ART.
THE NEW ENGLISH ART CLUB.
THIS, like last winter's exhibition, is an excellent one. It is strong—there are three Sargents and three Steers, a new rule allowing members to hang three pictures instead of two, as before—and it is various; a Ruskin and a Degas hang within a yard of one another. There is still a certain number of unaccountable pictures that spoil the general look of dis- tinction, but that those bad pictures catch the eye as excep- tions proves a high level of merit.
The exhibition is a triumph for Mr. Steer. The word masterpiece is not to be lightly used, but when one stands before his portrait of a girl in blue, it is difficult to think of any collection of good pictures in which it would look amiss, or fail to hold its own. If we talk of English masters, Romney is the name that most naturally suggests itself, because in the bright, clear face and brown hair, and large simplicity of presentment, there is a good deal to recall that painter. But Romney's colour would look cheap beside this, and his drawing conventional in observation, however big in style. This excellence of drawing deserves to be insisted upon, because while every one with an eye feels the charm of Mr. Steer's colour, it is usual to balance that recognition with a sneer at his peculiarities as a draughtsman. But the grace and nature of this portrait are surely as obvious as the loveliness of its colour; there is a look of scarcely arrested life, of movement caught in passage, in the drawing of the shoulders and the action of the whole figure. The chair alone is an example of what good drawing and good painting are,—the bit of furniture has given up all the beauty of the play of its form and colour with the air ; there is no inch of it that is a bored statement of fact, or a slurred substitute for observation. From corner to corner of the canvas the colour-play goes on ; subtle touches of other tints building up the broad imp cession of blue in the dress, and hints of reflected colour is the face aud hands relating them to the objects round. The face itself, fresh and clear beyond most painting, is a joy to the eyes. A picture like this unites so many qualities, that it must catch almost all onlookers by one or another charm. The other two pictures depend more entirely on the pure painter sense. But Boulogne Saiels is the very music of colour in its gayest and most singing moments, and every character and association of the scene helps by suggestion in the merry fete of light. The children playing, the holiday encampment of the bathers' tents, the glints of people flaunting themselves like flags, the dazzle of sand and sea, and over and through it all the chattering lights of noon,—it is like the sharp notes of pipes and strings sounding to an invitation by Ariel. It is all this, yet nine out of ten people will get no further with it than to notice that one of the little girls has awkward legs. She has ; and the painter ought to put them right before he allows the picture to leave his hands. They get in the way of pure enjoyment. The third of Mr. Steer's pictures is another holiday piece of colour,—a procession of yachts under a press of white canvas, framed by the masts of a schooner at anchor nearer shore. As in the other scene, the handling is of the kind that suggests by a sort of metaphor the rain and beat of light upon things. One painter, a Whistler, say, feels when he looks at a sail the fluid sweep of its form, how it comes and goes like a smooth, gradual gesture against the sea ; and this impression he renders by a technique that fits his feeling. But if you are more struck with the way the charges of light patter and break upon those reflecting surfaces, the more flowing and melting technique must give place to something like the handling here. It becomes a subtle problem in the dialectic of painting how far the more obvious characteristic should give way to the more subtle, how far the expression of truth of colour should be allowed to invade the facts of form and texture. The sky of the beach scene, for example, if it he taken as representing form and texture, is ridiculous; it is like something rough and chippy, and if that suggestion gets too much in the way, the method has overshot its mark. Its mark is to express by a symbol the vivid life in the sky-colour, the sea-colour, and the sand- colour, and it is doubtful if the richness and subtlety of their colour can be conveyed in any other way. This matter of handling, then, is a moot point, a question of temperament
and balance of interest; but the beauty of Mr. Steer's colour is not a moot point, and the sooner the colour-blind cease to pride themselves publicly on disliking it, the better for their own reputation. The simple fact is, that for range and delicacy of colour-combination, there is no living English painter to be put beside him.
In truth of observation of colour Mr. Sargent is, at least, his equal, and in habitual easy mastery of form is more than his match. His two large portraits in the exhibition are, for every kind of life-likeness, extraordinary. The portrait of Miss Dunham shows a rare grasp and under- standing of structure ; it is not a dress painted on a lay- figure. The action of the arms and the clasp of the hands is particularly well rendered, and the whole picture, in the relief and emphasis of the forms, the value of the flesh, and the brilliancy of the satin, is realism of a very large kind. There are many degrees in realism, and subordination of parts and selection of the essentials of effect so masterly as we find them here are uncommon qualities. But how little realism alone counts in the estimate of a picture betrays itself in the feeling that this, after all, is a commonplace Sargent. The picture on the opposite wall is different in kind. It has all the truth of movement and relation that the first had ; but it is also beautiful in its scheme of colour, and curious and interesting in design. The pale head, rendered with a directness almost brutal, the gown of purple shot with red, the bright scarlet of the flowers, the spring and turn of the figure with hands twisted back against the waist, unite in a simple, fascinating composition. The third Sargent is hardly recognisable for his work, so dull is the general effect ; but features like the hand of the painter in the picture, with its nervous character and elegant drawing, are unmistakable. The painter represented is M. Helleu, whose paintings at the New Salon were described in this paper, and a number of whose admirable dry-points are on view in this gallery. M. Helleu has a rare sense for the limits of a medium, and as in his painting he expresses by colour, so in these by the power of line,—not line reporting facts dutifully and drearily, but line rejoicing to be line.
Mr. Walter Sickert sends one of his music-hall sketches, Miss Minnie Cunningham. The swaying little figure is very graceful, and the profile, against its background of hair, lovely and tenderly drawn. It is one of the commonplaces of stupid criticism to suppose that a music-hall subject must be something ugly, chosen by a painter out of bravado. Quite apart from the fascination of stage-lighting, and the accidents of stage-colour, the fact is, of course, amusingly different. Among the various highly trained performers— dancers, singers, acrobats—beauty and grace hold the stage as well as grotesqueness and vulgarity. An artist knows how to treat all three if his range be great enough, but in a case like this there is nothing in the subject that would not delight a, Botticelli. In his portraits Mr. Sickert shows a tendency to blackness—a dark ground, perhaps, has been too much for him—but the portrait of Mr. Holyoake has much vigour and character in its handling. Mr. Purse's landscapes seem to suffer from the same cause, but the largeness of design in The Gnat Cloud is very noticeable. Like Mr. Roche's work in some previous exhibitions, it has something of the nobility of style that we associate with the older masters of landscape.
Mr. Buxton Knight's Haymaking Meadows is one of the best things he has shown since the Hemp Agrimcmy at the Academy. Mr. Fred Brown's Between the Showers is large and bright, and is flanked by two sketches by Mr. Bellingham- Smith, in which there is good colour. Mr. Macgregor has made a great advance in expressive drawing this time, and his colour is, as before, charming. Mr. Tomson's cats are capital studies of form and movement. Mr. Muhrman's Flower-Seller is, in its quiet key, one of the most distinguished things in the show. A charcoal study by Mr. F. Mura, a pastel and grey-green landscape by Mr. Nicholson, and a study of the bough of a tree against the sky by Mr. Forster, are artistic work by unknown men. Of Mr. Blanche's three pictures, the head of a girl is the best; and from other foreign contributors there are two delightfully suggestive sketches by a Dutchman, Breitner ; another, The Avenue, by a second Dutchman, Mettling, and a pretty Sous-Bois by Tollon. It is a good plan to have something occasionally hung', like the Cafe Chantant of Degas. It is a reminder from a master, and
sets a standard, with its inch or two of perfect drawing and colour. Its near neighbour, the Ruskin, a little crude in its purple, has fine qualities of drawing in the bank of mist and reflected mountain ; and is not altogether unworthy of the musical and pathetic words in which the scene was described :
"Morning breaks as I write, along those Coniston Fells, and the level mists, motionless and grey beneath the rose of the moor- lands, veil the lower woods, and the sleeping village, and the long lawns by the lake-shore.
" Oh ! that some one had but told me, in my youth, when all my heart seemed to be set on those colours and clouds, that appear for a little while and then vanish away, how little my love of them would serve me, when the silence of lawn and wood in the dews of morning should be completed ; and all my thoughts should be of those whom, by neither, I was to meet more."
Just below is hung a sketch that derives from the same
master, Turner, by Mr. Brabazon, rendering an effect of glow on Malaga. It may be noted here that a show of Mr. Brabazon's work is to be held next month at Goupil's, and should be missed by none who care for fine painting. It remains to notice a small case of silver work from Mr. Ash- bee's school in the East-End : some of it very delicate and pretty. D. S. M.
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