ART.
THE ACADEMY.-11
IF Mr. Stott had called his picture " La Vierge an Lapin," instead of Her thoughts were her Children (97), be would have made the title agree with his stylistic exercise in the recon- struction of a Madonna by Raphael. A hint even has been taken from the damaged condition of the "Madonna della. Tone" in the National Gallery in order to introduce a modern vagueness of definition. It is curious to see here an example of how futile have been the attempts of modern critics and painters to persuade the world that Raphael, as regards his Madonnas, had lost his hold on all but a sentimental public. Mr. Stott, sensitive artist that he is, has done his work with great taste and feeling for beauty, but it remains an exercise—a stylistic reconstruction. Let us hope that, having shown us how skil- fully he has been able to perform this difficult feat, he will return to modern life, which he so well knows how to touch with poetry and beauty. Another reversion to a convention of the past is Mr. Sargent's large semicircular decoration Armageddon (482). Of course, the effect of a work of this kind, intended for a definite position in a building, cannot be judged as it hangs in the Academy. What we can estimate is the poverty of the imagination. Here we have men, chariots, horses, and pieces of architecture, hurtling through the "central blue," but they leave us cold. It is just this kind of material with which Tintoretto would have created an emotional effect, making us believe for the moment in the reality of an imagined world. With him we should have accepted all the absurdities upon which this kind of painting has to be founded, and for the time believed in them ; but in Mr. Sar- gent's case we merely wonder and ask questions, and are conscious of the ungainly shape of the horse's back which is the apex of the composition. In Mr. Clausen's The Maiden (357) we get yet another reconstruction of the past. This time we get the antique, with a flavour of Watts. Nevertheless, this work is one of the most thorough and scholarly pieces of modelling in the exhibition. Mr. Lambert's picture (736) is hung too high. This painter is entitled by the solidity of his work to better treatment. As far as one can tell, con- sidering its position, the undraped figure in this unexplained allegory sh )ws a real understanding of the nude. It may not be all that is to be desired from the point of view of abstract beauty, but Mr. Lambert has not lost himself in the
model, like Mr. Byam Shaw in his Adam and Eve (759). This picture is also an instance of the ineffectiveness of bright colour without due arrangement. At a little distance all the hues neutralize each other, and on near examination we are astonished to find how little effect has been produced by so much primary colour. This lavish and indiscriminate use of crude colour is one of the besetting sins of the exhibition, taken as a whole. The artists seem to think that by piling up chromatic edifices they can attract attention and shout down their neighbours. But it is a great satisfac- tion to note how these declamatory works become indis- tinguishable in the general cacophony, while a picture like Mr. Talmage's The Chalk-pit (422) holds it own perfectly well on account of its balanced design and dignified reticencq.
Wherever we meet with Mr. Mark Fisher's landscapes on the walls the eye hails them with pleasure, they are so fresh, clear, and unforced. A- different but quite real pleasure is derived from Mr. V. Haver's two pictures (701) and (708) ; each is called A Living-room Picture, and this title we take to indicate that the artist considers them adapted to take their places on a wall, quietly and harmoniously, with other things without self- assertion. The second of the two works is the most successful ; in it the shapes of the trees against the dusky evening sky with the stars are most beautifully arranged, and the ideal figures floating in the branches are in complete harmony of sentiment with the " dim discovered " village and church tower. The picture is eminently restful, and would be a pleasant com- panion in a room ; when in a dreamy mood one could read one's own thoughts into it, and it would never force itself upon the attention at the wrong time.
Space forbids a detailed consideration of such pictures as Mr. Arnesby Brown's beautiful A March Morning in Chelsea (191), Mr. Bertram Priestman's Outskirts of a Northern City (8), Mr. Olsson's Moonlit Shore (335), and Mr. Orpen's two strong portraits (253) and (771). All these are worth dis- entangling from their surroundings. Nor should the works by Mr. Sant be passed over; his two little pictures, (269) and (274), show the veteran's enjoyment of his art, and, in the sea piece especially, his interest in his material.
To justify the attitude towards the art encouraged by the Academy, which has been taken up in this notice and in the one of last week, the writer would like to point to one of the walls of the sixth room. In the centre on one wall is a large work by Mr. George Harcourt, An Evening in Tune (364). The picture is a complete artistic mistake. It is a costume study of ladies and Chinese lanterns by a stream in a wood, which, treated on quite a small scale with brilliant and illusive exe- cution, might have charmed ; but, when the figures have to be realised on such a large scale, suggestion has to be replaced by complete realisation, and here we see a slight subject treated with the heavy hand almost inevitable in a work of this size. Realistic presentation makes tedious what might have been pleasant in a sketch. Besides this, the crudity and ugliness of colour are painfully prominent. Now look from this work, given the central place, to the theatrical and perfunctory allegory hanging above it, and the dull and lifeless paintings on either hand, to the portrait on the line on one side and the would-be ideal work on the other. When works of this kind are treated with so much apparent respect, who can blame an uninstructed public if they mistake such things for real art P Also, the prominence given to inferior work tempts painters to produce things of a like description in the anticipation of another year. If the showy and meretricious pictures were care- fully skyed, and if only the pictures which betrayed artistic intention were given good places, there might be some hope for the future. Out of the present condition of things nothing good can come, save by accident. H. S.
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