ART.
ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS. [THIRD NOTICE.] LET us reverse the order of the catalogue in this notice, and, beginning at the last room, work our way backwards. It ia strange enough, when we consider that the Hanging Coin- mittee is changed every year, that there are some painters -whose works are almost always to be found in this " Ultima Thule" of Burlington House : their pictures, we suppose, gravi- tate there of their "own wild will," or there is some inherent fitness which sends them here. Be that as it may, the best Wyllies, Henry Moores, and Woodvilles are usually to be found in this neighbourhood ; and this year forms no exception to the rule. Caton Woodville is one of the few English painters who has endeavoured—and on the whole en- deavoured successfully—to paint "battles," as opposed to painting special incidents of battle. The French, rather than the English, view of war is the view which this artist prefers and illustrates. His workAbowever, like many successful young men's work at the present day, has been of late falling off in quality, and is rapidly becoming as tepid and unimportant as that of any Royal Academician of them all. This year the picture he sends is doubly irritating to us ; because it is not only of the pot-boiling manufactured species artistically speaking, but is a sort of bid for Royal favour, in that it depicts H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught at the battle of Tel-el- Kebir, pointing in a sort of "Up, Guards, and at 'em !" atti- tude at the enemy, while shells burst round him in every direc- tion. No good word can be said for the picture, except that the figures of some of the soldiers lying down are cleverly drawn, and that the composition of the whole is fairly good. The work otherwise is as uninteresting as it is theatric, and that is saying a good deal. The truth is that Mr. Wood- ville draws too much to make an effect, and has studied war mainly from the point of view of Aldershot and Brighton Downs. He has great dramatic ability, great skill in drawing swift movement and strong action, and considerable power of com- position. He only wants to see some real fighting, and to forget that there are such things as illustrated newspapers and Royal Princes, to do some splendid work. His picture of the retreat at Maiwand showed a promise such as no English battle painting has shown for many a year; but all his later work has been of greatly inferior quality, and his Eastern pictures have a terrible look of being painted in the Easton Road, or some neighbouring locality. In this last gallery, too, in the place of honour, is Mr. Herkomer's chief work, entitled "Pressing to the West." It re- presents a number of emigrants waiting to be examined before being allowed to leave New York for their destinations "further West." It is worth while dwelling a little upon this picture, as it has received considerable praise, and, owing to a custom which is now becoming pretty general, has been advertised before ex- hibition by descriptions of the manner in which it was painted, and illustrations of some of the principal figures. Of all artistic expedients for gaining notoriety, this expedient of advertising the labour and thought which an artist has spent over it is, in our opinion, the worst. It strikes at the very root of all artistic morality. It is unworthy for a man who professes to see and love beauty to advertise the pains he has been at to seek it. It cannot be helped, we suppose. This year three artists have done it, or allowed it to be done for them, which is the same thing,—three famous artists, Royal Academicians, and men who make as large incomes by art as are made in England. Any one who wishes to see how offensive a clever work may be made by this mis- placed adulation, and this artificial eulogy, would do well to get a little pamphlet which has been produced by the "Pine- Art Society" with reference to Sir Frederick Leighton's " Cymon and Iphigenia." This astounding production is called "The Story of the Picture," and, like the giant at the fair, must be seen to be believed.* But of this we cannot stop to speak now, though it is well to keep hammering this truth into those of our readers who care for art at all, that all this advertising is bad, bad to the core ;—bad, whether it is done by Sir Frederick Leighton, or whether it is done by Tom, Dick, or Harry ; that it has no relation to good work, and is, indeed, incompatible with the continuance of good work ; that it does, in the most literal sense, destroy the artistic faculty and power of every painter and sculptor who once allows its influence to get the better of him. There is little to be said of this special picture of Mr. Herkomer's which it is very needful to say. It is not a good one in any sense. From the intellectual and emotional point of view, its failure is complete,—one group alone has any natural action or pathos, and that group is so out of keeping with the rest of the picture that it is like a purple patch on a • It is but justice to Sir Frederick Leighton to say that be is probably not mainly responsible for this publication, for the picture in question WSW bought by the Fine Art Society in the first instance ; but he must have finally sanctioned it, as the work contains studies, do., for the picture. homespun shooting-coat ; and from the technical point of view., we can admire it only in the sense of its being the work of a man who might have done it well, but has not This latter is not a matter of doubt,—not a matter which can be argued for and. against. Let any one with the faintest knowledge of art look at this picture, and at the painting and drawing of all the hands therein, and say if it is possible to consider that good work. Mr. Herkomer is " running " an art academy down in the country, where he teaches half a dozen arts—including, we under- stand, "modelling," "miniature painting," "forging," and many others—to very choice pupils selected by himself. May we sug- gest to him that the old saying, "Physician heal thyself," has an application here also ; that if he really considers the work we have spoken of to be a finished picture, he should go to some painting academy himself P The truth is, he does not think so. He does not care; it is the old story of the clever man being, blinded by his own ability ; and years ago we kept saying that,. with all his power, Mr. Herkomer could not do half a hundred branches of art. And the result has proved it.. He has never done so genuine a bit of art as his "Old Pensioners at Chelsea Hospital" (though the painting in that was scarcely more than student work) which was about his first exhibited picture, just because it was simple, sincere, and not in the least arrogant. He has wasted himself trying to be a sort of nineteenth-century Leonardo da Vinci, instead of becoming a great English painter. There is a little bit of comfort to be obtained from the picture which hangs next to this ; it is by Mr. Blair Leighton, and is called "Con- quest" Five years ago we noticed how well and carefully Mr BlairLeighton was painting a little picture—" Until Death do us Part;" and that care has borne fruit. No young man's work in this gallery shows so much thorough hard effort as does, this picture of "Conquest." No one is, upon the whole, so satis- factory, considering the difficulty of the subject and the technical perfection which is aimed at. Here, at all events, next door to Mr. Herkomer's work, is an opportunity for people to see- what painting—even when it is only student painting—is. This. is delicately precise work, carried out to the utmost of the artist's power : unsparing in labour, thoughtful in conception, and de- lightful in result ; delightful, because it is the result of all a man. could do and feel ; because it has aimed at perfection, and where it has fallen short has failed neither through indolence nor haste. Indeed, we think this to be a very promising pic- ture for a young painter, and Mr. Blair Leighton should do in. the future good, if not great things. May we venture to give him a word of warning ? Many a good painter in embryo, has been spoilt by the ability to paint a ruff, a jackboot, or a suit of armour. Specimens of such artistic bankruptcy are to be found within the Academic ranks to-day. Let him not fall into- the same snare. Again, to paint well is necessary ; bat to. paint well is necessary as a means, not an end. He has a power which is denied to nineteen painters out of twenty, the power of rendering expression,—perhaps the greatest, as it is certainly, the most delightful, power which an artist can possess. Let him make use of this. There is a great opportunity now for a painter to step into the place where the artist ot "The Huguenots" once stood, and give us English men and women, touched with a little divine fire, but still honest and powerful, modest and sweet, as Millais's folk were when he illustrated "Orley Farm" and " Framley Parsonage.' Knights in armour with captive maidens, as in " Conquest," are attractive enough to an artist, but they are, at the best, anachronisms at the present time. What we want is a fine_ treatment of the facts of to-day ; and there is just as much. poetry now for those who care to see it, as in the times of tourney and wandering minstrels. The world alters its clothes, but little else. A good specimen of this present-day poetry is to be. found in the two pictures by Mr. W. L. Wyllie of "Heave Away" and "The Close of a Winter's Day." Of these the first is the largest, and is a repetition (more or less) in subject of his last year's picture, which was bought for the Chantrey Fund- It is a barge shooting Rochester Bridge ; the picture is full of air and light and movement, but not so good as last year's work; its effect is spoilt by too evident effort at prettiness. The second and smaller picture is very good, hitting the mark with apparent ease, and yet full of good drawing and keenly-felt colour. It represents an old prison-ship, beached, and surrounded by snow, while towards the foreground come a string of convicts and a warder. We do not know when we have seen a work which was so dreary in its beauty or so beautiful in its dreariness..
This, it seems, is a legitimate subject,—one of those which, as Ruskin once said, "might waken into mercy the cruel thought- lessness of youth, and subdue the severities of judgment into the sanctity of compassion." One of the largest Bretts of this year is in this room, but it is not a good specimen of his work, which is this year less attractive to us than usual. This is chiefly because the subjects axe badly chosen,—though the artist's deficiencies are growing upon him somewhat; as, for instance, the heaviness of his clouds and their want of transparency are more marked than ever. Here, too, is a fine rough coast picture by Edwin Ellis, called "Baiting Crabpots ; Flamborough Head," and a magnificent Henry Moore," Off the Lizard, Penzance,"— in connection with which we may mention that no member or admirer of the Academy has ventured to give an answer to our question why neither Henry nor Albert Moore have been made Associates.
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