THE ARTS.
WATER COLOUR EXHIBITION.
LITTLE change appears in the collection that fills the small room in Pall Mall East, except that on one or two painters the effect of age is marked, either by a more pronounced form of the natural traits, or by some abrupt effort to snatch a new manner, as Wilkie did in his later years; and that a few new hands are added, from the junior society.
Many of the names will at once recall the cast of the works to which they are attached: De Wint, for example, presents the same simple and sturdy counterpart of nature; only that his eye seems to grow more clear with age and his hand more faithfully vigorous. He does not wait for outré and extraordinary effects; but takes plain English nature in her everyday aspect, and by the sheer force of knowledge and skill, he trans- fers the distinct forms, the vivid sobriety, to his paper.
The history of Copley Fielding has been different: an ultra-graceful tendency gradually led him into smoothing down every form and shade, until the sublimest spots were reduced to a pattern suitable for our Christ- mas Annuals: a sense of this effeminate exaggeration appears to have broken upon the painter at a late period, and he flies from it into an oppo- site extreme of a sketchy dashing manner; which results in pictures with crude, rough, unconcocted foregrounds, and violent-coloured distances.
In David Cox this rough manner is but the more pronounced form of an original blemish, considerably redeemed by great vigour: "the Night Train "—a railway train passing in the gloom, with its glow of fire while affrighted horses scamper off across the field—is a striking idea finely con- veyed. David Cox junior is following worthily, with a soberer fidelity to his model: this young artist must mend a disposition to see everything under a purple aspect. May it prove but the " purpureum lumen juventte."
George Fripp emulates the best in the masterly grasp of his subject and of his pencil: he thoroughly understands what he sees, and what he must do to render it into the dialect of water colours. In the present collection he has a variety of scenes,—rustic lanes torn by cart-ruts, old mills, ver- dant park views, Alpine regions from Italy; and in each he bends him- self, with the fidelity of strength, to take the character of his picture from the original subject. On the whole, his English scenes are the most complete, perhaps because they have employed a larger share of his labour; but nothing can be more beautifully warm and sunny, more animated, as in the play of the sun upon the living foliage, than the view of "Angera from the heights above Arona."
Bentley is becoming less artificially fine in his contrivance for grouping bright tints and warm colours, and he gains proportionately- in power: a certain hardness clings to him, but it is a fault which belongs to the stronger side of art, and he can break through it; witness his "Bantry Bay, Ire- land—Storm clearing off." Among works of merit we notice a large picture of the St. Bernard Hospital and Pass, by Gastineau; "Evening," by Branwhite, a painter whose energetic but quaint memoranda need to be worked into pictures; "A Sunshine Holyday," by Dodgson, a recruit from the other gallery; and " Mussel-gatherers—Rhossick Bay, South Wales," by E. Duncan, another recruit.
Prout has several excellent architectural views, in his usual manner; Joseph Nash, interiors, especially a good view of a room in a country-seat, Levan, in Westmoreland. Among the figure-painters, Alfred Fripp and Topham contribute Irish sketches; Jenkins, inter alia, some pleasing Normans, shrimping and boat- ing, and a pretty girl "After a romp"; George Cattermole, Jolly antiqua- rian monastic reminiscences, and a capital scene, animated and vigorous, in which some sacrilegious robbers are offering their precious plunder to a goldsmith for sale.
This year William Hunt leaves rustic boys and girls to Oakley, who improves the vacant field to excellent purpose; lacking the power and ab- solute truth of his prototype, but having a truth of his own, with a grow- ing skill that does more and more justice to a simple and graceful senti- ment.
Hunt is copious in flowers, fruits, and domestic interiors ; mad in some of the latter there is the gingham-gowned girl; and he ventures for the find time upon landscape—eighteen pictures in all! They display his usual power; but his newer style suggests some interesting observations. His wonderful acuteness and accuracy of eye and command of hand have long enabled him to seize upon the individual character of each particular object, from a potsherd to living man ; his nice discrimination enabled him, by an artful juxtaposition of elementary tints, to emulate the power of colour attained in oils by transparent mingling of tints. Irla more recent practice on fruits and flowers has still further developed that power, while it has compelled him to a ininuter and more refined handling: this has corrected the coarseness of his texture, while it has oar-
thing but derogated from his strength: on the contrary, it has rendered his works more than ever certain to survive, by imparting that perfec- tion which the overladen memory of posterity demands. In land- scape he is a student; the "Lana Scene" equals anything in power of luminous effect and in the character of colour, but is defective in the character of the forms, as if the artist had not learned to generalize enough for open landscape: he should try again by the opposite process, and aim to work rather like Rubens than Claude. In the "candle-light effect" we again notice that directly to represent a body actually luminous is impossible: light itself is beyond the gamut of pigments, which can only give reflected or refracted light: a dark shade to the lamp would have ad- mitted all the possible effect, and immensely increased the scope of the artist. The flowers are admirable-all of them: the May blossoms (296) are a triumph over difficulty verging upon the impossible-so marvellously caught is the threadlike horror or bristling of the blossoms and their sta- mens, so surprising the union of brilliancy with delicacy. But the crown- ing work is the "Basket of Primroses," in which the fragility and delicacy of the flower itself, its modest splendour, the intricacy of the tangled moss, the twisted aridity of the dead moss-clad twig, the mingling of earths and root-fibres, are so admirably imitated, that you seem to be peering into the work of Nature herself-rich, fresh, and living.
Among the brightest works, in every sense, are Frederick Tayler's hunt- ing scenes and groups of animals; and this year he excels himself-so gay and graceful, so free and finished, are his little bijoux of sportsmanship. Ills companion pictures, " Morning" and "Evening "-a group of dogs arousing themselves for the day, and the same composing themselves to rest-are more successful in the elaboration of brute character than any- thing we have seen from the same hand.
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