ART.
MR. MILLAIS' PAINTING.* This exhibition of some of the most characteristic works of one of our greatest painters is not only interesting from the intrin- sic value of the pictures shown—though that value is exceed- ingly great—nor from the fact that the paintings extend over a space of more than thirty years, in which time their author's progress in his art and in public favour has been so considerable, that he is now probably at once the most skilful and the most popular painter of his time. The interest which appears to us mainly to attach to this exhibition is one of a very different kind, and centres in a question which has little to do with improved technique and increased popularity. Put in the broadest and most simple way, it amounts to this : how is it possible that the same hand should, while still in the full- ness of its power, have painted the "Vale of Rest" and the Yeoman of the Guard,"—or, in other words, how is it possible that out of a young man's pictures the heart and mind can gradually die, while the magnificent artistic power remains at its highest pitch ? A partial answer may no doubt be found in the influence exercised over Mr. Millais' mind by Messrs. D. G. Rossetti and Holman Hunt. Our artist's genius as a young man, great as it was, was un- doubtedly cast in no especial line of thought or feeling. It reflected with bright unconsciousness any sufficiently strong motive that fell within its angle of vision. It happened that the strongest motive in the English artist world at the time when Mr. Millais began his career was that of pre-Raphaelitisea, and this he accordingly took for his ruling power. And the influence of pre-Raphaelitism meant in those days the influence of its leaders, Messrs. Holman Hunt and Dante Rossetti. Any one who has ever seen Mr. Holman Hunt's painting will trace an analogy between its manner and that of Mr. Millais' "Carpenter's Shop," and in like manner Mr. Rossetti's in- fluence is evidently responsible for the picture of "Isabella."
* The Flue-Art Soei■ ty, 148 Now Bond Street.
The curious part of the matter is that in all these cases of influence there was discernible no particle of servile imitation by the young artist. His genius for painting, drawing, com- position, and colour seems to have been always so great that he could absorb any one's individuality for the time being, and reproduce it in his pictures as if it were his very own. These. early works, though done, as we • can now see, under influences which the painter shook off impatiently directly his own, character developed, were no half-hearted imitations, were not even the tentative performances of a clever young man, who had not yet made up his mind as to his future course ; but were works which for the most part were as mature and apparently honest in thought, as they were beautiful in painting, and which produced the impression of having been executed under the pressure of the most intense feeling—an im- pression which, as we can see now, was erroneous, the motive- power being only the intense reflection of the feeling of others.. It is an extraordinary chapter in the history of modern English, Art which traces the career of this great painter, who had the very best substitute for an artist's heart which the genius of a a painter could give, and who for years was mainly popular for what in truth he did not possess. Probably, if any one fond of pictures had been asked twenty years ago whose works possessed the most genuine poetical feeling, and showed the highest aim, amongst the young painters of the day, the answer. would have been given without hesitation,—" Those of John . Everett Millais." With all the artist's increase of skill and fame, where should we find any one to give us the same answer now ? Gifted, as we have said, with an almost unbounded power of assimilating other artists' ideas without being permanently influenced by them, doing whatever he did, so well that people always thought the last work indicated the true direction of his mind, producing sacred pictures which had no touch of reverence and yet were not offensive, poetical pic- tures without tenderness, and portraits without insight, yet never falling short for one mament in the production of genuine. artistic work, the history of Mr. Millais' art from 1849 to 1881. presents us with a series of problems which time can solve.
Two or three points in this career may be briefly noted'. "The Order of Release " was probably the first picture of a series still in progress, which reproduced a former composition, because of its popularity,—which, in fact, sought to repeat the success, of " The Huguenots." This was followed by the "Black Brunswicker," "The Proscribed Royalist," "Trust Me," and the whole series of his later subject pictures. In the interval between 'The Huguenots" and. "Trust Me,"—that is, between, the years 1852 and 1862, Mr. Millais' painting lost nearly all its pre-Raphaelite character. "The Huguenots" is at least as superior - to "Trust Me" and its successors in care of execution and feeling, as it is well possible for a painting to be, executed by the same hand ; and from "Trust Me," downwards to the present day, the motive of Mr. Millais' work has grown slighter and slighter, till we find its culminating point of tenuity in a work like the "Yeoman of the Guard," which, for all its dramatic and personal interest, might, as we believe Ruskin once said, be "a cake of red paint." The last picture painted with any glow• of the old (reflected) fire, to which we have alluded above, was "The Vale of Rest," now in the possession of Mr. Graham, and exhibited at the Fine-Art Society's rooms,—a picture which retains much of the unsof toned truth of the artist's earlier days,. but which has lost their lovely glow of colour, and. whose feeling is, perhaps, mainly due to the powerful conception of a Very unusual subject. Perhaps nothing defined the limits of the artist's power more clearly than a picture exhibited by him (if we re- member right) about ten years ago, under the title of the "Knight . Errant,"—a man in armour, cutting the ropes which bind a naked woman to a tree, The painting of this picture was a marvellous piece of execution. The woman's flesh looked as if it would bleed if a pin were to prick the soft, firm skin ; but it was at once felt, probably by the artist himself, and,. we think, by the public generally, that here was one thing which Millais could not do ; the artist had failed in treating a delicate subject delicately, the picture was little more fitted for • the Academy than a photograph of the same scene from life would have been. Such, we say, was the general feeling, and.. probably it was shared by the painter ; in any case, the experi- ment has not been repeated. For the last dozen years Or so,. Mr. Millais has definitely given up, to all intents and purposes,. any attempt at poetical or imaginative art. His work now consists partly of large landscapes, painted minutely upom
the spot (in a small wooden house erected for that purpose), but wholly without any trace of that affection for the thing depicted which was the leading characteristic of , the pro- Raphaelite days. Compare the painting of the woods and the strawberries in the " Woodman's Daughter "and that of the moors and the rocks in any of the largo Scotch landscapes of later years, and no one, we think, will hesitate for a moment in deciding that there has vanished from the work of the great master, a precious quality which the 'pupil possessed. The other lino in which Millais has achieved such notable popularity is that of portrait- painting, and to this work he brings in perfection nearly every quality but the highest. If it were sufficient to paint the out- side of a man exquisitely, without any trace of that inner life which "raises us from the level of the brutes to be only a little lower than the angels," then Millais would be the first portrait- painter in England, perhaps even in the world. But it is not sufficient; a man or a woman is not a coloured superficios of cloth, and silk, and skin ; and so it is that, in Millais' finest portraits, we miss something which is essential to our complete satisfac- tion. To sum up a long and, we fear, rather discursive notice, we may say that this artist is the most naturally talented painter that England possesses ; that his head and his hand are alike to be trusted to do good work as a craftsman, and that if his painting has a serious defect, it is one which many artiste, and amongst them Mr. Millais himself, would consider to he almost a virtue.
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