ART.
THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATERCOLOURS.
IN some ways, this has been an unfortunate year for the ol& Society. The blare of trumpets and general success which attended the opening of the rival Society—of the Royal Society's new Galleries in Piccadilly—attracted attention from its older rival, and the tide of picture-seers has to some extent deserted the neighbourhood of the National Gallery, for theneighbourhood cf Burlington House. These things are very much a matter of fashion, and it seems to be the fashion now-adays for picture-seers not to go east of Waterloo Place. It was= to be regretted I thought, as indeed, I said at the time, that the Old Society did not accept the offer of the Institute, to make one great Water-colour Exhibition, and so do, away with all the past jealousies, and heart-bnrnings which have hitherto existed between the two institutions. However, the error, if error it were, will bring its punishment with it; and it is more important at the present time to draw the attention of the public to the fact that the members of the Royal Society do not paint the worse because their policy was short-sighted. Well, it does not follow that because there are nearly a thousand works in water-colours in the galleries of the New Institute, that the three hundred in the room of the Old Society are less worthy of notice. I wish, indeed, that I could say that this is a better oxhibition than usual, but such is certainly not my impression ; it is, on the whole, slightly inferior, though there are several pictures of considerable merit, and though the average is, on the whole, decidedly higher than that of the Piccadilly Gallery. The real defect in the constitution of this .Society has always been its ultra-conservatism, and the niggardliness which has been shown in admitting younger members ; this has resulted at the present time in causing the Society to consist chiefly of artists who have passed -their prime, and it must necessarily follow, unless there is a considerable change of policy, that for the next few years the exhibition of the Society will decrease in interest. 'There is no sufficient body of younger members to take the place of those who are passing away. However, I have said all this before. Let me rather note a few of those pictures which seem to be the best of this year.
"The Invincible Armada" (10), by Mr. Albert Good win. On the whole, this is the best picture in the -gallery, though it is only a repetition by this clever artist -of a former motive. If I recollect right, it was last year that he exhibited a drawing of similar title and somewhat similar treatment. The present composition shows one of the great galleons of the Armada stranded upon a rocky coast, and showing dark against a stormy sunset; it is, indeed, a very beautiful drawing, instinct with a stern, almost savage poetry, a pictorial equivalent to one of Kingsley's declamations -on the same subject. I must just pause to note here that Mr. Arthur Marsh, who is to the figure painting of this Society "what Mr. Goodwin is to its landscape, sends this year nothing of importance. " A Comfortable Scat " (1), by Mr. E. K. John-son. This deserves notice as one of the prettiest little pictures we have seen for a long time ; it represents the painter's little 'daughter, sitting in an old-fashioned garden, with a big Persian -eat on. her knees ; it has all this painter's well-known delicacy of execution, and its simple motive is exactly suited to the style of his work. Mr. Thorne Waite's work is rapidly losing its chief .meritorious qualities,—those of freshness of impression and -ease of manner ; it has long been evident that his sketches were far superior to his finished work, and this year be shows this atill more plainly.
Mr. Moore has half-a-dozen drawings here, all interesting, and all on his usual subject and in his usual style ; they call for little remark, except the one I have made so often, that for painting of the sea, as distinguished from the painting of waves, and painting of the sea-coast, Mr. Moore is our most accomplished artist, despite all his faults of over-roughness of execution, and his leaving too much to the spectator's imagination in the forms of his waves and clouds. His paintings and drawings of the sea possess all the freshness and healthiness of the scenes they depict, and have, too, no small share of the mystery of the sea. It is notable, too, that he is one -of the very few painters who, having worked for years in an -sumaturally low key of colour, has deliberately set himself to remedy the deficiency, and who is rapidly succeeding in so doing. 4` Fleet Street" (9), by Mr. Herbert Marshall. On the whole, this is the best picture of London which this artist has given ns ; it is on a rather larger scale than usual, and is full of figures, -omnibuses, and carts. Mr. Marshall will have soon to take -eat a patent for the smoky poetry with which he has surrounded London life. It is far too good to be allowed to be imitated at random, and as Ruskin once said of another artist, " to be degraded by the fallacy of its echoes." It is interesting to note that this is the first drawing of any real merit, -which has taken in the new Law Courts, and the site where 'Temple Bar once stood. As a contrast to this, it is worth while to look at its next neighbour, Mr. Goodall's "Cairene Mosque," shooting a slender minaret up into a sunny sky ; a fair, but -not a first-rate example of his work. " Waiting for the Boat, Scheveningen" (217), by Mr. R. Bevis. A fine, industrious, ,careful composition, well drawn and well painted, but not remarkable for any great amount of imagination, or any very minute observation of nature; in fact, industrious and accurate,
and a trifle uninteresting. Mr. Collingwood Smith's "Rome, from the Pincio," should be looked at as a survival of a form of art which is rapidly passing away, and should be contrasted with Mr. Glennie's " View of the Palazzo del Popolo," the same place from a lower point of view.
I find it excessively difficult to select a single figure picture as being worthy of special praise. Probably the best is one by a new Associate, who is, we hope, a comparatively young man, William Wainwright. This gentleman sends three drawings, all of which should be carefully looked at ; but his most important is called "The Singers," and represents some youths in mediaeval costume singing to an unseen audience. This drawing shows very plainly the marks of foreign teaching, and has a good deal of that somewhat unpleasant ability which marks much of the French work ; but it is well and strongly drawn, is full of power, and has a definite style and meaning in its painting ; in fact, it is by a man who knows his business, and is neither namby-pamby nor trivial. Whether it is not insolent is another question, and if Mr. Wainwright means to become a great artist, he must guard against that coarseness both of feeling and execution of which his work at present shows distinct traces.
Mr. Carl Haag's large picture (130), of a " Sheik in Cairo Receiving a Deputation from the Desert," at the door-way of a mosque, is not a good example of his work, in anything but technical skill ; the figures are singularly uninteresting, and the architecture, though beautifully painted, does not compose pleasantly with them. The elaborate style of this artist always borders a little upon the artificial, and, in the present instance has overstepped the line. On the whole, the most interesting landscapes in the exhibition, after those of Mr. Albert Goodwin, are by Mr. W. Matthew Hale, no relation to the figure painter of the same name. These are very tender, delicate studies of atmospheric effect, and the finest of them is called, " Just as the Setting Sun Made Eventide," a picture of a woodland glade against a faintly-pink sky. This last is, without exception, the most perfect piece of harmonious colour in the Gallery, and is absolutely true to an effect of nature which is as beautiful as it is difficult to reproduce. Mr. John Parker is an artist who has taken up the waistcoat, if not the mantle, of the late Mr. Pinwell ; and though his work fails in the eerie charm of his predecessor, and fails too, in its overprettiness and its lack of other meaning, it has several meritorious qualities. " The New Milkpail " is a good example, both for its excellencies and defects ; it is very cleverly and elaborately composed, is full of pretty things prettily drawn, and has a pleasant, almost idyllic character ; it lacks, however, the "one touch of Nature," and it lacks any reason for the collection into
a focus, of the incidents and what may be called the furniture of the picture. The things, and the people seem to me to be there, not because they were on the spot, or ought to have been, but because the painter wanted to make a pretty picture. Mr. Tom Lloyd and Mr. Ernest Waterlow are again two artists who suffer from this disease of unmeaning prettiness. They will stick gracefully dodged-up studio figures into their really delicate landscape studies ; they seem to me absolutely incapable of understanding that there must be a certain relation between a figure and the landscape in which it is placed. If they could be shut up in the Luxembourg, and fed on Francois Millet, and Jules Breton for a month or so, they might, perhaps, do some good work ; as it is, their painting has been for years of a kind which impresses me as futile beauty.
Mr. Alfred Newton's drawing of the " Propylaea, Athens," is a refreshing contrast, and errs only in its over-severity. Like all his work, it is a little stern, and tells us a little too plainly that art is a serious business ; in this respect, perhaps, it may be compared with Mr. Ruskin's water-colour drawing of the " Duomo at Lucca," a delicate study of variouscoloured marbles,•in details of architecture. Mr. Holman Hunt's "Plains of Esdraelon" is at once over-brilliant, over-laboured, and unattractive, dwelling upon detail with no apparent object, and giving me no pleasure either as a whole or in part. It seems natural to mention Mr. Boyce along with Mr. Hunt, if only because both are such staunch pre-Raphaelites ; but we need. not speak of Mr. Boyce's work at length this year ; it is as minute and as refined in quality as ever, but as in the exhibitions of the last three or four years, it is far less interesting than of old. Indeed execution has grown to be with Mr. Boyce an end, rather than a means ; his pictures therefore suffer.
HARM Q1511a2R.
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