ART.
THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY.
tug that bravely cleaves its way to the rescue. The gayest streamer was never more welcome sight than that pitchy volume of down-beating smoke. After Mr. Powell there is no sea painter worth mentioning, unless it be Mr. John Brett, who has plenty of , the observing power but little of the creative fire that are both necessary to the composition of an artist. Mr. Powell's other picture is a view in ‘, Loch Goil " (143), with saffron tints and wreaths of morning mist hanging over the calm loch.
Among figure-pieces, the most noteworthy is Mr. PinweIrs "Saracen Maiden entering London" (127). The catalogue supplies a long explanatory paragraph ; but the picture speaks for itself, and needs no interpreter. It is quite clear from the gestures of the bystanders that the Saracen girl is in a strange land, where the manners that make the man and avoid giving pain to. others are little studied. Begin with the principal figure, and look in detail at every group, and you cannot fail to admire the grace„ the dramatic force, and a certain life-inspiring magic which per- vades every one of them. The great desideratum is a more pictorial treatment. There is no massing of parts, no chiaroscuro_ Another fault is the coppery colour. If Mr. Pinwell would con- descend to admit (with Turner) that a knowledge of chiaroscuro. is essential to making a complete picture, there would be hope of his producing a work not beautiful in fragments alone, but in its entirety. Mr. Houghton's picture called " Useless Mouths" (104) is a much more compact composition.. There is less power in depicting character, and the armed man on the right is too droll a figure for the subject, which is apparently the expulsion from a besieged town of women, children, old men, and other non-combatants. Mr. R. W. Macbeth's large picture, "Land at Last" (76), is clever and ambitious, but the pathos is. missed. The action borders on the stagey, and both sentiment and execution want refinement. Mr. Marks' little picture "Enter Certain Players" (257), is an agreeable bit of colour. It is a companion drawing to one now exhibiting at the Dudley Gallery, which has for its subject a company of masquers personi- fying the signs of the zodiac. The quiet humour of this latter- picture is inimitable. No man conveys this meaning more dis- tinctly; yet he does not force it upon you, but leaves you thee pleasurable task of discovering it. V.
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