ART.
THE NEW GALLERY.
THE exhibition at the New Gallery this year has no distinc- tive character. Mr. Burne-Jones sends, it is true, a number of studies; but his pictures are elsewhere. Those queer people of the Grosvenor Gallery tradition, Mr. Strudwick, Mr. Spencer Stanhope, Mrs. De Morgan, Mr. Fairfax Murray, exhibit ; but their art has never been strong enough to con- done its anachronism. On the other hand, by dint of cutting across the different groups and tendencies of the English painting world, the directors have brought together a collec- tion in which there is plenty of interesting work. They have bled the Academy heavily of pictures by some of its most popular members,—Messrs. Alma Tadema, Watts, Richmond, Herkomer, and others ; they have welcomed, to their gain, artists like Mr. Alfred Hunt, whom the Academy, to its loss, has slighted ; they have captured two Sargents ; they share the favours of Messrs. Alfred Parsons, David Murray, J. J. Shannon, and others, with competing Galleries ; and the stern artist from Humphrey's Mansions hangs up beside the mild amateur from Molokai.
But there is one notable talent of the younger generation of our artists that the New Gallery seems to claim for its own. That is Mr. La Thangue. For sheer directness and dexterity of painting, the touch of the brush that gives at once drawing, colour, and tone, it is difficult to name his match. Mr. Stan- hope Forbes is the nearest in method and success, but Mr. La Thangue seems to reach a higher pitch of illumination. His most interesting thing here is the portrait of himself (20). We do not remember anywhere so close a rendering of the painter's eager, almost fierce scrutiny of his subject, and it is what one would expect from so keen an analyst of form and effect. "Leaving Home" (132) is interesting, too. We are thinking less of the dramatic appropriateness of the figures than of the sharp presence of the event that is rendered. It is a painter's resource that is used to enforce the feeling of an incident, a trick of design and perspective that brings us up so imme- diately before the horse and cart, and the ruts of the road coining straight at us, and away from home.
Mr. Burne-Jones's studies, thirty-four in number, are bung in the balcony. Many of them are for the " Briar-Rose " pictures, and for the student of design there is no greater pleasure than being permitted to see the development of a master's work. Among these is a lovely sketch for the head of the girl at the loom. It is worthy of a place beside Raphael's Madonna head. in the Print-Room. And in others we have design provoked by coils of hair, folds of dress, flames of fire, and the invention of iron leaves and flowers of armour.
There is luxury of colour in Mr. Alma Tadema's little portrait of Miss MacWhirter (52). It is his best thing this year. The people in the other two—" Eloquent Silence" (51) and "In the Rose-Garden" (53)—will hardly let us enjoy the marble and bronze and flowers. Mrs. Tadema has caught something of her husband's skill in arts and crafts and clothes —" Self-Invited" (118) and "Battledore and Shuttlecock" (148)—and Miss Tadema, who had proved her possession of a microscopic eye, denies herself the exhibition of its power, and promises artistic feeling in " Longing " (187).
It is amusing to find the Academy so gladly escaping from Burlington House. One of the technically strongest of their painters, Mr. Waterhouse, exhibits his one picture here, "The Toilet" (136). Mr. Herkomer is here in great array (28, 33, 39, and 43), but is beaten on his own ground of rude, forcible life by Mr. John Collier with his "John Burns" (213). Of other portrait-painters who may be mentioned in this con- nection, Mr. J. J. Shannon has had good subjects in his "Sir Alfred Lyall " (64) and "Professor Sidgwiek " (122), and
makes most of the former ; Mr. Edwin Ward is best in "Mrs. Eugene de la Penha" (160); and Mr. J. H. Lorimer and Mr.
C. A. Furze (63 and 367) may easily take their place as experts in this rather wearisome business of portrait, that is not, in its first motive, picture. Mr. Emslie's portrait of a "Dinner- Party at the Earl of Aberdeen's" (392) is quite pleasing, because every one has not insisted on having a front seat and distinct features.
Mr. Richmond is always at least troubled with the picture- sense, when he does portrait. This picture-sense, when we find it separated from portrait, as in the large illustration of " Epipsychidion " in this Gallery (72), is disappointing in its tendency to a sort of abstract prettiness. It is a tendency apt to have rather a negative result for some of the subjects of the painter's portraiture; it softens away the eloquent textures and sharp modellings of the face, without substituting a mould and texture in themselves satisfying. We do not forget the many instances when Mr. Richmond's subject has suited hie taste and method. His best work this year is the "Lady Ashburton" (57).
Mr. Sargent's capricious talent is shown in two canvases,—a clever sketch of Mrs. Comyns Carr (82), and one of " Ightham Mote House" (188), with a group playing at bowls on its lawn. The figures are put in with admirable skill in rendering action, and are in right atmospheric relation to their green and purple landscape setting. The realisation is complete so far as it goes, but since it goes no further, the scale seems needlessly large.
Of landscape painters, Mr. Alfred Hunt sends a lovely "Holy Island" (174), shimmering pearl-colour of cloud and water and sand. His other picture, "Windsor Castle,- Twilight " (92) is a struggle with that most fascinating of motives for the poet in light, the conflict of sun and moon. But the amount of intractable detail in the scene obscures this intention. Mr. J. W. North is another of the sensitives to the emotional appeal in rare moments of colour. Such is the flush over his wood in No. 243 ; but it is a pity to vulgarise the vague, ominous feeling roused by that colour by trans- lating it into a literary commonplace in the title (" The Path through the Haunted Copse"), and the appended tag. This confusion reacts on the picture in the introduction of the human figure. She would be needed by the writer, with her ghostly fear, because he cannot give the landscape ; given the landscape, she may go. Mr. Alfred Parsons is altogether delightful in his " Beanfield " (46), and here the figures are skilfully wrought in, so as to give accent to the different colours that play into the picture. The "Broom in Blossom" (242) is a dazzling water-colour. Mr. J. W. Buxton Knight is not so great here as at the Academy, but "All on a. Summer's Day" (19) is a pleasant reminder. There are fine qualities in Mr. J. E. Christie's "Four Manes" (14) : a little crudeness in the sky, and the superfluous ladies might be im- proved away. The same presence of good qualities alongside of defects, the sense of a talent that has not run clear yet and asserted itself, strikes us in the work of Messrs. James Charles (" Milking-Time," No. 111; " Nellie's Garden," No. 168; " Selsea Bill," No. 226), T. F. Goodall (" The Meadow Dyke," No. 32), C. W. Wyllie (" Fallen," No. 61), Mark Fisher (" Water Meadows," No. 190), W. Padgett ("As the Red Moon Rose o'er a Sussex Down," No. 2, and "Sunset," No. 222), and M. P. Lindner (" In the Golden West," No. 159). Of better-defined talents, Mr. Edward Stott has three com- positions, " Starlight " (219), " Harrowing " (230)—the cloud a little heavy and hard, otherwise fine—and one of his rosy calf-pieces (239). Mr. David Hurray sends two, "When Daisies Pied" (77) and "The Meadow Mirror" (142) :—the shimmer of the willow leaves is notable. There is a fanciful touch in Mr. Arthur Lemon's "Fugitive" (231),—the wind. stricken trees that sympathise with the action of the flying- horseman. Mr. Adrian Stokes's "Breaking Wave" (97) and Mr. R. H. Jones's "Yorkshire Oat-Field" (220) have both a good deal of skill. In the balcony there is a pleasant Alfred Goodwin, the "Wells Cathedral" (362), and near it a " Twilight " by Mr. Clausen (371).
We are pleased to find that our old friends on Mr. Van Haanen's canvas are still having a good time (" La Sagra, a Venetian Popular Feast," No. 154). Mr. Logsdail has deserted them for the Lord Mayor's footmen, but his master still keeps them merry with red wine and a jigging tune. Mr. WeguePg is bright and graceful in his "Spring-Time" (157 and
" Psyche " (89) ; Mr. Wetherbee gives us a charming rendering of the former theme, without any semi-classical transposition (" 0, Lovely Spring !" No. 105) ; and Mr. Britten puts us off with two pretty little figures, "Thisbe" (138) and " Arachne" (143).
Of curiosities the New Gallery has its share. Mr. David Carr's "Story of the Cross" (255) is one. Five people are contrived within a narrow space, anxiously engaged in avoiding one another's glance for no reason that the picture or the title explains. The sea-monster that Perseus is feigned to have slain has its inevitable victim here in Mr. C. N. Kennedy (162). Like the proprietor of the Grosvenor, Mr. Halle is tempted to exhibit in the Gallery he directs,—this year, six times.
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