ART.

THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

[SECOND NOTICE.]

WE were forced to close our first notice of the Academy with a mere list of names. What we had written about one of those names, and were compelled to defer, we hasten to say now, and with all the emphasis necessary when the name is less known to the public than to brother artists. We refer to Mr. J. Buxton Knight, and his picture called "Hemp Agrimony " (372). The title alludes to the mass of rich weedy stuff in the foreground, and a great merit of the picture is the large, masterly way in which this intricate rank growth is handled.

There is nothing scamped in treatment, but there is nothing small ; everything has just the right relief. So, too, with the rest of the canvas,—the river with its subtly wrought colours, the background of trees and haze, the horse with the white face, the cattle. Only the pollard willows (difficult tree !) seem to us not quite so right as the rest. If any one wants observation of Nature and dignity of Art, let him look here. There is another landscape in the exhibition curiously like this in palette and handling, though nothing so great as an achievement,—Mr. E. R. Fox's "Spring Days" (1,026).

Mr. Albert Moore this year challenges criticism with a much larger work than usual, and unfortunately, because the scale of the picture brings out the defects of his method (" A Summer Night," No. 487). Mr. Moore always works on lines independent of popular approval, and by his own artistic instinct, which is considerable. He has done fine things in his time, but this is not one of them. The critic seems often glad to apply the adjective" decorative" to work like this, and pass on. absolved from further responsibility. "Decorative," however, is properly applied to paintings in which the amount of nature admitted is limited by some outer condition, that of the setting or surroundings of the painting. The alternative limit is the purely inner one of design, of pictorial pleasant- ness and coherence. The general reference to nature in work like Mr. Moore's is so slight, that it is by this test of self- justification or self-contradiction that he must be judged. And our quarrel with the picture in question is that while its general aim is not naturalistic, its methods in some parts are, and that not successfully. If they succeeded, there would be incoherence ; as they fail, there is laborious in- effectiveness. The flesh-painting, for instance, is to no pur- pose either of realisation or of pleasantness. Either a simpler process should have produced something non-imitative but pleasing. or all this stippling should have made something which, if ugly, was like flesh. The unholy black of the sky, again, combined with the yellow of the pansies, is in itself unpleasant, therefore not decorative, nor has it the imperfect excuse of being natural. In parts of the picture, however, and chiefly in the foreground, there is fine colour.

Mr. Robert Noble has talent, but seems in too great a hurry to fix his pattern (" By the Linn Pool," No. 759). We can almost tell now where his red tree will end, and his grey-green begin, and how the rocks will lie flat under them. The same is true of two other painters of considerable skill. Mr. Brangwyn plants his ships and tugs (241 and 248) admirably in the sea, but will he never look at the sea again, with its infinite fugitive colour ? That dull leaden hue in which he saw it last, he has surely insisted on enough. Mr. Edward Stott, again, has a pretty pattern in pink (" Bathers." No. 842), but it threatens to pall.

Others in our list of names were Mr. Adrian Stokes, for his admirably bright sea, clouds, and fisher-boats, "Off St. Ives" (137); Mr. J. L. Pickering, for his "March Gloaming" (150)— rich brown fields, buff and green-blue sky—and the quiet little "Oast-Houses, Kent" (374). We like Mr. Arthur Lemon's landscape better without such strange cattle as St. Hubert's stag (470) ; the "Sussex Ox-Team" (145), is in better keeping. There is something good in Mr. Claude Hayes's "Land cf Windmills" (571), in Mr. W. A. Mackworth's "Cloud Chariots" (156), and in Mr. W. G. Foster's twilight effects (161 and 221). Mr. F. W. Jackson, too, is above the dull level (168 and 481). "An Orchard in February, Kent" (760), by Mr. R. W. A. Rouse, is fresh and vivid ; Mr. A. G. Webster's blue " Couci-la-Ville " (9471 is a good sketch ; Mr. Peppercorn's work (283 and 289), imitative though it be, is better than most of the British inventiveness around ; and Miss Bessie Nichol's Creswick prize landscape," The Angler's Haunt" (785), is promising work for a student. Then, among figure-subjects, Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt's "Love Locked Out" (32) is pleasant work in the school of Watts ; Mrs. E. S. Forbes's " Mignon " (182) is accomplished painting; M. Dannat. in his "Study in Red" (237) does not fail, but does not triumph,—and his task demanded that ; Mr. J. M. Swan's "Piping Fisher-Boy" (465) is a pretty conceit ; Mr. A. Roche's " Shepherdess " (125) is well conceived, but is dirty in tone (the danger of this artist and his school) ; and Mr. R. W. Curtis's "Drifting with the Tide," if not very strong in drawing, shows a sense for colour.

Among those who are not yet Associates, Mr. David Murray. prolific and capable, never bad, if not first-rate, sends "The White Mill" (43), "Young Wheat" (1,096), and "In Summer- Time " (875). Mr. Alfred East ought to beware of the pretty (" October Glow," No. 1,104); Mr. John Collier, of mummies (" Cleopatra," No. 551). Mr. S. J. Solomon's piece of prancing mythology is not thrust upon us so much as we had the right to fear (" Hippolyta," 1,063).

It is our duty now to turn to the Academicians, having dealt—we had almost said, with the artists—but there are several names that prevent the word " Academician " from being simply a synonym for "incompetent painter." Let us take them first. Sir Frederick Leighton has foolishly dallied with an idea in two of his pictures, in each case much to the discom- posure of his model. In No. 166, the idea—" Solitude "—has insisted on bringing in a woeful brown that does not go with the model's dress at all. In No. 243, the idea—" Tragedy "—has produced discoloured weather ; and in both it has unpleasantly puckered the model's features. Out on it, Sir Frederick ! Soli- tude is better company than that, and the Tragic Muse never whimpered yet in the worst of weather. But whether you call No. 310 "Psyche," or, better, "Soma," we can admire her pretty, graceful lines, and the wonderful pure colour of the curtain and the sky, of the gold and of the copper, and the unfaltering hand that has drawn that body so simply and so tenderly.

We have already just mentioned Mr. Alma Tadema and Mr. Henry Moore. Mr. Tadema seldom paints a thing without its seeming more beautiful than it was before. Pity that with faces he seldom gets beyond the doll. In the " Frigidarium " (324), the figures by the curtain are in execution a little dull, if we are to criticise by the painter's own standard. Miss Tadema sends a promising little slip of Dutch interior (" The Pet Goldfinch," No. 188). Mr. Henry Moore's waves and sky (257) make other things look dusty.

Mr. Hook is as ever; something of air and space (most in "A Dutch Pedlar," No. 309), something also of dirtiness dogging his colours, especially in the reds and browns of his human figures. A painter who at one time promised to carry the Hook sea-piece further, Mr. J. R. Reid, seems to be going to pieces. His turnip-field of this year is not nearly so good as the one that was bought for the Chantrey collection.

Mr. Orchardson skilfully manages a family portrait (235), and gets a picture from it. He has the artist temperament, and a palette of his own that gives pleasure to a great many artists. The brown-yellow, crimson, emerald-green, and so forth, are a striking and interesting combination, but always so bound up with a smeared texture in the paint and lapses in the drawing, that Mr. Orchardson's work is never so complete in reaching its own aim as one could wish.

Mr. Luke Fildes still fritters his talent on the draped Italian model (20), but he surprises us with something very nearly good in his portrait of Mrs. Agnew (303). The painter's temperament, as we read it, tends to the gorgeous ; a little more abandon here, and he would have achieved a triumph in that kind. As it is, the dress is gorgeous, and the thing is pictorially all of a piece, and therefore far ahead of most of the portraits hung, which have no pictorial motive whatever.

Mr. W. B. Richmond is delicate and refined in his "Bishop of Durham" (124). (The connoisseur in Bishops will find the Academy as ever, a joy.) In his other two portraits (449 and 666) he is curiously astray.

Of two other names, those of Mr. Watts and Sir J. E. Millais, we wish, remembering past work, to say nothing disrespectful. Of Mr. Watts it may be said that he showed wisdom in offering his brother-Academicians the option of rejecting his work. They have not had the courage to do so. Of Sir J. E. Millais, quite shortly, that in his landscape (25) he has been trying for something new, but has found nothing worth his pains. Mr. Poynter, more's the pity, proves a lost force in art ; all sorts of power and patience, but never quite the picture they deserve. The "Temple Steps" (866) only lends itself to inventory.

Then there are,a.mong Academicians and Associates, several men who have at one time or another shown gleams of artistic perception and power, but who, whether from want of thorough. technique, or from reiteration of a successful effect till they have forgotten what was good in it and what bad, or from some other reason, have fallen away. Mr. Graham, for in- stance, and Mr. Colin Hunter seem to think that any aboniinable colour-mixture that Nature may produce in the West Highlands is good for painting. That is not so. Mr. Graham before No. 190, Mr. Hunter before No. 384, should have shut his eyes and passed on. The Nemesis of this sort of thing is to send a portrait like Mr. Hunter's No. 694, and not to know that it is a libel on humanity even at that age. So with Mr. Brett. He has a fine eye for mussels on a distant rock, but has completely lost the picture-sense. Mr. Mac- Whirter is not violent in his failure, but merely feeble (271 and 279); Mr. Fettle is decaying Wilkie's way (302); Mr. Boughton repeats himself in an absent-minded, slip-shod fashion (396); Mr. Leslie must find it hard to remember how often he has sent in No. 258. Mr. Herkomer this year has none of the rude force that is sometimes a merit in his portraits ; and that absent, they are merely common. His landscape, "Our Village" (143), is actively irritating, for its wooden reminiscences of Frederick Walker in the figures. In this same connection may be mentioned Mr. Macbeth's "The Cast Shoe" (19). A picture is not necessarily bad because it is bought with the Chantrey money. This one is bad, and what is proudly called our " Luxembourg " is to possess it. Mr. Frank Dicksee has once or twice shown a sense for pictorial motive. His "Evangeline," despite the Longfellow in it, had that. His " Tannhauser " (203) may be Wagner or anything else ; as a picture it is impossible to praise it. Take it on its own dramatic terms (and a picture is always dramatic at its peril), what a want of unity of effect there is in the scene ! We course about the crowded stage, and fasten first on a tall red person as chief actor, but give him up, baffled. And so on, until we find that Tannhhuser, after the ingenious Greek tradition, has hidden his face, and with no one paying any attention to him, presents an unobtrusive back to the spectator. Venus. equally unobserved, is burning out in the background. And what is wrong is that here are two scenes in one, and the centre of attention is the second incident, pictorially so trivial, of the blossoming staff. It is with no surprise that in a later gallery we find apparently several of the actors in this piece resting after their labours. The lady who lay for dead sits up. the red gentleman obliges with a song, the clerical super sits by (" How Lisa Loved the King," by Mr. E. B. Leighton, No. 774). Mr. Henry Woods plays variations on his Venetian gossips. Mr. W. L. Wyllie's painting suffers a sea change (" Davy Jones's Locker," No. 81).

If any one wishes to study in short compass all that is characteristically bad in English painting, let him go to Gallery X. He will find Lady Butler's "Evicted" (993) hung because an eviction is a touching thing ; Mr. Stuart-Wortley's "W. G. Grace, Esq." (1,003) hung because its subject is a famous batsman ; Mr. Falero's " Magdalen " (1,021), because it is something out of the Bible ; Miss Rae's " Ophelia " (1,041), because it is something out of Shakespeare ; Mr. Hacker's "Sack of Morocco" (1,005), because it is something out of history ; and Mr. Sidney Cooper's jest (1,004) and Mr. Phil. Morris's pathos (1,022) and portrait (1,061), because these gentlemen cannot be prevented from exhibiting in the Academy anything they may choose to mislay on canvas.

We propose next week to review the New Gallery, and afterwards to return to the Academy and take up such oil- paintings as remain to be noticed, and with these the water- colours and black-and-white work. Afterwards, we shall deal with the architecture at the Academy, and the sculpture of the year in different Galleries.