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SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS.
Out of more than eight hundred contributions, how many can we unfeignedly commend ? The landscape painters, after our English fashion, are of course most prominent both in the number and quality of their works, the open fields, the bosky dells, the broad sea pieces, rocks on the coast, calm evenings by the river, are here in customary plenitude. Mr. Hurlstone's pictures from Shakspeare appear simply startling, and coarse, and perhaps best deserve the legend he himself, with pedantic candour, has attached to a scene from Othello—" baud fecit, faciebat 1859 " ; whilst Mr. Buckner's portraits, those of the Misses de Arrovaye especially, wear a grace of attitude, expression, and carriage, for which his sitters must sincerely thank him. A bright, gay, view of Genoa from the new Terrace, painted six or seven years back by Mr. Pyne, shows the same sense of warm hazy atmosphere with careful drawing in the foreground, observable in all his pictures, and contrasts with the ri :,m- ous clear bluffs, and sea and scud on the Devonshire coast of Mr. W. West, in this room. A. bold piece of scene painting from the Gridvanger Fiord, Norway, with the massy basaltic rocks rising from the /shadowed depths of land-locked water is forwarded by the same artist. "Beech Trees in Albury," by Mr. V. Cole, have a very real and out-of-doors aspect, the light glancing freely and glitteringly through the loaty cover- ing overhead. In Mr. Earl's dogs, we see his usual poacr of canine
expression, a lazy domestic spaniel stretched beside his masters' hat and cloak is an undoubted portrait ; and hereabouts is a sketch by Mr. Weir, of a young agricultural artist in his loose great-coat and wideawake, scraping a fiddle with intense self-satisfaction by the fireside. How that right leg curls with his efforts! Sunsets in their calm rich effects, and the cheerful morning dawn display the wonted cares of Messrs. J. Denby Gilbert and Mr. H. I. Boddington. A background of mountain scenery brings before us the "First Snow of the season" in good contrasts of light and shade by Mr. Byer, and commendable is the spirit and sense of motion in Mr. Wilson's sea pieces, the boat in the "Entrance to the Port of Havre" is driving rapidly on the full rolling wave. Of the figure pieces, Mr. Hill's "Wearied Shepherd Sleep- ing on his Dog; " " The Abandoned," a rosy little girl, asleep in a rock- cleft, whilst her brother is busy at leap-frog in the distance, by Mr. Fitz- gerald ; "Little Red Riding-Hood," by Mr. Baxter, and a clever study of a Lady's Head, "The Bride," by Miss Blunden, the warm light under the eyelids being well hinted at ; Mr. Woolmees elegant desolation in the attitude of Mariana in the South," and the natural repose of form in Mr. Roberts's sleeping-boy, "Forty Winks," most readily catch our eye for approval. Commend us in conclusion to the higher sensitiveness of sentiment in Mr. T. Robert's "Opinion of the Press "-whereby the artist narrates the effect of a crushing criticism on "My dear Husband's Picture' in the refusal of the-purchaser: as if purchasers now-a-days were so easily led by the nose by jounialists, and as if artists' domestic discords were the inevitable result, This kind of illustration is akin to Barbauld poetry. To criticise so charming a collection of master-pieces of the English water-colour art as are now exhibited at 168, New Bond Street, from the facile and poetic hand of Mr. David Cox were surely superfluous. No one should hesitate about a visit, for the whole tone of the exhibition is luxurious from its completeness of power.
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