/int arts.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.
(Fifth Notice.)
Not in one year out of ten is the portrait-department of the Academy Exhibition distinguished by such a body of beauty and dignity as we find in it this year. This is not, however, due to many men or to en- nobled system, but to a single painter. Mr. Watts—(he gives the pseudonym George in the catalogue, but we break no incognito in res- toring to him a name already eminent)—is among the few men of one's own time whom one can confidently rank with the leading men of any time for some special and surpassing gift. He belongs to the world's choice band of portrait-painters, claiming companionship with Titian, Holbein, Velasquez, Vandyck, Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Ingres ; and holding among these great masters no secondary place as an imitator, but a distinct place of his own. Exceeding beauty, blended with an ideal tone like that of true sculpture, is his special characteristic : he sets plain life, so to speak, to music. "Miss Senior," pacing her laurelled garden walk, has a grave, gracious stateliness : " Mrs. Nas- sau Senior" waters her lilies, an impersonation of womanly sweet- ness and purity ; "Miss Eden," simple as a child, engaging in her playfulness, conscious of her beauty, is as lovely as a flower. It is difficult to overrate the value of art like this as a refining influence generally, and a standard of excellence to artists—a standard sadly needed in these days when the mere attainment of a likeness, with an air of social refinement, scarcely at all suggestive of the essential beauties and nobility of human beings, which survive fashion and change, is the only current ideal of portraiture. In this class of art, Mr. Grant takes his usual foremost place ; and we can accept its results with gra- titude when so pleasantly exemplified as in the small portrait of "Vis- countess Hardinge" : but its insight is not deep, nor its appeal per- manent. Sir Watson Gordon is manly, broad, and vigorous, as usual, in his male figures and heads. A shrewd, kindly old Scotch head like that of " Dr.,Monro," or a reserved self-possessed gentlemanlike " C. W. Mercer Henderson, Esq., of Virden," brings out his powers finely. Mr. Richmond has less strength and artistic individuality thanlither of these painters : a portrait such as his "Earl of Leicester" suggests no par- ticular deficiency, and may probably be satisfactory to the sitter and his friends, but can scarcely claim from others anything beyond lukewarm approval. " Cecilia Sarah Richmond," however, is a modest intelligent head, rightly done. Mr. Knight's full length of " Henry L. Gaskell, Esq., High Sheriff for the County of Oxford," painted with a clear sparkling breadth, and telling harmony of grey tints, is much beyond the aver- age both of his own more than common skill, and of his established col- leagues. Mr. Sant has risen somewhat in dignity of feeling, in his treatment of high-bred children. Mr. Chalon's " Portrait of his sister, the late Miss Chalon," has an air of clumsiness made only additionally painful by its determined juvenility : yet it is the work of an artist, and of a colourist who yields perhaps to no painter of his generation for
sp liness, breadth of surface, and richness, combined. Like Mr. C on, though under a very different aspect, Mr. Robertson aims at some artistic beauty of effect. His "Portrait of a Lady," starting from the keynote of the clear bright complexion and brilliant yellow hair, is noticeable for the consistency with which light undimmed tones of co- lour have been employed throughout, with a salient, though rather chill, effect of open-air light. There are very few of the portraits so positive in attempt, or so successfully and deliberately carried to com- pletion.
Of the remaining large portraits, we may particularize Mr. Phillips's, for their untrained life-likeness, and the thoughtful character of his male heads, though the general effect is somewhat meagre. Mr. O'Neil's small half-length of the Spanish painter, "John Phillip, A.R.A.," shows a firm hand, and is painted with so much simple solidity as to promise superior results if the artist would devote himself to portraiture. The two miniature-painters, Sir Charles Ross and Mr. Thorburn, fare dif- ferently in addicting themselves to oil-painting on a large scale. Sir Charles (whose pictures, we hear it stated, are not of recent date) is grave and skilful, with some power of colour ; though not so great as to pstafy, in our eyes, more than a temporary inconstancy to miniature. Mr. Thorburn, once grand and dignified in miniature, has been for some years declining towards unsound display, even in that department of art ; and now that he disports himself in oil, he becomes lamentably tawdry and untrue. It would be difficult to conceive anything more repugnant to common sense and self-respecting art than the mythological travestie of "The Duchess of Manchester," or than the portraits of "Mrs. Merry and Mrs. Cunningham," (surely the ladies must be indignant at being presented in such guise to the public). Others are considerably less objectionable in the essentials of feeling and taste ; but all are more or leas coarse in effect, indicating, not the inexperience of a novice, but the perverted likings of a mannerist. We hope to find Mr. Thorburn work- ing very differently next year : but he will need an effort to recover hhnse
Briltish landscape is in a transition state. We have got out of the prin- ciple of picturesqueness ci tout prix, facility rather than fact, and the dexterous repetition of stock subjects ; and we have not yet quite passed from the stage of determined endeavour which produces studies and late from nature into that which realizes landscapes in the entire sense. In other words, our painters are not yet quite so much at home, or quite 3o. certain of their position, with Truth as they have heretofore been with Flatten and Insipidity : only, the veriest awkwardness in the one.ease is better than the moat insinuating smoothness in the other. The present result, however, is that landscape makes a less conspicuous show than it
used some years back : the old school is dying out, and the new school has to be often tracked through minor works, and resolute Lut unaccom- plished hands.
Mr. Anthony is foremost in sustaining the honour of landscape. Ms " Twilight" has seldom been matched by his own hand—not at all for several years past—and defies the competition of others. It is a simple subject of English meadow scenery traversed by a lazy stream ; motion- less cows chew the cud, and a church-spire in the distance joins the thought of worship to that of peace. The young crescent moon rises into the pure darkening sky over the modest barns and haystacks ; the sun- light, dying a death of beauty in the west, illumines an old willow and a girl's face under its foliage. The sky, still full of fading light, ap- proximates momently to the darkness of the unrippled water. There is splendour here, and power ; and the tenderness which is born of power. The more strength, the less effort : the more true self-reliance, the more genuineness of childlike trust. English eyes can look long on this strong and gentle picture, and recognize and love more and more in it the longer they remain fixed. If, leaving it, they stray to the opposite corner of the same room—a position still more scurvily assigned by the Aca- demicians to such an artist as Mr. Anthony—they will find the same tranquil satisfaction in his " Sweet Spring Time," less intense, but hardly less pure and vivid. Another work both extraordinary and admirable is "The Stonebreaker " of Mr. Brett; which, although its name appears to imply a figure-subject, is rather a landscape with a figure. Probably it would be impossible to carry accurate, uncom- promising study farther than this : its love of truth is absolutely unsul- lied, and its clearness of statement unflawed. Mr. Brett has put himself on his oath ; and, when he tells us that those arc the forms and those the colours of Surrey chalk-hill scenery at mid-day, we are bound to be- lieve him; to believe, that is, up to the limits of personal evidence, which always admits of some deduction on account of the frailty of per- ception and expression in the witness. In Mr. Brett's case, we are quite sure he tells us the substantial truth, and with perfect straightforTvardneas and unusual skill : at the same time, we believe that certain facts as to the colour of sun-shadows have impressed him unduly, and that he be- comes in consequence to some extent chilly where he means to be only fresh and clear. Mr. Oakes is not quite so sturdy an assertor of the truth as Mr. Brett, but he is equally conscientious : he is more anxious to persuade, and less eager to lay down the law. "The Warren" shows us a sea fused between grey, green, and blue, vanishing into white under the horizon-lustre ; a bird is on the wing, the rabbits slip in and out of their burrows. Flatness of surface is raised here from tediousness into charm ; all the features of the scene lying in fair light, save the furze- bush dark against the sky. " Maldreath Sands, Rain passing off," is rather chalky in the white of its flitting rolling land-clouds. There is a hint of a rainbow in the sky ; and the grass-green under the cloud-drift is almost lighter than the azure. The sands stretch inward from the salt ooze, haunfed by sea-gulls. The magnates of our landscape, Messrs. Stanfield, Roberts, and Crea- wick, exhibit their own skill in a proportion exceeding any interest which they excite from us ; but they are all more or less in good case this year. Mr. Stanfield's "Old Holland" is a clever delicate painting : we want more toughness in a wave-lashed pier-head. " The Fortress of Savona" also is a good Stanfield ; yet fortress and sea-craft look rather toy-like, and this neat, clean manner of tamed antiquity and educated nature, made to please the eye, and not rouse the soul, is not much more than a toy, after all. " The Hollands Diep—Tide Making "..is cleverly lumi- nous in its white line of sunshine on the shallow grey of the sea. Mr. Creswick is decidedly poor in his "Ford across an English River" ; pretty in the feathery leafage of his " Rocky Devonshire Stream," and his "Road by a Highland Lake" ; successful, always within stringent limits, in the " Mountain Torrent, Morning." But he is half-hearted at best ; never throws himself into his subject, determined to let it work its will upon him, come of it what may. Mr. Cooke does not keep up to his sea-shore of last year : his best work—not the most complete, but the one with the highest and most marked aim—is the " Sunsetwin the Le- gume of Venice—San Giorgio in Aliga and the Eugene= Hills in the Distance." Of Mr. Danby's three contributions, the only enchuable one is the "Smugglers' Cove." The artist feels the mysterious sorrowful- ness and terror of the sea : yet his billows and cliffs, with their tor- mented repetition of monotonous form, want organization. Three strik- ing landscapes come from the Linnell trio. The honoured senior of the family delights as ever in his swelling banks and clumps of trees. "The Wheat-field" by Mr. J. T. Lionel has freshness of feeling, and much rich natural material; but it is opaque and unlovely in colour, and tends to vulgarity in obtruded minutiae, and, like Mr. W. Linnell's "Hill Country," in strained relief.
To attempt detailed reference to all the careful and interesting land- scape-studies of the new school would soon exhaust our space ; yet we are reluctant to leave the beat of them unnoticed. Such are the green breaking waves of Mr. Holliday's " Darlestone Bay" ; the cosy, busy sea-gulls and white sea-calm of Mr. Moore ; the " Glen Vorlach " of Mr. Peel, with its graceful birch ; the cottage and heath studies of Mr. Boyce ; Mr. Davis's "Young Trespassers," which is curiously literal, and at the same time lovely, with its tender golden greens of grass, the stunted trees and massive farm against the sky, and the shifting of the grey clouds ; Mr. A. J. Lewis's exact and nicely chosen " Reaper's Nursery" ; the "Stonehenge," strange and solemn, of Mr. McCallum ; "Near Kenmare, Ireland," by Mr. Shalders, faint in tone, yet excel- lently balanced and full in subject ; the blue bay of Mr. Fenn'a " Lul- worth Cove" ; the liquid shadows and substantial forms of Mr. Dear- mer's " Old Monastic Mill which stood beneath Arundel Castle " ; Mr. T. M. Carrick's fall-foliaged English ruralism "Near Great Marlow " ; and Mr. Chester's "Afternoon in Summer Time," which seems to blend a great deal of elegant form and composition with careful reality. Mr. Raven's "Avenue, Cobham," a work of considerable importance, is re- markably facile and pleasant in tree-painting : the leaves seem instinct with motion at any breath of the soft breeze. Here, however, we find a little too much mere cleverness of manipulation, which gets the upper hand of the painter.
The only interiors we need mention are those from Santi Giovanni Paolo, and from San Lorenzo, by Mr. Roberta,—as picturesque, alluring, and mannered as usual; and the "Chelsea Interior " of Mr. Tait. This is the room of -our nineteenth-century prophet Thomas Carlyle, and cannot be valued too highly, or regarded with too great interest. The
painter has worked as at a labour of love, with unstinted diligence and particularity : everything is there, from Carlyle and his wife, dog, and pipe, down to each several rose of the old-fashioned paper-hanging, and each ugly item of patterning in carpet and table-cloth. The painter is probably more satisfied of his correctness in perspective than we are ; but, for sterling accuracy, and a pleasant quiet tone which makes a pic- ture out of a very ordinary suite_ of rooms, Mr. Tait deserves unaffected gratitude and credit.
The accustomed names greet us in the section of animal-painting : Landseer first of all—Sidney Cooper and Ansdell at a long interval, and with nothing which need constrain us to pause. " The Maid and the Magpie" by Sir Edwin continues the welcome evidence which the Bri- tish Institution had already afforded, that this consummate master, whatever difficulties of failing health he may have had to contend with, is still fully himself. Long may his labours continue to delight thou- sands, and confer more honour on their author ! The maid, a winsome Fleming with a seductive twist of her plump body and pretty head, is milking her cow, attended by a calf which we really cannot spare to the butcher this long while yet, and some well-conditioned goats who seem to have a very good opinion of themselves; and, while she lends a coy but willing ear to the " soft nothings" (more blunt perhaps than soft) of a bloused swain, the rascal of a magpie is after the spoons. Then there is an astonishing cat, dozing in tabby comfort, by — Rosarius (a queer name new to the catalogue and to us) ; how hard she blinks her green eyes, and with what inward satisfaction she tucks up her fore- paws upon her litter of hay in the out-house ! For minute picking out of every detail of fur, its softness and its gloss, this little picture is quite a phenomenon ; and the same punctilious finish is carried out into each several accessory of bristling straw and the frayed red waistcoat which the ploughman has left behind him. With such a start, and such a foundation of difficult labour, Rosarius ought to do something very re- markable—and this, we are inclined to think, not only in the way of minuteness, but of characteristic truth of a less special order. " The Emigrants on the Nile " is an interesting study of pelicans, standing, crouched, and flying, by Mr. Dillon; not very delicate in pictorial style, but evidently observed and watchfully rendered from the fact. Mr. Keyl's " Sheep " are a decided advance, especially in colour—a point in which all the uncommon cleverness of Mr. Huggins in similar subjects cannot keep him from falling into absolute absurdity. Mr. Hold's " Woodcock" recalls, at a distance, but still not uncreditably, the truth of Mr. Wolf; Miss Hardcastle aims boldly at the colour of a brace of kingfishers.
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