FINE ARTS.

TIER ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITLON.

Subjects of Invention.

A picture by Mr. F. R. Pickersgill, (507,) having a motto from Spenser, represents one of those ideal scenes of luxurious beauty which, in the style he has chosen to adopt against his own better powers, are the fittest themes upon which he can exercise himself. This is the completest expression his present aims have received ; combining what can scarcely perhaps be called fine colour, but is certainly fine paint, with something of the large and gorgeous rather than the merely pretty, in form. In short, we find here a touch of the Spenseiian beyond the words of the quotation. But what shall we say of the gentleman who had hitherto enjoyed the un- rivalled supremacy, not to say the monopoly, of this power ? Mr. Ken- nedy has had, no more cordial admirer than ourselves, even to the waiving of the sterner claims of study and truth—the artist's code of duty—in favour of his exquisite delightfulness. But this year his manner has de- generated into a lax and paltry mannerism, his enervation passes into the flabby stage, and his speciousness is intensified into falsehood. We hope, though having fears to the contrary, that this may not be the inevitable and final result of a habit of low artistic self-respect : at any sato, Mr. Kennedy must make a great effort to recover himself. We cannot num- ber Mr. Frost among painters endeavouring after the same goal as Mr. Pickersgill and Mr. Kennedy : his goddess is the lay-figure or the bar- ber's dummy, not Circe, nor Akins, nor the lady of the Bower of Bliss ; and the worst condemnation we can pass upon the "Juliet," (Mr. Frost's Juliet!) the "Nymph and Cupid," or the "May Morning," is to say that they are up to his ideal. Mr. Reed, in his "Attempt at Venetian Har- mony," more truly aims at the same thing as the two first-mentioned paint- ers—a general result of inviting beauty—although confessedly, by the title, of a special and reproductive kind. Nor is the "attempt" by any means without its measure of success.

If we are not mistaken, Mr. W. Cave Thomas's "Laura in Avignon" calls for notice among the subjects of invention. The sonnet appended to the title certainly does not come from Petrarch, though sufficiently Petrarchlike in style ; nor, so far as we can remember, is the incident reported in any writing relative to "Madonna Laura." The lady " che sola a me par donna," as her lover said, is reverently saluted, in pass- ing, by Sennuecio del Rene, and impudently gazed after by a coxcomb; against whom, however, Sennuccio turns the laugh. High qualities of draughtsmanship, a manly gravity of feeling, and a method of colour Whose remarkable clearness is not altogether exempt from hardness and chill, will at once be perceived in this picture. The arrangement of the figures, and the way in which the story is told, are also quite satisfactory. We have some individual objections to make, however. Laura is not YerY Young, (which, it may doubtless be answered, she need not be,) and *thoughtful almost to severity, rather than beautiful ; while the fop is by 110 means a type of a fop, although the action presents him in this light "elusively, but a gentleseon with rather a military air. Moreover, the

whole background is faint to an excess which there is nothing at all. to justify. But the sureness of the artist cannot be mistaken ; and the pre- sent work will undoubtedly vise him, as it ought to do,. in publia g. mation.

We scarcely know in what class to include Mr. Stone's picture, "Dz. hooker, in the Rhododendron region of the Himalaya Mountains, sur- rounded. by his native (Lapeha) collectors, &c., elnmiuiaag she plart*. gathered during the day's march," and Mr. Manley's "Medicine-m. performing his medicines or mysteries over a. dying chief." The former at least is in one sense a portrait subject ; but the interest of botth, con- sists in their representation of national feature, character, and, costume.. Mr. Stone's is surprisingly unlike the usual range of his treahnents ; it is the prose of remote and unfamiliar life, instead of the so-called poetry of commonplace tricked out. It has much the look of what the scene may be supposed to have been in reality, though not distinguished_ by any pe- culiar depth of couleur locale. Mr. Maey's is as like one of Mr. Cat- lin's studies, improved in drawing and colouring, as it is possible to con- ceive: yet Mr. Catlin would probably have made something better of it with the same opportunities. This is not a mere costume-piece, but a subject of human interest, however grotesque and alien : Mr. Manley's rendering is doubtless perfectly reliable, and in single heads even. characteristic ; but it has no life or motion. We may as well clear off scores here with both these artists, by saying that the latter has a subject from Paul and Virginia considerably worse than the " Medicine-man " ; and that the former contributes two or three of his female heads, of which the most passable is "At the Opera," and the least tolerable or indeed most

ts

utterly unforgivable, purpor to be from Cmybeline,—a Painful imbecility. We may dispense with anything beyond bare mention of the two tricky and unsubstantial melodramatisms of Mr. Johnston—upon which we can almost see the drop-scene descending—and the "War's Alarms" of Mr. Tiffin, devoid of character or incident, but cleverly arranged and pos- sessing some skilful sparkle of colour.

Illustrative Pictures.

This division brings us back to Mr. Millais and his " aphelia." Shalt- spere's description has been strictly followed- " Her clothes- spread wide, And mermaidlike awhile they bore her up ; Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, An one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and endued Unto that element."

One of the most difficult subjects of a single figure within the range of art. There is madness to be represented—the madness of an ideal woman whom we sympathize with almost as if we knew her—and the action of singing, and the calm " mermaidlike " floating which is to end in pitiless death, and the unconsciousness of danger wider conditions in which. the spectator can only by an effort reconcile it to. himself. These are points which tax equally the artist's conceptive power and his ability for truthful representation. Few persons can say conclusively in what exact position a woman would. float in the resigned dreadless state of feel-- • ,

ing imagined by Shakspere. Probably Mr. Millais cannot answer from i his own observation ; we certainly cannot from ours. But we find the position he has adopted highly conceivable as a fact, and a perfect emo- tional rendering. Ophelia is drifting slowly with the stream—the point • where she fell being out of the picture ; slowly the current carries the garland out of her hand, and bears onward the other flowers which she has let slip—funeral-flowers now; and slowly the water, which has covered her waist and arms, is reaching to her breast. The face is mad; yet where is the madness? We cannot tell: it is there, somewhere, be- cause the painter is a poet. But the fair face is more than mad and calm as she floats singing to her grave, and the hands are more than helpless. There is a kind. of fainting ecstasy in both, unconscious and inexplicable, as her eyes catch, perhaps, through some tangled canopy of kayos, a glimpse of the sky where she is to be "a ministering angel,"—a mean- ing unrealized to his own thought probably by the artist himself—the something more than its express intention which we recognize in all in- tense poetry. The scene of this beautiful death is truly marvellous in painting : the willow-trunk with all its twigs and branches followed out —not a spray unexplained, not a leaf of the river-bank vegetation stuck in haphazard—the firm sharp rushes and the swaying duckweed—araid all which pierce the cheerful notes of a robin-redbreast. The starry de- tached look of the blossoms of a dog-rose-bush is a subtilo touch of nature. Of the water we are not so certain as of tha other points of rendering : its colour is a dusky purple—we will not venture to say untruthful, but scarcely frimiliar to the eye, and the flow is so slight as hardly to enhance the appearance of liquidity. Nothing, however, can be more exquisite than. the moveless transparency of that portion which closes round Ophe- Ha's arm ; and the delicacy, roundness, and firmness of the flesh, the sweet features and soft bloom of the face, the living tenderness of the hands, and the rich floating hair, amid which a single rose still blushes, are not to be surpassed. • Besides the Ophelia, we have two others : one, of a very graceful order of poetry, by Mr. A. Hughes ; one, of a very indifferent range of stagey

convention, by Mr. O'Neil, yet preferable to some of his productions. We will not disquiet ourselves to inquire why the latter is on the line,' but we do most strongly protest, in the interest of common sense and common fairness, against the hanging of a work of so much beauq' of

feeling and painting as the former up to very nearly the top of the Octas gon Room. We see only just enough of the picture to know that the

amount and nature of its merit would warrant detailed criticism and warm praise had bare justice been done to it by the hangers. As it is, we advise visitors to bear the No., 1247, in mind, and to procure an opera-- glass : they will not forget to look out the artist's contributions for them- selves next year.

Mr. Cope's picture, "The Marquis, of Saluce marries Griselda," is one of the remarkable works of the Exhibition. It has purpose and strong

character, with conspicuous qualities of execution. The moment is when

the Marquis, having sallied forth with the lords and ladies of his court to lead home a bride, stops before the cottage of the old peasant Janicola, ; and sues for his daughter's hand. At first sight, the figure of the Mar- quis strikes as stiff dandified, and onmpaning : yet we fancy there is an intention in it at 011ae natural and original. Impassive as the man 'might be, it is not to be supposed that he went through such a scene without some manifest feeling of its singularity—what is called "the ab- surdity of the thing." A marquis cannot propose to a peasant-girl in the presence of his court with the same nonchalant superiority with which he would announce that his choice has fallen on one of his own sphere. It is this feeling, we conceive, which Mr. Cope has aimed at expressing in the figure's prepense jauntiness of pose, at the same time that the face in- dicates a smiling assurance to the half incredulous father that the thing is perfectly bong-fide. Griselda blushes a downcast consent, modest and yielding. Prominent among the members of the court are two ladies, of noble and beautiful presence. There is a stately surprise, but no vulgar contempt, in the foremost as she draws up her swanlike form : the second, to whose lot it has fallen to bear the yet unassigned bride-robes—of rich and splendid loveliness, but soft-eyed and womanly—gazes intently on Griselda, as though to read her heart., not unwilling to find her worthy of the Marquis's love—to which nevertheless either of these ladies may pro- bably have herself aspired, or both. Behind, the lords, more worshipers of show and outside, jeer at the strange choice ; the court-jester points to his bauble topped with an ass's head; and a knot of peasants, Griselda's friends, stare in with greedy eyes and ears. But the best piece of ex- pression in the whole picture is the head of a page, who, kneeling with a rich casket in his hand—one of the bridal gifts—faces round towards the spectator with a look of irrepressible but unexaggerated amusement at this woful vagary of his master. The father is expressive, but rather conventional and Jewish ; a cast of feature which he shares with a kneel- ing seneschal—the poorest of the foreground figures—and with a core- netted lady, apparently the Marquis's mother. The accessories are well painted and characteristic of the place. In colour, Mr. Cope is here, as usual, exceedingly strong, but thick and sticky with over-working, the whole background being besides of a rank unnatural brown ; and the blanket seems to be his standard of texture. We admire the work greatly, however, as well thought and largely rendered, and count it among its painter's most decided successes. It is a real pleasure to look at Mr. Hook's illustration of that story of Boccaccio in which a husband, supposed dead, comes home at the feast of his wife's second bridal, and makes himself known by a ring which he drops into her cup —a real pleasure to him who determines to rest in fact and eschew speculation. A different frame of mind forces the critic to turn round upon his own pleasure, and quarrel with it for not being ad- miration. Why, with so much true feeling for beauty in feature, colour, arrangement, and sentiment, does Mr. Hook deny himself the completion all this would receive through earnest resolve to do his best not only in those respects which please himself best? One immense good which the Pre-Raphaelites seem likely to effect, is that of forcing such painters, through a gradual education of public taste, to be truer to themselves. Meanwhile, as we have already said, this is Mr. Hook's best picture, and a delightful one it is. Signor Toren° has a dignified air; his lady is one whom neither husband nor bridegroom will be ready to resign; and the charming colour and engaging treatment of the two children in the foreground, and the lady who stoops to give one of them a flower, show that Mr. Hook has capabilities of a very uncommon order. Less good, but still extremely sweet, is the "Othello and Desdemona" : indeed, there is perhaps more of the character of sufficiency here, up to the level of the artist's purpose, than in the other picture. Manly strength in his personages is not Mr. Hodes forte; yet we have seen many less adequate conceptions of Othello, from artists who had no beauty to compensate for a deficiency in the more special requisites. Mr. Poole is a shorteomer this year. We say it with sincere regret ; for the fact represents a serious gap not only in the higher qualities of the Exhibition, but also in our own pleasure in going through it. His sub- ject is from "Pericles, Prince of Tyre "; where Marina, the daughter of Pericles, is brought before him to soothe with her singing the settled melancholy occasioned by her supposed loss. Never before had Mr. Poole so unqualifiedly trusted to the vague something, the impalpable poetic atmosphere, in his works, which saves the worst of them from being altogether valueless. There is not one figure here, one face, that means anything in the proper sense of the word ; nothing but a look as if some- thing were meant, a suggestion to the uncertain sympathies of the gazer, no appeal to his judgment. Marina has a kind of lovelorn unstrung aspect, quite- as nearly approaching hypochondria as the more gloomy abstraction of Pericles ; and every one of the assistant figures looks out -with a certain fatuous or leering objectleasness. The drawing and mani- pulation are slovenly to a piteous degree. Mr. Poole, as being a man of true and fine genius, excites a feeling akin to rage when he paints like this. The human triton is really guilty of a moral delinquency when he refuses to assert himself among the minnows.

Mr. Leslie's "Juliet"—musing in doubt and fear over the sleeping- potion—is a very nice study of a young girl; but we are not prepared to say that it is Juliet. We think, too, that the phial ought, on grounds of strict medinval correctness as well as of poetic suggestiveness, to have been less of a doctor's bottle. The flesh and object painting is of course highly skilful in quality ; the bridal dress lying in front. The last Shaksperean treatment we shall mention is Mr. Horsley's "Master Slen- der "—overdone, but not without point. With Mr. Frith we pass to perukes and shoe-buckles. "Pope makes love to Lady Mary Wortley Montague" in his picture, and being laughed at for his pains, scowls and bites his hands : but we have seen Hughes or Emery do the same thing quite as well at the Adelphi, and Miss Woolgar would throw far less of the hoyden into Lady Mary. The picture would continue a mistake though Mr. Frith's unquestionable cleverners at his brush were quadrupled. In Mr. Elmore's "Subject from Pepys's Diary" the cause of ill success is increased and its counterpoise diminished.