ART.
THE DUDLEY GALLERY.
THE usual spring exhibition of water-colours at the Egyptian Hall, which opened on Monday last, may be considered to be the first artistic event of the new year, and as such possesses an in- terest of its own. On the whole, however, this collection is not a striking one, in any sense. The average of technical skill is undoubtedly higher than it was a few years since ; and there are few of the excessively inferior works which at first caused this gallery to gain such a bad repute.
But it is open to question whether the tone of the works is not less healthy even than it was in the earlier years. There seems to be coming over water-colour art, and especially over those younger members of it whose works form the body of those exhibited here, a contentedness with small aims and slight suc- cesses which is, perhaps, the most unhealthy of all the phases of Art. For if it be a bad thing when artists are content to imitate the perfection of their predecessors (and that this is a bad thing the history of Italian Art plainly shows), then it must be still worse when artists begin to imitate themselves ere they have arrived at anything like perfection, and instead of endeavouring to paint Nature as they see her, paint her in the fashion that years ago they found pleased the public. It seems now to be almost a settled thing that if a painter has made his reputation by, say, a crimson sunset or a neglected donkey, that he should go on painting crimson sunsets and neglected donkeys for the remainder of his natural life, and should imagine himself capable of nothing else. Now, this feeling is very prevalent amongst the contri- butors to this gallery, and may be observed in nearly all the works of those whose previous performances have led us to expect any- thing good from them. Thus, for instance, Mr. Macallum still sends us brown and purple fishing-boats, relieved against a glassy sea ; Mr. Ernest Waterlow still paints trees, houses, and foliage in a luminous haze of sunshine ; Mr. H. Moore still sends us grey seas and cloudy skies ; and so on throughout the list. Now, if this were an exhibition like the Academy or the Old Water- colour Society, it would hardly be fair to expect much variety from artists whose style and subjects for painting were long since chosen, but in the Dudley Gallery the majority are young painters ; the ostensible motive for its institution was to give to such men an opportunity of becoming known to the public, and therefore there is but little excuse for the yearly repetition of similar subjects. It is a weakness in a dramatic artist if he can only personate one character, and in a poetic artist if he can only touch one strain of thought, and should it not be considered as blameable always to paint the same little phase of nature as to represent it on the stage or describe it in a book ?
In art, particularly in the art of young men, it is better to fail nobly than to succed ignobly, for the one may lead to something great, the other cannot. We may smile, half sadly, at the dreams of the youth who sighs for an unattainable good, but we censure sternly the method of him who guides his steps securely, with his eyes fixed upon the gutter. And here we have, as Mrs. Browning says, every soul content
"To paint a crooked pollard and an ass."
It is a hard thing to say, but it is a fact, that in this collection of six hundred and fifty pictures there is not a single figure picture which is really first-rate, and very few which are second- rate. Nine-tenths of the drawings are landscapes, and the remaining tenth is made up; with but rare exceptions, of single figures, generally women, called "Seventeen," or "The Shepherdess" or " Vivien," according to the dress of the sitter, or the fancy of the artist. We shall, following our usual order, mention two or three of these figure subjects, and conclude with a few remarks upon the landscapes generally. Un- doubtedly the best of these single figures is a half-length of "Ruth," by E. J. Poynter. This is a figure in a brown robe, holding the gathered wheat-ears in her band. The mouth is parted slightly, and the eyes, wide open, look straight out of the picture. We cannot say that this strikes us as being one of Mr. Poynter's happiest efforts ; the colour is dark, we had almost said dirty, throughout, and the flesh is spotty, without smoothness or beauty. Any tint more unlike the clear olive-brown of an Eastern woman can hardly be imagined. Still the picture is painted with skill and firmness, and is harmonious and clever. Next to this is a picture entitled "His Master's Daughter," by John Scott, the only full-length figure painting of any importance in the exhibi- tion. It represents an incident which must have been common enough in earlier times, however rare it be now, and may be described as being,— " All along of a lady fair, That loved a serving-man."
An apprentice is covertly touching the hand of his master's daughter, as she sweeps down the steps of the dwelling-house; her father, not unsuspicious of something being amiss, eyeing him sharply the while. This has missed but little of being an in- teresting picture, and would be much improved if Mr. Scott had not insisted upon every stone in the street and every brick in the wall with such mathematical accuracy. As it is, these details are hardly subordinated sufficiently to the main interest. Perhaps the pleasantest of the figures are Mr. C. Moore's portraits of children, treated in the light, delicate manner for which he is already famous. Probably all his sitters have not quite such rosy cheeks and clear blue eyes as in his pictures, but that, every mother will allow, is a fault on the right side, and must not be too severely reprobated. One of these little ladies, Sophie Castalia Mary Leveson-Gower, second daughter of the Earl of Granville, is quite charming, in the pre- cise manner she sits, fronting the spectator, and does not seem at all depressed by the weight of names which she has to bear. There is this year a little less of the bronze boot and blue-china accessories about which we spoke in former exhibitions, and Mr. Moore's pic- tures, though still little more than decorative painting, are improved in consequence. There is a clever sketch here, No. 96, by Percy Macquoid, entitled "The Reign of Terror," although there is little, unless we have overlooked some detail, to show the significance of the name. This is a picture of a girl, in a vrhite dress, hiding her face in her hands, as she bends over a large dog, who is look- ing up gravely into her face. Whether we are to suppose that the dog is all she has left to love her, or what else is the meaning of the name, is uncertain, but the painting is bright and graceful, the background being especially good. The figure and the dog are both apparently the same painted by Mr. Macquoid in his Academy picture last year. No. 121 is a domestic scene, by Madame Bisschop, apparently one of the Dutch school, and is remarkable for a breadth of light and shade seldom attained by English painters, even of the first rank. This picture, which is entitled "Mother's Help," is concerned with a woman, several babies, and a cradle, but the exact nature of the incident has escaped our memory, and is indeed of but little importance.
We now pass to the landscapes, and must first mention, as the only one of really striking merit, No. 290, "The Port of Shields," by Napier Hemy. This is a bright, pleasant picture, very strong in colour, and full of life and movement ; and here we may mention one striking characteristic of this Dudley Gallery, and that is the want of life in the pictures, as a rule. They all seem painted in the calmest weather possible, and a windy sky is almost as great a rarity here as it is in reality in an Eastern summer. Mr. H. Moore sends several of his sea-pieces, hardly so satisfactory in water-colour as in oil, though very suggestive, one of them, No. 29, "A Change of Wind—Clouds Breaking Up," having a very fine cumulus sky of glistening white. The question still remains unanswered of whether Mr. Moore will ever see some of the colours in the sea that we every-day mortals notice, but if it is ever answered in the affirmative, we shall have some grand pictures from his brush ; as it is, he is almost the only one of our marine painters who can paint a stretch of sea, as distin- guished from two or three individual waves. Mark Fisher, whose landscapes we had occasion to praise in some of our former notices, seems to be getting more and more into the foreign style of treatment. Will he forgive us, as one of his admirers, if we remind him that the beauty of Corot was not altogether in re- ducing all his drawing to a vague smudge, but the subtle sugges- tiveness and deep feeling which underlaid his work, and that for a young painter to imitate his style without possessing his spirit can only lead to a bad result? As an instance of what we mean, we may mention No. 329, "The Farm at Elstead," where the group of trees on the right-hand side of the picture has been reduced to an absolutely unintelligible green smudge.
As pleasant a piece of landscape as there is here is No. 196, "The Delectable Mountains," by Albert Goodwin. The picture has evidently been painted on the west coast of England, at least so we should guess from the blue-green water and the dark grey cliffs. It is a narrow picture of a bay, showing no sky, but only the slope of down and the narrow inlet of a little Cove.
No. 12, "A Careless-ordered Garden," by E. Buckman, is deserv- ing of notice, as a bold attempt at expressing at once broadly and: faithfully the main features of one of the old-fashioned gardens, where vegetables, fruit-trees, and flowers grew together. The figures of the old woman, cutting a cabbage, and her son are very happy, but the picture as a whole is as carelessly ordered as the garden, and gives less pleasure in its confusion.
Ernest Waterlow sends two landscapes, neither of which is,. in our opinion, as good as the homestead which he painted last year ; and J. Knight several small drawings of fields and moor- land. Of the remainder of the pictures it is sufficient to say that they are, as a rule, technically clever, and do not excite the faintest emotion or interest of any kind whatever.
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