ART.
THE OLD WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY AND OTHER. EXHIBITIONS.
THERE is an influence in the word "Old" that must have a good deal to do with the repute of this Society among the unthinking. It is supposed to guard and exemplify an ancient and honourable tradition in English painting. The most cursory inspection by an eye free from the superstition of a name, must make this idea ridiculous. If Cotman were to enter this room, where would he find anything akin to his own large and noble conception of-..picture-making ? Would he be able to greet any inheritor of that majestic simplicity with which he saw Nature and fitted it within a frame ? Would he not rather find himself a forgotten giant among pigmies, smiling at the idea of picture-making which requires the eye to nibble across a picture-field like a rabbit ? Would he not find every kind of timid falseness, qualities peculiar to no one time, but at all times the expression of eyes in- capable of steady and extended vision, of minds petty and distracted, of hearts strangers to single and deep emotion? Or, if he encountered a few eases of a simpler and bolder picture-making, would he not think the absence of timidity dearly bought at the expense of truth and sincerity ? On one picture he would perhaps pause, Mr. Clausen's Reapers._ It is not to be put forward as excellent in every way ; but it has at least the simplicity of conception, the rhythm of com- position, that are the first essential in picture-making as. opposed to a lazy transcription of objects. 'The Spaniards,* Hampstead Heath, by Mr. R. Little, has something of the same carrying power. Mr. Robert Allan is simple, but with the simplicity of a somewhat raw eye. Mr. Melville seems. unluckily to be dropping into confirmed mannerism.
If Turner were to visit the Gallery, he would find none of . his masterful invention dominating a complex of detail ; bat he would find in Mr. Alfred Hunt's work sensitiveness in the working out of the portrait of a given place that makes him by the fineness of this quality the most attractive painter in the Gallery, and the only one with a right to the name " Old," unless we include his follower, Mr. Matthew Hale. It is the
defect of Mr. Hunt's temperament that he is so deferential to the local fact before him that his pictures suffer from an excess of truth of this minor kind. Set him before Holy Island, and he will not venture to cure its broken- backed silhouette. Short of that, he will do everything that tender treatment can do. He will sing an evening song over it in clouds whose rosy gradation no living painter could excel, and in a hundred ways he will alleviate the uneasiness of Nature the patient. But the secret entangled in discom- fort that drew him to the bedside, he does not extract that secret clean from the confused mutterings. He smooths the pillow, humours the whim of the sufferer, is, in a word, the gentle nurse, not the masterful surgeon. The poem of a 'desert sand-bar and dismantled castle under clouds of rose -and ash, is but half extracted from Holy Island lying rigidly for its portrait. The result is that you may pass over Mr. Hunt's work in a general glance at the walls. Anxiety and -deference do much to depress his vision and deprive it of immediate appeal. But once you find those thoughtful and sensitive records, they provide a continual study, and must reward their possessor year in and year out.
There is another artist who is a real observer, but whose work is always marred by a serious defect,—Mr. Napier Hemy. There is admirable work in his picture, as on the many occasions on which we have seen it before, but also that -same obtrusion of the ugly form of boat and boatman. Some- thing in the painter's mind renders him obtuse on this point of focus. He is not obtuse otherwise, but on this radical matter of the importance of his figure to his landscape he yields to the popular taste that demands two focuses and a 'figure hitting one in the eye.
It would be lost labour to examine the confections in jam and egg that enliven the four walls. The truth is, that the oldest tradition that gains a considerable following in this Society is that of Frederick Walker. The picture-making ideas of Walker, without his delicate power of drawing, are of no lofty value, and are only too easily vulgarised. In the competition to do this, Mr. Herkomer is easily first.
At the New English Art Club I will draw attention only to one or two men of recent appearance. The critics who have ingeniously compiled a programme for what they call, in their -detestable slang," new art," have generalised on the facts that Mr. Steer does not paint poetic subjects, that Mr. Brabazon is not a line-draughtsman, that Mr. Sickert does not affect Biblical scenes. Happily, all the old fountains of art are -capable of breaking out afresh, and the New English Art Club includes, in Mr. Charles Conder, a poet of rare quality ; and in Mr. Henry Tonks, a line-draughtsman of sincere and exquisite talent. Two silk panels, stained with the colours and the shapes of dreams, are the work of the former. Three lovely pencil-drawings are by the latter, and a small picture, called the Chestnut Roasters, a group of children round the fire, rendered with a beautiful intimacy of feeling. Mr. Rothenstein -furnishes the bone of contention. Clever and precocious, more certain of his idea than of himself as yet, he treats ideas -beside his nature, and they turn in his hands to caricature. A witty caricaturist he might certainly become ; what else, it is too early to say. A landscape by Mr. Thornton is dignified in style.
Mr. Van Wisselingh shows a collection of water-colours, by Mr. William Hackstoun. I cannot think they will attract many people, because of their deficiency in the apprehension of substance, their cold tone, and occasional harshness of colour. But I find for my own part, besides these repellent characteristics, the interest of a grave and moody temper, of a man who goes to Nature with a singular and exacting spirit. Fifteen years ago Ha,ckstoun was making superb architectural sketches in the manner of Cotman. Some of these were shown to Mr. Ruskin, who had him to Coniston, and set him to study under his own direction. Under that tuition his style changed, and you see in his present work a conflict of the old architectural ideas with a more tentative and particular treatment of natural forms. "I hoped," Mr. Ruskin told me, "he would become the historian of the gloomy Fifeshire fishing ports" (Hackstoun had made one remarkable set of drawings in that quarter). Since then, however, he has worked chiefly in other parts of Scotland. The present exhibition is his first attempt on Loudon. I should pick out the Canterbury drawing, with its massive grey tower and simply treated forms, as the nearest example of his older manner. The large drawing with a rainbow seems to us the most grandly built-up composition in
an architecture of natural forms. D. S. M.
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