EXHIBITION OF THE SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER-COLOURS.
Our remark of last week as to the predominant mediocrity of art this year finds fresh confirmation, rather regretted than disappointing, in the Old Water-Colour Gallery. The best and (if we except Mr. Hunt for his special department) the second-best of the figure-painters, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Cattermole, are altogether away ; and no one appears who can make us overlook their absence. Moreover, the general impression left by the exhibition is that of extreme sketchiness : there is scarcely a single work that can be called highly wrought to the point of power and mas- siveness, as well as of the practised handling which gives a surface effect and surface Buis},
The records of Mr. Alfred Fripp's Italian tour form the largest and most noticeable body of figure subjects varied with landscape. There is much in them to like, and even to admire, allowing for two serious draw- backs ; excessive chalky opacity of colour, and excessive coldness of light—the chillest of blues and blankest of whites—the glare of a snow landscape for the glow of an Italian sun. "Pompeii, the City of the Dead," is the chief of the series : and the epithet of the title is impres- sively, we may almost say poetically rendered, in the lifeless depth of dark cloud to the left, the weird-looking vegetation which seems to wave and flap in a windless air, the blue mountains, and the sullen marsh, amid which endure column, arch, and-masonry, long strange to the light of day. The bloated serpent trailing along the stones of the ancient city is a good incident ; the forked lightning a poor one, whose commonness only detracts from the effect which it is meant to intensify. "II dolce far Nient,e" (much abused title !) contains a good out-of-windows glimpse of sea and mountains, and some nice touch and feeling in both figures and accessories—the latter hinting of Mr. Lewis's influence ; but the man's orange-copper flesh is a luaus pictoris, and the chalkiness of handling here is such that the moted sunbeam looks actually far liker one of those thin streaks of whitewash where the lines of the brush remain distinctly traced. Both "The Capuchin Convent, Amalfi," and "The Marina, Capri, Naples," are pretty, sharply-touched, and artistic. Others, and especially the "Head of a Neapolitan Boy," cannot be counted to the artist's credit: but on the whole we have decidedly got more pleasure out of Mr. Fripp this year than for several past seasons.
All Mr. Hunt's domestic figures are small ; but "The Young Rustic" (209) and " Study" (283)—a nice, candid, little country face of a girl, with glowing cheeks—yield to few for unaffected truth. "Devotion" is rather pinky in the flesh, and another tinge of the same colour is repeated in the dress. "The Study in the Country" (259) might have been, we suspect, no less thoroughly " studied " in town ; for we are much mis- taken if the model was not the quaint face of Mr. Hunt himself; here smockfrocked and a little jellified. "The Wood-Pigeon" and "Apple- Blossom" are not quite so uniquely perfect as some previous specimens. Mr. Haag proceeds in a partial reformation of his overdone colour and stony forms. His most pleasant contribution is "A Tyrolese Peasant- Girl "—a demure little round German countenance, in a strong but not violent light, and agreeable in colour. "An Italian Peasant-Girl" is sunny enough; and her companion head, "A Roman Model," clever, spite of his purple hair. We think we should find the " Siesta " also worthy of a good place on the list, were it but properly visible. The chief subject, "Marino Faliero and the Spy," is rather rich in colour, but richer in gum, and tells no story imperfectly. The spy too is a regular Mephistopheles, only of a more tripping kind. Exquisitely un- interesting is No. 172, " H.R.H. the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and H.S.H. the Prince Leiningen, returning from a Chamois-Hunt "- the property of the Queen. Mr. Gilbert, that most clever of designers on wood, who never seems himself in another material, has the most ambi- tious subject in the gallery—" Richard II. resigns his crown to Boling. broke " ; with the quotation from Shakspere where the discrowned King looks at his face in the glass. Unfortunately, it is but too evident that Mr. Gilbert nourishes another and very weak ambition—that of painting altogether out of his own head, without immediate reference to nature ; and the inevitable result appears in the want of living individuality. The carpeting of the throne-steps and screen is ingeniously invented and Painted. There is some depth of painful feeling in Miss Gillies's illus- tration of "Auld Robin Gray," but the parts assigned to the father and mother in the ballad, " Mv father urged me sair,
'My mother didna speak,—
But she looked in my face Till my heart was like to break," seem transposed. Mr. Topham is prettyish in his somewhat affected man- ner in "Wild Flowers" ; Mr. Jenkins only so-so ; Mr. Bostock skilful in the lap-dog of the " Inseparables" ; Mr. Oakley best in "La Joueuse " improving herself with a game of cup-and-ball. Mr. Cox is yet more than usually supreme among the landscape-paint- era: not that he has quite eclipsed himself, but rather that he finds the competition with others—always to be regarded coolly enough—very safe
indeed this year. Three of his four principal works are of a mountainous character. The "Mountain Pastoral"—gloomier in light than in feeling— is rough, hasty, but poetical • the "Summit of a Mountain"—with its single sheep below and its solitary eagle above, and the clouds among the flinty peaks—tumblingly precipitous : but "The Challenge" is the best of all, and the most worked up. The subject, as well as the name, bears affinity to MT. Landseer's stag-picture ; but here it is a couple of bulls that glower defiance in the wild uncultured cliff scene. Mr. Cox scans Nature in her rude remoteness with a seeing eye, and reports of her worthily. The fourth subject, "Barden Castle," partakes to some extent of the styles of both Mr. Cattermole and Mr. Niemann. The "Windy Day" is its own very title recorded in water-colours ; so free is the blue cloud-swept sky, so lustily emphatic the motions of the figures, and their voices, which we can see : the " Bathers " is of a kindred order of feeling, equally expressive, and with a touch of humour. Ever welcome be the even savage carelessness of style, for there is genius to make it pass cur- rent : but to a "Rainbow" it is death and dinginess,—as witness No. 20. Mr. Cox exceeded his licence in attempting this. Of Messrs. Fielding, W. C. Smith, Dodgson, Richardson, Bentley, Evans, Gastineau, J. and W. Callow, Duncan, and Branwhite, what can we say that has not or might have been said a hundred times before, beyond the announcement that they are generally rather below than above their own averages? We might include Mr. George Fripp with these—for, like them, he is perennially "after his kind "—were it not that we are loth to sink in a mere undistinguished call of names the plea- sure always awakened by his clear country feeling, or to miss pointing out to the visitor's special attention Nos. 19, 73, 84, 177, and 219. The "Sunrise in the Highlands—scene near Dalmally " belongs less entirely to the artist's wonted manner.
Four painters still remain, of whom we may manage to speak a few words proper to the present exhibition, and not equally so to its precur- sors. Except in one instance' Mr. Naftel loses ground this year. He has approximated to the style of Mr. G. Fripp; but opaqueness, violent co- lour, and a tinge of carelessness, leave him inferior both to that artist and to his former self. The exception is named "The Moor,"—capital, though slight. The generic characteristics of the view, its perfect solitude, the marshlike stream, the greyish-white sky with islanded clouds and an orange light at the horizon, are all excellent. Mr. Cox junior displays some versatility of style in his contributions, as compared both one with another and with those of previous years. " Stokesay Castle, Moon- light," " Bringwood Chase, Salop," and the panoramic-looking "Vienne on the Rhone are examples, and fairly approvable ones ; but we rather feel a want Rhone,"
study—of "backbone." Mr. Palmer, modifying his excruciating sunlights into hues lively indeed but subdued, sets up with a manner compounded of Mulready and Linnell ; of which he ex- hibits three agreeable specimens. Mr. William Turner combines the ex- tremes of quietism and of a hyperbolic colour, which reminds one, though in a afferent way, of his great namesake : witness No. 107 and No. 203—a home-view with a sky whose purple we should more than mistrust were the scene laid in the Tropics. But there are feeling and perception, and nice though timid and over flat modelling, in the artist's works. The gleamy sea, sky, and land—and especially the sunlit green to the left—in the" Fishing Village at Courthill," and passages in " Loch Carron," at- test these qualities : and that they could be supplemented by mellower tone and handling, is proved by "Twilight—scene on the Wye"; which is more than commonly praiseworthy in several other respects as welL
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