FINE ARTS.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.
Criticism on an exhibition such as that of the Royal Academy, com- prising nearly fifteen hundred works in various departments of art, cannot be very accurately or effectively given in generalities. The proportion of really capital works to the second-rate, the indifferent, and the bad, runs much the same from year to year, and never, unfortunately, very high. The truest test would lie perhaps in a comparison of the dozen or score best works of two seasons : but this comparison too would yield a result dependent probably rather on casualty than on any essential conditions. The absence of some particular artist or artists would be more likely to turn the scale than any intrinsic superiority. It is only in periods that the contrast comes out strongly : and, if we balance the actual decade of English art against its forerunner, we shall not be slow in deciding in fa- vour of the present. Should we, however, apply the test before sug- gested as between 1852 and 1853, we think the latter would come off se- cond-best ; and our general impression of the two exhibitions coincides with this view. The absentee painters, (among whom we omitted last week to name Mr. Poole,) are to be at least as much regretted this year ; two or three of the best contributors are not so good ; the sculpture is not only a poor but a poorer show ; the architecture, if somewhat more ex- tensive, is scarcely less unconspicuous. We cannot but remark, too, that the hanging has been very arbitrary ; and we happen to be aware of va- rious cases of exclusion, which, while they leave of course unaffected the positive deserts of the accepted pictures, strangely elucidate the Council's estimate of or indifference to their relative claims. For, so long as really worse works are hung, that annually repeated commonplace about pictures being rejected on grounds irrespective of their assumed inferiority will continue, what it is, all nonsense,—unless, indeed, the Academy choose to confess to favouritism and caprice.
Our notices of the exhibition will proceed in the order of sacred, his- toric, dramatic or inventive, and domestic subjects, landscapes, portraits, miniatures, architecture, sculpture.
The Sacred Pictures are comparatively numerous ; and are distinguished by an "Incredulity of St. Thomas" from the famous German Overbeck. Englishmen are by this time perfectly familiar with the style—a milder and more recluse Raphaelism—of Which this is not the place for us to do more than simply profess a greatly qualified admiration. The purpose of the expressions, as we read them, pertains to the most elevated con- ception of the subject; in the Saviour, a sorrowful pity of the Apostle's disbelief, as an infirmity which carried with it its own retribution ; in St. Thomas, who clenches one hand with spasmodic emotion, as he stretches out the other to feel the wound of the spear, a dawning hope which scarce dares credit itself. Nevertheless, the work leaves us unim- pressed ; appearing to us, as it does, an abstraction of the mind—at best, a public religious exercise, the scene of which is a picture-gallery instead of a church—rather than the living utterance of a devout heart. In point of art, we have to observe that the right arm of Christ is rigid, and un- pleasantly, without being very expressively, placed ; and St. Peter's head turned stiffly round into the composition, evidently in pursuance of a pictorial dogma. The colour is light and precise, with a touch of hard- ness. Our religious painters may study much with profit from the Germans ; but we hope they will never learn off by rote, without omission or modi- fication, the whole lesson presented by the school to which this work belongs. We leave with humiliation a lamentable attempt—what the French call attentat—at the same subject by Mr. Knight, his equally painful " Intercession," and the Affghan bandit whom he names " The Prophet Daniel" r • and we come to Sir Charles Eastlake's " Ruth sleeping at the feet of Boaz." The President has made little of a beautiful subject, to which his style was peculiarly adapted to lend an additional charm,—be- cause, failing to conceive his theme intensely as well as sweetly, he dwells more upon the style in which he illustrates it than upon what he has to illustrate. The grave abstraction of Boaz in the dim approach of morn- ing, the pure sleep of Ruth, who lies covered by the skirt of her "near kinsman's " garment, with the roosting doves, and the cattle, sheaves, and reapers, looming in the peaceful fields, afforded opportunities for a work in the highest order of feeling. Mr. Dyce exhibits a full-length, but smaller, repetition of "The Meet- ing of Jacob and Rachel," sent in 1850. The sentiment is chaste and lovely in a high degree, the execution that of a thorough artist ; but the colour will not be fully sympathized with unless by the devotee of a sys- tem. As the picture is a repetition, we quit it with these otherwise in- adequate comments. Mr. Dyce's cartoon for a fresco, "St. Peter," has a grand rugged head and finely-treated drapery. " The Head of a Scribe," by Mr. Herbert, "A Study for a portion of one of the Frescoes in the New Palace, Westminster "—that —that of the judgment of Daniel, we sup- pose—has the look of an ordinary easy-going man roused into surprise, and is painted in a dim tone. In the face of Mr. Hart's " Solomon at the Rock-hewn Dial, pondering o'er the Flight of Time," there is a feeble sententiousness the antipodes of wisdom. Mr. Severn sends a semi- mystic invention—so we presume it to be—which represents the Magda- lene buying, in miraculous prevision of the crucifixion, the ointment with which she anointed the body of Christ "to the burying." The face is beautiful, though not of a sacred order of beauty ; and the figure stands well and gracefully in the shadow of a thick canopy of honeysuckle. The infant cherubs belong to a style of art we entirely deprecate : but altogether this is the best, as it is the most important, of Mr. Severn's recent works. " The Master is come," by Mr. Frank Stone,—Martha apprizing Mary of the Lord's arrival after the death of Lazarus,—ia simple—artificially but not severely simple—in colour and arrangement, and does not suggest the painter's inaptitude for such a subject quite so strongly as might have been expected. It is a long way, however, from being religious art, even remotely. We understand the wild look of Mary to indicate the awakening from that state of lethargic grief in which the realities of the outside world pass as shadows. Mr. ArinHaeg " City of Refuge," illustrating the provision of the Mosaic law for " the slayer which killeth any person at unawares," is an interesting subject, of great opportunities, spoiled by French posing and other conventions. This artist is losing ground perversely and rapidly. Another of the West- minster Hall prizemen, Mr. Tenniel, produces a horrible " Expulsion from Eden,"—monstrously red as from the flames of "the other place."
A name entirely new to us—that of Mr. P. H. Calderon—is attached to the best among the sacred pictures of the less well-known men—" By the Waters of Babylon there we sat down, yea we wept when we remem- bered Zion." The style of design, though not grand, is the extreme re- verse of petty or unmeaning ; the colour is solid, bright, and pure ; and there are manifest originality and study throughout. The figures sit rather too much like Academy models—a sign of inexperience ; but they have true feeling—especially the white-draped female who lies weeping across the old man's knees. The background is English, but it is very sweet and poetical. We confidently augur well of Mr. Calderon. "The Angel directing the Shepherds to Bethlehem," by Mr. Woodington, pos- sesses interest as being (we believe) the first oil-painting of a sculptor of some eminence and more deserving. Its merit lies not, where it might be expected, in the forms—which are but weakly sculpturesque, while the general treatment is of the hacknied Lejeune kind ; but in a single striking passage of colour—the light upon the white angel. In preference to one or two conventionalities more obtrusive, we name, as last in this section, the high-hung "Madonna and Child" of Mr. G. A. Storey ; which, with a somewhat infantine manner, appears to be rather nice in sentiment.
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