ART.
ADD
DUNTHORNE'S GALLERY.
Ix a gallery which is a sort of unpleasant annexe to its refreshment-room, the Royal Academy starves the art of water-colour, or rather, having starved it, displays its poor misguided bones. Here is a divine art, whose triumphs are of equal value with anything else in art that can be named, yet no one may hope to get recognition from the Academy as water-colourist alone ; without oil, no official art. Result the first : that every painter is tempted, whatever his tempera- ment, to put all his strength into oil. Water-colour is left for the second-rate, or for those who can sacrifice official recogni- tion. If the Academy had been founded before Van Eyck, oil in like manner would have been boycotted, and inspiration discouraged save in white-of-egg. Result the second : that the overwhelming pressure of the official art, and the vulgar idea
that its methods and results only are important, force water- colour into a. stupid imitative attitude towards oil. It is pro- perly an art of suggestion, of atmosphere, of all that can be expressed by the play of colours in a wash. Much more than that destroys the very reason of its transparent being. But the water-colourist beholds the oil-painting, and straightway forgets the manner of artist that he ought to be. He sets to work as a man might to weave a cable out of gossamer. It can in a way be done ; but the result has the merits neither of gossamer nor of cable. As things of beauty, most of the works hung in this gallery would be eclipsed by a splash of colour allowed to dry accidentally on a sheet of wet paper. The real adept in water-colour is the man who can somehow keep the merits of the accident, but also arrange and overrule it to suggest something in Nature that lends itself to washes.
The only very striking sketch here is Mr. Arthur Melville's "Arabs Returning from a Raid " (1,338). Against a luminous afterglow, the domes of an Arab town stand out in flat night. In front of them a flutter of white burnouses, and a flicker of horses' heels, is the raiding party splashing through some water to the town. There are a few symptoms of convention beginning where study might have gone further; but it would be ungracious to insist on these before so refreshing a piece of artist's work.
Then there is an Alfred Parsons—" Wild Marjoram (1,268)—with the painter's sense for flowers and flowerlike bloom in landscape ; the line of figures, too, is well thought of. Next this hangs a picture that cannot be commended for its technique, which is fuzzy ; but there are fine qualities of feeling and of design to express it in the group of " Gleaners " (1,267!, by Mr. Lionel Smythe. There is, on the other hand, con- siderable technical ability in the dash of Mr. Raven-Hill's " Preparing for the Fancy-Dress Ball" (1,364), but little refine- ment. A work of Mr. R. B. Nisbet's has been bought this year with the Chantrey money (" Evening Stillness," No.
1,349). The choice is somewhat surprising, for the merits of Mr. Nisbet's work are not of a very pushing kind. But in his way he is an artist, and one often welcomes his unobtrusive low-spirited little moor pieces among vulgar exhibition neigh- bours. " Near Witley, Surrey " (1,258), and " Afternoon, nearly Sunset" (1,422), are other sketches by the same artist. Next this last hangs a study of a head, whose technique is quite exemplary compared with most things here, "A Connemara Bailiff" (1,423), by Mr. H. W. Kerr. When we have mentioned " Early Morning, Yarmouth Quay " (1,177), and " A Wet Day, Yarmouth Market-Place " (1,236), by Mr. A. G. Bell ; "Windy Trees" (1,214) and "Pinewood, Cove" (1,216), by Mr. James Paterson ; "A Dutch Homestead" (1,262), by Mr. Robert Meyerheim ; " On the Sands' Verge " (1,274), by Mr. Ernest Dade ; " Kelso" (1,280), by Mr. Albert Strange ; "Marshes on the Suffolk Coast, Walberswick " (1,366), and "A Hazy Morning, Walberswick " (1,394), by Mr. E. J. Sachse ; and " Scavengers " (1,419), by Mr. W. Luker, we have fairly done our duty to the gallery. But we cannot forbear from once more lamenting that Mr. E. J. Gregory wastes himself on the minute prettiness of things like " Fanny Bunter" (1,186). His " Prince Giglio (1,193) is larger, but not even pretty. What can be done by woman when she " hath a microscopic eye" is shown in Miss Kate Hayllar's astounding study, which she calls " A thing of beauty is a joy for ever" (1,190). Labour for ever does not necessarily result either in beauty or joy; and this kind of work, where the print on an engraving hanging on a wall is reproduced in infinitesimal letters, is not even realism. But it is a curiosity of patience. A pastel by M. Emile Wautera has strayed in (" M. H. Spielmann, Esq.," No. 1,195), and there is a large and somewhat depressing collection of miniatures.
In the matter of black and white, the same story is repeated as in the case of water-colours. Originality in black and white, such as original etching, the Academy has not recog- nised. It has recognised the engraving and the etching that reproduce the Academy picture. The results have been the same : the Painter-Etchers, like the Water-Colourists, have been forced to found an outside Society of their own ; but most of their work, except in the case of a few strong artists, is servile to the tyranny of Academy ideals. We look in vain here for the names of Whistler, and Haden, and Strang. Mr. Frank Short sends one of his original designs, already seen at the Painter-Etchers. Photography is rapidly making havoc among the mechanical reproductive engravers, and in most
cases the photographic reproduction is much to be preferred. But one etcher has recently astonished the world with what shows real translator's genins,—Mr. William Hole, with his etching after Millet's " Wood-Sawyers " (1,605). Nothing that we have seen of Mr. Hole's original work has seemed to us to have corresponding merit; work after a master he appreciates seems really to be his function. There are some other repro- ductions of merit, but nothing else in this curious jumble need detain us, unless the study of " Filecutters " (1,665), by Mr. W. H. Y. Titcomb.
It is pleasant, after so much blame of what is dead and trivial at Burlington House, to invite our readers to go on to a little exhibition round the corner, the "Atmospheric Notes in Pastel," by George Hitchcock, at Dunthorne's shop in Vigo Street. Here is a medium handled with intelligence, and used to the purposes of an artist. We have already noticed, as one of the really good pictures of the year, Mr. Hitchcock's " Tulip-Garden," at the Academy. All who have enjoyed that picture will hasten to see the pastel studies. Mr. Hitchcock is an American who was trained in Paris, and has since worked in Holland. Those who love Millet and Mauve will recognise something of the hand of those masters in Mr. Hitchcock's work ; but that is only its starting-point. The moment one enters the gallery, one's heart leaps to the exclamation, " Colour !" There it is, a blood-red sky burning out over smoking reeds and dim figures of women (3) ; sun- light and haze over fields of tulips and crocuses (7, 13, 33) ; lilac sky, yellow moon, and faint, cold green sea (15); "Night Rack," green and purple (18), and so on,—every one of the thirty-eight striking a clear, beautiful, novel chord of colour. There are materials for a like contrast in the etched work of Mr. Strang, hung in an upper room in the same shop ; but we cannot at present do justice to either the admiration that its merits excite, or the discussion that its eccentricities would provoke. We merely draw attention to it in the hope that those who have seen what the Academy displays in its Black- and-White Room, may go further to see what original etching is like.
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