ART.
THE MANCHESTER EXHIBITION, AND WHAT ITS ART COLLECTION SHOWS.—I.
Now that the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition has closed its doors, onr readers may perhaps care to consider briefly what lesson, if any, is to be learnt from the extensive collection of English paintings which was there brought together. It would be obviously out of place at the present period to attempt to criticise or even enumerate these works in detail, and this is the more unnecessary as a large proportion of them are well- known to the art-loving public, and a considerable number have already received notice in these columns. We rather propose to deal in this notice with the effect produced by the Exhibition as a whole. Is this effect a satisfactory one ? The question is hard to answer, so strangely are the elements of good and bad mingled in this English art of the past fifty years. Certainly the collection proves that we have much to be proud of in the past. Does it also show that we have a secure hope for the future? These questions will be most conveniently considered if we take them separately in the above order.
As to the past, then—the remote past, if so short a period as fty years admits of the use of such a term. At the beginning of this half-century, at a date that is about twenty years anterior to the so-called Art revival, there existed in England a body of landscape-artists, with J. M. W. Turner at their head, such as no other country or age of the world has yet been able to produce. Look round these Manchester galleries in imagination for a moment, at the vast, rich cornfields, overspread with skies of crim- son, purple, and gold, of John Linnet], who for more than sixty Tears painted every phase of English scenery and rustic life, and think where in the past—yes, and even in the present also —can be found an art at once so rich and so sober, so free and so veracious, so gorgeous and so sane. Sanity, that is the key- note of the work from the intellectual point of view ; and from the artistic, its mainspring is the right use of tradition, its -grasp at the same time of both Nature and Art, its firm, -clear assertion of the sufficiency of beautiful things seen beautifully. What does it matter if -the shadow of the great artists of past times is through Linnell's painting here and there perceptible ? That it is so only proves he was a worthy inheritor of their greatness, and was not ashamed to benefit by what his fathers had taught him. And as a contrast in every way to Linnell, save in that of genius, look at the great pictures by William Muller (especially at the greatest of all, the one of "Eel-Pots on the Thames"), with their masses of deep colours mashed upon the canvas as if by a hand too impatient to stay its progress for a moment, and yet a hand which errs as little as it falters, and which almost dims the glory of Linnell's sunset fields, with the gray depths of the rain-cloud and the dark distance of the woodland. For if Linnell's landscapes have much of the glow of Nature, Muller's have both its mystery and its power ; and amongst colourists, even amongst such great colourists as Turner and De Wint, his place is equal to that of the greatest. Had he not died at an early age, the English school might have had two Turners,—one of the sun, and another of the twilight. What are we to say of De Wint, of Barret and Robson and Creswick, of Cotman and David Roberts and Stanfield, of Copley Fielding and Varley and James Holland ? The names come tumbling over one another, and we have literally not space to enumerate them all, and give a word to each. But all of them are here, and for the most part well represented, though we must say, even at this late hour, that in the matter of selection and arrange- ment very much is left to be desired. The aim, indeed, through- out the Exhibition—and this remark applies equally to the oil and water-colour sections—has been to get quantity rather than quality. There are many instances in which there are numerous examples of the artist, but none of his finest work ; and this is unfortunately the case most with the best men. For instance, there is only one of the most celebrated of Turner's oil-pictures; and that (the "Rain, Steam, and Speed ") is a comparatively difficult one, and an example of his later (not latest) manner. The same is the case with David Cox, who is represented in his water-colour work by an enormous number of examples, many of which are of by no means the first quality.
Still, when these drawbacks have been given all due considera- tion, the fact remains that even as represented here, we English- men can boast of having produced within the last half-century an amount of good landscape-painting to which the work of no other country can compare. And we have produced it, more- over, from our very "pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil," this landscape art, not only good in itself, good for all time, but original, national, and individual in its very essence. It would be absurd to say that it owes nothing to earlier tradition; indeed, it owes everything, as much as a civilised human being owes to the ages which have slowly built up the methods of his thought and the surroundings of his life. But the art has used, and not been used by, the traditions on which it has grown ; and despite manifest blunders, ignorances, and errors of all kinds, it remains to this day a national product, as it is a national glory.
May we not, then, to return to our original question, be whole- somely proud of it P Certainly, in one sense, we may; but then comes the thought whether we are to be proud of it dead or— living. Are we to build a temple to its memory, or a house for its use ? We ask the question in all seriousness, for if there is one matter more certainly proved than another by this exhibition, it is that our English landscape-painting has passed away without even the honours of burial. We have been saying this in one form or another for several years, and none of our readers, or the artists, or the public, would apparently heed or believe ; but the man must be dull in- deed who can walk round, however hurriedly, this Jubilee Exhibition without feeling the truth of the fact. For here, at great length, in gigantic frames, on almost miles of canvas, stands revealed what our living landscape-painters can do, by the side of what our dead landscape-painters have done! And the contrast is a pitiful and, for those responsible for it, a shameful one. Bear in mind, moreover, that the comparison at the present gallery is, and must be by the facts of the case, strongly in favour of the present men's pictures. This, not only because they are necessarily more in accordance with the spirit of the time, but because the beet examples of their work are more easily accessible and available for purposes of exhibition, not being shut up in public galleries, or widely scattered over this or foreign countries. We are often reproached for writing harshly of living artists' work, and are told that a oritic's business is not to give pain ; but how is it possible for any one who cares for English painting continuing in the right track, to be silent when he sees the public led astray by a trivial and meretricious art which, with every example that is produced, does its little best to destroy the national feeling for what is true landscape-painting ! It is impossible to be silent ; it is useless to be mild ; to touch the matter delicately, lest we wound susceptibilities. There are snore important points to consider than that matter, for (and here, no doubt, we ;shall part company with even those few readers who have agreedwith
us so far) the decline of our art will not stop with the branch of landscape ; figure-painting will assuredly follow in the train of its younger sister, and there are not wanting signs that this end is already within view. But it is impossible to dwell upon this point now ; we only recommend it most earnestly to the consideration of our readers. Let them look for themselves at the work of our modern landscapists, and compare it with that of the last generation. The comparison will tell its own tale to any unprejudiced mind.
But this Jubilee Exhibition not only teaches us the fact of the decline in our landscape-painting ; it also shows partially, but still with sufficient clearness, the influence of the two move- ments in Art which have, if not caused, yet accompanied, and the influence of which in some measure explains, that decline. These are, first, the so-called pre-Raphaelite movement, which owed its chief impulse to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and through him to Messrs. Millais, Holman Hunt, and Borne-Jones ; and, second, the Idyllic movement, if it may so be called, which, taking its first origin in France and Italy, came to a sudden head in England about twenty years ago in the work of a group of painters associated only in a common impulse, and, alas ! in an almost equally early death. These painters were four in number —Fred Walker, George Pinwell, Boyd Houghton, and George Mason—all men of genius, and painters who were in sympathy with the age in which they lived to the utmost degree. Their work affected very quickly and with great power the aims of their contemporaries, and it is hardly too much to say that to them, and to the move in pre-Raphaelitism, may be traced two- thirds of our specially modern painting. The remaining third is due to an influence practically unrepresented at Manchester, but one which seems likely in the near future to overshadow all others. This is the influence of the modern French school, variously known, according to its different phases, as the school of "naturalistic," "out-of-door," or " impressionist " painting. The influence which these three phases of Art have exercised we shall hope to explain in our next article.
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