ART.
OLD-ENGLISH LANDSCAPE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.. IN the history of literature and art there have sometimes been some curious runs upon particular initials, to which we beg to call the attention of inductive theorists. Ten or twelve years ago we observed that all the writers of burlesques for the theatres began their names with a B. At the beginning of the century a singularly large gathering of French painters were grouped under the letter G. In like manner, the chief representatives of English landscape now admitted as Old Masters at Burlington House are found in the catalogue in division " C." Callcott, Cotman, Crome, Chambers, Collins, Constable, and Cox contribute more than one-eighth in number of the pictures exhibited at the Academy. But these are more than balanced by the one great name of Turner, who stands apart in the index, as his art also stood by itself, towering above as well as absorbing that of his con- temporaries.
Let us begin with the earliest in date, John Crome, of Norwich, than whom there is no English painter who can be more truly regarded as a type of national art. Not even Constable or old David Cox was more thoroughly English in his feeling of land- scape. Constable, indeed, in his more conspicuous qualities, was purely original, deriving his inspiration directly from nature, and instead of founding his art on the practice of foreign schools, becoming himself a guiding star for Frenchmen. But Constable as a master of English landscape, and Constable as head of French paysage, are two distinct characters in the history of art. The mannerism and coarse generalisation which Dupre and others carried off and implanted in the French school, and which has come down at last to a kind of slovenly sketching, were not the qualities in Constable's art which made it an integ- ral part of the English School. It is that kind of landscape por- traiture which depends on careful observation of the important features of a scene, and the choice and application of the treat- ment most appropriate thereto, that at the same time distinguishes the old English school of landscape from all others, and when practised by such men as those we have named so attaches it to its native soil. There is not a good, if even a genuine example of Constable in this gallery, but the "Dedham Lock" (62) belongs to the series of home-pictures by which he emphasized so strongly the features of his own neighbourhood of East Bergholt, and of which there are fine specimens in the National collection.. David Cox, both by precept and example, upheld the same theory of landscape-painting, though he was more successful in portray- ing effects of light and air and cloud belonging to the English climate than in depicting special objects under their influence. His best works by far are water-colour drawings, though his oil pictures, being few, and until lately less known, have generally a money value much beyond their merit. But one of the two here shown, namely, the beach of " Rhyl " (20), in a fresh wind and with a lively sea, a perspective of fluttering petticoats, and the steamer going out in the distance, not only exhibits some of his best qualities on a larger scale than usual, but shows us how much beauty can be present to an artist's eye at one of the ugliest of British watering-places. In consideration of the pure colour, we can here compound for some fluffiness in the waves, but it is not so easy to do so for the indefinite character of the foliage in " Outskirts of a Forest " (74).
To return to " old " Crome, to whom we have above ascribed an equal degree of nationality. Among English painters he was peculiarly English, though by virtue of somewhat different quell- ties from those above mentioned. The influence of the Dutch masters, which had come to him through some good examples that he had access to in the neighbourhood of his home, seems always to have adhered to his style of painting. His successful emulation of Cuyp was exemplified in the admirable picture of the " Yarmouth Water-frolic," exhibited here two years ago ; but his more ordinary exemplars were Ruysdael and Hobbema. It was by the adaptation of the style and principles of these painters to a limited and local type of English scenery that Crome at the same time asserted his originality, and made him- '' self the founder of a distinct British schooL In so doing, he made that right use of the Old Masters the value of which Sir Joshua Reynolds used to try to impress upon students, and the success whereof, in its application to landscape, is so fully exem- plified in the works of Turner. The " Oak at Poringland ; Boys bathing in the foreground" (116), has the composition of Hobbema, combined with the melting clouds and sunny atmosphere of Cuyp ; but in the combination we also recognise a home-bred, rustic freshness as a quality added by Crome, and a healthy, sparkling purity of air, as of that which blew about his native Norwich. After studying the careful and solid drawing of this tree, and seeming to breathe the air which filters through its branches, it is depressing to think of the foliage of Cox and Muller, to say nothing of the devices of modern drawing-masters, which serve as a shorthand for " leafiness." A noticeable merit in this picture is the way in which it seems to declare itself as a part only of a larger prospect, and this without any want of com- pleteness in the composition,—a quality which is likely to result from the practice of working from sketches of real scenes, instead of from ideas preconceived in the studio. The " boys bathing " appear to have undergone some extra scrubbing at the hands of the cleaner, which puts them a little out of keeping with the rest of the picture. The study called " Pollard Oak" (30) has a lovely luminous glimpse of landscape behind, and so has " Group of Oaks and White Heifer " (41), though, as it seems to us, not consistent with other parts of the picture. Here, too, there is a peculiarity from which also the " Oak at Poringland " is not free, and which amounts almost to a mannerism in some of Crome's trees. There is a whiteness, particularly at the edges and lower parts of the trunks, which takes away from the effect of roundness. Crome's fore- grounds of wild vegetation—as, for example, the bramble hedge here on the right—are thoroughly felt, and in pleasant contrast to the trim, isolated weeds which mere followers of the Old Masters are in the habit of planting at intervaLs along the bottom of their canvas. That Crome could appreciate the beauty of a weed, singly as well as in combination with others, is proved by the complete artistic picture that he makes out of a study of a grey-green thistle (4), relieved by red poppies, brown snails, and a yellow dandelion. We have difficulty in believing that the " Old Inn at Great Yarmouth " (51) and "Landscape, Evening " 015), are by the hand of John Crome. The latter looks much more like the work of the French painter Michel. " Oaks in Kimberley Park" (99) has some fine quality of colour, together with that sense of the value of contrasting lines which we see more fully developed in a younger luminary of the Norwich School,—John Sell Cotman. Cotman's art took a wider range than Crome's in the variety of scenes and subjects which he treated, and partakes more largely of the characteristics we have mentioned as distinctive of the old English landscape. He devoted much attention to architectural drawing, and thus acquired the same kind of knowledge of treatment which Turner and others derived from the same source ; and he was one of the celebrated band of young water-colour painters who frequented the house of Dr. Monro. His numerous studies in water-colour, a collection of which were exhibited last summer at South Ken- sington, and a " Liber Studiorum " which he published, show his high artistic feeling of the harmonies and contrasts of line, mass, light, and colour ; and when the " effects " thus separately dealt with are applied by him to the full expression of a scene in nature, their force is felt by persona fot whom his sketches have no par- ticular charm. No one can fail to enjoy the glow of golden sun- light on the becalmed " Hay-barges " (32), but it is not at first apparent how much of the charm of this beautiful picture depends on the nicely-balanced contrasts of form in the group itself, the clever marshalling of the square and angular sails, and the rounded packing of the hay on the decks repeated and carried out in the cumuli of the sky. The fine treatment of the sea- piece, " Impending Storm off Portsmouth " (235), unaccountably hung almost out of sight over a large second-rate Callcott, abounds in skilful contrasts and gradations of the like nature. The curves of massive thunder-clouds, such as the elder Linnell used to paint, vary the pointed forma of the sails, while a connection is established between the several parts of the picture by a subtle arrangement of lines. A second boat in the middle distance not only repeats and thus prevents the isolation of that in the foreground, and carries the eye to the sunlit town in the distance, making it, as it should be, the real point of interest in the scene ; but also, by being set a little more upright, forms a necessary link in the angular gradation between the horizontal line of the sea and the vertical lines of the houses. Observe, too, in the "Cave of Boscastle " (72) how the lurid western sun behind his bars of cloud, and the big waves that sweep into the dark seal-hole, give value to each other, and how the two forms are connected and the space expressed by the tossing ships at sea. An exquisite study of colour, called " Chateau in Normandy " (239), and a simple and beautiful souvenir of his own river Yare, called " Waiting for the Ferry- boat" (27), show other of the varied phases of Cotman's power as an artist.
The subject of the last picture assimilates more closely than the others to some of the works of the landscape painter specially re- presented in this exhibition, Sir Augustus Callcott. But the two painters had little in common. Both, indeed, were skilled in pictorial artifice, but that of Callcott was less spontaneous and more subservient to fixed academic rule. There is often that consciousness of the frame and its limitation which smacks of the studio, and induces a grouping of objects as in a drop-scene for the stage. But this is not always the case, and the remark seldom applies to his English pictures, painted before he had acquired a classic taste by foreign travel. His nearer details are carefully and conscientiously painted, and as he originally studied as a figure-painter, his groups are well drawn as well as skilfully placed. Rich as they are in incident, his compositions not un- frequently show a certain bareness in parts, insomuch that one might sometimes remove a whole strip of the canvas from top to bottom without the loss being felt. The large " View on South- ampton Water " (150) is perhaps the most satisfactory of his pictures here. Like most of them, it is sober without being dull in colour, and it has a sense of easy movement and an harmonious unity about it very agreeable to the eye. See, too, the careful painting of the sea-birds. The sunny composition called " Italian Scenery " (45) is a good specimen of his classic style, and " The Shrimpers" (14) is noteworthy, as the only good example here of his marine painting, and also for the sparkling brilliancy of the groups of figures and boats, and the way in which they keep their true distance notwithstanding. The English " Sunset with Figures" (265) has a Cuyp-like glow in the air ; but in the " Rotterdam " (262), on the same wall, which reminds us of Stanfield, all the brightness of Dutch brickwork seems to have been distilled from the architecture and dropped into the figures.
We have reserved to the last the consideration of the five works of Turner, from a feeling that his quality of greatness is best described as a summation of the great qualities of other painters. He seems to have carried every artistic principle a little further, or given it some wider application than had been done before, or was being done by the men of his own time. His genius was too wide to be confined within the limits of a school, and his diversity of treatment was only commensurate with the variety of subjects that he treated. Indeed, the extent of his attainments in art has been well expressed in the conclusion come to by a despairing follower, that " he knew a great deal too much for one man." These five pictures, of course, show but a frag- ment of his art, yet every principle and quality of merit that we have pointed out in the works of his contemporaries is repeated and amplified in them. How the noble composition, "Sunset at the Mouth of the Thames" (91), illustrates the value of con- trast, might be explained in the very words we have applied to Cotmau's "Portsmouth " and " Boscastle." The red, sinking sun and the stately ship reposing square with the horizon, and the tossing sea with its boats, are the two opposite elements, and
they are harmonised by rounded clouds and connected by a dis- tant boat, so fashioned that it just repeats the outline of the big
stern, and so prevents the eye from dwelling too much upon it. Observe also the truth and character of the two seafaring men in the foreground boat. Turner's figures are not academically drawn, but they are always the right men in the right places. It was his consummate mastery of treatment that enabled Turner to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm," in realising his sublime conception of the " Wreck of the ' Minotaur' " (150). The unity of effect of this grand work is so perfect that it needs long study to enable one to feel on how subtle a combine- tion its harmony depends ; how the noble massing of light and colour which first attracts the eye maintains its influence, while we pursue the lines of movement and become present at the scene of confusion ; how all the conflicting forces are marshalled, as if by nature ; how the boats are tossed into their best positions by, and all the floating groups partake of, the mighty movement of the deep ; how the slow, rolling pace of the big waves is ex- pressed under the spray and turmoil of the surface ; the great, unwieldy hull, subdued by mist, looms large without dis- tracting the eye from other objects ; and how the half-submerged shako of a marine seems, in all this vast scene, to have been the one speck wanting to complete the composition. What a range of power lies between the authorship of this picture and of the "Vintage of Macon " (122) and " Crichton Castle " (60), ex- pressive of happiness or repose, the one in the manner of Claude, the other of Poussin! The former is now discoloured and obscured, and the sun is not sole monarch of the sky. The foreground was once fresh and green, and the dancing har- vesters on the hill were doubtless in bright contrast to the toiling barge-folks below, but the fine sweep of the river and flowing lines of the far country still remain. The latter is in singularly good order, and retains the full effect of its pure, classic line and luminous gradation of tone and colour. There can be no greater contrast to this beautiful early work than the mysterious play of pigment called " Neapolitan Fisher-girls, surprised bathing by moonlight" (261), painted in the last period of the artist's decline.
It will have been observed that marine and coast subjects form a large proportion of the works we are now dealing with, and to painters of this class slightly represented at the Academy should be added Brooking, who had promise, but died young in 1759 ; Chambers, Collins, Schetky, and John Wilson. A picture of " Whitchurch " (205) illustrates the power and sketchiness of Muller, but " Bay of Naples," though it has his name in the corner, seems to us scarcely worthy of his band. The department of rustic landscape is further supported by some ordinary Mor- lands, a large Loutherbourg (11) that wants cleaning, and a small " Woodland Scene" (204) by Stark, of Norwich. With these may fairly be classed two most characteristic and thorough paint- ings by Stubbs, one of an old-fashioned gentleman and his keeper and dogs going out shooting (10), the other a group of labourers with a cart and horse (15), but both hung where they are scarcely seen. Nor should we forget a charming, sunny street- scene at " Verona " (247) by Bonington, though he is a painter claimed by France as well as England ; or a telling study of chiaroscuro (249), by S. W. Reynolds, the mezzotint engraver.
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