flu ids.
SCULPTURE IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
How is it that sculpture occupies a position so conspicuously inferior, not only in the vault of the Academy, but in our public places ? Not certainly because the public are not inclined patronize it, for there is a perfect mania. for monuments, public and private. Not a man or a woman contrives to raise the head above the herd, but forthwith appears the customary bust or statue, and like the Romans, we are eager to con- fer or to obtain the honours of the Forum; at the same time, we fear it must be owned that all this argues just what it indicated among the ancients—a depression of the taste for the ideal. That this is not an unfair conclusion may be gathered from the results of any effort' o com- memorate the great deeds of the nation by a monumental work of sculp- ture. A visit in an unbiassed tone of mind, to Westminster Abbey, St.. Paul's, Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park.Corner, the City, or the open places of our provincial titles, will force upon us the verdict that, putting out of the question the Imre portraiture, all our elaborate and costly works of sculpture must be classed, in an art point of view, along With the Xing Georges in the character of Roman generals, and the Shake- speares and Handels a la Roubilliae. The influence of the wretched style of Bernini, and the' art of the ." Louis Quinze " period, was unfor- tunately followed up by the clever weakness of Canova's works, which became,And perhaps are,even now, quite popular with us, to the neglect of a far better man—Flaxman. Had this English sculptor been en- couraged and enabled to work in marble, it would have been vastly for the elevation of sculptural art with us; but his finest ideas remain on paper and in plaster, and even in this inadequate form have continued a refining and invigorating influence upon the schools of Europe. John Gibson is another sculptor whose genius has been allowed to satisfy itself with works which find a place only in private galleries, when his great abilities should have been secured, if public monuments of lasting merit were to be executed. But, whatever the explanation, it is a serious regret that no important monumental and national works have been entrusted in a liberal, national, and encouraging spirit, to such men as Gibson, Bailey, and Macdowell.. It is equally matter of regret, that the Royal Academy Exhibition, year after year, shows no work of sculpture that can compare with the Hunter," the " Eve," or the " Virginins." In works ofportraiture—busts and portrait-statues, large and small—there is always a certain amount of excellence, and generally two or three busts of the highest aim and execution ; but the moment our sculptors mount their Pegasus we may predict a fall. The late Mrs. Jameson added a, capital rider to Coleridge's defininition of painting as a "somewhat between a thought and a thing," when she said, "sculp- ture is a thought and a thing" ; our sculptors, we fear, think too much of the " thing " and too little of the " thought." As we have referred to public monumental works, we will instance a specimen of this kind in Mr. John Bell's model of "Honour," No. 978—part of the memorial to be erected on the parade. at Woolwich to the artillerymen who fell in the Crimea. The figure is draped and colossal, standing on tiptoe, some- thing in the affected manner of Canova's dancing girl, and holds a small garland, of which she has a store, on the left arm. The drapery is stiff and compressed upon the figure, thus showing a form by no means noticeable for beauty, while the head appears to be modelled after the style we recognize in the works of the modern German school of Schwanthaler. There is no work even aspiring to the high ideal of the antique ; but Mr. J. H. Foley has carved, as his diploma work, a small life-size statue, called "The Elder Brother in Comus," for the sake of bringing it within our scope of ideas, otherwise it would be an Apollo, or Antinous of the late Roman school with all their faults of pro- portion and went of grace: "Melancholy and Mirth," a group of two figures, intended for Milton's Penseroso and Allegro, by Mr. J. Hancock, is a fair example of the picturesque kind of statuary which pleases the multitude, however it may be theatrical in treatment. 948, "A Girl with a Pitcher," by Mr. J. C. Westmacott, and 977. " Maidenood," by Mr. E. G. Pspworth, jun., are precisely similar in feeling, and show the average knowledge of the figure. In "Paolo and Francesca," a statuette group in plaster, 1dr. H. F. Leifchild seems to have found a difficulty in forgetting dry ,Subeffer's well-known composition, although there is an evidence of power in the poetic vein which, if cultivated with more ori- ginality, might attempt grander things; but this particular subject is one of those which ought never to be attempted in sculpture. The same ob- jection lies against a far more able work, "Piacere e Dolore," by Ra- phael Monti, who, though a Milanese, is, like many of the Italian artists, an adopted Englishman. A more striking instance of attention to the thing, and not to the thought, could hardly be found, than this group so wonderfully well carved, and displaying so much knowledge of the prac- tice of the art. But, after all, the drapery intended 'for lightest gos- samer upon the face of "Piacere " the swift hour, is bard stone,—the illusion sought is not obtained, and we feel that the veil Lail better been dispensed with. The flowers are petrified, and altogether the sculptor has been bestowing his talents unworthily, though not without effect, such as it is. Signor Monti has another group, which pretending to nothing but simple nature, attains an interest of a genuine kind,—it • is called "A Gossip on the Borders of the Senegal," being two young Afri- can women in all their primitive ornament of savage life. 'This an admirable example of picturesque modelling; the work is also noticeable as being produced in deposited copper by the eleetro chemical process. In connection with metal work, we should also draw attention to the very noble shield by Mr. Armstead, a presentation to Sir John Pakington, as First Lord of the Admiralty, by his country friends. It is in flat relief; after the style of Cellini, but modified by that of Veehte, and therefore some- what wanting in originality. The. gures, too, in the compartments, are rather liberally supplied from Michael Angelo ; but this kind of cribbing is not thought derogatory in ornamental metal work of the best masters, and does not detract from its merit as a piece of art work of a kind in which Englishmen ought to excel. A sot of alto-reliefs by Mr. Theeti, illustrative of acts of mercy, for the monument to the Duchess of Glouces- ter in St. Georges's Chapel, are only to be esteemed as showing what can be done in reproducing the mediaeval style of sculpture, to which they are confined, by the architecture as designed by Mr. G. G. Scott. There is a portrait-statue of John Bunyan, seated in the attitude, of a languid, well-fed, man of fashion, without anything in. the countenance to denote the enthusiastic and imaginative devotee he was.
The busts are numerous, and not quite so 'ghostly as usual, for we notice a vast improvement gained in the general appearance of the rank and file by the beards, of which there arc several adorning heeds quite as fine as the antique, and showing us that the grand old representative head of the Greek philosophers has not died out yet.
Very few of the busts, however, display the highest qualities of por- traiture ; and some are sadly deficient in the ordinary amount of finish. Mr. Durham's bust of General Sabine is one of the best, as an unaffected and lifelike portrait. Mr. Weeke's bust of Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mr. R. Jackson's of the Honourable Mrs. Cooper, are admirably well and delicately carved. A bust of Mr. Phillip the academician, in his Spanish jacket, is quite a chef d'muvre of Mr. John Thomas; and this, with another of Thomas Tower, Esq., by Mr. C, F. Puller may be pointed out as showing how aptly our sculptors have succeeded in carving the beard. A bust of 'the late eminent botanist, Robert Brown, by P. Slater, also deserves to be mentioned, as an excellent.work by a
sculptor of the Edinburgh school. '
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