FINE ARTS.

Mr. Poole is an artist to whom, in virtue of our sincere conviction of his genius, we would claim the privilege of venturing a few words of re- monstrance. He has now for several years been in the habit of exhibit- ing pictures which have placed his admirers in the painful position of being unable to uphold them, on grounds of strict art, against those who are dead to their poetic beauty. Year after year, the idea upon which he works is sure to be among the finest in modern painting ; and yearly he is content that, in all but colour, the execution should be left unworthy of the idea. And we would notice particularly that there is nearly always in his pictures some one personage so unhappily independent of drawing as to reflect discredit on the whole company in which he is found, even if no other were at all chargeable on the same count. Last year, in Mr. Poole's subject from Job, this "bad eminence" belonged to the boy pouring wine in the centre ; this year, in "The Goths in Italy" (344), it has been bestowed, as though in reward of unobtrusive merit, upon the figure of the girl to the left who watches, in harrowing sus- pense, the overtures which a brutal Goth is making to her childish sister. Surely Mr. Poole must know himself that this figure is too small for the rest, and in every way unsatisfactory : neither will we believe, though he does his best to convince us, that he really thinks hair should be painted like that of the man tying his sandal, or an arm drawn like the right arm of his principal female figure. Not less unaccountable are the folds of his draperies ; being moreover, of the two, rather more like water than his sea, which is represented in something of that artless simplicity (whatever may be allowed for poetic effect) in which it exalts the mind on the transparency- blinds of cheap coffeehouses. Mr. Poole's personages, too, seem, like the company of a theatre, to do duty in all parts and on all occasions. One barbarian we especially noticed, lying on the upper bank, whose identity and recumbent tastes Mr. Poole has traced, we suppose on the Pythagorean system, from the surrender of Rome to the surrender of Calais, thence to the shipwreck of Alonzo King of Naples, and so on to the plague of London ; only that he has chosen to give us the process of transmigration in an inverse order. Even the atmosphere in his works, beautiful as it is to the eye, would appear equally suited to all seasons and countries ; each new Poole, like the pool in Mr. Patmore's poem, seeming eternally to "reflect the scarlet West." But enough : we have said our say, and assuredly much more for the artist's sake than our own ; since we can assure Mr. Poole, that as long as he paints pictures whose merit is of the same order and degree as in those which we have seen—even though they should continue to fall short in the respects touched upon—we shall take up our station before them regularly, as heretofore, nor be able to move away until we shall have followed out all the points of thought and intellectual study brought in aid of the deve- lopment of his idea ; and we can trust him that these will be sufficient for prolonged contemplation. Among such points, in his present picture, we may mention the incident of the sisters already alluded to ; the figure

stretched in the foreground, who holds inverted a goblet drained to the hostess, the sodden stolidity of Barclolph, the meld glance o

lees' and the Goth who looks up with lazy respect at the marble bust of (we believe) &ache. "Edward the Confessor leaving his crown to Harold " and " Harold's Oath to William " (580, 619) were fine subjects for an Englishman to exercise his genius on : it is to he regretted that the influences of Mr. Cross's foreign study should be so strongly stamped upon his renderings. In the colour especially he has allowed French convention to thwart his better knowledge : for it is not to be believed that the painter of the Deathbed of Richard the First has lost the faculty of perceiving or repre- senting the vivid and various hues of nature. We think Mr. Cross's French tendencies must have been purposely exaggerated in this instance, with the view of conveying an artifieial impression of archaism, as ger- mane to the subject : and, though we cannot but reject this item of the means, the result has been attained. This is perhaps the chief merit of the pictures : to which it should be added, that they show the hand of a thoroughly educated artist. In the former, the royal lady kneeling by the bed is an impressive and dignified figure ; in the latter, the eager clenched watching of Duke William is expressed with power. Harold is rather theatrical in both ; the first especially partakes of the BuIvrerian " Isst of the Saxon Kings " ; in Edward also, the not too heroic politician merges overmuch into the dying ascetic. Mr. E. M. Ward's historical picture of this year is " The Royal Family of France in the prison of the Temple" (185)—the Queen mending the King's coat whilst he is asleep. The worn faded face of Marie Antoi- nette seems to have a certain presentiment of the yet more bitter future ; and the allusive incident of the shuttlecock in the Dauphin's hand is thoughtfully introduced. The aspect of confined daylight is well given ; and there is advance in the method of colouring generally. On the whole, this is among Mr. Ward's successful works, though not of his very best. A picture whims, interest is of a somewhat similar nature is Mr. Lucy's " Royal Prisoners of Carisbrooke" (720), illustrated by a passage from the MS. of Pere Gamache, which relates the death of a daughter of Charles the First, through slow fever brought on by the thought of his sufferings. There is deep yet very quiet sentiment in the picture, espe- cially in the figure of the young Prince, who finds his sister dead. This is always an excellence in Mr. Lucy's works : they have no horror or grimace, but a reality of feeling which grows on the spectator. Here, however, we think the interest would have been increased by a more dis- tinctive individuality in the face of the Princess.

One of the places of honour in the great room is occupied by Mr. Charles Landseer with a picture (127) which serves as a rather inoppor- tune comment on the text of his recent election to the Keepership. The subject, " Cromwell, attended by Fairfax, reading a letter found in the King's cabinet, taken at the battle of Naseby," does not recommend it- self in any respect save as introducing a great man and one or two his- torical portraits ; and we would rather not see our hero-worship through the medium of a boiling-down by Mr. Landseer. In every artistic qua-

-drawing, expression, colour—the picture is mean and impotent. " he Trial of Sir William Wallace in Westminster Hall" (681), by Mr. W. B. Scott, is a work evidently well-considered in its hietone and dra- matic relations; but, placed where it is, it has so confusing an effect that no fair judgment can be formed of it in detail. Under an affected title, " A Sunrise on the Hills of Kent, A. D. 597 " (63), Mr. Morrison treats with some gauntness and ineffectiveness of character, but with simplicity of arrangement, the preaching of St. Augustine to Ethelbert. A huge affair, leaving little impression but of coarseness and disproportion be- tween means and end, is Mr. Barker's " Incident in the life of William Rufus " (640) ; which monopolizes space that might surely have been better distributed among some dozen moderately-sized pictures. From foreign artists we have two historical works of some presence : No. 675, by Cavaliere Capalti, "The Preparations for the Defence of Florence in 1529,"—containing some good design, without much interest, swamped by detestable colour; and " The Triumph of Hermann, after the Battle in the Teutoburg Forest" (551), by M. Graefle,—a French classicality o the most heinous order.

Clear of the Scriptural and historical works, we come to swore extended field—that of inventive and illustrative subjects. Among these we first turn, for the sake of its own delightfulness, as for other reasons, to Sir O. L. Eastlake's "Ippolita Torelli" (135)—a true ideal, but womanly in all tenderness. We have already expressed the very high place we would assign to this among its artist's works. For charm of pensive sentiment, conveyed with so delicate an inner feeling, so calm an appeal to the sym- pathy, that no change save that of the painter's own heart and purpose were needed to divest the face of its meaning—we have seen few pro- ductions of any hand to equal it. The soft rich simplicity of the colour is a triumph ; its harmony of tone, in a degree scarcely supposable of a new work, really astonishing. We mention this as an extraordinary point of attainment, not prejudging the question how far the quality itself is a sound object of ambition. The sentiment of the work we feel as, in one word, lovely, tempting rather to a rhapsody of vague generalities than to criticism: one point, nevertheless, occurs to us, though we mention it with hesitation—perhaps the left hand lying in the lap is slightly too large. Mr. Dyce's "King Lear and the Fool in the Storm" (77) is, as a mat- ter of course, one of the most advanced examples of English art in the exhibition. What is more, it is a finely imaginative work—not Shak- spere, but a half of Shakspere. It has the grotesque horror of the situa- tion, the desolate beginning of madness, houseless, and with all adjuncts of dread. There is a bleak reflection from the sky ; and a piteous aban- donment in the human agents. They have indeed become but "poor forked animals" under the wrath of Nature ; and their ravings and grin- nings are feeble, helpless, and spasmodic. This is admirable within the limits of its attempt ; and if it is not the whole of King Lear, it is yet a more complete rendering than would have followed almost any effort in the opposite direction of poetry and elevation ; more complete, because grounded on a surer self-knowledge, and carried out with more direct singleness of intention. Yet we must entirely dissent from Mr. Dyce's conception of the Fool,—a thick-skinned, thick-skulled lout, who might rather pass for a Stefano or Trincide. Among the executive excellences of the work, the fine modelling, notably of Lear's hands, and the large free treatment of the drapery, are to be remarked. Two other eminent pictures from Shakspere are those by Mr. Leslie and Sir Edwin Landseer. The first is truly a Sbaksperian production, so far as that may be,—" Falstaff personating the King': (140). The sups pressed humour of Falstaff, the unrestrainable admiring laughter of 'the

Francis—half, as it were, deprecating the irreverent mirth of the scene, half venturing to be amused—are rendered with consummate truth ; the other subordinate agents bear their part well ; and Mr. Leslie's usual ease and truth of arrangement are conspicuous. Highest of all is the embodi- ment of Prince Henry, entering unreservedly into the humour of the per-

sonation, yet always refined and princely. In the tone of colour—some- what deeper than his wont—as in other qualities, this is one of Mr. Les- lie's very best works. Sir E. Landseees "Scene from the Midsummer Night's Dream; Tita- nia and Bottom" (157) is liable to objection as being too much an ordi-

nary Landseer, without special dependence on its subject. Neither Tita- nia nor Bottom arrests the attention greatly, as such. But the elf behind is full of preterhuman mischief; and the albino rabbits, with their glassy pink eyes, have been chosen for the fairy revels with a keen sense of

appropriateness. The colour, too, seems like a soft luminous veil, deli- ciously sweet in the moonlight glimpse through the opening to the right. Here we should speak of Mr. W. Holman Hunt's subject from the Two Gentlemen of rerona,—a work wideh claim q closer attention than any

other Shaksperian treatment in the rooms,—and, in connexion with it, of the works of Messrs. Millais and Collins. Our remaining space, how- ever, will not allow us to do them justice at present ; and we pass, there- fore, to such pictures of minor account as claim origin from the greatest of poets.

The most conspicuous instance of the kind is Mr. Elmore's " Hotspur and the Fop " (487) : the quotation is indeed extracted from Shakspere,

but the picture comes not even from Mr. Elmore's mind, but from his

brush and palette. It is a mere conventional commonplace ; overdone in the intention, as in the pantomime-figure of the courtier—feeble in the

carrying out. No. 606, "Bassanio receiving the letter announcing An- tonio's losses and peril," by Mr. Stone, is yet more unmeaning in cha- racter, but considerably less chargeable with trick and pretension. The

Bassanio is an utter nonentity, and seems to be tottering like a grown-

up baby ; while the Portia, who is inferior in mere prettiness, is not a whit more living than Mr. Stone's stock lay figures. The personages are

spread out ineffectively over the canvass, without any sense of pictorial interest. Yet there is, on the whole, something more of colour, and pos- sibly even of dramatic crisis, in the picture, than was to be reckoned on from Mr. Stone,—it is quite undeniably preferable to the "Ferdinand and Miranda " of last year. The right-hand group, with the figure of Nerissa, is unaffected, and rather pleasing. As regards intellectual qualities, we cannot speak much more highly of Mr. Hook's "Defeat of Shylock" (535) ; upon which, from the daring

improbabilities which form the scene, we look, besides, as a most injudi- cious choice for a painter. But here the colour is very charming—the most adequate expression, perhaps, that the artist's aims have yet re- ceived ; not indeed particularly truthful, but soft, glowing, and harmoni- ous.

Two works by young artists remain to be mentioned : Mr. Godwin's "Hamlet and Ophelia" (701), and Mr. W. M. Egley junior's dinner- throwing scene from "The The Taming of the Shrew" (794). The former

displays a certain amount of originality without much force or grasp of mind—the Ophelia is lachrymose and sulky the latter, which is bright but hard in colour, contains some good expression in the subordinate figures, but fails entirely in representing the bustle and excitement of the situation.