FINE ARTS.
DIORAMA AND COSMORAMA.
THESE two popular exhibitions of pictorial illusions by foreign artists have reopened with new views. The Cosmorama is a mere peep-show beside the grand pictures of the Diorama; with which it will not bear comparison either in art or dimensions. But we couple them together, giant and dwarf, because both aim at producing illusory representations of real scenes, though by different means. The Cosmorama makes use of the simple contrivance of the peripatetic showman—a piece of magnifying- glass, with an occasional aid from transparency: the Diorama, by means of a complicated apparatus for modifying the light thrown on elaborately- executed paintings, produces the changing effects that are the most at- tractive feature of this marvellous and beautiful exhibition.
Both the views at the Diorama this year are out-door scenes: the old picture, the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris, changes from sunset to bright moonlight; in the new one, the Castle and Town of Heidelberg, the transition is more startling, from the depth of winter to the height of summer. The curtain rising discloses an extensive landscape covered thickly with snow and canopied by a blanketty expanse of gray clouds; the river looking sullen and colourless like the dreary waste through which it glides. The roofs of the houses and churches in the town, on which you look down from a great height, present a mass of snow; and but for the smoke from the chimnies and a travelling-carriage in the street, the place would seem deserted, so still and lifeless does it appear. On the left, the ruined castle of Heidelberg rears its ruined walls on the summit of the rocky heights, now mantled with snow; the fissures and projections of the building being marked by the snowy deposit. In the foreground, a few naked trees and tufts of weeds and grass are visible through the wintry pall, and a poor peasant-girl, whose footsteps are imprinted on the snow, lies frozen on her bundle of faggots. The chill desolation of the scene did not need this painful incident to heighten its grimness. Ere the spectator has well had time to note the various points of truth in this masterly re- presentation of a snow-scene, and to appretiate the merits of the painting, a gleam of sunlight becomes visible through the mass of clouds; its welcome beams reflecting a golden tinge on the castle-walls. The clouds quickly disperse before the rays of the evening sun; the blue appears; the old castle glows with a brighter warmth; the horizon is steeped in a flood of radiance; and behold! a change has come almost imperceptibly over the scene. The snow has disappeared; the rocks are covered with foliage; a party of peasants listening to a guitar are seated on the grass above the place where the frozen girl lay; and the plain and the mountains, the river and the town, are illumined with the mellow light of the setting sun. This effect, however, lovely as it is, has not been so faithfully or skilfully depicted as the snowy scene: the light has too much the appearance of transparent painting, and both local colour and shadow are wanting in the buildings and distant landscape: the river, too, is blue paint, not water. The castle, rising above its belt of trees and lighted up by the evening sun, is the best part of this phase of the scene; though its shadowed side is too dark, and the bronzed masses of foliage have a rigid and artificial look. Moreover, the trees seem to have multi- plied, as well as shot out their branches and leaves, in the short interval. Out-door views, whether architectural or landscape, are not so well suited to dioramic painting as interiors; neither are they so successfully treated by French artists, whose minuteness of detail and smooth finish are better adapted to flat unyielding surfaces of stone and wood than to the undula- tions of ground and waving masses of herbage and foliage. Indeed, the pictorial illusion can never be made complete in a representation of scenery; for the nearer the imitation of buildings, rocks, and other motionless objects approaches to reality, the more fixed, rigid, and lifeless will the trees and grass, clouds and water, men and animals, appear: the aspect of the scene will be deathlike in its stillness. Atmosphere and movement are represent- able in a picture by their effects alone; and these can only be conveyed by losing that exactness of definition inseparable from an illusory imitation of any solid object, and which gives it fixity and rigidity. This deathlike stillness is in accordance with a scene of desolation ; and the cold smooth style of foreign painting is in keeping with the wintry aspect of snow and the effect of moonlight. Such phases of the Diorama are therefore admirable: the dark shadows in the night-view of Notre Dame—they are too deep and prevalent, by the way—obscure the nume- rous details, and the light brings out only the salient points in startling relief In the evening effect the quays and bridges are depopulated, and the solitude conveys the idea of early morning; though the sunset is beauti- fully pictured. In short, the artists of the Diorama should never attempt to depict an out-door scene without veiling its details in the gloom of deep twilight or moonlight shadows, or under the snowy pall of winter. And, after all, their forte lies in architectural interiors: in them the illusion nay be made perfect. The Cosmorama views are so badly executed—with the single exception of an interior of the Church of St. Germain L'Aiucerrois, at Paris-=that we notice them only to point out the expediency of employing better painters, especially in the landscape-scenes. This exhibition might easily be made one of the prettiest in town.
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