THE LIVERPOOL ACADEMY.
Provincial exhibitions are becoming an important feature in that ad- vance of art which forms, and for some years has formed, so conspicuous a movement in this country. Manchester, with her promised exhibition of art treasures for next year, outstrips anything that the Metropolis can show for herself; Glasgow, with the Art-Union works which she has markedly confronted this year with those of London, is confessedly ahead in the competition ; and the annual exhibition of the Liverpool Academy has more than once already enabled its directors to show, in the selection of contributions and the award of the prize, an independence and supe- riority of judgment which might well read a lesson to institutions of greater pretension and power. This year, the prize has been bestowed upon Mr. Ford Madox Brown's picture of Christ Washing Peter's Feet ; a picture exhibited some years ago at the Royal Academy, where it met with scanty official or public appreciation, but which claims to rank, as the Liverpool men appear to have perceived, with the most serious and impressive sacred works pro- duced in England. The artist has now draped the figure of the Saviour, which was partially undraped when the picture was exhibited in London. By this alteration, he has succeeded in adding to the harmony of the work, besides conciliating public opinion ; since the original intention, although doubtless designedly followed out with a view to the facts of the particular incident represented, was liable to be misconstrued by many as a parade of technical knowledge and skill in a subject where any such display is not only inappropriate but degrading.
A second picture sent by Mr. Brown to Liverpool is one which the London public have not yet seen—" The Last of England." This is a work intensely real, and full of that depth and power which reside only in reality; studied also and carried out to the uttermost. A husband and wife—persons of refined society—are aboard an emigrant vessel, which is just losing sight of land. The shadow of a life which has known struggle and disappointment is on his face ; that of home-sorrow on hers. Each holds the other's hand, in silence ; and glimpses of the infant which the mother presses to her bosom are seen beneath her shawL The hus- band, vigorous and resolved almost to sternness, broods with knitted brows intent upon the future which he will carve out for himself and her far beyond the remotest horizon. The background figures are equally true in invention and character; notably the hardened ne'er-do-well who shakes his fist at the old country, which has become too hot to hold him, and his poor aged mother, whose withered hand is raised to strike down her son's fist, and teach him shame if not compunction. The picture, in its every detail, is full of thought and truth ; and it is the only one which art has yet produced to realize worthily a scene alive with the interest and the history of the age.
Besides these works, and along with others sent to Liverpool from the Academy-exhibition of the present year, are Mr. Hunt's " Scapegoat," Mr. Cave Thomas's "Heir Cast out of the Vineyard," and Mr. Hughes's " Eve of St. Agnes."
Previous page
