ART.
THE ACADEMY.—I.
THE honours of the present exhibition are undoubtedly with. the Academicians and Associates; but so are the dishonours. The works of Messrs. Watts, Sargent, Abbey, Orchardson, and Waterhouse form an achievement of high excellence,. covering a wide field, and not equalled by outside exhibitors_ But it would be equally possible to select another group of members and say of them with equal justice that their work is the worst in the exhibition; while between these poles lies the morass of dull mediocrity. Non ragion' di tar—pass on, and if possible without looking. The only picture this year which has a great poetic inspiration is Mr. Watts's Love Triumphant (No. 310). This work is the sequel to his Time, Death, and Judgment, and should be seen, not on these dis- tracting walls, but like the earlier picture, in St. Paul's Cathedral. The present work shows Time and Death over- come and fallen, while Judgment, or rather Justice, trans- figured into Love, soars up to heaven. This aspiring figure is. worthy of Mr. Watts at his best; it has that grandeur of rhythm, both of line and mass, which this painter attains in the same way as did the great Italians. To judge of the colour of this picture is impossible, on account of its surroundings. In the upper part are concentrated the warm reds and yellows, but banging immediately above is Mr. Austen Brown's pink Bishop relieved against a gibbering blue sea.- These thin, screaming colours affect as disastrously the figure of Love as does Mr. Leader's whity-brown paper coloured sea-shore the sombre and chaotic background. It is Mr. Watte's habit to submit his work to constant revision; perhapa he may do something farther to the prostrate figures, which if they were more subdued would add to the general effect. The dominant feeling whioh the painter has desired to ex- press is the unconquerable power with which the figure of Love aspires—nothing could keep down the upward flight. The idea, which is a perfectly pictorial one, is fully achieved. The arms are raised and the wings spread; the legs have not yet gained freedom, for the feet are still touching the earth ; but the triumphant face proclaims that love "shall reign for ever over all."
If Mr. Watts has produced the best—indeed the only— picture inspired by great poetry this year, Mr. Sargent un- -doubtedly carries off the honours of the portraits. There can be no question of the commanding power of his Francis ,Crannter Penrose, Esq. (No. 63). What strikes us first, even before the amazing cleverness of the painting, is the sym- pathy of the artist for the form and structure peculiar to old age. The most striking instance of this is to be found in the hands. Hew wonderfully observed and represented are the brown, shiny skin and the long, thin fingers, which, although attenuated, are sensitive and full of life. The head shows -equal sensitiveness on the part of the painter; the structure -of the skull shown against the dark ground is masterly in the extreme. The pose of the sitter is one of dignified simplicity, and the composition is sufficiently studied to avoid any photographic effect; the colour, too, although iittle more than black and grey, is the black and grey of a -colourist, not of a man who is indifferent to colour. More astonishing by its cleverness, though not so beautiful or so dignified, is Mr. Sargent's portrait of Asher Wer- theimer, Esq. (No. 603). With a palette as restricted, and .as moderate a scale of light and shade, as in the picture just described, Mr. Sargent scores a success as great, though of a totally different kind. Instead of old age, enthroned in its rhigh-backed armchair, the man of the world stands, cigar in hand, about to make acute remarks upon men and things. The actual painting itself is of a kind which might be described as witty ; and in the poodle dog, whose head just comes over the frame, Mr. Sargent has allowed himself the amusement of illusion, for the pink tongue seems to palpitate.
Mr. Seymour Lucas has executed a large painting for one of the panels at the Exchange, which will be fixed to the wall ultimately. The scene is William the Conqueror Granting -a Charter to the Citizens of London (No. 449). The subject was uninspiring, no doubt, but the painter might have done something better than this half-hearted costume picture. It seems as if Mr. Seymour Lucas, when given the commission, tad gone to Paris to study the wall decorations of the Pantheon, but had resolutely turned his back on Pavia de Chavannes, and studied the inferior things there which are such good examples of what wall painting should not be. Costume pictures, to be even tolerable, must have that subtlety and cleverness of painting which is absurd in a fresco, where breadth is everything. A wall painting, to be anything short of an anomaly, must never attempt to produce illusion ; it should be a development—a flower—of the architecture. The flatness of the wall must always be kept in mind ; holes must not be made in it, neither should there be violent projections. Imitations of texture, too, should not be insisted on. But an ordinary costume picture without these things is not interesting ; "bits of armour," and other studio properties painted with the needful severity for wall painting, become appallingly dull. This is the error Mr. Seymour Lucas has fallen into. His work, painted with every resource of an easel-picture, might have been a good example of a rather uninspiriting style of art, but still good of its kind. But when the artist felt he must leave out the small ornaments of painting, he should also have felt the necessity for a more austere composition and a more distinguished design.
In literature the difference between poetry and prose is easily recognised. Although in painting there is just the same division, it is not so apparent. The casual observer sees no difference in kind between Mr. Watts's Love Triumphant and Mr. Seymour Lucas's historical picture. But, really, the former is poetry, the latter prose. Even if this is granted, may not prose be just as great and noble a portion of our art as it is of our literature ? Poetry and prose are both com- pounded of emotion and reason in varying proportions, the latter predominating in prose. If this be so, can prose in painting ever be satisfactory ? It is rash to answer "No" positively, for a genius may always arise whose special power it may be to expand the boundaries of his art. But with this reservation it seems as-. if reason was much leas capable of being expressed by painting than emotion. An account in words of an historical event may be a great work of the art of prose. But painted history, true or feigned, has always to be propped up with extraneous sup- ports to make it intelligible. An explanatory title in the catalogue, the introduction of portraits of historical person- ages or accessories,—these are the means resorted to in order to connect the picture with matters of fact so that its historical meaning may be understood. Let any one look at the pictorial representation of a scene from history and consider how far intelligible it would be if the parts of it were not recognisable in a purely mechanical way. How far would it impress him if the persons and things were unrecognisable P Only so far as the painter had added to his archteological studies the beauty which creates emotion but which cannot tell stories. The appeal to the reason by painting alone is so feeble that it has to seek help from outside, from the memory and from archwological details, to make the portrayal of an event understood. Therefore, things which, when treated in prose literature, produce a perfectly satisfactory result, do not do so in painting, because they appeal more to the reason than to the emotions. But this appeal is so weak when made by painting that it has to call in help from outside. For subjects which are poetical painting is a powerful exponent. Colour and form can raise emotions swiftly, and without the reasoning powers being called into play. It really matters little if the figure in Mr. Watts's picture be called "Love," or "Justice," or anything else. All that matters is that it should kindle a great and hopeful emotion.
Here only the extremes have been touched upon, but between these lies a branch of art which Mr. Berenson has aptly called "illustration." The consideration of this matter will arise when Mr. Abbey's King Lear is discussed in next
Previous page
