ART.
MR. BUNNEY'S VENICE.*
Tux chief matter which is made evident by this exhibition of paintings and drawings illustrative of Venice, is that Venice
has never been painted at all,—if so much of paradox may be allowed to us without offence. Turner, who came nearest to depicting the glory of this city, was so wrapt in the glory that he lost sight of all else, and his Venice is rather a gorgeous dream of what the Queen of the Adriatic might once have been, than of what she is, when " all except her sun has set." And no one else has reached even so near to the truth as did Turner, —no one, that is, who has attempted to paint the aspect and meaning of the place as a whole, though many dexterous and clever artists have given us piecemeal representations of canal and lagune, cathedral and piazza.
The best representation of St. Mark's that has ever been made pictorially is the one by the Gentile Bellini, in the Academia, at Venice, painted about 1490, which shows the Cathedral with all its ancient gilding and the original Byzantine mosaics above the doorways, which have long since been replaced by ones of comparatively modern date. The next best is probably the one that Miss Clara Montalba exhibited two years ago in the Royal Academy, which showed the Cathedral standing in a flood of golden light against a hazily bright sky. During the four hundred years between these pictures, St. Mark's has been drawn by probably three or four hundred artists, but their records of it have been almost uniformly unsuccessful, and from Canaletti's harsh accuracy, to Ruskin's gentle and delicate minuteness, artists have always either failed in seeing the beauty, or given up the attempt to reproduce it, except in isolated details.
The present exhibition has its rai8on d'etre in the collection of pictures and drawings by the late Mr. Bunney, who was for many years resident in Venice, and who was originally induced to go to Italy by the influence of Mr. Ruskiu, in whose College of St. George he had studied drawing. After staying for some years in various parts of Italy, Mr. Bunney settled himself at Venice, and there for the remainder of his life painted the architecture, the boats, and the aspects of sky and water, which make Venice the strangest and perhaps the loveliest city of the world. The Venetians called him indifferently " The old painter," or " The painter with the big beard ;" and most English and American tourists who went to Venice for any time, became acquainted with the painter and his work, and used him as a sort of unofficial guide to those inner beauties of the city which are scorned by "Bradshaw," and omitted by the veracious but somewhat irritating " Baedeker." He was a kindly, courteous, old man (old before his time, for he looked seventy at least, and was only fifty-five when he died), whose great delight was to get some one to whom he could show his favourite bits of architecture, and to whom be could talk of Ruskin and Turner, and the " Stones of Venice." There was something almost idyllic in the manner ho used to wander about, sketch-book in hand, through the rough, hurried Venetian life; and if one rose somewhat earlier than usual, and strolled into the Piazza about five on a summer's morning, one was pretty certain to find the old man sitting patiently before his big canvas of St. Mark's, and adding detail to detail, till the brain reeled at his industry and patience. The big canvas is finished now, and the painter's life with it, and it ulmoit seems as if there was something fitting in such a close. Perhaps it was better for him that, having lived to paint his picture, he should die before he heard the world's opinion of it. We say the world, but it is but a small section even of Loudon picture- lovers who will visit this Venetian Exhibition, and fewer still, we fear, will pay much attention to the work therein on which Mr. Bunney spent the greater portion of his time during the last five years of his life. We, who write, saw the picture last spring, when it was all but finished, and had a. long talk over it with the artist, who was excessively anxious about its exhibition, and looked forward to its establishing his reputation as a painter. It is difficult to speak of the work of one who has been personally kind to you, and who is just dead, with absolute impartiality, and it seems cruel to tell harsh truths, when their subject is beyond reach of praise or .blame. And so we may be, perhaps, excused for only saying here that this chief work of Mr. Banney's lice, seems to be of groat
• The Fino Art Society, New Bond Street.—Venetian Sketches and Paintings.
value only to the extent that it is a record, most faithful, minute, and diligent, of the actual appearance of St. Mark's between the years 1878 and 1882. Every detail of that most marvellous building, every vein in its porphyry, and every flaw in its alabaster, every wreckage wrought by time or the more fatal hand of the renovator, is here faithfully set down, with an amount of skill and patience which are very wonderful, and which put to shame the stamped, indifferent, work of many a painter who is known to fame.
In the same room in which is Mr. Bunney's " St. Mark's," there hangs also an oil picture by Mr. Macwhirter, an associate of the Royal Academy, professing to represent "The Bridge of Sighs." Aud perhaps it is necessary to appreciate the full value of Mr.. Bunney's life and work in Art, to turn from his patient. and self-forgetful painting to the hurried, meretricious empti- ness of Mr. Macwhirter, and to remember that the former. painter lived unrecognised in poverty, and died leaving absolutely nothing bat a few sketches ; whilst the former enjoys high Academic fame, popular repute, and their pecuniary accompaniments. We grudge Mr. Macwhirter neither his fame nor its rewards, but it is a proof of bow little the public cares for truth in Art. We have said that the value of Mr. Bunney's picture is chiefly as a record ; we must add that this applies not only to his picture of " St. Mark's," but to all his other works. They are almost, without an exception at once more patient and more mechani- cally skilful than any with which we are acquainted. If it were possible to imagine Turner without his feeling and his glory of colour, one would not be far from thinking of work similar to Mr, Bunney's. The truth is that he was the product of Ruskin's teaching, and that the nature of the material was such, that it adopted the manner of his, instructor, rather than his matter. The great defect of Ruskin, as an instructor for painters, is that he banishes the personal element from their work. This is very evident iu the painting of all his pupils, and. comes, perhaps, in some measure, from the fact of his teaching being formed on such. a very high standard of technical skill.. But there is another reason which operates more strongly than this, and it is one of which examples are by no means confined to, Ruskin. In Literature, as well as in Art, there are to be found guides who fail in producing, or rather in teaching, their pupils to produce, thoroughly good work, simply because they inculcate. certain definite methods of looking at the world of Letters or Art. What Herbert Spencer would call the moral bias, and the- religious bias, are singularly fatal in instructors either of art or literature, neither of which is in itself moral or im- moral, religious or anti-religious. Certain phases of feeling common to the great mass of humanity are as much a dead- letter to Ruskin, as Sanskrit is to the ordinary cab-driver ; and his incapacity to understand these, and their influence upon men, leads to his impatience with that erring, imperfect, bat withal genuine Art, which looks upon Nature and mankind from the point of view of error, rather than perfection. He understands that a picture should declare the glory of God, but hardly that it should denote the frailty of man; and all those attempts at combining natural beauty with the commonplace. endeavours, failures, and emotions of mankind which form the great bulk of good, modern Art, arc to him wasted endeavours. This was why he never could see more in Fred. Walker than a wasted artist, why he has never written a really sympathetic word upon such men as Mason, Pinwell, and Houghton. How-• ever this may be, it is certain that Mr. Bunney's art is such as it would have been under Ruskin's training, and probably under none other. It is laborious, unassuming, and truthful, and if we seek for a word on the other side of the question, we must add, inartistic. The glory, either present or past, of Venice has had no personal existence for this faithful lover,—he has believed in it and worshipped it, but neither seen, felt, nor recorded it.
H. Q.
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