irts.
THE CLOSE OF THE SEASON.
THIS is the closing-week for most of our leading art-exhibitions. The Royal Academy, the Water-Colour Galleries, the Suffolk Street Society, the French Exhibition, have today opened their doors for the last time, and tomorrow they wil exist only in retrospect. Art, like .everything else, is going out of town ; and many It first-rate or second-rate attraction of the London exhibitions will shortly be a piece do resistance for some provincial gathering. .Let us bestow a parting word upon the London art-season of 1856.
From the walls of the Royal Academy we may yet glean a few works which, in our more detailed notices of the Exhibition, received. slight mention, or were passed over for want of space.
'Mr. )obson's ' Prosperous Days of Job," Mr. F. R. Piekersgill's ".Christ Blessing the Children " Mr. Dyee"-s "Good Shepherd," and Mr. Le Jeune's Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre," are works of the religious class all marked by some point or character not wholly com- monplace. The first two and the last are works of art decidedly feeble : yet it is something for Mr. Dobson to give us Job as a lordly benefactor rather than the squalid scabby beggar which illustrious old master after old master has loved to repeat ; -only he weakens the meaning of his treatment sadly by making one of the bystanders whisper to another who the benefactor is, as if the name and fame of him were not abroad already -wherever his good deeds extended. It is something for Mr. Pickersgill to have thought how he should express for himself, not-merely copy from some one else, the character of Christ, and what aspect of the character should be enforced in this subject of the Little Children. He has endeavoured, as we read his picture, to express, amid the happy children and -proud mothers, the Man of -Sorrows acquainted with grief," the " Son of Man, who hath not where tolay ;As head"; and, though the embodiment, as we have said, is feeble, the intention claims to be respected. It is something for Mr. Le Jenne to have imagined the moment when Mary gazes into the sepulchre, so rapt in sorrow that her Lord is standing even now behind her and she knows it not. The value, however, which really exists in the thought is masked under the commonplace of prettified treatment, and, as a whole, the picture is not only weak, but con- demnable. Mr. Dyce's " Good Shepherd" is scarcely worthy of him ; and he has especially missed the character of Divine tenderness, giving austerity instead.
"The Prayer of Faith Shall save the Sick" has 'been a highly popular
work, and has certainly advanced its artist, Mr. Phillip, in popular es- teem. To-our judgment, its merit is summed up in firm and effective boldness ; for we discern nothing beyond the ordinary in its invention, and we find Mr. Phillip's manner, both in colour and otherwise, eminently destitute of beauty, though by no means of vigour. Mr. Hensley. the new Associate, has not done anything to distinguish the year sof his his election; "The Administration of the Lord's Supper" being of a mawkish theatrical kind, and the other three being slight things enough. Mr. Leslie's " Hermione " has little in it remarkable save the elegant breadth and ease of its handling. Another Shaksperian woman, Mr. Cary's "Bianca," from the Taming of the Shrew, has more than common "favour and prettiness"; but the artist, by turning the face almost away from the spectator, avoids the task of rendering shades of character. Mr. Cross is an artist whom elevation of aim and past ap- proved excellence, if nothing else, should save from the indignity which the hangers have done him, by placing his picture of " Lucy Preston's Petition, 1690," where its undoubted blemish of negative colour could be seen, but where any excellences it may possess were effectually con- cealed. Mr. Rankley's domestic subject, " From the Cradle to the Grave," is one of the best pictures he has painted, and a decided advance in breadth and firmness. In landscape, the lofty feeling and admirable executive thoroughness of Mr. A. W. Hunt's " Stream from Llyn Idwal," and the vigorous perception and clear unfaltering style, charac- teristic but very free from mannerism, of Miss B. L. Smith's water- colours, deserve to be again insisted on. In sculpture, Mr. Munro's "Dante," evidently studied from the mask, is an interesting attempt. The absurdity of which Mr. Fontana has been guilty in applying the principle of colour on marble—tinging the flesh of his " Prisoner of Love," but leaving the hair white, as if hair formed a light mass in con- trast with flesh—should not pass uncensored by any who wish to see the principle fairly on its trial.
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