FINE ARTS.
THE G ROSVENOR P ICTU RES.
A previous disappointment or so will scarcely be grudged by the lover- of art who obtains final admission to the Grosvenor pictures ; which we enjoyed the pleasure of seeing on Thursday. Hung-in a suite of five sa- loons, without crowding, (although in some eases beyond perfect reach of sight,) well lighted, and surrounded by many splendid objects of luxury and taste, the pictures are viewed under a combination of circumstances contributing sensibly to the visitor's satisfaction. It would be difficult to name a private gallery in England in which world-famous works bear so considerable a proportion to the aggre- gate number. Here are one of the diverse treatments by Raffaelle of his Madonna del Vele ; the Tribute-money, and the gloriously beautiful Bella di Ceder° of Titian; a smaller example of the eques- trian Vclasquez, Balthazar Charles Prince of the Asturias, with the King and Queen, Olivarez and others, introduced in the background, executed of the size of life in the Madrid Museum; a duplicate of Rey- nolds's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse; Gainsboron,gh's Blue Boy and Cottage-door ; a repetition of Guido's Fortuna ; the great Canaletti, the Piazza di San Marco, with the bull-fight ; Hogarth's Distressed Poet ; Giulio Romano's Baptist in the Wilderness; the Man with a Hawk and Lady with a Fan of Rembrandt ; and several of the most distinguished' Claudes, specimens from whose hand abound in this collection ; —works at once identified in the mind and recognized by the homage of the votaries of their respective authors. So capacious a sympathy-as would enrol us among the admirers of these, all and sundry, is not at our disposal ; but the consistency of the individual devotee may be admitted without ilia- plying acquiescence in the object of devotion. The large paintings by Salvator Rosa, Democritus contemplatingthe end: of all things, and Diogenes relinquishing his bowl on seeing a man drink out of his hand,—works strongly invented and executed, with a certain classicality in their grotesqueness,—form a feature of interest not common in English collections : in. the Mao-lee at the Sepulchre a still further purging of the grotesque element is to be noticed; and a rigid self-con- straint appears to have been exercised, which yet cannot banish the painter's native wildness. The Carlo Hold of the Daughter of Herodias bearing the head of St. John deserves study for its colour, which (though over-informed with green) is remarkably rich, solid, and simple : the head, too possesses an amount of individuality—nnt, indeed, of the best soil—unusual with the painter. A masterly treatment in. point of art is the St. Bruno of Sacchi ; and the Diogenes of Spagnolatto. is wonderful for force of character and bold method. By Del Berta there are two heads of the infant Baptist, exquisite in Leonardolike feeling; and a portrait of the Contessina Mattel, which, like the head now at the British Institution, show him to have been unsurpassed in grand yet mi- nutely expressed portraiture. A Holy Family by Raffaelle seems to be- long to a transition period of his art, when the habit of his earlier style lingered yet unsuperseded by antique study, but growing ever more faint and superficial. The Christ and Baptist here, if not studied from the same model, are at least identical in thought ; generalized' expressions of semi-manful infancy. There is much extrinsic similarity of character between this and the Holy Family of Fm Bartolommeo ; but the latter contains a more fervid and spontaneous principle of life. Those to whose mind the name of Perugino represents an extreme of primitive simplicity will be surprised to find in his Marriage of St. Catharine, grace, sweetness, and ease of motion, analogous to the qualities of Correggio's treatment of the same subject. Indeed, in the face and figure of the infant Saviour these predominate perhaps unduly ; while' however, the general pnrity-of sacred feeling is not so evidently to be paralleled. Here are found a dupli- cate of the Circumcision by Giovanni Bellini, exhibited at the British In- stitution, having more duskiness of tone and it may be a somewhat less charming natural truth in the female heads; and, also here ascribed to Bellini, a repetition of the Holy Family with Sainte, assigned to Lorenzo Lotto in the Bridgewater gallery ; the only, point of difference we note between the two being the introduction here of. figures in the remote, background. A more favourable sample of Albano than the Triumph of Venus is not easily to be met with.
The old Flemish school is represented in a folding triptich by Memm- lack ; consisting of heads of the Saviour with the Virgin and the Beloved Disciple, and in the two side compartments the Baptist, and Mary bear- ing the jar of precious ointment. The work is deserving of sincere and careful study ; but perhaps we shall best convey our impression by say-
ing that it displays more elaboration than finish whether in expression or detail of objects. Wide-yawning indeed is the gulf which severs the earliest from the later Flemish school ; felt in contemplating (as cannot be done without astonishment) the series of enormous canvasses painted by Rubens with Scriptural and ecclesiastical designs, his Ixion' and other subjects. The astonishment partakes of a jarring and almost humiliated sentiment when we turn to the Departure of Hagar, treated as a domestic scene ; a picture which reduces patriarchal character and the events of Scripture to the level of a kitchen squabble. Nothing is more needful, in such subjects, and properly understood more elevating, than the study of simple truthfulness; but no quality is more utterly alien from coarse- ness such as this. The gallery possesses a single Holbein, the portrait of Sir Brian Tuke ; admirable' we need hardly say, but not perhaps of conspicuous excellence.
Of the Dutch school, are the well-known Lion-hunt and Bear-hunt by Snyders-the latter especially amazingly forceful; the Salutation, and a splendid sunset landscape, by Rembrandt; a very capital view by Be Koning,-spacious not only in feet of canvass, but in air and chiaroscuro; two Fyts, of first-rate quality ; and a brilliantly sunny, warm, and de- lightful Paul Potter, than which landscape art can produce nothing more perfect. In addition to the works of our own school already specified, it appears chiefly in three of West's known pictures; a nicely felt and painted coast- scene by Bonington and a very humorous and amusing little Ilogarth- a boy trying to extricate his kite from the beak-and-claw onslaught of a crow.
Among works in other departments of art filling the rooms of Grosvenor House, we observed particularly a statue of a sylvan figure with a dog, evidently antique, and of most pure style.
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