ART.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
[CONCLUDING NOTICE.]
13LMEDIATELY above the small landscape of Mr. Poynter's with• the mention of which we concluded our last week's article, hangs- a work by M. Gustave Moreau, entitled " L'Apparition," which attracts notice from its prominent position at the end of the room and its extraordinary method of treatment. It is a picture of a very large woman in very scanty, fantastic raiment striking an attitude at the sight of a bleeding head which is suspended in the background and encircled with a halo of fire. We confess that this picture remained unintelligible to us for some time, till a friend suggested that it was intended to represent the daughter of ilerodias disturbed during one of her dancing orgies by the ap. 1?arition of the head of St. John the Baptist. This work appears to us to be in the very worst French taste, than which there is, artistically speaking, nothing less attractive, and there is no quality in the drawing and colour to atone for such an affected and theatrical treatment of a very noble subject. If a comparison were to be made of this picture with any true imaginative work— and there are several in this gallery—it would be clearly seen how it is lacking in all the qualities essential to the worthy reproduc- tion of such an incident. For observe that in this scene the 'essential thing is not the daughter of Herodias in her minimum of drapery, nor is it the ghastly head, with dripping blood and flame-encircling rays, but it is the effect of sudden horror mixed with remorse which we should expect to find in the woman's face ; and it is this which M. Moreau has apparently not felt, or at all events has failed to show in his picture. We have here all the actors and all the accessories of the emotion, but not the emotion itself, which would have been the only excuse for painting such -a subject. In fact, the picture is notable as a work of falsely imaginative art, and as such we mention it.
Proceeding round the gallery from right to left, we came upon one of Mr. Boughton's idyllic works, entitled, " A Raffling Breeze." As usual, the title has a metaphorical, not a literal meaning, and the breeze is one of those lovers' quarrels which from time immemorial have only led to making friends again. There are two fancy-dress peasant women and one fancy- -dress peasant man, in what we are almost tempted to call a fancy- dress landscape, and the picture is graceful and pretty, but thoroughly artificial. Sir Francis Grant does not show to advan- tage in this gallery, and his picture of " F-M. Viscount Hardinge, -with Staff, returning from the Field of Ferozeshah " is certainly an example of the ludicrous, not the impressive side of modern warfare. This amiable-looking gentleman on a wooden horse, ambling peacefully away from a background of burning villages -and bursting shells, in company with other aimable gentlemen, arouses no feeling within us save one of thankfulness that the -days when such painting was considered praiseworthy are nearly, if not quite, over. Sir Francis Grant also sends a large portrait of Sir Hope Grant, G.C.B., playing the violoncello, which seems as if it might be a good likeness, though, owing to the dirty brown -colour, it is an unpleasing picture. Close to this, Nos. 44-46, are three water-colour drawings of Italian scenery by George Howard, which, as specimens of amateur work, are quite admirable. No. 44 particularly, a view of a pine wood near Pisa, has caught all the sombre character which this tree possesses when in company with many others of its own kind, and suggests just such a scene -as is described at the beginning of Dante's " Inferno."
What Mr. Ruskin once called " the school of clay" is well repre- sented here by two pictures, Nos. 50 and 51, by Victor Mottez. In these two pictures, entitled " The Spring" and " After the Storm "respectively, the grass loses its green, and the sky its light, and the water its limpidity and liquescence. In " The Spring " especially, we would call our reader's attention to the water which gives the name to the picture, and which is supposed to be flowing down a sort of gutter towards the spectator. We say -deliberately that we have never seen such a wilful perversion of natural fact as the painting of this water, and this is the less ex- cusable, as it is not a hurried sketch or a tour de force, but a -carefully finished picture. There is a thoroughly clever, but an impleasant picture above this, by David Bles, entitled " Musical Trio at the Country-house in Batavia." To judge from the pre- vailing tone of the colour, this picture is the work of one of the Belgian school, and it has many points of interest The figures are grouped very skilfully, and there is considerable dramatic power displayed in the different performers, and more or less wearied spectators. Yet the picture fails to please, less, we think, from its dead grey colour than from the fact that the artist seems to have painted it in a too thoroughly cynical humour.
There is close here a small portrait of Miss Munroe, No. 55, which seems to possess some merit as an amateur effort in this most difficult branch of painting. It is, however hung so high, that it is hardly possible to see it thoroughly well. No. 56 is another work by a lady, Mrs. Louise Jopling, entitled, " It might have been," a sensational young lady, not differing much from the usual Academy one, reclining in a chair with an open letter in her hand, and a packet of similar productions, tied with a ribbon by her aide. The screen and background are well painted.
Mr. C. E. Halle, the secretary of this Gallery, has several small works here, scattered about the various rooms, the best of which is " A Little Blue-stocking," in the west gallery. May we sug- gest that if Mr. Halle's models have such very unprepossessing feet as he gives them in his paintings, he should not be at so much pains to show them ; it is never worth while to insist upon ugliness, even in feet. Of the Water-colour Gallery there is very little to be said, as there are very few pictures in it, and of those few, only a small proportion deserving notice. The most notable feature is the series of drawings by Richard Doyle, which extend along the whole west side of the room. These are mostly the delicate fairy conceptions with which Mr. Doyle has illustrated so many children's story-books, and so long as he keeps to these he seems to be thoroughly successful. Nos. 8, 11, and 14 are especially ingenious in device and pleasing in execution, and the manner in which Mr. Doyle has contrived to render each tiny figure luminous in the picture of the "Haunted Park" is ex- cessively clever. The drawing of " Fountains Abbey" is, how- ever, an example of how ill at ease this painter feels when the subject is not one which appeals to his imagination. This draw- ing might have almost been done by a boy at school, under the usual black-lead drawing-master.
But by far the most subtly imaginative and beautiful of Mr. Doyle's drawings in this exhibition is No. 19, " Haworth Rectory, Keighley, Yorkshire," the early home of Charlotte Brontë. Every reader of Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Currer Bell will recognise the tall, bare house, standing on the very verge of the churchyard, with the bleak moors behind it. Mr. Doyle has given the greater part of his picture to the churchyard, with its innumerable head- stones, looking wan and grey, under the cold evening light ; and in the background the house rises, somewhat spectral, but hard and unlovely in every line, with a feeble light glimmering here and there in the windows. A thoroughly well-thought-out and imaginative picture is this, and one which would have been an honour to any artist.
We have left to this last article all mention of Mr. Whistler's works, because they seem to be equally apart in their scope from the works of what we may call the pre-Raphaelites, and those of the French artists here exhibited ; for it must be noticed in pass- ing that this Gallery is mainly divided between these two groups, and that, roughly speaking, we might take Burne Jones on the one hand and Tadema on the other as the representative men. We confess that we do not quite understand what Mr. Whistler's aim is in the pictures which he has produced of late, and it is with a feeling of great diffidence that we offer a few suggestions upon what he appears to us to have in view. It seems, no less from the names of his pictures than from the pictures themselves, that Mr. Whistler wishes to establish some connection, of what kind we do not quite understand, between painting and music. Thus we have from his hand " symphonies," " nocturnes," and " arrange- ments" in various colours, which are, we suppose, intended to arouse a similar feeling in the spectator to that which a piece of music of the same name would excite ; and we further imagine that, ac- cording to this theory of Mr. Whistler's, there is some property in the harmonious arrangement of colours themselves which will produce upon the sensuous organism a similar effect to that which harmonious arrangements of notes produce. We imagine that the subject of Mr. Whistler's pictures is to the treatment of it in a precisely similar relation to that which the melody of a piece of music occupies in relation to its harmony, and that he would in painting, as most great musicians in music, consider this subject of infinitely small importance in comparison with its treatment. Now whether the affinity between sound and colour be as great as Mr. Whistler supposes, and whether colour can be so used as to produce an analogous effect to sound, independent, or nearly so, of the subject-matter of the painting, we would not presume to say, but one thing appears clear to us, and that is, that even if such be the case, and if Mr. Whistler's theory be correct, an equal education will be needed in the harmonies of colour to that which is required by the harmonies of music, and that, save in the case of some few exceptionally gifted souls, the great mass of the picture-loving public will remain deaf and blind to these colour-strains.1 And it seems to us, that even granting the theory to be correct, it can never be of much practical service, but must always remain " caviare to the general." This is no reason why we should undervalue Mr. Whistler's efforts, but only an attempt to show a fair and adequate reason for the public's rejection of them. For it is without doubt that the great mass of the public do reject these pictures, and reject them, moreover, in precisely
that degree in which they embody the artist's special notions. For instance, we may mention that of the seven or eight examples of this artist here, the landscapes are sold, but the three large portraits, which are certainly the most special examples of Mr. Whistler, remain his property. Of these portraits, we can only say that in the only one whose subject is personally known to us —that is, Mr. Irving—we can trace no likeness, and are quite unable to understand it viewed as a picture. In some of the land- scapes, notably in the one entitled " A Harmony in Blue and Silver "—a river view in calm weather—we can see considerable beauty, and great delicacy of feeling in the treatment of the misty evening and broad expanse of water. It must be remembered, in what we have said of Mr. Whistler's meaning, that we have only spoken from conjecture, and offered a possible solution of it and of his opinions. It would add greatly to the interest of these pictures, we think, if the artist were to enunciate his theory clearly. If he has done this already, we have not had the good-fortune to come across his exposition.
Here we must close our notices of the Grosvenor Gallery, an exhibition which, however great may be its faults, has yet brought together the most interesting collection of paintings which we have seen in England for many a day ; and which has also shown, con- clusively, we hope, that there is a steady and progressive feeling amongst some of our English artists for that higher imaginative art which we feared had almost breathed its last breath, under the press of Manchester patronage and Academic criticism. It may possibly be right, when a young artist who is struggling towards higher things sends his more ambitious attempt to the Academy, that it should be rejected for not possessing some technical merit, or reaching some arbitrary standard of execution ; bat if it be so, it is no less right that there should be some ex- hibition where these attempts may be seen and duly appreciated, and where help and encouragement may be held out liberally by those who are above the need of either. This would be a worthy object for the Grosvenor Gallery, and we hope and believe that it is one of the objects with which Sir Coutts Lindsay established it.
Previous page
