ART.

THE GROSVENOR GALLERY. [FIRST NOTICE.] Tins winter's exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery comprises works in water-colours, and studies in chalk, pencil, charcoal, &c., by living artists only, chiefly by members of the English school, though there are in the Water-colour portion of the gallery, fifty-five contributions by Dutch painters, members of the Hague Society of Painters in Water-colours. Of these latter we shall speak in a subsequent article, confining ourselves for the present to a brief mention of some of the most important studies in chalk, &c., upon which, indeed, the main attraction of the exhibition rests.

These may, perhaps, be most easily noticed by making a somewhat arbitrary division into three classes, and considering them under the heads of masters' work, students', and amateurs' work. The latter class always abounds at this gallery, and no- where else is there to be seen in such uncomfortable proximity the varying results of contented ignorance and humble knowledge. First, it will be well to say, as shortly as possible, what mean- ing we attach to these words of "master " and " student." We may leave " amateur " out of our definitions, as that word will include all more or less sedulous workers who are not comprised under one or the other of the foregoing names.

A master, then, we take to mean an artist whose work, no matter how poor in intention or low in aim, thoroughly expresses the object which he has had in view ; and fails, when it fails at all, in no weakness of technical skill and no defect of know- ledge, save such as are due to the incompleteness or error of the theory upon which the work is executed. Using " master" in this sense, we are not expressing any opinion as to the com- parative value of the result gained, but only putting in a class by themselves those men who are capable of uniformly execut- ing their work with the amount of assured skill necessary.

A student, on the other hand, is a master in embryo, and his work's merit depends not only upon its actual accomplishment, but upon:its rightness of aim. It is impossible, in this latter case, to separate the aim and the work, as we have done above, for the work of a student is only valuable for what it leads to, and if this be worthless or inferior, we get a hopeless notion as ,of mere twining ropes of sand, or Danaids mechanically con-

• tinning to carry their useless burden. Looking round this room of studies, whom do we find amongst our English artists, to whom the name of " master " can be rightly given,—that is to say, whom do we find whose work is not inconsistent with itself, failing to carry out its own theories, falling short of the very requisites which it acknowledges ? The names are few indeed, and if we range them in order of merit will probably stand as follows :—Mr. Burne Jones, Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A., Mr. G. F. Watts, RA., Mr. J. E. Millais, Mr. Holman Hunt, and, among the foreign artists, M. Alphonse Legros and M. Alma Tadema. Our readers will, perhaps, be surprised to see that we have included Mr. G. F. Watts, and indeed, had we strictly adhered to our definition, we could not have done so, for in the works of this great artist there are commonly, if not always, signs of a conscious shortcoming which is alien to the

master," as such ; but the error would have been much greater -to cite Mr. Watts's work under any other head,—and in one very considerable department of his art, that of portrait- painting, he is worthy of the very highest rank that can be assigned to him, his portraits not being so much better than those of other contemporary painters, as different in kind,—in the way that a man is not so much a better animal than a donkey, as a different one.

Let us, then, say a very few words as to the prevailing char- acteristics of each of these artists' pictures, taking them in the above given order. Mr. Burne Jones's work has been written so much about of late, that its main aims and method are most likely wearisomely familiar to our readers. All who read the papers must have frequently seen this artist's name mentioned, either for praise or blame. It is worth noting, however, that praise and blame are here bestowed much after the fashion of political criticism, and are rather the badges of a party than the utter- ances of a belief. Nine-tenths of those who admire so fervidly and write so rapturously of Mr. Burne Jones's pictures aie like those who buy the hangings of Morris, and read the poetry of Rossetti, simply casting in their lot with the followers of a new school of emotion, well satirised by Du Manlier under the title

of the " INTENSE." To these foolish and perfectly unreasoning people the defects of such pictures as our artist paints, are as

dear as their merits; to mention the one is, in their opinion, to be insensible to the other. Thus one well-known critic, seeking to defend the master in question from the charge of painting diseased types of character, found it sufficient to say that the painter's ideals were those of " delicacy rather than strength," and to talk, a little vaguely, perhaps, of the paroxysms of " alarmed robustness." But surely delicacy and disease hardly mean the same, and " robustness " may well be alarmed if it sees a school of admirers mistaking the one for the other.

It is good that, in a civilisation like ours, where we are sur- rounded by scientific and sanitary ugliness of manifold descrip- tions, there should suddenly spring forth an artist whose whole work is suffused with a beauty almost painful in its intensity ; but it is bad, bad to the core, that the weary longing and languid sweetness of these flower-like faces should ever be mis- taken for the expression that is fitting for a man, or as the reflection of the thoughts by which his life should be shaped. We want Barnard to paint us " Saturday Night in the Seven Dials," and will not be too severe if his work has even a savour of coarseness, so long as it rouses us to the sense that a man's work is not to cultivate his emotional faculties in isolation from his fellows, but to live amongst them the healthy citizen life, facing boldly its vulgarity of feeling and coarseness of incident, and doing something to redeem them. Let us not be misunderstood, as those who whisper even a word against the wholesomeness of Mr. Burne Jones's pictures too frequently are. We do not say that they are unwholesome, save for those who take them for guides to the right aims of life, who praise their defects as well as their virtues. To us, they seem to be perfectly pure in intention, and almost perfectly

beautiful, but there can be no doubt that there runs through them all a feeling of unsatisfied longing, a sort of atmosphere of,—Come, let us take hands and look kindly upon each other, for life is short and death is near, and little is worth the doing.

Morris has expressed this perfectly, in one of the verses of the preface to his " Earthly Paradise, "—

" But sometimes, when a-weary of your mirth,

From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh, And feeling kindly unto all the earth, Grudge every moment as it fleoteth by, Made the more mindful that the glad days die."

It seems unnecessary to mention specially any of these de- signs, where all are so beautiful and so alike in feeling, but we may just draw attention to the studies for the "Annunciation," the head in monochrone numbered 339, the "Venus," 373, and the " Caritas," 375, as being especially lovely. We have before written so much about the beauty of Mr. Burne Jones's studies of drapery, that we need only mention that those in this gallery far surpass any of his previously exhibited work of this kind. Sir Frederick Leighton's work forms a singular contrast to that of the last-mentioned artist, though it has for its theme generally the same class of subjects, and in its studies of drapery approaches more nearly to the skill of Mr. Burne Jones than does the work of any other artist here exhibited ; not even excepting that of Mr. Albert Moore, whose robes, though very beautiful, seem always made more for show than use, and suggest the studio in their elaborate arrangement. This applies to Mr. Moore's later work, rather than 'his earlier pictures, which were, in our opinion, far superior in most respects, though he has gained, of late years, in technical skill and reputation. To return to Sir Frederick Leighton's work, and its merits. First of these comes a delicacy of pencilling, in which he stands only second to Mr. Burne Jones, and is, indeed, in some ways his superior. The difference between these methods of pencil- ling mainly depends upon the use or rejection of a clearly- defined outline. Sir Frederick Leighton's drawings, if carefully examined, will be found to owe much of their attractivenes to the perfect division and undeviating thickness with which the delicate outline is drawn. In Mr. Burne Jones's work, nothing of this is visible, the outline is in all the finer studies executed more in the method of painting than drawing, and never asserts itself apart from the light and shade of the com- position. We doubt whether Mr. Burne Jones could ever have executed that lemon-tree (408) that Sir Frederick did twenty years ago at Capri ; nor, we think, does Mr. Burne Jones's work ever impress us with that feeling of skill work- ing at perfect ease with itself which is to be found in Sir Frederick Leighton's, and which seems to come from the conscious- ness of pre-eminence. Probably something of this is due to the difference in the artists' character ; certainly Mr. Burne Jones would never have drawn a figure of such defiant strength as that of the " Slinger," the small study for which is exhibited in this gallery.

Something, too, of the Academy and the life school is to be traced in the work of the President; it is instructed drawing, and perhaps the instruction seems to have got a little the upper hand, and the feeling become a little deadened. Probably the best possible lesson to be learnt from it is the impossibility of greatly affecting the spectator by mere beauty of line, without emotion. Any of our readers will understand this at once, if they will take the trouble to compare one of these studies with those of Mr. Burne Jones. It is hardly possible to tell what there is wanting in Sir Frederick Leighton's draperies, till you come to look at them by Mr: Burne Jones's, and then you see that the first are draperies only, and the second draperies plus a personality to which they are adapted, and of which they form an actual part. It is impossible to avoid feeling the difference, once it has been re- marked, and the effort to think of the two pictures on the same level afterwards, is like that of considering in the same way one of Madame Tussand's wax figures and a living being. Sir Frederick, however, has merits of his own of a very special kind, and foremost amongst these is the sense of the dignity and purity of manhood, such as formed the basis of old Greek art. Such a picture as that of " Hercules wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis," the small sketch for which is in this gallery, approaches more nearly to the spirit of Greek art than that of any modern artist that we have ever seen, besides being technically magnificent in colouring, composition, and drawing. It should be noted also that the President is the only living English painter who can habitually draw muscle in motion, as, for instance, in this figure of Hercules, and again in that of the Slinger. That this power of drawing occasionally misleads him is evident, as in last year's picture of Elijah, in which all beauty was lost in the attempt to display a figure struggling in a difficult attitude ; but none the less the power is there, and it is a very great one.

The work of Mr. G. F. Watts in this gallery is hard to characterise, if only because it falls so far short of what we are now accustomed to see from this artist's hand. Such designs as those in red-chalk numbered 385 and 389, one for an illustration to "The Book of Job," and the other to that of Isaiah, are rather traces of imaginative power, than actual designs for great pictures. The one great distinction between true and false im- agination, or rather between imaginative art and imagination wandering loosely in the fancy, is the clearness of vision, the fullness of detail possessed by the seer. Probably the work of Mr. Watts, when he attempts Scriptural illustration, is best paralleled by that executed by Turner in his latest period, where indistinct traces of a great conception show themselves through a cloud of gorgeous hues. It is not so much that Mr. Watts's work is ever indistinct in outline, as that its meaning appears hardly to have been grasped by the artist himself, or has perhaps been left purposely doubtful. It should be noticed that Mr. Watts is equally removed from Mr. Burne Jones and Sir Frederick Leighton in the technique of his work, and the impression given thereby. Whereas, in Mr. Burne Jones we find infinite beauty and delicacy, with some hints of conscious incompleteness, and in the second, a sense of power and perfect mastery over material, in the work of Mr. Watts both beauty and skill have become subordinated to the thought, till it scarcely occurs to us to ask ourselves what extent of technical merit the work possesses.

The four illustrations to " Barry Lyndon " which are the sole contributions of Mr. J. E. Millais to this exhibition tell us little of his power, and only serve to recall to our minds somewhat regretfully the old days when, scarcely more than an Academy student, he illustrated " Framley Parsonage " and " Orley Farm." It may be that some will find in the increased skill of these latter days an efficient substitute for the uncompromising devotion to nature and truth that gave us the " Ophelia," "The Yale of Rest," and " The Carpenter's Shop," but we can only say that, for our part, the loss outweighs the gain. It seems fitting, in connection with the remembrance of Mr. Millais's pre-Raphaelite work, to mention that of Mr. Holman Hunt, the only surviving member of that once famous association, whose pictures are constantly before the public, unchanged in their method. He sends here two studies of heads for pictures, in red and black chalk only, both of which, however, show clearly the power of rich colouring which is familiar to the public in such works as " The Light of the World," and the " Finding of the Saviour in the Temple." We must leave these works with the bare mention above given, as we must those of the foreign masters, M. Alma Tadema and M. Alphonse Legros, both of whose contributions are in their usual style.

It will, perhaps, seem an error on our part, to many of our readers, for us to cite Mr. Poynter's work as that of a student rather than a master, and it is, indeed, with the greatest reluct- ance that we are forced to come to this conclusion. But there can be no doubt that it is the only one to be drawn from the

various studies here exhibited, and they are sufficient in number to render it comparatively certain. It is not only that the drawings seem to be almost wholly deficient in all qualities of grace and beauty (look, for instance, at No. 479, a seated figure in the fresco of St. Stephen before the Council), but they are curiously incorrect in that very anatomical detail upon the study of which this artist insists so strongly, instances of which may be seen in the torso of the figure cited. above, and in the disproportionate length of the lower limbs in the studies 429,. 434, 435. The most elementary acquaintance with the propor tion of limbs to torso and head, will enable any of our readers to verify this fact at pleasure. Nor is this the only respect in which Mr. Poynter's work falls into the student class,. for it is not the only one where he fails in his own con- ception of the aim which is worthy of attainment. If any one thing about last year's Academy was beyond dispute,. it was the disappointment felt by almost every visitor in the picture of Nausicaa by this artist. To what was this dis- appointment due Here was a man supposed to be at the very head of his profession, chosen to direct the Fine Arts of England,. he had selected perhaps the most beautiful incident in the most beautiful of all Greek poems, he had had for his models,. or rumour much wronged him, some of the most lovely women in London—that is, in the world—and lo ! the result was sheerly ugly. There was no more to be said for it.. What is the explanation ? Simply this,—the artist had aimed at two things only, and missed them both, and those were beauty of line and colour. It is sometimes, necessary to speak an unpleasant truth, and the facts of this matter are that Mr.. Poynter has studied Michael Angelo and the Greek artists till,. in the attempt to rival their works, he has lost all attractiveness,. and his works have become mere accumulations of ill-assorted studies, sometimes of studies which, like' those we have-men- tioned, are both ugly and incorrect. It is to be regretted, for the artist's own sake, that he should exhibit works so calculated to disappoint his many admirers ; but it may, perhaps, be useful,. if it teaches him that even heads of departments cannot do in- ferior work with perfect impunity.