FINE ARTS,
THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.
Illustrative Pictures.
"The devout Childhood of St. Elizabeth of Hungary," by Mr. Collins, is a good example of Pre-Raphaelite industry ; the grain of the oaken church-door, the young rose-bushes, and the accessories generally, being reproduced with great care and success. There does not exist a more con- scientious or consistent adherent of the school than Mr. Collins. But his aspiration scarcely keeps pace with his perseverance. He is content to paint subjects of a single figure or head, affording no opportunity for stir- ring action, or for more than passive strength of feeling; ana even for expressing this, he puts up with models whose appropriateness is only ne- gative. It is quite right that his St. Elizabeth should not be the mere dummy of a saint : but neither is she the flesh and blood of a saint ; and this is not right Mr. Collins might have done more for the sentiment of such a subject; but something further still is required—he should rise altogether above the little excellences of quietism, into masculine vigour and sympathies. ' Tennyson's poem of" Dora" has receivqlustration from Mr. Lucy. The poem is eminently touching, and thiëture is by no means wanting in the same quality ; yet it is not much like the poem. The reason is, that the one is poetical, while the other is not. Nevertheless, the plain-speaking of Tennyson in this pleas, =varied by any flight of fancy or rhetoric, any appeal to the reader except such as resides in the narra- tive itself, is fully as scrupulous as the homeliness which distinguishes Mr. Lucy's picture, and which should seem calculated to be its natural coun- terpart: the difference is in the men. The picture assimilates in character to Crabbe rather than Tennyson : but, this objection apart, it deserves much praise for simplicity and straightforward truthfulness as well in execution as in expression and story-telling; Mary's face is the least successful, being opaque and rather flat Mr. Lucy's thorough superiority to artifice and affictation is cheering in its honest self-reliance. From the hand of Mr. G. B. O'Neill we have a genuine illustration of Crabbe--" The Foundling" —capitally humoristic. The heads of the "village sires" met to name the child are all good, from the hard-fisted, hard-headed, aud hard- featured old farmer, to the reverend chairman ; the sturdy little brat himself, and the rand Mrs. Camp, are even better than good. In the execution, and especially the colour, there is something of a starveling look : but this is a picture of promise so decided as hardly to stop short of fulfilment. Another well treated subject of familiar life is Kit's Writing - Lesson," by Mr. Martineau, from the Old Cariosity Shop. The painter's very praiseworthy diligence has resulted in an amount of success which would be creditable not only on a first appearance ; and he evidently has an eye for character and expression. Some of the back- ground objects are too prominent ; their multiplicity and minuteness easily leading to this error. Mr. Rankley'e "Eugene Aram" conveys the senti- ment of Hood's powerful lines descriptive of the murderer's feelings in listening to the children's evening hymn as completely as some alloy of sameness and weakness will permit A picture which seems to have as little story or purpose as any in the Academy is the " Florinda " of Winterhalter. You may take it, if you like, for a study of women in fancy-costume bathing; or, if the man looking through the screen of trees catches your eye, for a Boccacciolike scene of any general kind—as Boccaociolike, that is, as the work of an imagination whose luxuriance does not transgress academical limits can be. It turns out to be a legendary if not an historical picture; a feet of which no one surely would have thought unaided by a second edition of the Catalogue. The " Florinda " is that lady, the daughter of Count Julian, whose fateful beauty brought destruction on the Gothic dynasty of Spain. That the painting is the work of a man well up in the techni- calities of his art no one will deny, although the drawing is not unex- ceptionable: but here our commendation stops. The character is, as we have hinted, utterly unhistoric : perceptible story or incident there is none ; and the feeling is of the most objectionable order of semi-propriety ; going beyond the point at which it might very well have stopped, yet not reach- ing the perfect unfearing boldness of conscious purity. The glare on the flesh seems to come from artificial light ; and almost all the heads (to say the least) are clearly from the same model, " idealized, " (i.e. disindividual- ised,) but still petty. There is a picture hung up to the ceiling in the Middle Room—Mr. Seddon's "Penelope "—which we believe would repay examination more than any of the remaining illustrative works, its treatment being mani- festly severe and simple; but the hangers forbid. We must therefore dis- miss it as briefly as Mr. Cruikshank's Tam o' Shanter," a companion to the one exhibited at the British Institution ; Mr. Severn's impracticable subject from Spenser (261), which is as well managed as it could easily be ; Mr. Solomon's mediocrities from Sterne and Moliere ; and Mr. Weh- nest's most un-Keatsian "Eve of St. Agnes." The presence of three or four execrable " Samisens and Delilahs" from Milton is owing to the fact that this was the prize-subject for the last Academy gold medal. The prizeman, Mr. Burton, exhibits himself in the North Room : and it is well for the Academy, whose award would otherwise seem strange enough, that some of his competitors justify it by furnishing a standard of comparison.
Domestic Pictures.
The best of these is Mr. Cope's paternal "Portrait of Florence Cope at Dinner-time "—which, though professing portraiture we call a domestic picture in virtue of its sentiment. The childish look oidemure expectation Las been caught most happily, and is expressed with a great deal of quaint- ness and nature. The firmness and truth of painting, both in the figure and the objects on the table, are excellent ; and altogether there is scarcely a picture in the Exhibition better calculated to please universally, the critical taste being satisfied as well as the home affection which so greatly influences the likings of most visitors. If, however, this domestic pic- ture of Mr. Cope stands at the top of the list, his other, named "Creeping like snail unwillingly to school," is a considerable way down.
No. 74, by Mr. Frith, as representing the artist's wife and child, pos- sesses an interest of the same kind as the "Florence Cope." It is one of the best works Mr. Frith has exhibited—of the most skilful in painting and pleasing in sentiment The colouring is remarkable for crispness and brilliancy, obtained with hues almost entirely neutral. There is much roundness also in the forms: but the child's face looks as if flattened by some process of compression.
Mr. Webster has a large picture, and a good one,—the two not being identicaL The large one is "A School Play-Ground," in which top-spin- ning, football, and marbles, are going forward. It possesses observation of boyish expression beyond a doubt, but really not to any extraordinary degree and by no means largely various either in the individual heads and actions or in the general amount of incident. The best is that of the " milk-sop " boy in white "ducks," who goes off to be kissed by mamma, while his tall rebuilt father looks on at the sports, apparently with more lilting for the rough training to be got out of them. Mr. Webster does not always master the great difficulty of representing transient expression: the smile on one of the foreground faces is as hard and liney as it must doubtless have been on the model's after the first ten minutes' sitting. Moreover, the key of this artist's colour is always many degrees be- low the Lath ;—a feebleness which no dilettante praise on the score of delicacy, tone, and what not, will change from a blemish into an excel- lence. The portraits No. 597 will be felt as quite absurd in this respect on a moment's reference to fact. The good picture—certainly one of the best Mr. Webster has produced—is "A Letter from the Colonies," in which every expression is truthful, well-thoughts and rendered with refinement. The old man who turns the letter (probably of his far-distant son) over and over with that perversely minute investigation of externals which is so unreasonable and yet so natural, is sure to burst out blubbering if he delays opening it much longer : the sister has risen, and looks over her father's shoulder with smiling anxiety; while the mother's eyes and heart are so engrossed with the letter that there is no knowing how long the postman may have to wait for his money, unless he can make up his mind to ask for it. A school scene which has quite as much fun and character as Mr. Webster's is the "Patron's and Patroness's Visit to the Village School" by Mr. Faed : but the artist must get rid of a mannerism and insubstantiality not unlike those of Wilkie's later works, if he wishes to rival his earlier.
Mr. Hannah's companion pictures, "The Novel" and "The Play,"
are amusing things ; especially the Englishman in the latter, who, stiff and undemonstrative, sits behind the object of his suit, and gazes with the dismay of a thoroughly well-bred and respectable Briton at the gesticu- lating offisandedness of his French rival. However, there is neither material nor style in these works for anything beyond a sketch. Mr. W. H. Knight is a promising young artist, being an exceedingly dex- terous colourist, and clever in particular points of his pictures ; but he is scarcely equal as yet to infusing motion into his compositions. The lilac satin dress in "Feeling the Bumps" is an almost unique piece of mercery. But an aspirant whose promise is of a higher order., because more sure in study, and perfectly free from trick or pretension, is Mr. W. Davis ; whose female figure picture, called " The Canary," for all its unas- suming and even unattractive look, IS one of the very best done things in the Exhibition. It contains moreover deep and quiet sentiment ; and as we find by the "Dead Game" (137) that its negation of striking colour can- not have arisen from incapacity, we ascribe it in full confidence to an in- tentional self-denial on the artist's part, which may almost be pronounced well-advised. A word of praise is also due to Mr. Woodville for the unobtrusive humour of his New York Communist advancing an argils ment " : from which subject and the address in the index we conclude the artist to be an American, although we should infer French study from his style. We see that a lithograph of this little work has been issued.
Mr. Poole is more himaalf in his domestic than in his elevated manner this
year. "The May Queen preparing for the Dance" is not indeed such a good specimen as many of its predecessors- still, it is prettily poetical enough. We cannot relish Mr. Redgrave's "Love and Labour " ; it does not seem to have been a labour of love, and displays little love for labour in the way of design: but, as the painter has one work, a landscape, good enough to swamp the claims of this, we do not think it worth while to indi- cate at length in what respects they have not been made good. Still less need be said of Mr. Charles Landseees namby-pamby "Bird's-Meat Man," or of Mr. Goodall's "Last Load" ; both artists being of that class in which the author's name is itself sufficient criticism on the picture. Some notice IS due to Mr. George Smith's various studies for their creditable amount of merit ; to Mrs. E. M. Ward's "Antwerp Market" for the closely mar- ital character of its style ; and to Mr. Hart's "University Student" and "Idler for their excessive atrocity. Really, a tour de force must be inquired to attain such a pitch of badness ; ordinary industry suffices for mewing an average success.
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