ART.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
[SECOND NOTICE.] WE regret to say that, owing to an error in the catalogue, we stated inaccurately that Mr. Watts's picture of "The Soul's Prison" had been painted in illustration of a sonnet by Mr. Walter Crane; we are now informed that the reverse is the case, and that Mr. Crane wrote the sonnet after seeing the picture. By the way, there is another curious error in Mr. Blackburn's catalogue concerning this composition, which is described therein as representing "The Soul's Prism," a title full of that unconscious irony in which printers sometimes indulge, Mr. Watts's picture being full of what Mr. Crane calls "fires prismatic" and "palpitating mists with magic hues."
To proceed with our notices of the Exhibition, we call atten- tion to the most important landscape, and perhaps, taking all its merits into account, the best picture of the Exhibition. This is Signor Costa's " Frate Francesco and Frate Sole," a view over a broad stretch of valley, surrounded by mountains, seen from Perugia, with a Franciscan monk in the foreground stretching out his arms in benediction of the rising sun. It is a large (we should imagine the largest picture the artist has painted) and a very important work, and stands in relation to the other landscapes of this Gallery in a similar position to that in which Mr. Borne Jones's "Mermaid" stands to the figure- subjects at the Academy. It crushes its surroundings, that is to say, by four distinct qualities of fine art,—its style, its com- pletion, its colour, and its serious purpose. "Beauty goes beautifully " in this composition, each little detail of tree, and flower, and hill being lingered over, as if the painter had been loath to part from his work ; and yet all the details, careful, clear, and delicately truthful as they are, have undergone-
" A sea-change Into something rich and strange,"—
have been transfused by the artist's imagination. It is impos- sible to define shortly, and within the limits of an article like this, it is unwise to attempt, any definition of this quality of style which connects the works which possess it with the great art of former ages, and links them with that which is to come ; only we may note the fact of its existence here. We see quite plainly that had there been no great Italian painters, no classic art, this picture could never have existed. It is not only the result of a genuine poetic impulse working serenely towards a definite predetermined end; it is the result of tradition of the right kind, of that subservience to the beet, which we know as reverence, and that remembrance, colon re I by personal thought and feeling, which is the groundwork of imagination. It is, perhaps, worth while to note here, as it is certainly pleasant to remember, that this Italian painter, whose present picture shows so many of the qualities which made the idyllic art of our own " George Mason" so beautiful, was also the man who found Mason in the utmost need in the streets of Rome, and lodged him in his owu studio, and helped him till he gained reputation. And it was from Costa, too, that Mason gained not only shelter, but the peculiar charm of his art. Some note, hitherto silent, was struck within him by the example of the elder painter, and the character of his work changed so entirely as to be almost un- recognisable, after he became acquainted with Signor Costa's work.
To speak plainly, after this Italian landscape there is nothing in the Gallery which does not look both a little coarse and a little trivial, and the best thing to do is probably to start boldly to the opposite extreme, and select for next consideration some- thing frankly and simply English. This may be found in " How the Boat came Home," by Mr. Napier Hemy, a picture of North- Cornwall fishermen landing in a heavy surf, their boat tossed up on the crest of a breaker, the whole of the near water being a mass of curling foam. " Honour to whom honour is due ;" and Mr. Hemy deserves recognition for this picture, if only because of its determined attempt to depict accurately a phase of Nature which is of intense difficulty, and which is custom. arily evaded, or treated in a wholly conventional way. The present writer, who has painted frequently upon this very coast, may perhaps be allowed to speak with some decision as to the general truth to Nature of these breakers and swirling lines of foam ; but (as has been said) the subject is one of great difficulty, and Mr. Hemp, though he has made a splendid bid for success, has not wholly obtained it ; the wild- ness and the broad aspects of the scene he has gained, but that one almost insuperable obstacle, the order in confusion of the broken water, as it retreats to the oncoming wave, is not wholly overcome. Still, notwithstanding that partial failure, this is a fine work, bold without insolence, and vivid without affectation, alike sincere and worthy in its purpose, and painted thoroughly and solidly throughout. Not altogether in vain was Mr. Hemy, in the old days, a pupil of Baron Leys ; his long apprenticeship to mediteval art, if it did nothing else, taught him that a trowel was not equivalent to a paint-brush, nor an effect to a picture.
Look at Mr. Nettleship's " Untameable," a study of a tiger lying down, for an example of a genuine artist who has not learnt the above lesson, but who smears his work about with a profound indifference to anything but the result, •and thereby renders many of his pictures most un pleasing upon close examina- tion. This is the more to be regretted as the painter is one of those artists who have not only an artistic, but an intellectual impulse in their work ; and he rarely paints a picture without a meaning which is almost too big even for its large canvas. But, after all, in an oil-painting the first thing must be the painting itself; till we get that, it cannot be a picture at all, much less a good picture.
Mr. Henry Moore's large sea-coast scene, entitled " Sun- set after Storm," is his best work of the year, and is in several respects very fine. The shore and near rough water are especially good, the horses and the man well drawn and well introduced. The weak part of the picture, as it is by far the most difficult, is the painting of the sea and cloud in the middle distance. In this part of his composition, Mr. Moore has attempted to show a heavy drift of rain-cloud advancing towards the shore, and hanging low down over the waves and obscuring the horizon. This is, as in Mr. Hemy's work, a very hard subject to render with perfect clearness, and in the present work is but imperfectly depicted ; both the form and the position of the cloud are a little confused, and it is not till the upper part of the picture is reached, with its wild mass of lighted cumulus cloud, that the effect becomes clearly intelligible. And if one must tell the whole truth, the picture is, perhaps, a little too much a record of an effect, showing too little intention and thought on the part of its painter. Its truth is presented to us sharply, but with some coarseness and haste; shoved at us, as a news- paper boy pushes the Graphic in at the window, when the express is about to start. We feel the artist is not treating us with courtesy, though his intention is right enough.
What shall be said for Mr. Robert Browning's "Jeanne &Ars
and the Kingfisher," otherwise a life study of a nude woman in a heavy blackish-green landscape P The evident criticism, of course, is that the woman is an unmodified school study —a good one, as far as it goes—and the landscape is a harmonious background, but in no sense in any connection with the figure,—in other words, that this is not a picture, because it has no unity of impression ; nor could a figure look like this,. except in a carefully lighted studio. Our objection to this work, however, goes much deeper than the above ; and as Mr. Browning's art has received much praise from injudicious critics, partially, we suppose, from the fact of his being his father's son, and partially because it is the fashion just now to applaud the chic and vivid effects of this Antwerp school of painting, we may as well state clearly what we consider to be the great drawback to paintings of this class. Our view is that pictures of the " nude " are only admirable when they are painted from an overmasteriug sense of the beauty of the female figure, either from its sculpturesque or its pictorial point of view. And to a considerable extent this feeling is, and must be, of a general kind. The insistance on individual peculiarities in the painting of the nude invariably results in merely producing a picture of a model who has just taken her clothes off ; and directly the thought of clothes is introduced,. the picture becomes offensive ; or, if that be too strong a word, at least indelicate. Try any great painting of the nude by the following test,—" Can I, by any stretch of my imagination, think of this figure with clothes on P" You will find that the invariable answer to that question is " No." The thought of clothes is one which you cannot get into your mind about a great nude picture, which you cannot dismiss about a bad one. This is one of the cases where the mind and soul of the artist either speak through his handiwork, and make it good, or are silent, and make it execrable; no disguise is possible here,— if the painter has had no thought save of himself, if he had felt no more about his subject except the opportunity it afforded him to display his skill, it is intolerable that he should choose any subject in heaven and earth save two, pure landscape or pure humanity. As it is impossible for a landscape artist who sees nothing in Nature but so many opportunities for covering a big canvas, to give us any real reproduction of her beauty, so it is impossible for a figure-painter who has no other thought about the body than that it is a difficult thing to draw, and he will show how well he can do it, to depict the human form in such a manner as to make it beautiful. There are some things in the world of Art which cannot be done, and one of them is to paint a great picture of the unclothed figure, without painting a great deal more than its superficial aspect,. and no amount of technical skill will aveil in this respect to save the artist from the failure which his want of thought and feeling have brought about. We can excuse him, perhaps, for thinking and feeling little in renderings of costume, or thin picturesque fancies ; but if be takes humanity for his subject, he must feel what makes it noble, or it is certain he will only show us what makes it base.
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