lint arts.
EXHIBITION OP THE ROYAL ACADEMY. HI.
The third room is the most miscellaneous and the most unequal of the three, containing some of the most beautiful and the least successful of the works in the present collection. The stories are in many cases either too trivial or too -vague for picture, and some of the best execution is wasted on unsuitable topics. "The Review on the Champ de Mars on the occasion of her Majesty's Visit to Paris," painted on command by Mr. G. H. Thomas, is a record with a certain documentary "value. "Domenico da Peseia urging Savonarola to have recourse to the Fiery Ordeal" belonga to the class of unsuitable subjects : how can you paint a " recommenda- tion" ? You might paint it as readily as the doubt which Savonarola felt about the want of supernatural proofs. Nor is there anything in the figures which sufficiently indicates the bearing of the two men upon each other; you hardly know which is which. There is merit in Mr. Holi- day's "Burgesses of Calais" (480,) the burgesses being left out, and the design only representing King Edward at a window, with Queen Philippa kneeling by his side, also looking out. Her countenance is constricted with anxious sympathy for the doomed men. As she kneels, her arms are clasped tightly round the hips of the stalwart King, who, while he looks with conscious power upon his enemies, is fondly pressing the head of his wife against him; the cunning spectator being well able to foresee that the rougher power is here fast yielding to the gentler. The paint- ing is somewhat coarse for the scale of the picture. Mr. G. Barrett's "Gretna Green" is a document; it represents " osie of the last marriages previous to the alteration of the Scottish law, with. portraits painted on the spot." The whole group—with the lovely but hopeful bride, the annoyed bridegroom, the cool official, the sympa- thizing maid-servant, who is looking out at the door, through which the postboy hurriedly points to some coming intruder—tells the story very sufficiently.
Some slight incident expressed with considerable finish forms the subject of several other pictures upon which we can scarcely dwell in dfrteil. Mr. E. Hughes's "Cup of Cold Water" represents a kind wo- man ministering to the thirst of an aged wayfarer. Mr. A. Hughes, ' who has a great fancy for a concave facial outline, shows us, at the en- trance of a summer-house, a pair of lovers that are, in some way from their floral circumstances and the moral exiguity which distinguishes this prce-Raphaelite, drawing certain consolations in present " sweetnesse " fr,.past " bitternesse." Mr. Hodgson represents a "German Patriot's Wife, in 1848, coming to 'visit her husband," whose gaoler her brother- in-law is feeing. Mr. M'Innis gives us a Sunday-school with a long array of very fair portraits. Mr. Gavin a group of bays playing the game "Through the needle ee, boys !" with great fervour, in a glowing sunset, on a green meadow. Mr. W. j. Grant, a "Legend of the White ROBE," Perkin Warbeck in the stocks, reading his recantation h noble Scottish wife sitting by in sympathizing melancholy ; a picture precisely of the style in vogue some ten or twenty years ago. Frank Stone paints a lovely Norman lass at the wash-tub, her accepted lover having esta- blished himself within the house door, while the rival comes pressing his heart, "a little too late." The story of this last is capitally told, espe- cially in the radiant beauty of the girl, and a certain humour lurking. behind her eyes, although they look grave and sweet enough while the: dilatory suitor is explaining his painful case.
A more powerful picture than any of these is Solomon's "Not Guilty,": the companion to the "Waiting for the Verdict," exhibited two years, ago. The prisoner has just been released from court; his Wife, whose red eyes tell of days' weeping, has thrown herself against him, hardly able to contain the agony of joy at the deliverance ; while his family are disposed around in attitudes fitly expressing the event. The story itself, so far as it goes, is completely made out.
But the power of this room as well as of the two others, amongst the painters of' story pictures, is still Millais. Here is a smaller picture, than the two which we have already noticed—" The Love of James the First of Scotland." The scene is a garden, on the dexter side of the ture is the wall of the prison ; through a very small aperture comes the ' hand of the imprisoned Prince, who is hastily taking the precious flower. The lady with whom he fell in love from seeing her through his prison window, has herself been taken captive by the passion; she has come with a basket of flowers hanging on her left arm, and standing by the wall, she is trying to make herself as tall as she can, while looking round to see if she is watched, in order to hand up one of the flowers to the Prince. The picture is a presentment of facts, beautifully ordered. The flowers of the painter are the flowers of nature : nothing do they lose of the delicacy or the brilliancy which makes them fit emblems for human sympathy. The lady is fair in face and form, though not ideal ; her countenance is intent upon the work in hand ; it is sad, earnest, gentle, not entirely devoid of pleasure as she is successfully handing up the ettz pledge of her kindness. There is in the handling of the flesh a certain heavineaa and harshness, which at a little distance make the fea- tures look coarser than they really are. The half tint down the side or the nose, for example, is too black ; for although such blackness may sometimes be seen in nature, yet when it happens it only disguises the reality of delicacy, and is therefore in unfitting circumstance to be ex- cepted by a truthful painter. The bloom on the lady's cheeks, too,- which she retains, and fitly retains, notwithstanding the agitation of her little risk,-is too coarse, too strongly outlined, too much like the painted colour upon a clown's cheek. The parallel, we admit, is a gross caricature ; but it indicates the nature of our objection. The bands which are real and not "ideal,"-which are not caligraphic flou- rishes of wavy lines, but genuine flesh and blood, capable of doing active work in life,-enhance the beauty of the character. The lady, who is tall and slender, is clothed in a dark blue dress of some thick stuff; which save in the loose sleeves and gathering folds of the skirt, is made to fit her figure : the figure is sufficiently intelligible even through the thick- est and freest of the folds,-as it is in nature, as it is in that master of drapery-Raphael, The dress falls so as to display the points and pro- portions of the figure, while the folds make forms actually pleasing and graceful in themselves. If one had caught a glimpse of the incident at the moment when it happened, the sight could not have been more beau- tiful than this picture ; the painter being a fit companion for the poet Prince and the lady of the poems.
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