ART.
THE GRAFTON GALLERIES.
THE managers of these Galleries have once more earned the thanks of the public by bringing together a liberally con- ceived exhibition of pictures. It includes work by Mr. Whistler, by various foreign painters, and by members of the Glasgow school. There is no Gallery of the kind in London that both includes and excludes so much. There are, of course, some bad lapses.
But one fact alone would draw students of painting to the present exhibition, and that is a considerable collection of the work of the late Albert Moore. There is some talk of a supplementary collection of his paintings at a Bond Street dealer's, but the roomful of pictures and drawings at the Grafton is large enough and representative enough to allow of an attempt at a critical estimate of the painter's talent. To make such an estimate fairly, it is necessary to set aside two considerations that have engaged sympathy on Albert Moore's behalf. His artistic rectitude, the determination with which he held by his own remote line of production, and the indifference he displayed to the common forms of picture- cookery that command favour, have, in a time when these semi-moral qualities of an artist are rare, attracted the admiration that they deserve. But these qualities of character are merely the first necessary of the artist; a man may be honest and an artist, without being a great artist. Nor does the other fact of the exclusion cf Albert Moore from the Academy prove anything. He was, beyond doubt, better -entitled to that dubious privikgc of R.A.-ship than many of the Forty, but that, in view of eternity, is saying little. Dropping, then, these accidental matters, and treating the painter with as little reference to merely temporary tastes as we can, honouring him, that is, by the highest standard, what is to be said ?
That he had not only artistic honesty, but artistic in- telligence, is clear beyond dispute ; and artistic intelligence is rare enough, and rarer than honesty. His intelligence told him that a picture must be as carefully planned by its author in all its parts, as carefully carpentered in all its pieces, as if everything in it were the painter's invention, created to match its neighbonr. He was incapable of being an indiscriminate reporter. He did not approach Nature with the silly gape of the interviewer. There is no form and sno colour in his pictures that is not there because he chose to have it so. He even insists upon this with an emphasis that raises a first doubt ; for the greatest masters of painting have concealed most of their invention under the form of dis- covery; they have found out combinations in ready-made material; they have surprised Nature and fashion in the pictorial act. But here is a painter who is full of anxious and evident contrivance in matters of upholstery. His in- vention in these matters is not of a first-rate order ; it is -small and pretty, and it gives out when it has to deal with life. The human figures are arranged, but they remain obstinately a kind of furniture.
How the sentiment of life is missed and the sentiment of furniture conveyed by these figures may perhaps be more exactly explained. A glance at the forms reveals a prevailing taste for nobility and grace, and an anxious disposition of limbs and bodies accordingly. And many of the black-and- white drawings go a long way beyond this. There is one in particular, a study for the back of the woman in the Summer Night with her arms lifted over her head, that is beautiful, not only in the taste shown in the choice of a pose, but in the sense it has of life, of character, of action that presses the beauty of the form very closely, and also in the freedom and pleasure of the line itself. Several other studies of arrested movement have the same beauty. But when these studies are developed into the complete painting, this charm disappears ; a stony constraint and anxiety descends upon them ; the life oozes out, and only the general taste in posing remains. The secret of this weakness, or, more exactly, the refuge of this weakness, is a sculpturesque rather than a pictorial idea of form. The painter's real preference was for a somewhat pretty, slight, girlish beauty. Had he been more of a painter he would have pursued and captured this in paint. Being less of a painter, but a man of taste and theory, he had recourse to what is commonly admired in sculpture. So the pretty bead of his model is spread out upon a large stone mask, and the arms acquire the weight of marble. The modelling is never painter's modelling, it is the modelling of a coloured cast, not thorough indeed, but uneasy, as was natnral to an artist on the wrong tack. This painting of statues relates Albert Moore's work to Sir Frederic Leighton's in certain respects. Both are inspired by the figures of the Parthenon, or the temple of Nike Apteros ; but Sir Frederic showed greater tact in the adaptation. In beauty of conception, if one's memory may be trusted, the two sleeping women in the Summer Night of the President went beyond Albert Moore's essays on the same theme (and such essays are his most satisfactory efforts), besides being much better painting.. Albert Moore is never at home with his material, oil-paint ; he applies it in a negative way. He was more sensitive to pastel.
The matter of colour is difficult to talk intelligibly about. If we may judge by the early examples shown here, the feeling of the painter was on this side at first quite negative. This negative period is followed by a startlingly positive use of colour. It is like the case of those people who have dressed and adorned their houses in a sober, unconscious way, and who suddenly blossom forth in Liberty silks. The range of his colour sense is that of a fine selection of Liberty silks. That is to say, he deals in well-defined colours that are pretty in themselves and pretty when arranged and reshuffled. He goes beyond this at one or two points, when he deals in mother-o'-pearl, or matches a red or orange note against a delicate black. For the most part it is rearranging of safe and rather too sweet comoanion colours. They go together, but they do not grow out of a common source, or come together in a magic. ou see him, in the second versicn of Sea-Shells, substitute for a brown Liberty scarf an apple-green Liberty scarf, and it makes no difference to the landscape, which is as really disconnected from the first as from the second, only not aggressively so. Look round the Gallery. There is a pretty set of salmon tints, of lemons, the prettiest one of apple-greens. The blues alone are positively unpleasant, as in Mr. Chamberlain's picture, and the ambers are doubtful. One cannot thus analyse a great colourist.
There is one little picture that retains the beauty of the drawing, and in which the blue is more tolerable. It is No. 201, the Palm-Fan.
The rest of the exhibition must be dealt with briefly. Of masters who are hors concours, Mr. Whistler sends three marines, beautiful pictures, whose sea and sky combine in a deep fresh fullness. Painting like this does not clutch at the skirts, it rests on the living bosom, of beauty. In a set of lithographs by the same artist the little dancing figure is particularly fine. Two frames of sketches by the gleat Rodin hang oppDsite. Then there are three pictures by Stevens, all with a charm of colour half spoilt by the edges and polished planes of the drawing. Raffaelles method of producing coloured etchings by printing from several plates is demonstrated; the colour result is scarcely worth the pains. Mr. William Stott's Nymph bears well being seen again.
Of other painters, Mr. Alexander will perhaps be looked at first. His grey portrait, already seen at the Champ de Mars is a large and vigorous design, fine in colour and in texture. The drawing of the hand is the weak part. The same want of complete grasp keeps Mr. Greiffenhagen's Lady with a
Bose from being very good indeed. Mr. Melville's i.ortrait
group seems fine, but in its present light and under glass It is impossible really to see so dark a work. Mr. Guthrie's tea- party, already shown at Liverpool, looks very bright and sunny, though the reflected greens on the faces tell tuu much like loDal colour. Mr. J. J. Shannon has a group of mother and child, finely conceived in arrangement and charming in the expression of the faces and hauds. Mr. Swan, on the other hand, shows a child's portrait of very capable cr.f csmanship, but uninteresting in design. The most striking picture from a new man is a harbour scene by Mr.
D. Y. Cameron, already well known as an etcher. The arrangement of dark sails and spars against the lighted house fronts is extremely picturesque. A scene in a circus by that brilliant water-colour sketcher, Mr. J. Crawhall, will excite interest, for his work is seldom seen out of Glasgow. There are also three fine landscapes by Mr. Muhrman.
Of foreign painters not already mentioned M. Pierre Lagarde stands first with the fine simplicity and truth of his snow scene. MM. Breitner, Aman-Jean, Boutet de Monvel, and Jeanniot will also be found interesting. D. S. M.
[NoTE.—A letter appeared in the Spectator of January 20th, on the subject of the picture ascribed to Melozzo da Forli at the Old Masters. There is, I believe, general agreement among connoisseurs that the picture is the work of that painter, but the question of ascription has, of course, nothing to do with the admirable qualities of design obvious in the work itself. If "C. R." will look at it again he will find that age has done nothing to obscure the merits of which I spoke.]
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