ART.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE INSTITUTE.*
TILE Institute of Painters in Oil-Colours is, to the autumn exhibitions, in a somewhat similar position to that which the Academy occupies to those of the spring ; for not only is it double the size of any of the other picture-galleries which open at this time of year, but, owing to the principles which have governed this Exhibition from the first, there is a far greater variety of work than is to be found elsewhere in a corre- sponding space. This is owing to the salutary rule, that no one artist, whether he be member or outsider, is allowed to send more than three contributions,—a regulation which it would be well for the Academy to copy, at the earliest possible date. The gallery is, indeed, the only representative oil exhibition which has ever been regularly established in England, with the exception before-mentioned of that at Burlington House. Then comes the question, whether this year is better or worse than usual ? and this we propose to leave, for the present, unanswered. To glance round so many pictures, in the dim light of a rainy November afternoon, will hardly entitle one to answer fairly such a question. And it is only the impressions derived from such a cursory inspection, under such little favourable circumstances, which we record in our notice of to-day.
The first thing which struck us, perhaps only because we were inclined to expect some such result, was, that the effect of the bad times which the artists have been experiencing of late, had shown itself in a corresponding depression of their spirits, as far as such were evidenced in their work. Even Mr. Fred Barnard, who is generally good for a large amount of boisterous, if some- what vulgar, humour, seems this year to have suffered from the prevailing depression. For though one of his two pictures—that which is concerned with Horatio Sparkins, Esq.,—is intended to be funny, the fun is forced ; and though we admire the cleverness of the work, it does not make us laugh as the artist intended. For the rest, this picture would, like most of Mr. Barnard's work, look much better in black-and-white than in colour, for in this latter respect it is at once both thin and gaudy in its effect. The power of the picture is in its artist's perception of character ; the weakness is in the unconscious vulgarity with which he sees and renders a subject. Let us look at another bit of genuine painter's work, of a very different kind. Though it is dangerous to predict what the critics will admire and the public praise, there is little doubt that the chief honours of this Exhibition will be borne off by the work of a young painter,— who, we are informed, was but quite lately a student, first at our Academy, and then in Paris. He signs himself Solomon J. Solomon; and the large picture which he sends here is a lamp-lighted interior, more French than English in its furniture and decoration. It is a composition in which there are several figures, the chief of whom, a man in evening- dress, is examining the programme of a girl who sits beside him. The subdued light of the room, the different objects of bric-a-brac, the furniture, dresses, &c., and the mice-en-scene, are all carefully rendered and fully understood. Note especially, as a piece of good drawing and right value, the place in the apart- ment of the decorative pedestal, on which stands a great brazen vase. The painting is to a certain extent student-like ; but the drawing is excellent throughout, and the picture, as a composi- tion, and as a piece of tone, very far above the average. Above all, the different parts of the composition have that relation to * Institute of Painters in Oils, November, 1885. each other, that intangible connection and interdependence, of which one can only say that it is there, or that it is absent— that it is right, or that it is wrong. Let us take, for the sake of those few readers who 'care to follow out a criticism, a picture which, having many merits, has not this merit of which we have been speaking—Mr. John Reid's village-street scene —(we cannot give it a name, for there are no catalogues as yet published, and we are only writing these notes from memory), with several rustic figures, and cottages, and a big oak tree, and patch of sky, is full of patches of strong, rich colour ; it is cleverly composed and clearly expressed ; but when you come to look at it from the point of view of rightness, it is, to use a slang expression, "all over the place." The whole key of colour, and all the relations of tone, are so forced, that the result is bizarre in the extreme. The artist's rustic damsels look as if their red cheeks had been dipped in a tar barrel before they came to sit as his models; his sky appears to be tumbling through his trees; his light seems almost dirtier than the shadow; his whole art is, one can see, entirely ruined, by his having played tricks with what he no doubt possesses—a very keen sense of the beauty of rich strong colour. There is hardly an inch of this picture—and we speak advisedly —in which there is not some fine bit of colour ; and it is only the wilful manner in which the artist has neglected all his values, and all the modifying effects of light, atmosphere, and distance, —which makes the whole result false.
Let us look, again, at another clever man's work—a young man, too, who has lately laid the foundation of a great success. This is Mr. Walter Langley's picture of an old man lighting his pipe, in a pause of cabbage-digging, somewhere behind Newlyn village. There is a flowering tree behind him, we forget of what kind, which is quite exquisite in the painting of its green trunk and jagged branches, against the landscape, the houses, and the blue sea ; and the figure of the old man, too, is good, especially down to the hands,—cleverly drawn and painted, so as to give an impression of clear, Spring sunshine. But all the lower part of the picture, of which there is a great deal,— ground, cabbages, wheelbarrow, spade, &c.,—is of a soft, fluffy, blotting-paper kind of texture, not the slightest attempt being made to discriminate between the various surfaces, of the iron spade, the rich earth, the cabbages, and the wheelbarrow. The work is not so much wrong, as wholly incomplete. The one thing done is the old man's head and hands, and the trunk, branches, and blossoms of the tree ; all the rest is simply left to the imagination of Mr. Langley's spectators, and left, we should imagine, in wilful idleness by a young painter of great ability, who has been flattered into the belief that he is a master, when he is only as yet an uncommonly clever student. Perhaps, at this period of his career, it may be of some use to remind him that popularity is no certain measure of an artist's merit; and that theonly confidence with which a young man can leave his work, is the confidence of not being able to carry it any further. There never yet was an artist in this world, worthy of the name, who purposely neglected half the facts of his painting, save when the rendering of such facts was inconsistent with the purpose he had in view. This picture of sunlight and Springtime does not gain, but loses immensely, from the fact that the artist has made only the sunshine real, and constructed his Spring out of canvas and oil-paint.
It is a relief, after such a picture, to turn to the old-fashioned grey seas and reddish boats of Mr. Edwin Hayes. And notice how thoroughly the painter (even if he be a little old-fashioned in his conception of a picture, and a little conventional in its arrangement) understands all the details of his subject,—and how the picture is finished from end to end, with patient and unfalter- ing skill. There is an absence of self-consciousness in the paintings of these elder men, of which our younger artists seem to have lost the secret. The old man sits down to make a picture, and, rightly or wrongly, at the close of his work, a picture is made ; the young man,—full of talent, originality, and science,—nine times out of ten, now-a-days, does not give himself the trouble to make a picture at all, but puts a study, or the result of a series of studies, upon the canvas, and leaves us to make the most we can of it; and in good sooth, in most cases, that is not much. On the whole, it will hardly be an unfair epigram to say that, while painting in England was probably never so good as at the present moment, art was probably never so poor. There is an obtrusiveness, and, as a school-boy would say, a " cockiness," about the most popular English painting of the present day, which is hardly to be paralleled in the history of art. Even the astounding impudence of the clever
young French student is less irritating, because it is more naive, and because it does, in most oases, show that the life-school has, broadly speaking, taught him his business. There is a gigantic picture here, of a meet of the Coaching Club in Hyde Park, full of skill, most carefully and cleverly arranged and thoroughly workel out, by Mr. Walter Wilson and Mr. Frank Walton, which does seem to us to be as abominable a waste of the talents of those painters as it is possible for such a thing to be. And there is a large landscape of Keeley Hale- welle's, of a meadow, and a few trees, and some sheep, and a lot of dock-leaves in the foreground,—which, if it has any inner meaning at all, gives a kind of condescending pat on the back to Nature, so entirely does it evidence the painter's feeling, not of delight in the landscape he was reproducing, but of delight in the dexterity with which he was reproducing it. It may seem a harsh thing to say that we should prefer, and think that there might be more genuine art, in the most utter failure of a student's work, than in this most complete, most elaborate, and most skilful canvas,—if only the first-named had some of that freshness of impression, that direct. ness of study from Nature, and that sincerity of utterance, which are so wholly wanting here. Think how strange a thing it is, that the same nation which produced Cox, De Wint, and Turner, and even granted to them some little merit whilst they were alive, —should now accept, as the chief exponents of its landscape art, work like that of Mr. Keeley Halswelle, Mr. Leader, and Mr. Vicat Cole,—work which is entirely opposed, not only in method and character, but in its narrow, and, so to speak, pettifogging result, to all the best traditions of English landscape.
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