ART.

IN our first article upon this Gallery, we only spoke generally of the character of the exhibition ; in this, we propose to note in detail a few of the principal pictures.

On the first wall of the West Gallery bang two small pictures. which are, upon the whole, the most satisfactory in the exhibi- tion—the " Black Diamonds," by Mr. W. L. Wyllie ; and the " Waves Breaking by Moonlight," by Mr. Arthur Severn. These works form a carious contrast in nearly every respect but that of merit. Mr. Severn's is refined, dignified, and almost solemn in its general effect; abstracted from all trace of human toil and human emotion, and simply literally reproductive of a very

beautiful natural effect. Mr. Wyllie's, on the other band, is a picture of a string of dirty coal barges, seen on a crowded part of "the River," under a bright light, and wit' all the bustle and

toil of the Thames surrounding them. All 1 our to him, that he has found beauty as intense as that of the soft moonlight,

and the " broken spirit of the wave," in the rough unwieldy bows of his coal barges, and the muddy water of his river. If we go to Mr. Severn, as we may go with all confidence in this picture, to learn how the water has tumbled upon the shore since the first moonlight fell upon the waves, so we may go to Mr. Wyllie to learn how, in the year of grace 1883, the barges and the bargees looked upon our national river. The life of nature and the life of man are represented in these pictures, and represented truly. One remark we must make here, in justice to Mr. Severn. He has been accused (we happened by chance to seethe statement) in one of our most well-known evening con- temporaries of having "too evidently painted this picture from a photograph." Nothing, we will venture to say, could be more

-unjust than such an accusation. The chief beauties of the work depend entirely upon subtleties of colour, as seen under

moonlight, for which a photograph would be absolutely useless, and it is excessively doubtful whether a photograph could have helped the artist in any portion of the picture. The truth does not lie in this direction. Mr. Severn, greatly influenced as his work has been by Mr. Ruskin's teaching, is an unwearied student of Nature ; and he has studied breaking waves especially, so fully and so sympathetically, that he knows their features as a youngster knows the face of his sweetheart, truly and minutely, and yet through a veil of fancy and a glow of feel- ing. As a little bit of technical criticism, perhaps we shall be pardoned for drawing attention to the magnificent artistic 'dexterity with which Mr. Wyllie has treated the " black

'diamonds " of his barges. To paint a long string of laden coal barges, showing the contents plainly, without making the picture dull in effect, false in colour, or exaggerated in light and shade, is a real artistic triumph. Mr. Wyllie has done it with an amount of brilliant ease such as perhaps can only be fully appre- ciated by a painter, but the truth of the work and the interest .of the picture lie open to every one who knows the scene, and feels a little interest in this side of English life.

Close to these there are two pictures, of " Roses " and "Poppies," by Mr. Fantin, of which we said incidentally in our last article a harsh, though, we fully believe, a

-true word. We would add here that they are, in every- thing bat the inner feeling of the painting, most splendid

pieces of work. In artistic skill they leave nothing to be desired, and are to any other life in this exhibition as wine to water. The artist has not quite got at the quietness of

the life of flowers, and has endued them a little with what we hold to be alien to their nature; but if he does not see them fully, he does see them strongly and truly, and what he sees, he can paint to an extent which comes very near to perfection.

We have now spoken of three fine pieces of artists' work. Let us say a few words upon a kind of work which

is opposed in character to these, and which, by its pre- valence in this exhibition (and in nearly all English ex- hibitions) goes far towards swamping the better style. "Wanting ! a name for this holiday number of the Graphic style of art," which gives us dressed-up children and dressed-up sentiment, from the intellectual point of view of a

young ladies' school, the social and emotional stand-point of an Oxford-Street dressmaker,—pictures in which a dog or a cat is introduced, and combined with silk stockings and dress-

improvers, till the poor beast loses all its beasthood, and with it all its beauty, and becomes a mere toy-thing of fur or hide, playing a sham human part in a sham human comedy. One instance of this is, perhaps, as good as a hundred, and no in- stance could be better than Mr. Burton Barber's "Coaxing is Better than Scratching." A table-cloth and a wicker-work chair, partly seen, form the surroundings of this precious work, wherein a child of nine or ten, dressed up to the nines in white frock and blue sash, and silk stockings, and shoes with rosettes,

is poised against the edge of a table, at an angle of about forty-five, whilst a cat rubs its head against her arm. The whole picture is painted with great clearness and dexterity, and will undoubtedly be bought, if it is not bought already, by

one of the illustrated papers, to reproduce as a " coloured plate;" and there are scores, if not hundreds, in this gallery, of a similar nature. It is, perhaps, worth noting by any reader who. cares for pictures, that in work of this kind the public not only get bad art and sham feeling, but they get, almost inevitably, a vulgarity of treatment which is beyond description. In the opinion of the writer of this article, nothing could be more alien to the spirit of childhood, nothing more intrinsically and detestably vulgar, than these combinations of canine and feline life, with millinery and childhood. And it must be remembered that the wide-spread painting of these pictures, which have increased in number enormously during the last ten years, is due in no small measure to the encouragement which is afforded to the artists by the proprietors, or rather, the managers, of the illustrated papers. It is sad to see that one of the greatest living English animal painters has been of late seduced into prostituting his art to this purpose ; and who can wonder that lesser men follow,— "When Astur clears the way."

Let us talk of pleasanter things. If Mr. Wyllie's and Mr. Severn's pictures are, on the whole, the most interesting in the exhibition, there can be no doubt that the pleasantest is Mr. F. D. Millet's picture, called simply, " The Window Seat." This is a woman in a white gown, sitting sewing, against a white- curtained window. The picture is absolutely perfect in its quiet refinement of feeling, its sense of placid, decent life, its atmo- sphere of home and peace. It has, too, another quality, slightly more subtle, which grows slowly into distinctness. This is a certain quaint grace and refinement of its own, something which separates it from the slightly heavy, prosaic goodness of the English character, and imparts a touch of gaiety to its virtue, and liveliness to its repose. The woman is sewing, but we feel that she has not sewn for ever, that it is not impossible she will leave off, and with her work put away her cares of the household. A delightful picture, thoroughly well painted, unaffected, and graceful. We heartily congratulate the young American artist upon a genuine success, none the less real because its subject is so comparatively trivial.

It is unpleasant to have to say hard words of a man who has done good work, and who still possesses great ability ; but in truth there is no more irritating sight in this exhibition than the two figure subjects which Mr. E. J. Gregory sends. One is a little girl picking caterpillars off some rhubarb-leaves ; the other, a little girl resting in a chair with a palette in her hand. Both are trivial, uninteresting, and vulgar, of no conceivable interest to any one, except what must come from the spectacle of an artist of great power lowering his abilities to the level of vulgar common-place. Here and there, as, for instance, in the colour of " Caterpillars," the old, artistic power of the painter shines out ; but it only makes more dreary in its light, the lack of meaning, the lack of beauty, the lack of feeling, grace, gentle- ness, and gentilesse which accompanies it. As the present writer was, perhaps, the first in England to appreciate Mr. Gregory's great powers, we do not scruple to say that he is at the present time wilfully

"Spoiling the heritage in his gift," and doing work of which he ought to be ashamed.

Mr. George Clausen has a large and successful picture in this Gallery, called "Day-Dreams," an old and a young peasant- woman sitting under a tree in a hay-field. The old woman is sleeping, the young one dreaming. The picture is full of artistic ability,—it is delicate in its grey colouring, true in its out-of- door effect, and the subject is skilfully treated. But we cannot notice this work on its merits without saying that it is, in colour and manner, a most manifest and unmistakeable copy of the painting of M. Bastien Lepage. It is so like indeed, that were it not a little less delicate in colour and vigorous in conception, it might pass as one of the last-mentioned artist's works. This is not a trivial or an accidental resemblance, which might be unconscious or accidental, but it is a deliberate adop- tion by Mr. Clausen of the style of the young French painter, and we regret to say that so clever an artist should be willing to sink his own individuality so completely.

We have had occasion to speak several times of Mr. Henry Woods' work, and to remark upon its rather trivial in- terpretations of Venice and Venetian life, but we must say that his small work in this exhibition (about a third of his usual size), entitled, "The Market of the Rialto," is one of the most fresh and spirited bits of street painting which we have ever seen. It possesses all the good qualities of his larger pictures, and the slight element of coarseness which is to be found in them is absent from the smaller work. A very good piece of work this, as good of its kind as anything in the exhibitions.

and especially to be noticed for its brilliance of colour, and what we may, perhaps, call the free minuteness of its painting.

There are two large landscapes which must be mentioned, though we have little space to do much more than mention them. Mr. Keeley Halswelle's river scene, entitled, " Opening Day," and Mr. Alfred Parsons', " The Daylight Dies." The first is fine in its rendering of the reeds and river; but the sky is coarsely painted, and lacks all tenderness and beauty of colour. The second is a far finer piece of work, but is not quite free from that suspicion of heaviness and that lack of interest which are apt to attach to Mr. Parsons' work. This is a picture which is the work of a thorough artist and a thorough painter, but it is a little heavy, and more than a little unsympathetic. But the manner is fine, and it is notable that it is almost the only picture in the Gallery which aims at reproducing a landscape with any grandeur of composition. Those who care to see the difference between really fine painting and work of lesser quality, should look at the painting of the grass and reeds and brambles in Mr. Parsons' foreground, and then at the brush work of Mr. Halswelle's large picture.

Mr. Caton Woodville has a clever, Oriental, sketchy picture of a fight at a ford (in Egypt), full of his spirited drawing and vigour, and a pleasant contrast to the milk-and-water subjects of the surrounding pictures. Mr. Dampier May, a young artist, has a rather good picture of a girl in brown, walking along the Chelsea Embankment, quiet and unaffected. There is a good Tadema, an indifferent Long, and a fair Riviere.