffs, two Gandaras. The Mesdag is bad, the brads, not good, the J. Maris, fair.
The Seotchmen come in this exhibition to an encounter with the masters, and must be judged by that high standard. Justice has already been done in these columns to the amusing invention of Messrs. Henry and Hornel's work. Something may now be said by way of criticism. If one turns from Whistler or a Degas or an Orchardson to these painters, or to others of the school (and it is too much of a school), the effect in drawing. in colour, in texture, is, by force of contrast, one of ill-breeding as against refinement. These painter& are, of course, of a different kind from the common Academician. They have pictorial ideas. But the drawing recalls the mannerism of Bastien Lepage, the colouring is Japanese in intensity but not in coherence, and the thick slabs of paint are often unmeaning, whether looked at close at hand or at a distance. The brushes of the school, moreover, are clogged with an unpleasant dirtiness. It spoils Mr. Walton's Corot, Mr. Roche's Cazin (in this last, there is something very beautiful in the invention of the figures), and it comes out worst in flesh-painting. Even in Mr. Gnthrie's Miss Wilson, a beautiful design, and in many ways delightful in drawing and colour, there is something of this defect, Mr. Melville's lady at the piano, on the other hand, has to struggle against the too important flowers on her dress and on the wall, these last throwing her head hope- lessly out of scale. Mr. Brangwyn, naturally a black-and- white painter, has also been letting about him with strong colours; and the Buccaneers is the result. Of all the Scotch pictures, one of the most successful is a quiet Winter by Mr. Austen Brown ; indeed, with its justice to what it takes in hand to do, it is one of the most satisfactory pictures in the Galleries. Mr. Orawpall's water-colours should he looked at, though none of them is 'so remarkable as the Cockatoos of
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