ART.
BIRD-PAINTING AND FALCONRY AT THE GROSVENOR.
THE Falconry Collection was a happy thought on the part of those responsible for the "Sports and Arts" Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery. Falconry is now something more than a picturesque revival, such as Washington Irving humorously described in " Brneebridge Hall." The circumstances of modern country life will probably prevent it from regaining its old place among national amusements. But the very complete collection of the accessories of the good old sport, sup- plemented by illustrative specimens of the birds themselves, is evidence of the thoroughness with which modern falconers pursue their art. The literature of the subject is also well represented; but as the Grosvenor authorities have so far devoted only two lines of small print to explanations of birds or books, those unfamiliar with the subject can learn little from either.
This is not the place for a treatise on falconry ; but we may -draw attention to the beautiful finish of the hawks' furniture, hoods, bells, and jesses, many of them the work of old Adrien Moellens, of Valkenswaad, one of a race of hereditary falconers ; and to the curious difference in size and markings between hawks of the same species, but of different sex or age. It is not the least pleasure of the falconer to watch the pro- cess of change in plumage, as his darlings shed their first year's feathers, and to note that nice adjustment of Nature by which corresponding feathers fall from either wing simul- taneously, so that at no time shall their powers of flight be marred.
With the Falconry Exhibition is shown a collection of bird- paintings, many of them in no very obvious connection with the subject. But few people will be disposed to take excep- tion to an arrangement which gives us a whole series of exquisite water-colour studies of birds by Albert Diirer. The catalogue—which is throughout meagre, and at times mis- leading—groups these under one number (362), and only states that they are the property of the Duke of Devonshire. We may be excused for devoting some little attention to the series. The first, a duck flying, sketched in dark-brown, is interesting from the fact that the artist has seized the moment of com- pletion of the downward stroke of the wing to give his lin- pression of a bird in motion, a method of representing that phenomenon which European artists have constantly neglected, while the naturalist schools of Japan and China have as con- stantly selected it as the most characteristic movement in sustained flight. Instantaneous photography justifies the opinion of the latter, and the pictures of driven grouse in the Badminton series, taken by the camera, differ in no respect from the Japanese drawings of' the sixteenth century to be seen in the White Gallery at the British Museum.
In the next frame is a beautiful painting Of a Ilawfmch, the colour being remarkably fresh ; below is a study, not corn-
pleted, of a dead brambling finch, with the wing expanded to show the arrangement of the feathers. In no bird is the blending and mottling of the colours so difficult to preserve with due regard to tone as in the woodcock. The great master has apparently amused himself by snaking a conquest of this difficulty. The inner markings of the woodcock's wing seem to have interested him much, for in addition to a painting of the bird, he has also made a separate study of this part of his subject. A crowded page of butcher-birds, wrens, and fly- catchers, is followed by two careful paintings of a magpie. He is a disreputable old bird, standing very far back on his heels, and, in the second portrait, has lost his tail. The painting is so fresh and humorous, that we wondered whether Mr. H. S. Marks had seen this most suggestive work. We believe not. But the whole treatment, and even the grey-toned paper, recall at once his clever and beautiful paintings of the darker coloured macaws. This "grey" paper is really a page of some old manu- script, or black-letter printing, washed over with grey colour ; it is, in fact, a "palimpsest." Where Diirer has not drawn from life or the dead specimen, he is not so happy. The last of the series, a partridge, is from a badly stuffed copy, and reminds us of the hawk which sits on a chair-back in Sir J. Millais's early picture from Keats's "Pot of Basil," painted so carefully from the stuffed " specimen " that we look at once for the attaching wires.
Two other paintings of Diirer's are of special merit,—(72), a pair of squirrels eating nuts, done in water-colour on vellum ; and (55), a hare sitting among wild flowers and grasses. Crouching among flowers and tufts of dandelion- seed and hawkweed and wild-strawberry leaves, this venerable hare is dozing away the summer day, just as Darer saw him in the meadows beyond the walls of Nuremburg. He is so old that his brown fur is covered with tiny tufts of grey fluff, and so sound asleep that he does not mind the dragon-fly that has almost settled on his nose.
The collection of iaintings by Wolf suggests the con- clusion that his work marks the limit of excellence which has been reached by modern painters in the expression of truth and feeling in bird-painting. There is a true story of Wolf, that when waiting for a drive of roe-deer in the woods by the Spey, he let the deer go past rather than disturb a flock of crossbills which had settled in the pine-tree on which his stand was fixed, high above the ground. He has left a record of this incident in a charming sketch of the fearless little birds for whose blood-red breasts and crossed bills Christian sentiment has found a reason in a holy and sacred pity for the crucified Redeemer ; and to this power of silent and sympathetic observation he has brought rare skill with brush and pencil. His larger works are no mere portraits of birds, but carefully composed pictures, with a due subordination and relation of the parts to the leading idea. No better example of his power in this respect could be found than his "Osprey Fishing" (368). Wolf excels in snow-scenes, and this is one of his best. One pool in a frozen river still defies the frost, and the osprey rises, after a plunge into the black water, with a huge pike in his talons. The water streams from the expanded feathers of the bird, and a crossing jet is flashed from the broad tail of the fish as it makes a desperate struggle for liberty. On a dead branch sit two other ospreys, and the whole is bounded by a ring of pines seen through the frost-fog. Two other scenes of bird- life in snow by this artist are " Ptarmigan " (332) and "A Merlin seeking his Dinner" (365). The first is on the high uplands of the Snehattan Mountains. The snow is lighted up by a flood of yellow, misty sunlight, and on it the ptarmigan strut and crow before a mountain-hare as white as themselves, who quietly nibbles lichens. Other ptarmigan fly to join them, like morsels of snow whirled from the cliff. No. 365 takes us to an English heath. There is a little clearing among seedling pines, and in it, on the thistle-tops, gold- finches cluster, while a flock of other small birds flutters on the ground. On the unsuspecting flock the merlin glides swiftly, and silently as his own shadow on the snow. A far more ambitious but less pleasing picture is No. 9, "Kite- Hawking on a Suffolk Heath." It is a wonderful study of plumage, but the subject is disagreeable, and the colours rather crude. Falcons and hawks are favourite subjects for Wolf's brush, and though modern ornithologists com- bine to pronounce the "perching birds" to be the highest type, most people will agree with Wolf in preferring the falcon to the sparrow. Among the best of his hawk-portraits are (344) an Iceland falcon; " Sakers on the Lower Danube" (352) ; and (353) a pair of Egyptian lanner falcons, basking on the heated rocks of the desert. If we compare with these paintings by Wolf a hooded falcon by Sir`E. Landseer (No. 357), we find the latter inferior alike in truth of colour and texture, though " pic- turesque " enough. Nor can No. 68, "The Swanery invaded by Eagles," be said to add much to Landseer's reputation as a bird-painter. Coarse in drawing and bad in colour, it has little in it to recommend a thoroughly repulsive subject. The best of Landseer's bird-paintings exhibited is No. 85, miscalled in the catalogue "Teal and Woodcock." It is really a picture of a snipe and a dead teal, and is excellent in colour and texture. But even this is not better than the paintings of wild duck by Teniers (114), Albert Cuyp (109), and Jan Fyt (132). G. E. Lodge has some excellent " portraits " of falcons and hawks : "A Goshawk" (343), and "A Hooded Tiered" (361), being good alike in drawing and rendering of the feathers. "The Peregrine," by Captain S. Biddulph (364), is almost up to the standard of Wolf's drawings. But those whose time is limited will do well to devote their atten- tion to Albert Diirer and Wolf.
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