ART.

MR. ARMITAGE'S WALL-PICTURES.

EVERYBODY who henceforth visits University Hall, in Gordon :Square, must feel obliged to Mr. Armitage for admission to one -of the most delightful of conversaziones.

The thought which set Mr. Crabb Robinson in the position of perpetual host in the midst of the people whom it was his life's labour to know was singularly appropriate and happy, but not snore so than the artist's realization of it.

If Mr. Armitage has scarcely been able to give the full stature

-of some of the mightier ones whom he was deputed to fetch in to the gathering, he has, at any rate, avoided a snare to the whole work which lay very close at hand. He has not made of his hero .a Mr. Leo Hunter, holding a perpetual garden party, which, con- sidering all things connected with the subject, he might very easily have done. On the contrary, he has given a fine and stately look to this gathering of illuminati, and has shown a way to turn our English passion for "the portrait of a gentleman" into a direction which may prove invaluable to art. An artist, indeed, might be tempted to think that were Mr. Robinson's life to bear no other fruit, it might come to be gratefully remembered on account of this successful memorial of it. For the interest of the subject, the technical excellence of the treatment, and the extraordinarily moderate cost of the work, all conspire to point out these wall- pictures as fit to become a turning-point in the course of English Art.

It is difficult to resist the impulse of gossip which naturally rises after seeing so many famous and familiar faces. The human interest, as in all the greatest works of art, is brought out

so prominently that it insists on the first claim to attention. We feel as though we had just come from meeting a most remarkable set of people, and above all things, would like to sit down and talk them well over, discussing their manners, appearances, expressions, and characters, with our friend who took us to the party. The painter has, indeed, been telling us at length and at leisure what his opinion is of all these notable persons,—for if "the ghost is as the man," the picture is certainly almost always as the painter of it. And we feel that it would be very pleasant to compare notes with Mr. Armitage on his readings of so many characters.

For instance, while we should at once admit that the easy princeliness of Goethe must certainly be true to nature, as well as one of the finest pieces of drawing in the picture, we should be disposed to question whether the man who wrote the " Tintem Abbey" could have had so dense a look of wooden, pragmatical, conceited stolidity. Again, whether the caustic tongue of Rogers could be hidden behind a face of such simperiag imbecility ? The hard, puritanical, self-satisfied narrowness of Lady Byron's portrait, the strange wild cometary lustre of Irving, the bursting impetuosity of Lander, may or may not commend themselves to one's historical impressions about them ; but can this dump- ling head be Coleridge's, or those fishy eyes that have no speculation in their glare belong to Blake? It is well that close by come the delightful and touching figures of Charles Lamb and his sister, to restore our faith in the artist's tender insight/ and real sympathy. Surely in no way could be better or more pointedly rendered the beautiful, sad story of these simple, noble lives. The grouping of the mutually supporting figures in its naturalness and grace recalls (no doubt unintentionally) the sub- lime pose of the Ceres and Proserpine of the Parthenon, while the flicker of some not too distant spark of madness in the eyes is given with consummate and most touching skill. The whole long, loving story could scarcely be more exquisitely epitomized than in the pathetic way in which Mary's hand rests upon her brother's knee, and is, half-unconsciously, and as of course and habit, caressed by his. Were all the picture painted up to this level there would indeed be little left to want, nor could the dearest friends of any represented in it wish for a more kindly memorial.

But of this style of gossip there might be no end. One thought occurs continually and irresistibly, as a sort of summing-up of all of it. How many of those here before us are likely to live out the traditional Art-immortality of 500 years? How many fames will not have faded long before their forms, even if Mr. Armitage's process last but half that time ? Goethe will live longest—and after him perhaps Wordsworth, and then Schiller and Flaxrnan—but will the names of any others outlast their portraits here, even although their work may stand for ever, "enriching the blood of the world "?

As we have said before, the class of art to which these wall- paintings belong is that of Conversazioue pictures. Such works have always been most interesting marks of date in art, and in- deed the study of the " Santi Conversazioni " alone has long seemed to us a valuable thread of Art history never yet sufficiently taken up as a clue.

They have of course their own peculiar difficulties, which are not always altogether overcome in even the most masterly examples. Their chief peril lies in a sort of artificial effect, as if their subjects bad been set up into groups for the express purpose of being painted, and had not naturally come together. The mere semblance of such treatment is, in any case, destructive of ease and truth, as every individual victim of a photographer must have felt, but the risk of it is increased in a compound ratio with every additional figure. Consummate genius only can altogether escape the danger, as Raffaelle has escaped it and triumphed over it in the Stanze of the Vatican. It is not, therefore, wonderful if we find Mr. Armitage somewhat at fault in this respect, if his party looks a little stiff, and cold, and glum, as though it did not amalgamate well,—as though the people did not greatly care for one another. He might, of course, retort that the supposed occasion of their assemblage was not enough to melt them all together under the influence of a warm sentiment or warm emotion, such as is present in the great examples of "The Parnassus" and "Time Disputa." And, no doubt, there would be reason in the answer. But still, one obvious peculiarity does puzzle us very much, as adding gratuitously and indefinitely to this apparent stiffness and isolation. Throughout the whole thirty or forty figures here assembled—some engaged in active talk and argument, some in pointed demonstration and eager gestures, and some in sympathetic and absorbed attention,— there is not one whose mouth is not as closely shut up as if snapped-to and tightly locked ! Whether or not this has been

done on any traditional theory—as, for instance, to express that all are dead—we cannot tell, and can hardly suppose likely ; but certainly the artist has hampered himself greatly by adopting such a course, and has thrown away all the advantages of powerful and delicate expression attainable from the most flexible and tell-tale feature of the whole face. The open mouth from which the breath of life seems issuing as we gaze, who has not felt and seen continu- ally to be the central figure of a living group in art? In such pictures as these are it is of special value, as giving a natural nucleus for each separate section, and why, when all other means of showing eager interested talk are taken, this most natural one is left aside we are at a loss to guess. We can but wish that Mr. Armitage had recalled to his memory such instances as the Homer in the Parnassus ; or, to come down to our own time, Delaroche's treatment of the leading speakers in the Hemicycle of the "Beaux Arts."

Another criticism occurs to us in carefully studying this work, so worthy of a patient analysis, and with that our "bill of excep- tions" may be closed.

The picture ranges along one end and half of the two sides of the dining-hall, at the height of about seven feet from the ground, and is painted of life size. Over the doorway in the centre of the end wall is Mr. Robinson's portrait, in a panel by itself. To the right, in a long connected series of groups which turns the corner of the room, and stretches along the side wall, stand or sit or lounge, Coleridge, the Lambs, Southey, Wordsworth, Blake, Flaxman, and others. To the left, in a similar succession of groups are Wieland, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Arn, Tieck, Savigny, and nine or ten more figures. Now, the idea of an imaginary conversazione seems to us not only the best, but probably the only practicable mode of bringing all these various people together. But it seems realized in two halves, and to represent two conversaziones,—one in an English home, as indicated by the English fire-place in the back- ground ; the other in a foreign gallery or salon, as shown by the Continental stove. This division may no doubt imply the double nature of Mr. Robinson's acquaintance—English and foreign— but may very likely also have been partially suggested by the plan of the room, the door of which cuts up into the picture at the end much as the window does into the " Parnassus " of the Vatican. Perhaps had a Raffaelle been painting here he would have seen his way to make one group of the whole, and thus have helped to carry out the feeling of Mr. Robinson's hostship or pre- sidency over all the gathering more thoroughly than has been done.

The magnetism of mutual talk and intercourse might thus have been more obviously and continuously suggested even to the artist himself—and been carried more obviously through the picture— knitting it together as the influence of a kindly and genial host will always knit together a party of his friends. Had this been possible to do, the treatment of the composition would, in our judgment, have gained much.

Allowance duly made, however, for all drawbacks, we have here a work not far from being very fine, and above all, most sugges- tive for the future. In the first place, there is no vulgarity from beginning to end of it. How far this is owing to the avoidance of all colour—that pit-fall to most English artists—and to its quiet sober chiaroscuro, may be worth consideration. But the fact remains that a soothing and refined effect, as of a company of gentlefolks, breathes out from the whole work. In the next place, the scale is well chosen to the room, the painted men and women on the wall are not too far removed in stature from the living men and women looking at them ; the room is not too small for life-size figures, although perhaps quite small enough. Then, again, the eye is struck agreeably by the pleasant sort of sub-lustre of the vehicle which has been used— and which gives an indescribable fresh crisp glisten to the surf ace— relieving it from the deadness of fresco on the one hand and from all the odious dazzle and glaze of varnish on the other. We believe the process to be a modification of encaustic painting introduced by Mr. Armitage himself, and can but hope that its permanence may equal its pleasantness, and exceed the durability of most ex- periments in mural painting.

Lastly, the reputed cost of this meritorious and charming work is so encouraging for the prospects of Art that we cannot omit to call attention to it. If we are rightly informed, the charge at which it has been completed is so moderate that all who are concerned in decorating public halls or places of assembly should take care to make themselves acquainted with it. For it may put within their reach a mode of making their walls live, so vastly better than any now in vogue as only need be known to be adopted. Many a local hall and room throughout the country might have its local worthies of past generations brought together out of local

means after the fashion set at Gordon Square, and thus endued with their appropriate immortality of one, two, or five hundred years, as the case might be.