ART.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
[CONCLUDING NOTICE.]
VERY few words are needed to complete our notices of this Gal- lery, as the majority of the most important works are hung in the large west room which has had its contents already noticed. We will, however, now pass through the last gallery and the two. smaller rooms, saying a word here and there on any good, bad, or interesting work. We must premise, however, that many of the pictures we must leave unnoticed here, are very fairly good specimens of their artists' work, and possessed of considerable merit, and we must group together in this class the pictures of Mr. Jacomb Hood, Mr. Ernest Waterlow, Mr. P. R. Morris, and Mr. John Collier. All of these are pictures of considerable skill, and possess almost every merit save that of being in any way different to the -usual character of their artists' work. Mr. Albert Moore's " Berries " is slightly beneath his usual average, less graceful and less interesting ; and Mr. T. M. Rooke's portraits show this faithful, humble-minded artist on his least attractive side. The truth is that Mr. Rooke's work is neither strong enough in character nor good enough in drawing to allow of its being successful in the line of pre-Raphaelite portraiture. In the endeavour to be faithful he makes his sitters almost grotesque. What the artist can do, and do as well as any one, is, in the words of the master whom he most admires, to "make a little space beautiful." It must be a very little space, scarcely bigger than a visiting card ; and then Mr. Rooke will put into it half a dozen tiny figures with robes and crowns, a little fanciful architecture, a few orange or palm trees, against an Eastern sky, a hovering angel or two, and, in fact, all sorts of pleasant pretty things. There is something very delicious in the result which he thereby attains ; the naiveté and sincerity of the man's mind is very clearly perceptible, and the pictures have, when finished, very much the mental atmosphere of some
old monkish missal which presents us with every sort of scene, and beast, and bird, and flower, on the border of a hymnal, or in the interstices of a capital letter. Perhaps the most perfectly complete contrast to such work is to be found in Mr. Julian Story's large composition of " 2Esop,"—a big bare picture of a lot of ugly men listening to Asop, who, uglier and more awkward than the rest, with all his unprepossessing physical points relentlessly emphasised, squats on a stone bench telling his fables. It is not worth while to say more about this picture than that it has evidently but one purpose—to display the clever- ness of its artist—and that it performs this office clearly, though it also displays his perversity, his misconception of the office of a painter, and his entire lack of any sense of beauty. We are speaking with the utmost care when we say that we can con- ceive of no better picture to be hung in an art school than this as a warning to clever students. For out of this galere of self- conscious cleverness in which Mr. Story, in common with .many young foreign painters, works, can, hardly come any good or even any pleasant thing. It stands in much the same relation to good art as the advertisements of a new soap stand to good literature: one reads the picture as one does the verse or story,—less with a view to the subject than to the name of the adver- tiser in big letters at the bottom of the page. Technically speaking, this picture is better drawn than most of its kind, and is vividly conceived ; its colour is beyond de- scription bad. Mr. Hamilton Macallurn's large picture of "Coral Fishing in the Gulf of Salerno" is interesting as one of those which the facetious Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy rejected, and which was rescued from the cellars of Burlington House just in time to be hung on the line here. It is a fair but not a good specimen of the artist, the subject being his usual sunshiny rippled water, with a boat or two, with fishermen in picturesque attitudes. But Mr. Macallum has not caught the character of the Mediterranean Sea, nor of the Salerno boatmen; and the work would have been much better with an English fishing-boat and "Beer Head" in the distance, as usual. Nevertheless, it was far too good to be turned out of the Academy, where Mr. Macallum has reposed peace- fully on the line for many years. A good Henry Moore hangs close to this, but not one of his very best works. Mr. Frank Miles's "Girl with Azaleas "should be noticed, as distinctly the prettiest face in the gallery, and one of the prettiest pictures. The work is delicate and nice upon the picture,—not in any way fine either in drawing or colour ; but for those who care for the portrait of a pretty woman, this will have great attractions, and it has evidently been painted con amore.
Mr. Herkomer's "Portrait of Bird Foster, Esq.," is, like all his portraits this year, striking at first, but both flashy and cheap. It has no sign of any deliberate effort of the artist to understand the character of his sitter, or to produce anything but a superficial likeness. It is, perhaps, worth insisting upon that portraiture of this kind has little or no relation to great art,—it is not even so near to it as the " impressionism " of some of the French school; for it is neither so frank, nor, in its way, so accurate.
Mr. Nettleship has here a large—very large—beast picture, which will puzzle many, and which will do little, we think, to increase his reputation. The artist is one of those few animal painters who have steadily laboured to show the dramatic side of animal life, without giving to it any of the sham human sentiment which since the time of Landseer has been the common device. And he has done some good work, though, from technical deficiencies, it has scarcely attracted sufficient notice. In this year's Academy there is an especially good composition of a lioness rescuing her cub from a torrent,—a fine piece of action, a good idea, and a very satisfactory composition, re- garded from the technical side. But the work here which is entitled "Thou makest darkness that it may be night, in which all the beasts of the forest do move," has none of these merits. It is overloaded with animals, and looks as if the contents of several large Noah's Arks had been turned loose. The land- scape, too, savours of the Lowther Arcade, and does not seem to be anywhere in particular. There is no beginning, middle, or end to the composition, and the motive of the picture is neither clear to see nor important when it is seen. What is to be said of Mr. Halswelle's "Bed of Water-lilies?" Well, chiefly that it is very much like his other works,—very clean, veryclear, very carefully drawn, very coldly coloured, very bright and light, without being sunny, and very literal without being truthful, —the sort of work which would drive a French artist mad, from its contempt for that great goddess, "La valour ;" the sort of work which a pre-Raphaelite would hate, from its approach to the form of his art, and absence of its spirit ; the sort of work which is to great landscape painting much as a piano-organ is to great music—something correct and insistent, and clever—some- thing which, turned slow or turned fast, or with an altered stop, will discourse excellent music of its kind, but through which there always runs the same turn-te.tarn of the machine. Mr. James Macbeth's rough landscape of "The Winter, it is Past !" is a relief after this ; there is just a touch of poetry in its conception, and the work, though rough, is neither coarse nor careless. And of Mr. Walter Crane's. "Bridge of Life," we almost feel inclined to speak admiringly;. for he, too, tries to bring a little imagination and poetry into his painting. But his art has never embraced the possibility of drawing the nude or semi-nude figure. The absence of knowledge is invariably apparent when he attempts them, and it seems a strange fatality which causes him to continue producing pictures of which all the interest is spoilt by the bad draughtsmanship of the figures. Look at Mrs. John Collier's picture entitled "By the Tideless, Dolorous Midland Sea," for the delicate drawing and modelling of the principal woman's figure. The work is scarcely more than a study of the nude, but it is a very graceful piece of work,—womanly in its delicacy and spirit, and yet strong and good from the technical side. With the exception of a small ideal half-length by Mr. Watts, it is almost the only nude work in the gallery which is worthy of a moment's atten- tion. We wonder whether the artist feels that as a picture it is a trifle objectless and futile ? There is in the fourth room an interesting portrait of Rossetti by Holman Hunt, which is worthy of attention. It is quite a small work, and done when both artists were young men ; but it has many fine qualities, and, above all, it conveys that impression of fidelity to its original, which is, perhaps, the most precious of all qualities in the portrait of a great man,—especially when it is coupled, as it is here, with comprehension of its sitter's char- acter. There is little else noteworthy in the exhibition—though a small, unpretending portrait, by Mr. Harold Rathbone, of Miss Ethel Rathbone should be examined carefully. It is extremely careful and faithful, and shows an attempt at painting, as opposed to smudging, very rare at the present day in young men's work. The drawing might be better, but on the whole is fairly good ; and the picture shows promise, in that it shows earnest work by an intelligent mind.
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