ART.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
[SECOND NOTICE.]
WE concluded our last week's notice of the pictures in this ex- hibition with the mention of the works of Mr. Burne Jones, and we will now mention briefly the few remaining works in this. west room which call for special comment. Of these, the finest are certainly the nine contributions of M. Legros, who may be known to some of our readers as the recently-elected Slade Pro- fessor at University College. It reflects great credit upon the judgment of those who are responsible for his election, that M. Legros can send four such fine studies as we have here (Nos. 72 to 75), which have been executed against time (two hours' apiece), for the instruction of the pupils in the Slade Schools. These studies are all single heads, and show great power and the most thorough mastery of the medium employed, and like all M. Legros's work, are full of dramatic force and intensity. Of the large works by M. Legros, No. 78 is in our opinion, by far the best, and is indeed as fine a. specimen of what may be called the Idyllic school as we have ever seen. "Le Chaudronnier," so it is called, is not idyllic in sense of Mr. Boughton's nymphs in pale muslin draperies, but in telling a simple incident of every-day rural life as it might have actually occurred in all essential respects, and yet imbuing: it with a subtle flavour of pathos and poetry. This old tinker,. who sits mending copper saucepans in the shade with his coat off, is certainly no heroic figure, but still AL Legros has found something of the heroic in him, and shown it us, for he has selected no picturesque, careless vagabond, no broken-down old man, with silver hair and tottering steps, and has surrounded him with no theatrically effective accessories, but has given us. an ordinary man, at work in a very every-day landscape and is a very every-day manner. The painter has had the perception to grasp the fact that the work itself was the element of pathos or interest, and the picture simply records how an old tinker mended his pots methodically under a tree one summer afternoon,. and interests us accordingly. Nos. 79 and 80, "Le Cloitre Espagnol" and "A Baptism," respectively, are in the sterner and more classical manner of this artist, but they are each worthy of attention in their way, the first-named especially so. Walter Crane, the clever designer of the "Babies' Opera," sends. two contributions, the larger of which is entitled the "Renais- sance of Venus." This picture is an unfortunate example of what happens to a man when he endeavours without sufficient knowledge to rival an old master. There is probably nothing much worse in this exhibition than the figure of Venus in this picture. It resembles a hard piece of discoloured putty more than anything else we can think of. The little landscape, No. 71, is as nice in its way as the Venus is detestable, and why Mr. Crane should paint such semi-classical inanities when he can do really clever landscape work, we cannot understand.
We now turn into the East Gallery, which is chiefly occupied with works by foreign artists, though one contributor, M. Tissot, has domiciled himself amongst us for some time. This is, we believe, the first time that the works of M. Heilbuth have been exhibited in London, with the exception of single pictures here and there, and we shall therefore mention them at some length. He sends no fewer than nine works, which, together with those of, M. Tissot, occupy the whole of one side of the east room. To criticise these works at all properly, it is necessary to bear care- fully in mind the various degrees of value of different kinds of artistic work. Excellence in painting may be broadly divided into a first, second, and third class, as follows. In the first class, we place the higher imaginative landscape and figure painting, as instances of which we might take Michael Angelo and Turner. In the second class we place all first-rate realistic painting, either of nature or the human figure ; while the third class is composed of works which, unequal to the produc- tion of either of the above two, concerns itself chiefly with the accessories both of nature and man, and makes a red handkerchief stand in the place of a sunset cloud, or a Tivoli fountain instead of a mountain torrent Of course all these may be divided and subdivided, the last being especially divisible into mock-historic, mock-pathetic, and mock-sentimental. It must be borne in mind by our readers, both in perusing this article, and' looking at the pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, that the majority of works in the west gallery are, at all events, efforts rn. the first of these classes, and that as such even partial failure is
more praiseworthy than full success in the last clasp. There is much to be hoped for some day from the author of the "Renais- sance of Venus," though his hand is hardly strong enough as yet for such ambitious attempts, but there is nothing further than we see, to be hoped for from the art of Ferdinand Heilbuth. These pictures of his are undoubtedly excessively clever in their way, but it is a thoroughly low way, which ends in a cul-de-sac. There's no light beyond it, no issue possible into the clear day of truth. These eleven paintings might be lumped together and called "The Apotheosis of Millinery," and it would be perfectly fair and almost an adequate description of them. Here are a carriage, horses, harness, and coachmen standing at the door of a villa ; here we have ladies in elaborate Parisian dresses lying on the banks of a stream. In No. 10 we have a careful transcription of a very peculiar lady's dress, which is close round the throat, and has a large triangular opening on the breast, a subject upon which M. Heilbuth seems to have concentrated his utmost efforts, and which we are sorry to be unable to describe in fitting language, for the benefit of oar lady readers. No.. 11 is called "Past and Present (Rome)," and we might imagine from the subject that it would have another kind of treatment, but the only notion which M. Heilbuth derives from Rome is apparently a group of tourists, whose costumes are carefully painted, and a middle-aged Parisian in a new great-coat, engaged in explaining the ruins to them. And so on in every picture,—the painting is clever, the figures are well enough drawn, as far as they go, and the colour is invariably bright and fresh ; but they are thoughtless and mindless in the strongest sense of the word, and so are to us more than unpleasing. If the best thing M. Heilbuth has to tell us about Rome, is that there tourists dress, eat, and talk, he might as well choose some other theme, and give us, say, "A Promenade in the Champs Elysees," or "An Afternoon at M. Worth's ;" there would be greater scope for his talent and less fear of his falling below his subject. Nos. 17 to 26 are by M. Tissot, whose works are somewhat after the same style as M. Heilbuth's. He has, however, one redeeming point, which lifts him up to an immeasurably higher level, and that is, that in all his works, almost without exception, there is an element of purpose. Where Heilbuth seems only to try to make a pretty picture, Tissot generally endeavours to tell us some story, to make his characters something mote than lay figures. This was notably the case in his picture of "The Captain's Daughter," exhibited some years since at the Royal Academy, and may be noticed here in the two pictures entitled, "The Widower," and a portrait. The most important of his works in the present exhibition is No. 19, "The Galley of H.M.S. '..Calcutta' (Ports- mouth)." This shows two fair women, listening to the chat of one of the ship's officers in the "galley," and looking out over the water. That the ladies are " Parisienne," dressed in the height of the prevailing fashion, goes without saying, for M. Tissot, though he paints in England, has a thorough Parisian's contempt for English dress and beauty, and the only time he attempted to paint English girls (in his picture of the ball-room at the Academy), he made them all hideous alike. We would direct our readers' attention to the painting of the flesh seen through the thin white muslin dresses, in this picture; manual dexterity could hardly achieve a greater triumph. Of M. Tissot's other pictures, we need only mention "The Triumph of Will" (22). This is an allegorical subject, which is to receive further treatment and explanation in four pictures, as yet uncompleted. It may be owing to the want of these four pictures that the present one is unintelligible, despite the ex- planation attached to it. We confess that it appears to us more like a scene from an inferior burlesque than anything else.
Phillip Morris, the painter of the "Sailor's 'Wedding" in the Academy last year, sends a work entitled, "The Reaper and the Flowers," apparently intended to illustrate Mr. Longfellow's poem, though in this instance the Reaper is not Death, but an amiable rustic meeting some village-children in a lane. This picture is prettily painted in Mr. Morris's usually frothy style, but is not remarkable in any way, and does not ex- plain its title. Mr. Leighton, RA., sends three unimportant works, quite unworthy to represent him, though the head of an Italian girl is a charming little study. There are two more portraits by Watts se the end of this room, one of Lady Lindsay (of Balcarres), and the other of Burne Jones, exhibited, we think, at the Academy some years since. Mr. Watts has, like Sir Coutts Lindsay, painted Lady Lindsay in the act of playing the violin, though in the latter picture she stands sideways the spectator, With her head turned over the left shoulder. There is a great deal of spirit and power about this portrait, but it is somehow hardly a pleasing picture. The small head of Barns Jones is full of character and thought, and is, we shbald imagine, as fine a likeness as it is a picture,—no smallpraise. Nor-. 37 and 37s are two small water-colours by Poynter. The first is a portrait of Mrs. Burne Jones, uniform in size and style with those of Lady Wensley- dale and Mrs. Poynter which we described in our last week's article. The second is a beautiful little bit of the landscape in North Devon, entitled, "From a Window at Lynmouth." We happen to know the place in question well, and can bear witness how faithfully Mr. Poynter has caught the character of the old- fashioned cottage-roof and thick foliage.
In our next and last article on this Gallery, we shall deal with the remainder of the west room,—the water-colours and the sculpture.
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