ART.
THE WINTER EXHIBITION AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
THE Royal Academy have this year got together for their Winter Exhibition a large and splendid collection of works by the late George Frederick Watts, R.A. The greatness of the artist we have so recently lost is shown in a striking and impressive manner in the five rooms filled with his work. These hundred and forty-seven paintings and drawings, and one piece of sculpture, cover a period of just seventy years. The range of subject is astonishing in these days when specialising in one small branch of art is so common. But through all Watts's work, whatever the subject, runs the ennobling thought, the purifying spirit, which lifted everything he touched to a high plane of idealism. This spirit is particu- larly noticeable in his treatment of such purely mythological subjects as Daphne, Diana and End yntion, and the Childhood of Zeus. In these pictures the noble and classic beauty of the forms, totally unsuggestive of any studio model, removes them to a remote sphere of ideal art but seldom reached in these days. For pure loveliness it would be difficult to match the Childhood of Zeus, painted in 1896, when the artist was nearly eighty. It is hard to believe that it is not the work of a man in the full pulse of vigorous youth, so imbued is it with immortal freshness ; while the face of the infant Zeus is of a beauty that can only be described as poignant.
The pictures have to some extent been arranged chronologi- cally, but this method has not been strictly adhered to, and there are many breaks; thus works separated by more than twenty years may be found hanging next to each other. There may have been reasons for departing from a strict chronological arrangement ; but if it could have been carried out, the Exhibition would have gained greatly in instructive- ness. But in any case it is a task of the highest interest to trace the gradual unfolding of the artist's genius, and to note the advance in technique which each decade brought, until in about 1860 he may be said to have reached his supreme level. From that time onwards for forty-four years he continued to pour forth a stream of astonishingly varied work, of which only a small part failed to reach the level of his beat. If the present collection contained all that Watts had ever painted, it would still seem a great achievement. But when it is remembered that his most important allegorical works are in the Tate Gallery, many of his finest portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, and that there must besides remain a certain number of his pictures which have not been lent by their owners on this occasion, the immensity of his life-work almost over- powers the imagination.
The first number in the catalogue is a portrait of the artist at the age of seventeen, in which he appears as a dreamy-eyed boy. On an easel in the big room is a portrait of himself painted in the year of his death, and not quite finished. It is a striking presentment of dignified and beautiful age, though the expression seems a little sterner than that which his friends were accustomed to see in his face. Between these two portraits comes a full-length picture (No. 9) of a young man in a red robe, painted at the age of thirty-six.
In the first room the pictures are mostly early works, and they include the well-known Wounded Heron (No. 38), which was the first thing the artist exhibited at the Royal Academy (in 1837). in the same room is the charming portrait (No. 32) of Miss Nassau Senior, painted in 1858, which, though stiffer in technique than his later work, is yet marked by a peculiar grace and elegance. Perhaps the most noteworthy of the portraits in this room is the one of Dr. Joseph Joachim, painted in 1866,—a truly marvellous picture, giving not only the outward aspect of the great violinist, but also, as it were, a glimpse of the "Dweller in the Innermost."
There are still a few people who dislike Watts's "intention in art" as deliberately set forth by himself,—namely, the frankly didactic effort to express in his pictures "things spiritual and ethical," and to "paint ideas." Such esprits posit ifs, as M Anatole France calls people of this tempera- ment, cannot of course be convinced of any error, nor are they likely to recognise that if few pictures contain "ideas," it is because the artists have none to express. But even these cavillers must surely bow to the greatness which could produce such widely various works of pure genius as the Portrait of Lord Tennyson (No. 67), the exquisitely fanciful and gem-like Good Luck to Your Fishing (No. 73), and the moving For He had Great Possessions,—all in Gallery No. II. In the same room is also a fine version of what is probably the most popular and best known of all Watts's pictures, Love and Death (No. 66), lent by the Manchester Whitworth Institution. In this room the earliest date of any painting is 1863. By that time the artist had completely shaken off his earlier technique, and had entered upon the stage of crumbly surfaces, iridescent colour, and of those unsurpassed atmospheric effects which defy all analysis of the curious who might wish to discover "how it is done." It cannot be too much insisted upon that, although he was not equally successful in everything he painted, Watts at his best was as great a master of technique as any artist who ever lived,—as great as Titian or Rembrandt. His affinity to the Venetians is a matter of universal agreement, but that he also had much in common with the greatest imaginative painter outside Italy
would perhaps not be so generally recognised. But any one who has seen Rembrandt's wonderful picture of David Playing the Harp before Saul (at the Hague) will feel that the Dutch artist's conception and presentment of the subject is singu- larly analogous to that of Watts in similar pictures. The technique of the painting also bears a strange likeness to a Watts of the best period, being very rough in surface and marvellously luminous and rich in colour. On this point Mr. Watts once said to the present writer : "I like to feel the surface of the paint," at the same time passing his band over one of the pictures in his studio.
In the Water-Colour Room are a number of drawings, some in chalk, others in pencil and silver-point. Many of them show such power of draughtmanship and delicate beauty of handling that to find their equals we must go back to Leonardo and Raphael. Let those who may think this an exaggerated statement look carefully at the Portrait of Lieutenant-General Arthur Prinsep as a Boy (No. 87), the Portrait of the Hon. Rollo Russell as a Child (No. 90), and the Portrait of Miss Fenwick (No. 94), to mention only three. In the same room is The Isle of Cos (No. 156), which Whistler might have named "a harmony in pale blue and silver," and the mysteriously beautiful painting of the Sphinx seen darkly against a luminous background of greenish sky.
The large Gallery No. III. contains a number of the painter's masterpieces. Here is a Portrait of Miss Alice Prinsep (painted in 1860), gorgeous in the rich deep tones of the blue dress and sleeves slashed with orange, the fine reds of the background, and the black of the piano, while the face glows with Venetian beauty of colouring. Here also is the Childhood of Zeus already mentioned, the noble portraits of Mrs. Percy Wyndham and Countess Somers, the wonderful picture called The Eve of Peace, the unsurpassed Daphne, the exquisite Hope, with its lovely harmony of blues, the portrait of Walter Crane, and the Carrara Mountains. Seldom have mountains been drawn and painted like these. Full of minute detail, yet handled with immense breadth, this picture certainly reaches the highest level attainable in pure landscape painting. In Gallery No. IV. The Two Paths, Loch Ness, and Loch Ruthven are further examples of Watts's poetic treatment of Nature ; while the Dore that Returned in the Evening is a wonderful vision of vast illimitable waters and spacious sky. In this room are also a fine portrait of the Right Hon. Gerald Balfour (No. 248); a beautiful full- length of a girl in a white hat (No. 239), painted last year; and a delightful little Ganymede (No. 241), very Venetian in feeling, whose face is like that of the infant Zeus, and almost as beautiful.
One most noticeable feature of the Exhibition is the sense of harmonious and rich but quiet colour which pervades the galleries. Though not every work shown is a masterpiece, the general effect is of a most satisfying and restful nature. In fact, the rooms would be good to live in. Of how many exhibitions of modern paintings could this be said ?
Besides the five rooms of works by Watts, the Royal Academy show a small collection in Gallery No. V. of drawings and paintings by the late Frederick Sandys, and (in the Central Hall) a model of Mr. Brook's design for the National Memorial to Queen Victoria. Sandys is fairly represented by a number of book illustrations, of which The Little Mourner (No. 278) is a very good example, and a few paintings and coloured chalk drawings. Of the paintings, the most remarkable is the Portrait of Mrs. Stephen Lewis, an extraordinarily vivid and minute piece of work in the style of Van Eyck. Morgan to Fay (No. 267) and Oriana (No. 302) should also not be missed. A finely drawn and realised head in coloured chalk is that of Percy Wood (No. 294), represented in the dress of Chieftain of the Mohawk tribe of North American Indians. But there is a good deal of Sandys's work that it is impossible to admire. Such things as Gentle Spring (No. 268), the Portraits of Two Children (No. 284), the Portrait of Mrs. Gillilan (No. 292), and Helen of Troy are somewhat of a shock to the visitor who comes straight from passing some hours among the Watts pictures. The contrast is too violent, and it tells hardly on Sandys.
Mr. Brook's model, which is on a one-tenth scale (and therefore of considerable size), gives the idea of an imposing
and well-proportioned monument. Its note of simplicity is very marked; and the effect of the whole should be most striking, if not hopelessly marred by Buckingham Palace in
the background. J. C. C.
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