ART.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
[THIRD NOTICE.]
Is this notice we propose to speak chiefly of those works which are otherwise likely to escape observation, either from their lack of size, their inconspicuous position, or the comparative unattractiveness of their subjects. In an exhibition like the present, which is notable chiefly for the absence of remarkable works, the inconspicuous pictures are frequently the best ; and we have been surprised, on going carefully round the rooms, to find how much good work in the department of landscape is to be found in the higher places of each gallery, where it can scarcely be seen, and is almost certain to pass unnoticed. The attempt to mention all the works which deserve attention being perfectly hopeless, we shall ease our own minds, and gratify the patience of our readers, by giving up the endeavour to do more than say a few words almost at random on the painting and the subject of those pictures which arrest our attention.
There is a work in the first gallery called "The Last Look," by Mr. Maynard Brown, which has excited a good deal of com- ment since May 1st. It represents a scene in a manufacturing town, in which a mother and her children are taking a last look at some unknown object, probably intended to be the dead body of their father, since there is a large coffin on a chair by the side of the bed. The picture is dully painted in the manner of the Munich school, very carefully and well composed, and very restrained in its general effect ; there is almost absolutely no colour in the work, and the chiaroscuro is of the simplest kind; such attraction as the composition possesses is entirely due to the truth of expression of the faces of the mother and her children; and it is remarkable that so artificial and so sickly a sentimentality prevails in English painting, that the mere fact that this picture depicts sorrow amongst the poor plainly and unaffectedly, has• been sufficient to place it in a class by itself at the Royal Academy. It is, in truth, rendered im- pressive less by its own power and sincerity, than by the abso- lute triviality and sham prettiness of the works around it. From the technical point of view, it should be noticed that the manner in which the interior is intended to be lighted by no means explains itself; it is certainly not from the dying candle, near which one of the children stands ; it does not seem to be light of dawn, noonday, or evening,—in fact, the whole of the scene, except the figures, is sunk in an obscurity which is relatively impossible. The light and shade are entirely arbitrary, and such as we believe could not exist under any natural conditions.
Mr. Barnard's picture of " The Jury, in ' The Pilgrim's Pro- gress,' " is one of those clever but somewhat vulgar pieces of character-painting which this artist lso frequently affords us; it is, in fact, a study of twelve unpleasant types, conceived with more skill than subtlety, and executed with more force than beauty. It devotes great ability to the delineation of noxious and unpleasant things, without any adequate reason for so doing ; it seems to take an actual delight, like Mr. Ledge, the landlord of the Royal Oak, in telling us what a " poor lot these people are, big and little ;" it lacks that " neva indig- natio " against the base, and that aspiration after the worthy, which alone could render such a painted satire tolerable. " The Enchanted Lake," by Mr. A. Goodwin, we have before mentioned, but call attention to it again, as we find that its merits increase on further acquaintance. It is really a delight- fill piece of quaint fancy, and were it not that it seems-to have been somewhat hurriedly executed, it would be entitled to rank with Mr. Goodwin's finest work. It is worthy of mention that during the many years this artist has contributed to the Academy, he has, if we remember right, never once been hung upon the line. All these pictures are in the first room. fn the- second, Mr. Boughton's "Dutch Ferry" has all his usual charm: of tone and delicate colouring, but is sadly uninteresting in all other respects. It is now some years since this able artist painted a real picture, such as his admirers have a right to from him,; hp has lived on the reputation of " The Bearers of the Burden," and, having proved by that picture that he was capable of both power and insight, he has given us some reason to be dissatisfied with the lukewarm compositions: of Dutch peasants and the large-eyed theatrical maidens which have formed his staple artistic commodities for the last four or five years.
Mr. Frith's picture of "The Private View of 1881 " is one of those remarkable works which are fortunately less common in- the Academy of the present day, than they were a few years since. Without descending to the level of abuse, or at least what would seem such to those who have not seen the picture,. it is quite impossible to state our opinion as to its merits ; but it is little less than heart-breaking to any one who cares for Art, to see such a picture as this in the place of honour at the
picture-show of the year.
A passing word of mention must be given to Mr. Rooke's delicate little composition of " Autumn," in which every detail, from the grapes in the foreground to the green lizard: which is running behind the principal figure, is elaborated with an almost over-loving minuteness. The face of the girl who- is carrying the grapes is a little lacking in expression, and not too well drawn; but the picture is a beautiful study of colour,. of the full, rich kind that one seldom sees in the Academy. The hues employed have somewhat of the same deep, satisfying lustre peculiar to ancient mosaics, and have a little, too, of the mosaic lack of variety,—the colours are placed against each other, that is, piece by piece, and, though unity of tone is pro- cured to a considerable extent, it is at a little loss of freshness and ease ; like an essay by a young beginner, the picture is divided off into so many coloured paragraphs ; and details seem to be introduced more for the sake of details than any other purpose.. Mr. Henry Wood's " Preparation for the First Communion' is another of his scenes of Venetian life, on a rather larger- scale than that which he generally attempts. The result has not justified the artist. The picture is, it is true, full of vivid expression and character, and is cleverly arranged, but the defects of Mr. Wood's paintings show more prominently the more he increases the size bf his pictures. The colour is at once coarse and uninteresting ; sentiment and meaning are almost absolutely absent, and the lack of chiaroscuro, which is alwaysa peculiarity in Mr. Wood's work, is very evident here.. For the rest, the picture will please those who regard painting from the point of view of an illustrated newspaper, and will annoy all those who think that a picture is scarcely worthy of the name, unless it tells us something important, shows us something beautiful, or hints to us something grand. Mr. Adrian Stokes's landscape of a "Spanish Mill" should be. noted for its brilliancy and its truth of tone. And we must say one more word for Mr. John Reid's "Darby and Joan." It is the most quiet, unaffected, charming little picture of home-life to be found in the whole exhibition. All these pictures are in, the second room.
In the third, the largest, gallery, look first at Mr. Watts's study of "Katie," a little girl with a pink dress and a pink face, a reddish background and scarlet stockings, a nice, demure,. innocent, good little child, utterly spoilt as a picture, in our- opinion, by the garishness of her stockings and her very prosaic button-boots. Mr. Watts, of all men in the world, should not succumb to this shabby pre-Raphaelitism of leather and cotton.. It does not consist with the style of his painting, nor with the• poetry of feeling with which all his work is marked ; on the- contrary, it strikes an absolutely incongruous note. Nearly- above this there is a rather powerful, rough landscape, by Mr.. Thomas Hope M'Lachlan, of " Moonrise on a Teesdale Moor.' It is a dark, almost colourless picture, roughly executed, but fresh,. true, and instinct with a certain inarticulate poetry of its own. Compare with this, Mr. Goodall's tiny, highly-finished picture. of " Returning from the Pasture at Ghizeb." We confess that this small landscape seems to us to be of far more value than the majority of Mr. Goodall's more ambitious works; it is de- licate, beautifully drawn, and very good in colour, a delightful remembrance of the place under its most beautiful aspect, that is, of course, at sunset. Another good landscape, this time by
an amateur, is "In the Highlands of Surrey," by Sir Arthur Clay, Bart.
In the fourth gallery, Mr. Dendy Sadler's " Recreation " is -one of the chief pictures, and though it touches only the humor- ous side of Art, one of the best. Mr. Sadler never paints any- thing but monks, and monks grinning,—but these monks are grinning very well, and each of them has a separate grin of his own; the picture, moreover, is original in its treatment, and is painted with a certain brisk incisiveness, as of a man who under- stands his work and means to do it thoroughly ; to get it over -as soon as possible, and then do another. Contrast with this Mr. Weatherbee's " To Everything there is a Season, and a Time to Every Purpose under the Heavens ;" this last is a picture of a young man standing in a field by the side of a plough, putting on his coat after his day's work. In the distance, -one sees a farm lad taking the cart-horses home. A picture somewhat in the manner of Walker, but with a more foreign style of colour, and perhaps a little more foreign motive ; it -deserves mention, if only for the fact that the chief figure has -considerable power and truth, and is not, or at least does not appear to be, a studio model who has never worn a pair of gaiters or done a day's field-work in his life. Above this may be seen a good example of what careful painting and careful training can do to produce a picture. This is "At Last," by Mr. Fred. Cotman, thus succinctly and correctly described by that accomplished critic, Mr. Henry Blackburn,—" A soldier returning home ; a woman on the bank ; dog swimming to meet Um."
" Nerina," by Mr. C. E. Perugini, is the frankest and the best imitation of one of Sir Frederick Leighton's brown-skinned damsels which we have ever seen. It is so manifestly and so utterly an imitation that it seems scarcely necessary to say any -more about it, but it it is perhaps worth while to point out, as throwing some light upon the possible shortcomings of Sir Frederick's work, that this imitation of his manner gives exactly -the same kind of pleasure, though not in so great a degree, as -does the original. It is in its way quite exquisitely skilful, and though the face and the hands are not drawn with -that precision and grace of which the President is capable, the draperies, the stonework, and all the surroundings cf the -figure could scarcely be told from those of the last-mentioned -painter. Is the secret of the lack of power which art of this kind has to affect the majority of thoughtful people hinted at in the following sentence by Emerson ?—" Art makes the same -effort which a sensual prosperity makes, namely, to detach the beautiful from the useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, and hating it, pass on to enjoyment. These solaces and com- pensations, this division of beauty from use, the laws of Nature do not permit. As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker."
If we mention Mr. Walter C. Horsley's " Fighting his Battles -o'er Again," it is only to mark our opinion that so crude, violent,- and insolent a picture, so coarsely painted and so -vulgarly conceived, has no business, upon the line at the Academy. It represents a half-naked, Eastern potentate swing- ing a gigantic sabre across the ncse of a chuckling negro, whilst the Eastern potentate's favourite wife, with commendable in- -difference to the result of this perfectly uncalled-for proceeding, is gazing abstractedly into an Eastern landscape, composed of three anomalous trees ; the remainder of the work is filled up with yellow-satin cushions, very uninteresting furniture, and a female attendant playing the banjo, apparently for the purpose • of exciting the ancient warrior's warlike reminiscences. It may be that Mr. Horsley intends this work to be taken seriously, but ewe prefer to consider it as one of those pictorial eccentricities -which occasionally, by some strange mischance, get shifted from the office in Bouverie Street to the walls of Burlington House.
In the fifth gallery, Mr. McWhirter has his best picture in the exhibition, which represents, as usual, a silver birch, and is similar in shape and size to the other work of the same char- acter which this artist has exhibited in previous years. But the chief picture in this gallery is, without doubt, Mr. Logsdail's Composition of "The Piazza San Marco;" it represents the evening gathering in the great Venetian square, in front of Mr. Ruskin's favourite cathedral. For the accuracy of one at, least of the por- traits the present writer can vouch confidently, since it represents .a gondolier who punted him about Venice for more than a fort- night; but, indeed, most of the characters are evidently portraits ctf the itaiiist6s of the place. It is difficult to describa the hard,
unnatural naturalness of this painting ; it is like life, but like life with a twist in it, —very literally," the trail of the serpent is over it all." We mean that Mr. Logsdail has, as is generally the case with painters of his school, seen his subject in all its details, both personal and architectural, with eyes which have only under- stood, or at all events have only been able to reproduce, the elements of bizarreric, coarseness, and eccentricity which are to be found therein. The loveliness of the Cathedral, the finer details of character, the minute delicacies of colour and light and shade, the dignity of form and gesture, and all the hints of poetry and meaning which might and should have been in such a picture, are absent here. It is not a composition which repro- duces worthily one of the most beautiful squares and the most motley assemblage of nationalities that can be found in the world ; it is simply a large, double-page illustration to a Venetian journal.
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