FINE ARTS.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY: HISTORICAL PICTURES.
THE pictures which draw their subjects from poetry or mythology are few. The most striking, without doubt, isMr. Dyce's "Neptune Resigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea,"—a sketch for a fresco to be painted at Osborne House. It exhibits, in many respects, more mastery of art than any picture in the collection. In spite of high authority, we hold allegory to be a detestable class of subjects for painting: allegory is a grave quibble, and a picture resting on such a basis is stamped by its very origin with unreality. It is a picture without a subject; because the subject is some- thing to be constructed out of the semblance of one—that counterfeit to be set aside by the spectator as a triviality. It is attempting to depict what cannot be represented by visual objects. In this picture, Neptune in his watery chariot has driven close to the margin of the land, where he pulls up; he holds out a crown, which the flying Mercury, as the genius of Com- merce, takes from his hand, and conveys to Britannia; Sea-Nymphs also lean over the margin of the land, and offer to Britannia the precious pro- ducts of the deep. Behind Britannia are three figures, indicated by their attributes to be the geniuses of Manufactures, Trade, and Navigation. All this is very intelligible, on a conventional interpretation; but it supplies no proper action for the picture. There is life and Rotten in the design: Neptune is excellent—grand, vigorous, and energetic; in Amphitrite, who looks on approving, and in Britannia, are indicated two female forms of much beauty and dignity. The Sea-Nymphs also are beautiful, but not unexceptionable in style. It is most usual, we think, with artists who paint ladies that terminate in fish, to make the junction of the several na- tures at the hips: Mr. Dye°, not without precedent, continues the human form to a -lower point; but in extending the human part the monstrous.... rendered more glaring: in fact, there is a considerable breach of vernamilr-
tzide in suggesting two modes of locomotion. The human aspect of the Nymphs in Mr..Dyce's sketch, who look like bathers come to show En- tannia something which they have found at the bottom of the water, raises familiar ideas unfit for the abstract classicism of the subject. The defects which we have pointed out might pass in a picture of less merit: they are apparent chiefly through the vigour and skill of the artist in giving so much life and reality to the figures: that sort of reality jars against the unreality of the dry abstraction in the allegory. As an assemblage of tints, the sketch is very pleasing: the colours are lively; although the canvass is full of figures, the scene is open-an airy space. Mr. Dyce has the faculty of imagination-of really conceiving the event and the scene before he paints them; and he has promise of powers more like those possessed by the great painters than any artist we have had in this country.
More general attention, for obvious reason, is attracted by Mr. Frost's "Una." The fair and pious lady is seated on a bank; the Wood-Nymphs, fair Hamadryads, and Naiads, come all to view her, and eke the Satyrs: the sylvan ladies "envy her in their malitious mind" ;
"But all the Satyrs scorn their woody kiude, And henceforth nothing fair but her on earth they finde."
The picture may be considered as a favourable specimen of academic study after the manner of the English Royal Academy. It has been praised for its " arrangement "; and in the balletmaster's acceptation the praise may be allowed: the figures are arranged with much grace and variety; the group approaching from a distance-so that while some have come others are still coming, and quite unconscious of the lady who "made a sunshine in that shady place"-is well conceived and well expressed; the drawing is vary good-no want of power has fettered the artist in throwing the figures into all sorts of postures. The expression is often " appropriate " to the artist's meaning. The colouring is good, according to a purely English standard -above the average: bright in its tints, it is smudged and chalky in parts, and is thoroughly conventional throughout. But the chief objection lies in the very essence of the design. We pass the fact that Una is not that corn- pound of brightness and purity which lighted up the whole place; she is a tame nun; and, so far from being more glorious in beauty than the wood- nymphs, many of the others have considerably the advantage. The sur- rounding ladies have nothing about them of the wilderness; they are not more wood-nymphs and naiads than they are fancy portraits of English young ladies: there is a girl behind Una, "envying her iu her malitious mind," who is more like any Lady Helena or Lady Georgiana than an habitude of the wilderness. There is a studied freedom in some of the ac- tions-often not even that; a few locks are loose here and there; there may be the zone unbound; but the whole scene smacks of the drawingroom or of the opera-stage: the wild creatures are only the young ladies of society -or young ladies excluded from society-in fancy parts. The Satyrs are the best; but their grinning admiration wants the fierceness and fervour of the wilderness, the reverent worship of demigods: it is still the ostenta- tious ogling of the ballet of action. The scene which Spenser conceived and desctibed in words, Mr. Frost has been unable to conceive and set forth in figures: he has thrown together a mass of academic studies, taking Spell- ter's passage as a theme.
Mr. Maclise's sprite appearing to two Irish girls is pretty and fantastic; but it is disfigured by a mechanical "boldness" of drawing, which gains upon him, and is leading him away from the modest copying of nature; and still more by the terrible paper-stainer's style of colouring-unreal, flat, dull, and opaque: this little picture actually looks like one designed for transfer to some expensive patent paper for hanging walls. Mr. Redgrave's "Guardian Angel" is a meritorious production, chal- lenging notice principally by its simplicity. The Angel stands on the earth, quite erect; before him, with his face to the spectator, stands the child, erect as to the body, but with head cast down pressing the guar- dian's hand caressing to his breast: the Angel is mediating for the Divine benediction, and his face is moved by the heavenward élan of a reverential but earnest beseeching; the expression of the child's face is vague and pas- sive, a mere trusting submission. So far good, and "appropriate." But there is a fatal weakness in the cardinal point of the picture: the Angel's face is not celestial-it is of the earth; strictly human in its features; not of typical humanity, but of daily life. It is handsome, delicate, sensitive, amiable; but devoid of power. It has not the singleness of expression by which the greatest painters have rescued the angelic aspect from common humanity, and suggested the idea of a divine instrument. Raphael's angels, as in the Baptism of Jesus, are exquisitely beautiful, and merely loving, or, as in the Heliodorus, they are beautifully and passionlessly severe: they are single-countenanced, instinct with an impulse rather than impressed by an emotion, implicit in obedience to that impulse, irresistible in act. Some such mode of elevation above the obvious incidents of hu- manity seems to be necessary to the idea of the angelic nature; and unless • the artist can attain to it, he had better omit angels from his repertoire. Mr. Redgrave might paint human beings metaphorically called "angelic," meaning supremely amiable; but his tendencies, his best powers, are essen- tially human.
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