ART.
THE OLD MASTERS AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
(MR. POOLE'S PAINTING.)
THE chief attraction of this winter's collection of the works of deceased artists at Burlington House is the selection from the works of the late Academician, William Poole. This painter had rather a curious reputation in his life-time ; probably his- work puzzled the public, from its unlikeness to the general ran of the pictures with which it was shown. Briefly speaking, the- pictures which are annually exhibited at the Royal Academy consist of three classes,—one of costume, one of domestic senti- ment, and one of more or less realistic landscape ; and to none of these did Poole belong. He was a. survivor of the old times,. when there were " high " art and "low" art, and his work smacked much of the style of Maclise and Etty. We hope that none of our readers will imagine that in saying this we intend. to suggest any likeness between the work of these masters, of whom one was probably the worst colourist (for a painter of any repute) that the English school has ever had ; and the second was one of the best. But Mr. Poole's work in some ways combined the traditions of both men. He looked at his subjects in a way which combined realism and tradition,. and in his earlier days it is probable that he directly imitated Mediae. The picture of "Solomon Eagle Preaching during the Plague of London" reminds us strongly of the manner in which Maclise would have treated the same subject, and there- isnbout the various figures that strange lack of individuality and life, that dressed-up, correctly-posed appearance which was a noticeable characteristic of much of Maclise's historical paint- ing. This, and the large painting illustrating one of the trials of Job's patience, which was exhibited seven years afterwards (1843 and 1850), is much the lowest point of merit in Mr.
Poole's painting. They are careful, laboured, ambitions, and alas! conventional, full of all kinds of art as far as Art can be taught, with good composition, careful though not very delicate drawing, and solid and uniform painting ; but there is in them no touch of special artistic faculty, and they axe, above all, of that fatally uninteresting class of pictures which depicts the outside aspect of great events or great emotions, and leaves the essence of the matter untouched. They bear to true historical painting much the same relation that the wire frame on which a dressmaker hangs her costumes bears to the human body,—a delusive and irritating semblance.
Five years afterwards (in 1855) Mr. Poole's work shows a great advance, and the large picture (the largest here) of Philomena's song in the "Decameron " connects the work of his earlier manner with that into which he finally settled. This picture is, indeed, a beautiful one, one in which the spectator does not care to look for faults, so splendid is it in its luxury of sunshine, so suggestive of beautiful people and lovely surround- ings. Here almost for the first time we notice that strange power of Mr. Poole's which was afterwards to become his chief glory, of touching Nature with a hand which subdued her details to a special purpose, without making them either con- ventional or untrue. We notice also entwined with this, that power of imparting a touch of fairy influence to his landscape, so that every rock, tree, and cloud helped the suggestion of
strange matters," and, as it were, smoothed the way for the introduction of supernatural or fantastic figures. Here, too, for the first time we see the painter giving full play to his colour faculty, and appearing to revel in its exercise. After -this, however, comes a considerable interval of second-rate -work, and occasionally, as in the "Trial of a Sorceress," a sort -of attempted return to the more conventional manner of early days. Indeed, the "Trial of a Sorceress," with its meaningless figures and its absence of any real feeling, might be a Mediae, were it not that it possesses considerable strength of colour. The works, however, upon which Mr. Poole's fame will ulti- mately depend begin with the year 1868 and end with the year 1876, and are only five in number. They are in order of date as follows :—" Custance Sent Adrift by the King of Northumber- land," 1868; "The Prodigal Son," 1869; "A Lion in the Path," 1873; "Oberon and Titania," 1874; "Cave of Mam- mon," 1875; and "The Dragon's Cavern," 1877. All of these .are fine pictures ; pictures in the right sense of the word, .containing conceptions of a given occurrence at a given time, wrought out so as to be fully brought before the spectator. All are suggestive of beautiful natural fact; all are imbued with .a poetical and imaginative rendering of that fact, and, perhaps, -above all their other merits is that of originality. They remind cue of nothing but themselves, and the occurrence they depict ; they bring up little thought for the painter, but much for the thing painted. There is, perhaps, no other instance of a painter of great ability in our own day who attained to the work for which he was really fitted by so arduous and so circuitous a road as did Mr. Poole. For indeed any one with the slightest real feeling for Art can see in looking at these col- lected works that the man's genius was that of a landscape, and not a figure-painter. Whenever he takes a subject in which figures form the principal interest, he either fails, or he only -succeeds by treating them in such a manner as to either conceal their faces or subdue them into comparative insignificance. This is so in all his best work ; this is really the reason for much of his preference for moonlight effects ; this is why all his pictures which please us best are those in which landscape predominates. Lt must be borne in mind in reading this criticismcf Mr. Poole's work at the Academy that notice is necessarily confined to the works there exhibited, and that that collection is by no means a complete one. Nay, to the best of our remembrance, it is not even a good representative one. There are here only twenty-eight examples in all of the artist, and when it is remembered that he painted from 1830 to 1876, and exhibited at the Academy 'during the whole of that time, the number must be
admitted to be pitiably small. Indeed, several of his finest works are not here,—such, for instance, as the "Lorenzo and Jessica" and "The Vision of Ezekiel." And though he was singularly happy in his water-colour art, there is not a single specimen of his work in that medium. Nor are the works arranged in any chronological order. In fact, the collection has evidently been carelessly done, and reflects little credit upon the way in which those concerned have executed their task. It was not necessary to wait five 'years after a painter's death to make so incomplete an exhibition. In conclusion, it is difficult to sum up the place of this painter, if only because be worked in a department of Art, that of imaginative landscape, which scarcely a single living artist attempts, but so much as follows may be affirmed unhesi- tatingly. As a figure-painter he was a failure, and for very simple reasons. His drawing, though careful, was weak, and very often bad. Look, for example, at the figures of Oberon and Titania, in the picture of the same name, where it is specially noticeable. And he had little if any power of por- traying expression in the faces of his characters ; they are, almost without exception, tame and sphitless, and destitute of any individuality. This is especially notable in the works of the earlier period, as, for instance, in the picture of Job receiving the news of the slaughter of his servants, where it is difficult to tell which figure in the composition is intended to represent the patriarch, such a level of common-place marks them all.
But the power and dignity which Mr. Poole lacked as a painter of figures he abundantly possessed in his treatment of landscape ; and the expression and poetry which we seek in vain from his prophets and patriarchs, we find almost in- variably in his treatment of trees, cliffs, and valleys. Common- place in one direction, he was almost a genius in another ; and if he lighted his humanity with a rushlight, he cast a splendid glow of the light that never shone "on sea or land" over all his landscape creations. This special praise belongs to him, that having been elected to Academic honours, he never faltered in his pursuit of the highest art he could conceive, and that in a school of painting where to attempt great things was the rare exception. His nature must have been strangely mingled of prose and poetry, but we can at least now thank him for the better part.
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