ART.
THE ROYAL A.CADEMY.—[SEcossn Norscs:.] Mn. MiLsaus and Mr. Calderon each exhibits the picture presented by him to the Academy, according to custom, on his election as RA. Neither shows such an anxiety as might have been expected that his diploma work should worthily represent him, and bear wit- ness among his fellows concerning the true nature and extent of his powers as au artist. Mr. Calderon's picture has a middle-aged gentleman with a sword in his band crossing a garden bridge into a thicket, and followed by a girl with scared look carrying a casket. It is called "'Whither?" (579), suggests no meaning, and exhibits little art. Mr. Millais's picture, entitled " Souvenir of Velasquez " (632), is an attempt at what, with all his cleverness, the artist has quite failed to achieve. Velasquez was, as every one knows, a master of execution, and one sweep of his brush expresses more than a whole day's niggling from the hands of most others. But the expressiveness of his execution depended on his profound know- ledge or, at least, unerring perception of the essential characteristics of the objects he was to represent. With inferior knowledge or less accurate perception, the imitation of this fascinating kind of execution sinks to affectation and impertinence. A peculiarity of execution, moreover, is the very quality of all others which one artist ought not to imitate from another. To be of any use, it must flow naturally from the painter's idiosyncracy, otherwise it is mere mannerism. And Mr. Millais has dexterity enough of his own to make borrowing quite unnecessary, and, except in idle moments, very undesirable. Fortunately, the head of the flaxen- haired child (which is his subject) is painted entirely in his own manner ; only the frock of black and pink may be taken as his notion of the great Spaniard's style of execution, and the ill- success of the experiment (take, for instance, the pink sleeve) should prevent a repetition of it. On the other hand, the portrait picture of " Sisters " (6) is unaffected and beautiful. Three pretty children dressed in white with blue ribbons have been playing the old-fashioned garden game of Les Graces, and now the eldest takes her younger sisters by the hand, while with momentary seriousness they attend, it maybe, to a word from nurse or mother. The subject has quite got the better of the temptation which the artist too seldom repels of challenging notice by showy execution. These "sisters," with their background of azaleas, are simply delightful. The same artist's "Rosalind and Celia" (70) is undeniably pretty. But the transparency of Rosalind's disguise, which is allowable and even necessary on the stage, is a very questionable merit in the picture. The difficulty is perhaps inseparable from the sub- ject. The anxious beauty of Stella (242) must find sympathy, in spite of the disturbing trickiness of painting in her dress ; and the " Pilgrims from Greenwich to St. Paul's " (356) is a genuine bit of hero-worship. There are three pictures by Mr. Calderon besides that already noticed. One is in distemper. But he is not at his best in any of them, and the frequent repetition of the same features in every woman he paints betokens some indo- lence of study and observation. But perhaps it is too much to expect there will be no relaxation of effort in a man who has just reached the top of professional rank.
There is no man takes firmer grasp of his subject than Mr. Poole, or holds his way more fixedly with a single eye to the highest province of his art. Popularity may come or not ; if not, so much the worse for the people. He must have a dull brain that is not stirred by this artist's picture from Chaucer. It is the old story ; a suspicious husband, deceived by the injasta nooerca, casts his wife and child adrift on the sea ; without sail or rudder, her trust is only in Heaven. Mr. Poole has treated the subject with rare power, and with the poetic faculty that realizes the scene and enchains the attention. In looking at that "hitch schip " that, under an angry sky, drifts helplessly along the moonlit tide sea-
wards, it is a solace to one's sense of poetic justice to remember that she found a port at last. Husband and wife came together again, though perhaps "their life was a serious one, and they died early." The moonlight is very well painted. The colour of it is true, and not too "pretty," and helps to carry the attention straight to the point of the story. This last quality might be studied with advantage by Mr. Mediae, who is apt to overlay his subject with insignificant detail. In his "Sleep of Duncan" (439) the real meaning and intention are almost stifled by the crowd of objects indiscriminately presented to the eye. What first attracts the attention and, worse still, holds it last, is the detail of arms and armour, of architecture and furniture. These are per- haps archmologically correct, but that is little to the purpose. Raffaelle's cartoons might be pulled to pieces, if correctness of that sort were all in all ; did not Garrick play Othello in the cocked hat and uniform of a British general ? By all means avoid an- achronisms; but use your knowledge as a tool ; do not be a slave to it. Mr. Poynter has a singular power of compelling his arch- seological knowledge to serve his pictorial purposes. We all remember his great picture last year ; and now the business of a siege by a Roman army, urged on with all the engines of offence and defence at their command, is made a reality to our eyes (402).
It is real business, and no mere pretence for parading a little knowledge, still less for copying a few of the properties of an artist's studio. Between the age of the catapult and that of the cannon battering engines were of little efficiency, and Mr. Marks would imply that the defect was supplied not by professional but by lay invention. Such at least appears to be the lesson of "Ex- perimental Gunnery in the Middle Ages" (494), in which a black- smith having strengthened a great iron tube with external bands and chained it down to the earth like a vicious beast, collects his neighbours to be witnesses of the trial. He is about to apply the match, and all by anticipation, including the cross-bowman, wince at the coming shock. The out-of-door study to which Mr. Marks has of late years devoted himself has brought a sensible improve- ment in colour ; while his appreciation of character and fund of Hogarthian humour never desert him. Gypsies and gypsy camps have been painted before now, and well painted by Mr. Raukley. But it remained for Mr. F. Walker to perceive the majestic carriage that comes of unconstrained use of the limbs, as in the gypsy woman he has here painted (477). Mr. Walker's quality of colour is peculiar. No doubt there is daylight in it ; but the constant use of opaque white in his water-colour practice appears to have led him to a certain chalkiness even in his oil painting.
There is always pleasure in looking at such earnest and manly work as Mr. Yeames's. The life of Lady Jane Grey affords a subject for more than one exhibitor at the present Exhibition, but only Mr. Yeaines has treated it worthily. His scene is in the Tower, when Feckenhain, the queen's Chaplain, engages the prisoner in a learned disputation intended to convert her from her Protestant tenets. The chaplain urges his arguments warmly—with the ardour of a partizan, rather than with the comforting warmth of a ghostly adviser. His " patient " is much-enduring, yet not undistressed, as the artist has well expressed it in her fair face ; and the issue of the argument may be foreseen. This subject Mr. Yeames has got well hold of, and has embodied it in a composition the large arrangement of which is well adapted to give it serious and solemn meaning. The colour, too, is good, and the painting careful throughout, but by no means laboured. However, in the matter of colour, more might have been made of the chaplain's black gown in the bands of a Phillip. A less serious subject, but well worth the doing (and, therefore, as is clearly Mr. Yeames's opinion, worth doing well) is "Time Chimney Corner" (222), wherein the old man finds his accustomed corner preoccupied by a sick child wrapped in a blanket, but of which, perhaps, the principal quality is the truth of reflected daylight per- vading the room. This last characteristic is also very remarkable in Mr. Storey's " Shy Pupil" (273), which is very glowing and true. The figures, it must be confessed, are of secondary interest.
Sir E. Landseer's dead stag and coolie dog are in every way worthy of his best days (347). The stag is obviously dead, dead high up on the hills, whither he has fled with his wound, and whither the watchful coolie has followed him. There is a world of intelli- gence and trustworthiness in the dog's eye, which no man can paint so well as Landseer, when (as here) he will think only of a dog, and not of a man travestied. A pair of carrion crows follow, skimming low, with beaks to the bloody track in the snow. Is it scent, or taste, or sight that leads them on ? Here is a nut to crack. Landseer is less at home in another picture, wherein he illustrates an episode of the troubled times that followed the '15. Colonel Donald Murchison (an ancestor of Sir Roderick Murchison, who suggested the picture—so he says—and who thus gets his family virtues more judiciously commemorated than when he erects unsightly obelisks for that purpose, say, at Balmacarra) collects rents for his defeated chieftain behind a screen of fallen trees and turves, over which his ragged Highland friends are closely watching a party of King George's redcoats. The catalogue mentions the particular spot in Glen Afric where the scene is supposed to be laid. But few will recognize it as Aa na Munich, or believe in the road over which the troopers are comfortably riding. The picture is, for Landseer, a poor one. In his peculiar province as a painter of animals he has no rival, and scarcely a follower. There is, however, a remarkably good picture by Cathelinau (176) of a black and tan bitch, radiant with all the pride and happiness of nursing her pups. It is worth while noticing what is the result of mere popularity-hunt- ing; there was no more popular picture at last year's Exhibition than Mr. Barber's "First at the Fence." Does his "Taking the Lead" (431) at this warrant the public judgment in his favour ?
V.
Previous page
