FINE ARTS.
LAKE PRICE'S VIEWS IN VENICE.
Mn. LAKE PRICE has recently returned from a sojourn at Venice, with a portfolio of sketches in water-colours, wherein the marble palaces and watery highways of that magnificent city are pictured with a feshness and vivid truth surpassing any thing in modern art since CANALETTO. We have become so familiar with the forms of the principal buildings in Venice, by means of prints and paintings, that the subject, fruitful as it is in picturesque beauty, seemed to have been exhausted ; but on looking over these drawings by Mr. PRICE, we felt that we had never fully experienced the charms of bright and varied colour that shed such lustre on the towered brow of the "sea Cybele." Not only did we get a glimpse of nooks and corners that had never been put on canvass, but we received new ideas of more prominent objects, with which we had fancied ourselves well acquainted, in a pic- torial sense : the Church of St. Mark, with its barbaric pomp of co- loured marbles, bronze, and gilding, the Moresque façade of the Ducal Palace, the lofty Campanile Tower, and even the Rialto with its wide- spanned arch and covered way, appeared in a new light ; the sun of Venice lit up its old glories with a golden glow ; the buildings stood out in bold relief from the deep blue sky, and the gay hues of sur- rounding objects were reflected in the rippled surface of the emerald wave.
Every painter of original powers may give freshness to scenes the most familiar, inasmuch as each one depicts the impressions made upon his own mind, which must differ in some respects from impres- sions received by others but there is a greater difference than can be thus accounted for between the views of Venice taken by LAKE PRICE and by other English artists his predecessors. He has not only seized those salient angles of view which show the stately edifices in con- junction with less remarkable buildings, thus presenting the general aspect as well as the leading features of the city, but he has faithfully imitated the local colours of the several spots, and the brilliancy of the atmosphere ; so much so, that on quitting the portfolio and emerging into the sunshine of a London street, the blue sky seemed only sky- blue, and the atmosphere to pattake of the dingy hue of the brick
The secret of Mr. PRICE'S success consists in his having made all his sketches in colours, and completed them on the spot : as regards details, arrangement, and effect, they are pictures in all but finish. Other artists—with the exception of HOLLAND, whose views in Venice we have often had occasion to admire for the beauty of their local colour- ing—appear to have been content to sketch the forms in black and white, making memoranda of the colours and afterwards introducing effects of their own in their pictures; whereas Mr. PRICE has studied and preserved both the colours of the details and the general effect of nature at the time. PROUT renders the forms in his peculiar manner ; and TURNER transmutes the scene by his capricious and fantastic effects of colour. Whether Mr. PRICE will be equally successful in the pic- tures that he may produce from his sketches, remains to be seen : the outcry that was raised against his picture of St. Mark's, in the last exhi- bition of the Old Water Colour Society, has impressed him with a notion that in order to please the English taste he mast lower the tone of his colouring ; for while he was throwing down his pencil in despair at not being able to attain the brightness of natural effects—the most pure and intense colours seeming like dirt in comparison—visiters of the exhibition were exclaiming at his exaggeration. We shall be sorry if Mr. PRICE should sacrifice one iota of the vividness of natural effects to any fear of offending public taste : nor need be, if, bearing m
mind that the hues of nature are reflected by sunlight on the atmosphere, he imitate their transparent and aerial qualities as well as their in- tensity ; which be did not in his large picture of St. Mark's. But to jyoduce a finished picture equal in vigour and freshness to a coloured sketch, requires all the refinements of the painter's skill. Meanwhile, the sketches themselves are to be lithographed ; and Mr. PRICE has been fortunate in inlisting the talents of his brother artist Mr. JOSEPH Nem; who will do as much justice to them as can be done in neutral tints. Some interiors of the churches and palaces of Venice are most superb : they appear as if set out by an artist to make pictures of; the master- pieces of TITIAN and PAUL VERONESE subduing the splendours of the sumptuous hangings and furniture, themselves aspiring to distinction as works of art.
We have so often bad occasion to complain of the English aspect of foreign landscapes, owing to the artists not having represented in their sketches the local characteristics of the places, that we cannot let pass the present opportunity of urging the necessity of making coloured drawings on the spot, whether they are to be engraved or painted from. The influence of the colours of objects and atmospheric effects in devel- oping the character of a scene is very great : long after the forms have faded from the memory it retains a vivid impression of the general ef- fect. The most exact and skilful draughtsman cannot compete in minute accuracy of outline and breadth of light and shade with the daguerreotype ; but not all the delicate truth of photographic delinea- tion can supply the want of colour : by imitating the local colour and atmospheric effect alone can landscape painters hope to stand against such a formidable rival as Nature. Therefore it behoves them to study with redoubled assiduity the influences of atmospheric light upon the individual hues of objects and the general tone of the scene ; and also to strive to imitate the appearance of movement in figures and foliage, water and clouds : at present the choice seems to lie between florid visionary gleams of places, vague and formless as a mirage, and models of landscapes, like painted toys, destitute of life, air, and motion.
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