ART.
THE SCULPTURE OF THE YEAR.
WE welcome the Camel to Burlington House. It is true that he is unpleasant company elsewhere. "The Commissariat Camel," as the poet has told us,—
"when all is said and done, Is a Devil and an Ostrich and an Orphan Child in one ;" but for that very reason his perversity is better in bronze, and his extravagant body is the very thing to tempt a daring sculptor. Mr. Onslow Ford did well to tackle this outrageous beast. But we question whether he did wisely to set a portrait on his back. There is something very filling about the view of a camel ; the mind refuses to include even Nature's dearest freak on the top of him, unless it be merely the burnouse- shrouded Arab we are accustomed to,—a decoration to his hump silhouetted upon desert horizons. And it is still more questionable whether the camel's back was the right seat to give Gordon. The seat is not a dignified one. A seat on horseback is, for the horseman not only sits, but rides. On a camel he is awkwardly carried. To ride a horse is to become part of a nobler compound animal than either horse or man is singly. To sit a camel is merely to sit upon a hill, and that uneasily. To ride a camel is to suffer a series of earthquakes. To manage him is to pull with a rope at an outlying and malignant peninsula. All this is anxious work, and if we read the expression of Gordon's face aright, he is very much, and very naturally, preoccupied with his mount. One wishes that, even perched on so obstinate a brute, the figure expressed less of the worry of the moment, and more detachment, less camel, and a little more Khartoum.
As to the camel itself, it would not be fair, perhaps, to judge it when seen in so narrow a space. The sculptor seems to have shrunk from leaving the grotesque forms of the animal alone, and has filled up part of the arch with long heavy tassels hanging from the saddle-cloth. Throughout the work there seems to be an excess of tag and small decoration—the surface is needlessly tormented ; one would think that more reliance on the modelling of these surprising forms unbroken would have produced a stronger and less distracting effect than so much applied elaboration.
Another work of Mr. Ford's, the "Peace," seems to us the finest thing in sculpture in the exhibitions this spring. Like the best work of our recent sculpture, it is more in the spirit of Donatello, realist and artist in the forms of half-developed youth, than in the tradition of emptied-out classicism repre- sented by a neighbouring figure, the " Mermaid " of Mr. W. Calder Marshall, R.A. The action of the " Peace " is one and .graceful; she poises on a pedestal of disused arms, lets fly a dove from one outstretched hand, and holds a palm branch in the other. From every side it is a pleasant figure to look at. The two companion figures of " Music " and " Dancing" (the latter at the New Gallery) are not so completely pleasing as this last. There is a want of distinction about their design, and more particularly their draperies and other accessories, that tempts one at first to class them lower than they deserve. Of the two, the " Music" is the more successful, in her owl- headdress, simple action, and the brooding look of the face.
We have called this notice " Sculpture of the Year," but there is little else that demands mention. Mr. Alfred Gilbert sends only a relief for a funeral monument to the New Gallery. The birds and poppies are delicate in modelling, and in design too, but there is a little too much profusion of Nature about the lower part of the relief. It is, however, refreshing to see our sculptors turning to this kind of work, and applying Nature to it afresh. They will never be strong decoratively till they work in living connection with architecture. They ought to train themselves to model ornament and figure in conjunction with the mouldings of gravestones and chimney.. pieces. Qualified so, they might find and create a steady supply of work for themselves, and give the art of solitary sculpture a broader, a paying, and therefore a more secure. basis; as it is, few of them are capable of designing so much as a respectable pedestal for their own statues.
There are some who would point to Mr. Harry Bates as a skilful decorative sculptor. It is true that he puts his figures. into panels, and the figures are often pretty enough ; but it is. a long way from this to a frame and its contents knit together by a real decorative necessity. Of other men who show a certain amount of ability and promise, the name of Mr. Albert Toft may be mentioned on the side of life and vigour ; those of Messrs. Pegram and Ledward on the side of design, design to some extent Gothic instead of Renaissance.
Of course, there is the usual display of dull idealism and brute portraiture. One leaves the Academy sculpture galleries with the habitual sense that the problem of treating the late Mr. Forster's trousers on a colossal scale artistically is not yet solved; one hardly has the spirit to wish that it should be again attempted ; the author of the worst monument in London and the worst coinage of this or any other time is still busy in our midst ; there is a wonderful mess of allegory and Indians by another well-known hand ; indeed, there are things that send us back with relief to the pictures.
If we may return for a moment to the pictures in this closing article of our review of the chief exhibitions, it is to say that no exhibition can be called a bad one that includes such work as Mr. Lavery's " Bridge at Gretz," Mr. Buxton Knight's " Hemp Agrimony," Mr. Abbey's "May-Day Morning," Mr. Edward Stott's " Bathers,"—to mention only four of the pictures that dwell in one's mind for their artistic quality. In the Grosvenor, again, there is a constellation of fresh and admirable talent; the New Gallery has its Sargents and some other things ; and the New English Art Club had, in Mr. Greiffenhagen's, the most charming, in Mr. Steer's, the most original of the por- traits of the year. The pity is that this really distinguished painting is so scattered, at such cost of money to the exhibitor ; and so overwhelmed with the flood of trash, at such cost of labour and weariness to the visitor. The Academy is past praying for till, as a body of self-elected life Academicians, it is abolished. A single strong outside combination is impossible as things are, because. of jealousies among the outsiders them- selves, and because of their ambition to become insiders, to become Academicians. Speedy reform can hardly be hoped for, whether by way of suicide within or sacrifice without ; and meanwhile Art must do as it can, seduced by the official and hustled by the amateur. That, even so, we have great art, and have the promise of greater, there can be no question.
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