ART.

THE BLACK-AND-WHITE E.KHIBITION AT THE EGYPTIAN HALL.

Tins year's exhibition of Black and White, held, as usual, in the room better known by the name of the Dudley Gallery, is one of fair average merit, but only average. There is a great deal of etching, much of it fairly good, but little of first-rate quality, and at any rate, one master-hand usually well represented here is absent. There is no one now living in England whose etchings can at all supply the place of those by M. Legros, and those of our readers who remember the "Mort d'un Vagabond" and "Lea Bucherons," both exhibited here during the two last years, will acknowledge the deficit caused by the artist having this year failed to contribute anything towards the exhibition. On the other hand, we could, perhaps, have done as well with less than forty works by Edwin Edwards, fascinating as is that alliterative artist's angular etching ; and a few comers, like M. Fantin, might have been gently persuaded to omit exhibiting altogether. Indeed, the great fault of the Committee would seem to be an over-leniency, a desire, perhaps caught from London dairymen, "to water the cream." Fortunately, a very simple analysis will enable us to separate the constituents, and we shall be able to treat our readers to cream, half-and-half, or pure water, just as they may feel disposed.

Every time we sit down to write one of these picture notices, one for ever unsettled question oppresses us, and calls impera- tively for solution. Once for all, let us ease our minds of this literary Frankenstein, by placing the question plainly before our readers, and leaving the onus of the solution (if, indeed, a solu- tion be possible) in their hands. This is the question,—" Say that in an Exhibition like this, there are, on an average, about 150 landscapes of similar and fair merit, with nothing in subject or treatment specially calling for remark, what is to be said of such works ?" They can't all be described and criticised. To select any two or three in particular, is to do injustice to the remainder. It seems hard that a fairly good picture should not have a few lines, while a bad one has, perhaps, many ; but is there any way of avoiding this, and if so, what is it? We con- fess that we see no way of escaping the dilemma, and so shall continue at present our old plan of noticing only the bad and the good, leaving out the indifferent, both on one side of merit and the other.

Of decided pen-and-ink work of considerable executive skill, and a certain kind of hard-headed imagination, Mr. Linley Sambourne's vignettes for Punch are very good examples ; firm in drawing, and funny with the peculiar dried-up fun of our nineteenth century, which always seems to us compounded of a yawn and a sneer. That this is not a fanciful statement, but an actual fact, may be tested by any one who takes the trouble to look at No. 109, "Mother Carey's Chickens," an unmistakable portrait of Lord Beaconsfield flying across the Channel in stormy weather. This was drawn and published some months since in Punch.

No. 57, "The Banquet of Life, Design for Mural Decoration," by E. J. Ellis. This is a very narrow, long picture, in outline only, containing many figures, reclining at or standing near a long table ; through an archway on the left come more guests to the banquet, while in the immediate fore- ground a covered way leads down,—either to the basement of the building or the infernal regions, as the spectator may choose to imagine. The grouping of the figures is clever, but they are individually poor in drawing and expressionless in character, and

the meaning of the composition is simply unintelligible. If Mr. Ellis has called his work "a quantity of very undressed people at a table," we should, at all events, have acknowledged the

truth of his title, even while we wondered at his choice of a subject, and objected to his treatment of it. But the "Banquet of Life: a Design for Mural Decoration," is such a very large order upon our perceptive faculties, that we could wish it had been accompanied with a clearer meaning. The fact is that these

symbolical pictures, if they are not very good, are very trying. To spend a certain amount of time worrying out the meaning of

a second or third-rate work, and finally to discover that it has no meaning whatever, that it is, as Mill would have said. "only verbally intelligible," is an operation not only annoying in itself, but apt to put one in a bad temper with symbolical work in general, even when of real purpose and adequate power. No. 24, "Peace," by Marcus Stone, A.R.A.; is a clever sketch, presumably intended for wood engraving ; if not, the coarseness of the execution is hardly excusable.

Leon Lhermitte's work this year is better even than formerly, no slight praise ; indeed, now that Legros is absent, the above- named artist decidedly carries off the chief honours of the gallery- His "Mont St. Pere, au Printemps," No. 51, is a very suggestive and beatiful charcoal study of a spring landscape, with a flower- ing tree in the foreground, and behind the church and belfry of some quiet old French town ; but his larger work, entitled,. "Chapelle de Pont Christ," No. 157, is without exception the most powerful and thoughtful work in the gallery, and indeed. could hardly be better, considering the medium in which it is worked and the intention of the composition. It is a chapel in the interior of a French cathedral, with kneeling figures of peasants, and a priest at the altar performing the "offices." This is to us a very remarkable work, possessing a quiet interest and beauty, without any affectation of either treatment or sentiment ; and so dexterous is the management of the somewhat intractable medium employed, that we heard a bystander say loudly, "You're not going to tell me that's only charcoal," the indignant incredulity of his tone being, indeed, one of the highest compliments that could be paid to M. Lhermitte's work, if, as we believe it is done, entirely in the one medium mentioned above.

Next to Lhermitte this year should come, we think, a large fen- aud-water picture, also in charcoal, by Auroonier, called, "Easton Broad, Suffolk,"—some flags in the foreground, with gulls rising into the air, and a long, broad stretch i of water, under a fleecy sky. Underneath this, a drawing in red chalk, called " Virginie," by Bertrand, may be noticed as probably an experimental sketch for the picture of the same name, a reproduction of which may be seen, if we remember rightly, in Bond Street at the present time,. —a slight, graceful, lifeless figure, washed ashore by the waves. No. 111, "Loch Fyne Herring-boats," charcoal, by Frank Powell, is a clever and delicate rendering of one of the mist-effects he so well understands; it is, however, no more than an easy repetition of what we have before had, the beat example of an artist's worst practice, contented tautology of sentiment, perfectly executed. Nos. 147 and 149, two portrait etchings in brown ink, by H. S. Tuke, are good, honest, young man's work, very evidently inspired by imitative admiration of Alphonse Legros. It may be questioned whether that artist's practice of shading the whole background in parallel horizontal lines is one which is de- sirable for his admirers to copy. It suits the somewhat morose character of his etching, and rather increases the effect of his severely accurate drawing, but at the best of times it is but a makeshift for better things.

No. 164, "Portrait d'Homme, d'apres Franz Ilals," etching, by Paul Rajon, is one of the best of the small etchings which M. Rajon sends this year ; it well maintains his reputation. As a reproducer in black and white of the works of the elder Dutch, Flemish, and English masters, M. Rajon has no peer, and stands absolutely alone at the head of the ranks of etchers, Jacquemart, the only other artist with whom there could be any comparison,

failing signally when it is a question of character versus dress.

In dress alone Jacquemart has, indeed, no rival, nor in the re- production in black and white of any actual texture or surface.

No. 245, " Retour des Champs," by Bastian Lepage, a peasant woman, standing with her back to the spectator, looking out ova a typical French landscape, flat and poplarly ; a very clever, slight

etching, done with apparent ease, singularly expressive in the use of the pure etched line, which is going so rapidly out of fashion just now. Perfectly fearless and very slight,

there is yet as much suggested truth here as could well be got in the time, every scratch meaning something, and meaning it rightly. Next to this is an etching by John Parke, after Con-

stable, deserving of a glance for the manner in which the young artist has preserved the spirit of the old painter ; and just below it, a clever little etching of a building of considerable antiquarian interest, "The Belfry of Bruges," by W. Cooke, which will interest every one who has read Longfellow's fine poem of the same name.

No 256, "La Source," after Ingres, by Leon Richeton, is bad in every way,—inconceivably bad, considering that M. Richeton is a young man' of considerable ability as an etcher, who has already reproduced fairly several of our National Gallery works.

Not a trace of Ingres' keen and beautiful drawing remains in this hulking, misshapen female, and were it not for the peculiar atti- tude and action of the figure, recognition would be impossible. The whole etching is coarse and ugly, and a complete burlesque of the original picture, which will, no doubt, be familiar to most of our readers, as there have been prints of it all over London for the last few years. Nos. 302 and 305, the first, one of Tenniel's cartoons from Punch, entitled "Friends or Foes ?" and a sketch called "Low Tide," by Allonge, the celebrated char- coal delineator of landscape, should both be looked at ; as should also Frank Holl's etchings for two small cabinet oil pictures, exhibited here last year ; and It S. Marks' sepia study for 4' Convocation," in this year's Academy.

To "E. V. B.'s " brown-ink Italian sketches ; to Poynter's studies for various portions of his great picture of " Atalanta's Race ;" to Robert Macbeth's etchings, many of them extremely nice in feeling, as well as clever and original in conception ; to Mr. Clifford's chalk sketch of Octavia Hill, much better than his coloured work has been of late ; to Helen Allingham's "Harvest Moon ;" and to the whole series of West-Country etchings by Edwin Edwards, we have only space to direct our reader's attention, merely remarking of these last that their great fault seems to be an angularity and scratchiness of drawing, and a certain coarse- ness of contrasted black-and-white effect.