ART.

THE ACADEMY.—I.

A DISTINGUISHED painter was once criticising the work of some of the younger impressionists, men who began where the masters left off, and who thought it unnecessary to acquire a knowledge of form for its own sake; and his verdict was- " Well, they won't last." It is impossible not to remember these words when surveying the serried ranks of pictures now hanging at the Academy, the painters of which are so taken up with being clever and brilliant that they have no time left for less taking but more lasting qualities. Everywhere we see evidence that prismatic colour and brilliant light have been the sole study. Form and composition, which give force, and the subtle balancing of tones, which alone can give solidity, are too often neglected. Pictures, like clothes, are susceptible to the changes of fashion. The present style will be super- seded by another, and the works which have only adherence to the prevailing fashion to recommend them will soon appear antiquated. This is not an argument against change or experiment, but a plea that painting should be founded on the

vital principles of drawing, modelling, relative tone, and decorative unity, as well as on colour and effects of light.

It would be difficult to find a more convincing example of this contention than Mr. Sargent's Glacier Streams (No. 107). An uninstructed eye might see in this picture only the glitter of the light on the sun-baked rocks, the dazzling rush of the streams, and the marvellous realisation of the colour of the shadelesa mountainside at cloudless noon. But Mr. Sargent has constructed and modelled every rock as carefully and as subtly as he would the head of a statesman or the face of a child. It is this basis of profound knowledge of form and design that enables the painter to give the more brilliant qualities of colour and light, force and enduring power. Mr. Sargent provides in Vespers (No. 529) another, though an entirely different, example of the effect which only the completely equipped painter can attain. This work, which appears almost accidental in some of its painting, is really the result of deep study. Particularly so is this the case with regard to the relative values of the lights, whether of the sky, the front of the church, or the white pillars of the pergola. These are made luminous by dark masses of cypress and olive and by the black-robed priest.

By the subtle balancing of the tones as well as by the beauty of the colour, the artist has contrived a harmony in this picture as reposeful as that of the mountains was stimulating. It is impossible not to rejoice that Mr. Sargent has discarded mere Duchesses, and given us the poetry of the mountains and the twilight cypresses of the South.

Another painter who fortifies and enhances the beauty of his work by mail qualities is Mr. Clausen. His head of A Wood Nymph (No. 56), taken as a whole, is a beautiful work, whether looked at from the point of view of modelling, colour, or decorative arrangement, though perhaps a little more idealisation of the nose and eyes would have been appropriate in an ideal head, the beauty of which is not impaired by its preservation of the tradition of Watts. The same painter's From a London Back Window (No. 51) is full of colour and charm, and shows what can be done by an artistic way of seeing common things.

Mr. Hughes Stanton by his mastery of his means and by the largeness of his style claims the right to be considered

the most accomplished landscape-painter exhibiting here. He

has the gift of pure landscape, and has no need of aids and conventions to make his pictures telling. Although his Villeneuve-les-Arigreon (No. 456) is open to the charge of being rather prosaic in feeling, there is no question as to its dominating -by its force and effectiveness all the rest of the landscape compositions in this Exhibition. Very many painters represent merely a slice of a landscape, making us feel that the scene extended with possibly equal interest on all sides of the , part they have chosen,—a beautiful fragment perhaps, but still a fragment. Not so with Mr. Hughes Stanton. His work has a feeling of absolute completeness.

At the same time, there is no artificiality of composition. He can give the -sense of style, and yet be natural. His is the true landscape art. By the side of this austere picture Mr.

East's Autumn in the Valley of the Seine (No. 21) looks a little stagy, and the beautifully drawn and painted trees in The Green Pool (No. 157) a fragment.

By the death of Sir William Orchardson the Academy has lost one of its finest portrait-painters, for on his portraits rather than on his elaborate costume pictures or his painted stories will his future fame depend. In the last were to be found consummate workmanship, especially in the painting of still life. But time will probably stale the sentiment to such an extent that the enjoyment of the painter's gifts will be much greater in those works which, though primarily portraits, were also pictures. Three of these are to be seen in the

present Exhibition,—E. A. Abbey, Esq., B.A. (No. 101), Lord Blyth (No. 148), and B. A. Robinson, Esq. (No. 189). They are all fine; the,,first is the most elaborate and the last the simplest; but each one is full of character, and each has the painter's charm of colour and delicacy of handling.

r The new Associate, Mr. Orpen, has sent two portraits.

Neither of them 'has the strange and arresting qualities of the artist's work at the Grafton Gallery. The more interest-

ing is The Son.' Sir Eric Barrington (No. 41), with the delightful painting of the wall and the mirror behind the

After such artistic work as this it is painful to encounter, as one does in every room, and almost on every wall, portraits many of which seem to aim at nothing but mere vulgarity and commonplace. Others rehash, and do it badly, and with insincerity and want of conviction, the worn conventions of past times. Mr. Shannon is a great offender in this way ; but it is doubtful whether he has ever been more unhappy than in his portrait of a lady (No. 166), or given us more slovenly work than is to be found in the background of this picture. The want of taste and artistic feeling could hardly be more apparent than in Mr. Bacon's glaring and crude official portrait (No. 275). From such an assault upon the eye, a last refuge can be taken in Mr. George Henry's delightfully coloured Lady Margaret Sacic-ville (No. 443), full as it is of life and charm. In the same artist's picture hanging near by, The Nightingale (No. 427), the colour is more ambitious, but perhaps not so good. The light coming into the room through the open window is not moonlight, but the more highly coloured illumination that does duty for it on the stage.

As in past years, the visitor to the Academy will be con- tinually struck with amazement. It is impossible to account on artistic grounds for the presence here of a great many pictures. The claim of the Academy to be the principal artistic Society of the country can never be made good, or considered seriously, while it encourages the production of bad art by giving prominent places to the pictures of painters who have no aim above gratifying a taste founded both on ig,noranea and vulgarity.

H. S.