ART.
TWO LANDSCAPE PAINTERS.
[E. 11. WINPERIS• AND DAVID 5tIIRRIV•r3 THERE are two exhibitions of sketches which have been lately opened in Bond Street which are in marked contrast. Both exhibit the works of genuine artists; both represent the result of sketching tours ; in both is landscape the principal object of the painter ; but within these general similarities the divergence of the art exhibited is as complete as possible. Mr. David Murray's collection is of rural scenes in Picardy, and numbers one hundred and twenty sketches, chiefly in oil; Mr. E. M. Wimperis's gallery is of scenes principally from the New Forest, and contains eighty-seven examples, all of which are water- colours.
Those of our readers who do us the honour to remember former articles, will recollect that for the last five years at least • Dowdeewall's Gallery. T Fine Art Society. we have been recommending Mr. David Murray's work to their attention, despite the little attention which it has received from the Press generally. It appears now that the painter has sprung into sudden popularity, and certainly this exhibi. lion entirely justifies our verdict. Paintings more bright, more delicate in drawing, more markedly original in treatment of their subjects, have rarely been seen for many a long year, and to this we may add that Mr. Murray has, besides his technical excellences, a touch of poetical conception and dramatic fitness which vivify his work. Again, he is, too, a colourist at once daring and subtle; he plays with his colours, as it were, as a violoncello-player on his instrument, restricting himself to no studied range of tones or tints, but throwing little dashes of colour with seeming capriciousness here and there.
Some twisted apple-trees in blossom by a weedy pond ; a pieta catching the last rays of the sun, while in the shadow beneath, a shepherd, surrounded by his flock, kindles his pipe ; an old peasant bringing her wreath of immortelles to the country graveyard ; a punt moored in the quiet shade of„the poplar.trees ; some grasses by a wayside road ; a glimpse of reapers knee-deep in the corn,—these are the subjects Mr. Murray shows us. Brightness is the key-note of his painting; ingenuity the founda- tion of his pictures. Fitting details of figure, house, boat, crucifix, and what not, are introduced with the utmost precision in exactly the right place ; each sketch is, in this respect, a complete picture.
Yet there is something wanting to one's complete satisfac- tion, and what that something is, we find out beyond question if we leave the Fine Art Society's pleasant rooms, and enter Mr. Dowdeswell's gallery, where are Mr. Wimperis's sketches. What a different world, to be sure ! A land of brown road and purple heather, of rough-shaped trees and bushes, of broken grey and white clouds, and misty shadowed light. How is it that the change does not disgust na,—that it comes almost as a relief ? Anyhow, we can see at once what it was that Mr. Murray's paintings lacked, and pronounce it boldly to have been, in one broad word,—the breadth of Nature. Freshness of aspect, the apparent absence of preconceived idea, simplicity of rendering, and a feeling of content with the simplest of homely English scenes,—these are the elements of attraction in Mr. Wimperis's work. However, ou looking a little closer at the work, we see that its elementary qualities are chiefly those of truth, and that its artistic qualities are by no means elementary, though they are apparently obtained by simple means, but are very rare and very desirable. Such pictures as "The Wooded Valley," with its beautiful wide spaces of rainy sky, whose great cumulus clouds melt into the faint blue of the heaven ; with its swelling folds of moorland leading up to the distant mountains, are, for their subjects and their medium, works of the most subtle art,—of an art, too, which it may be well to remind our readers, is exclusively English, and unaffectedly true.
We are not seeking here to draw any contrast between Mr. Murray and Mr. Wimperis which shall be disadvantageous to either artist ; both have the defects and the virtues of their qualities. We are only seeking to show our readers what those qualities and those defects are. If we return in fancy to Mr. Murray's "Picardy," we say, after seeing these "New Forest" drawings, " Why, the man has never seen the sky at all I" and the accusation would be to a great extent just. If we once more tarn our steps, full of this conviction, to Mr. Wimperis's gallery, we shall be apt to exclaim, "This is a very ploughboy conception of Nature ; why cannot he be as fresh and strong RS he likes, without being so clumsy in his details P" Why, indeed Why are none of us perfect ? Why shouldn't we all be " Solomons and Queens of Sheba P" to use an old-world expression.
The old and the new school,—that is what these exhibitions have to show us. Which shall we choose ? The school of Be Wint and Cox and Constable ; or that of the modern landscapist, such as Mr. Murray? Minuteness of detail, grace and variety of sentiment, colour most varied, most attractive, and most delicate, almost shell-like, in its iridescence and its brightness,—all of these are in the new school's control. And, on the other band, simplicity of rendering, resolute adherence to a few broad facts of Nature (force and freshness being perhaps the chief), and above all a determination to paint a whole scene rather than one little bit of a landscape, a corn-field rather than a wheat-stack, a valley rather than a tree, a sky rather than a clond,—these are the characteristics of the elder men. And the first school is a little finikin and trivial ; the second a little ignorant and coarse,—which will we choose ? The question is a difficult one, for its answer depends upon whether we believe most in the tendencies of an age, or in the teaching of history. If we attribute greater power to the first, the old school must die, as it has seemed to be dying of late years, for it is opposed in kind to all the pecu- liarities of the present day ; it is not sufficiently subtle ; it is too outspoken, too unrefined. But if we believe that the Art of the future must be founded, as was the Art of the past, on the most vital qualities of Nature, upon her broader and more universal truths of aspect, rather than her isolated and comparatively partial details, we must prefer the work of the older school, and hope and believe that the day will yet come, and perhaps very. speedily, when all folks will be convinced that the really great landscape art of England was that which grew up in the earlier- half of the present century, and that we must return to its aims,. if not to its methods, in our future efforts.
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