put 2rto.
At the private view of the Royal Academy, on Friday, this year's ex- hibition appeared decidedly above the average. Messrs. Mulready, Dyce, and Herbert, occupy the post of honour in the great room; one with a mother teaching her child to pray, the second with a tender picture of the Saviour as the good shepherd, carrying a lamb whilst he guides his sheep to the fold, and the third with a Mary Magdalene, of exquisite emotional merit. Mr. Millais has several pictures, two of a larger size ; and there is all his old earnest power in the single figure of the Lady Margaret reaching up a flower to the prisoner's hand through the barred window. Of course, Messrs. Clarkson Stanfield, Roberts, Lee, and Cres- wick, supply their scenes of seas, skies, rocks and water, and imposing interiors. Here, too, are the corn-field pictures of the Messrs. Linnell and the flowers of the Misses M utrie -bright as ever. Mr. Egg has a noble night picture, " Before the Battle of Naseby "-Cromwell praying in his tent ; hard in outline, but full of character. Mr. O'Neil presents a compan- ion to " Eastward ho I ' in " Home again, 1858" ; with a very crowd of domestic stories, grief, hope, joy, surprise, are all told completely; and Mr. Solomon adds his " Not Guilty," which will find et, en more ifii- mirers than "'Waiting for the Verdict," for the story is at an end, and there is a joyful sympathy for the poor fellow which all must share. Of -the majority of the genre works by Messrs. Leslie, Ward, F. Goodall, Stone, 'Horsley, Hook, Hicks, Brooks, and R. Redgrave, we can speak in terms of unqualified commendation. There are the famous dogs and deer of Sir E. Landseer ; and Mr. Grant's portraits are shades of charac- ter as genteelly rendered as ever.
Previous page
