ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.—IL
IF I wish to express in words the fact that a man passed rapidly through a room, I shall commit an elementary error in description if I linger to make a careful inventory of its furniture. To do this would be to indulge in a realism untrue to fact, for these objects would ,be present in such insistent detail neither to the actor nor the onlooker, and destructive of effect, because to describe at such length would be to slacken the expression of speed in the event by the lounging style of its narration, and thus to omit the most important truth, since that is best conveyed by an answering quickness in the manner of the telling. A hint that the china rattled on the chimney-piece may be to the purpose as indicating a vigour of tread, but to be full of information at that moment about the maker's mark on the under-side, is to convince the reader that a leisurely saunter was on hand. When a painter essays, with the means at his disposal, to tell the story of action or movement, he is attempting what at the best is a doubtful undertaking, though all the more alluring for that ; he has to render a moving figure by a figure that cannot move, that must obstinately stand still; he is bound to render the room to some extent, instead of alluding to it, and this necessity, and the comparative ease of the task, in- vite him to reproduce its still-life at the expense of proportion, to rob the figure of interest that already was incapable of movement. Now, a moving mouse is more engrossing to the attention than a roomful of precious things, and this natural arrest of the attention being denied to his art, a painter must needs use every device that is left to him to make his figure tell among its surroundings with something of the predominance of life. A laborious definition will not do it, for that is to relapse on still-life by the sug- gestion of a leisurely survey ; rather the main character of the action must be caught, and a trait here and there of con- vincing expression determined, such as the eye collects in a glance; to do more is to glue the eye with impartial indifferent scrutiny to every feature of a scene, and to reproduce the absurdities of the instantaneous photograph. The wheel is stopped, so that its spokes can be counted, and the act that in life blots out everything from the field but itself is reduced to the false proportions, the cold impression of the measuring-tape. Nor does the art of suggestion stop here.. By a kind of metaphor implicit in the whole texture of his work, by a vigour and vivacity of handling that argue an agitation of impression, the painter may communicate a sense of life ; and by the way he paints even the inanimate sur- roundings, give them a vibration and intensity that make them partners in the general excitement, like the images of poetry that reverberate upon a fact the energy and spirit of a flame.
To search for convincing examples of an art like this in the Academy would be a sanguine proceeding, but something of the essential difference between the quick and the dead methods of treating action may be gathered by comparing Sir John Gilbert's picture of a Venetian Senate with the pictures by Mr. Tadema and Mr. Poynter that flank it on either side. All three purport to render action: we are invited to read Mr. Tadema's canvas as A Kiss ; Mr. Poynter depicts a game at knucklebones. The middle picture will probably strike most people as a sketch compared with the others ; the others will seem to be carried further, to be more "finished." Now, if finish is possible to a picture that leaves out the most essential point, if that omission can be made up for by polish of what remains, these pictures are certainly more finished. In the other sense they are not begun, because they are like carefully told stories with the point left out. The figures are detailed with an extreme care and conscientious- ness that demand a minute attention ; they are not treated as subordinate to a general effect, else there were no quarrel with them ; but the result is not to give them breath, they miss the imperious note of life, and have the effect of little polished china images placed on a shelf. The painter of The Kiss had the same patient pleasure when he made out the difficult perspective of his bronze lettering as when he put the little people in their places; and the spectator has a little more. To be thus irresolute or placid between the com- peting claims of marble and of maternity, is to cancel the effect of both, and to produce what the dealers will hail in their jargon as a gem of Classic Genre. So with Mr. Poynter's picture. He has expended on it a great deal of what is so misleadingly in this connection called learning. He has painted his marbles and mosaics with an approach to Mr. Tadema's skill of craftsmanship, and the type of his girl- figures is pretty ; bat just as the knucklebone hangs up for ever in the air, so is the middle figure contrived in a relentless " decorative" Bleep, and the high lights on the limbs and faces of the players have an air of old habit, of having taken a permanent situation. If all this seems fanciful (the examples of failure are respectable), turn to the Sir John Gilbert. There is a good deal in it that is loosely imagined, and the general colour envelope is of an old-fashioned brownish hue ; but what a swing there is in the drawing, what a gusto in seizing on the expressive elements in the actors ! If two men are put side by side to talk, they do at least talk. That action is defined, the rest of them is not wrought to the same pitch, and this is finish in the proper sense. What of accessory is allowed, has a sober vivacity and sparkle. In a word, here is at least a poor relation of Tintoretto.
To pass from "Classic Genre" to the English cottage variety, is to call up a well-established type of picture in which a tragedy and a tea figure,—each of them red on one side and green on the other. How well we know that tea-pot and that pat of butter, with the cold light of dawn streaming this way upon them, and the firelight that ! Mr. Stanhope Forbes has replaced the tea-table with an anvil, and the tragedy with the forging of an anchor. It would be grudging to deny the skill with which it is painted, particularly the red-hot anchor, the man holding it, and the boy at the forge ; or the adroitness with which the picture is put together. But in total effect the colour is unpleasant and the design unim- pressive. Just as his Salvation Army of last year in its painting of photographic circumstance contrasted with that etching of Mr. Strang's, in which a kind of inspired shorthand gave us the heart of the business, so here we are half convinced by this and that, but in the main untouched.
Sir Frederick Leighton, in his two round compositions this year, has avoided anything very glaringly grotesque, though the Sea Giving up its Dead is uncomfortably on the border- land, and the arrangement of the snake in the other picture, coiled round one of the Hesperides, is something trivial in con- ception. But the plan of the rocks and grave-lids, and the body of the child, in the first are fine, and the general design of the second is big and simple. As colour, the Resurrection picture is hopelessly bad. The other has one or two good passages ; thus the profile face, dark against the light, comes near success, and the colour of the snake and the landscape about its head are brilliant and congruous enough, taken alone. But then there are such breaks ! How to connect the green dress with the others? The total effect is as of a shop.
window filled with what they call Art colours. Each Hesperia has determined to outdo her sisters, and the landscape has entered into the competition with spirit. When it came to the turn of the water, the exhausted palette had no respect- able colour left of the necessary strength, so that had to be content with burnt sienna.
D. S. M.
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