Tins is a good exhibition, a high average of work,
and several pictures which are far above the average. Pictures, moreover, look well here, some little regard to relative tone, subject, and shape,being paid by those who have the direction of the Gallery. When all allowance, however, is made for this, I find it difficult not to think that as an exhibition of pictures, this year's Gros- venor is a better one than the Academy. However, fortunately, there is no necessity to make the comparison, and in this notice I only purpose to say a word or two about some chief pictures, leaving the majority of the contributions to another time.
The first consideration should be rightly given to the "For- tune and her Wheel" of Mr. Burne Jones, a picture which might well puzzle a critic to estimate or to define. For though its merit is very great, it is merit of a kind for which it is hard to find an exact description, or to remember an exact parallel, and its shortcomings are evident to "the merest schoolboy." On a gigantic cartwheel are bound (we suppose they are bound, though we see no evidence of the fact) three male figures, felon, king, and poet, or whatever they are intended to re- present ; whilst by the side stands Fortune, with closed eyes and lidless face, languidly turning the wheel. The origin- ality of the treatment is manifest, and there are certain beauties of line in the arrangement of the figures and their attitudes; but the peculiar charm of the whole is excessively difficult to define. Partly, no doubt, it lies in a very exquisite quality of painting, and in the genius for design which appears in every portion of the composition. The arrangement, for instance, of Fortune's robes, is in itself a masterpiece of combined imagination and patience. But all this would not account for the peculiar power of the picture, a power which exists absolutely independent of its painting or its composition. Look for a minute at the portrait by the same painter of young Carr, a little chap about six years old. This has the same charm and the same unreality, and perhaps it is easier to trace the artist's secret in the latter instance.
• It is the charm of the triumph of spirit over matter, essence over substance, soul over sense. The peculiar flavour of Mr. Berne Jones's art lies in this, that with a keen, almost too keen, sense of the beauty of form in which it resides, it is, neverthe- less, the spirit of a scene or a person which the artist seeks to depict; and it is not strange that this being so, he seldom succeeds in painting characters which are alien to his own—for he can only conceive one kind of spirit, and if he does not dis- cover that in his subject. his sitter, or his model, he finds nothing at all. And this painter, as be reveals himself in his work, is a strange mixture compounded of very diverse materials, showing, equally,— " Bursts of great heart,
Foul slips in sensual mire."
It is strange that his strength lies in this contradictory combina- tion. All his finest pictures have had some trace in them of that
purely physical side of love, which he depicts in such strange con- junction with its most immaterial aspect. A painter who varies his subjects between Swinburne's " Laus Veneris," and "The Annunciation," gives plenty of food for reflection to his critics, and it is, as I have said, when he combines the two that this artist does his best work. However, this Fortune has practically none of sensual element evident. It is an almost monochromatic design (some people would call it a harmony in slate-and-gold colour), which attempts in no way to render the physical truths of the scene, but which takes advantage of the subject to obtain a conjunction of beautiful lines, to display much subtle drawing of the figure, and to depict a scene which shall have no relation to the coarse, hard-and-fast motives and actions of the present day, an illustration of,—
"All passes : naught that has been, is ; Things good sad evil have one end.
Can anything be otherwise, Though all men swear all things would mend, With God to friend ?"
Regret and beauty, loss and love, desire and weariness, those are the aspects under which the world appears to Mr. Burne Jones ; and even of these he has no gospel to tell us,—only under his hands these things take a lovely shape, and their recesses are sounded to the bottom. A strange art, strangely powerful in its appeal to many of us. Expressing failure in the loveliest way in which it could possibly be expressed. An exact antitype in painting to the old Grecian sculpture ; for the perfection we see here brings no joy or peace to its possessors, who have all, like Wolfedieterig, "lain under the Linden," anal known that which has mule life tasteless to them for the rest of their days.
Look, for an instance of entirely different art, at the portrait of the Duchess of Westminster, which hangs close by ; this is. byMr. Millais. A fresh young English lady, in a black-silk dinner dress, black gloves, and a fan in her hands, turning little more than a profile to the spectator ; one of the best of Mr. Millais' women's portraits, absolutely lifelike in its reality, without in the least degree straining after effect. The vivid beauty of the flesh- painting, possibly a little exaggerated, braces one like a cold bath, after Mr. Berne Jones's brown men and women, and the work of a very genuine artist, and of a very healthy one ; and. yet, and yet,—well, there is more real art in Mr. Berne Jones's imperfections than in the merits of these later Millais's, for Mr. Millais now is tending nowhither, and has no great aim in view. He paints as well as he cares to paint—better, in fact, I might say—inasmuch as he seldom paints as well as he can. And the simpler his motive, the more he is pleased. Within the last four years, it would be interesting to know how often he has painted the same model under different names ; a very pretty girl she was, too, this "Cinderella," " Sweetest Eyes ever- Seen," "Caller Herrin' !" &c.
And as a contrast to Mr. Millais' simplicity, if not lack of mean- ing, look at Mr. Nettleship's picture of " Blind,"—a blind lion followed by jackals, cautiously feeling his way along the edge of a precipice. For the painting, quet painting, it would be difficult to say much, but both the tragic power and meaning of the work are indisputable ; it is a drama of animal life which must end_ in a tragedy, and is touched with a very sympathetic hand.. There is a certain rough grandeur about some of Mr. Nettle- ship's work which places it in a class of its own amongst English painters ; he lacks the humour and the grace of Mr. Britain Riviere, and he lacks the solid, good craftsmanship of such men as Hardy, Davis, and Beavis ; but he has certainly succeeded on more than one occasion in seizing the essential characteristics of lions and tigers, and in endowing their suffer- ings with true pathos.
At another end of the pole of painting are the three Venice drawings by Mr. Gregory, the last-elected Associate to the Royal Academy. So minute and faithful that they seem almost as if they had been done from a photograph, these little works are singularly free from the usual defects of small work. They are bold; vivid, and delicious in colour, and are worthy of very careful attention. Mr. Gregory is essentially a figure painter, but few of our architectural artists could equal such work as this.
I must close this exceedingly brief and imperfect first notice,. by the mention of Mr. Alfred Parson's two summer landscapes, —one in a green garden, the other in a meadow by a river, with the chief object in the composition a flowering May-tree. Both are essentially clever work, smacking, perhaps, just a little of French training (seen, for instance, in the rather heavy quality of the greens, and the rather blottesque manner of painting: foliage), but very English in their fullness of colouring, and almost pre-Raphaelite in their accuracy of detail. Close to one of these is Mr. Richmond's chief work—he sends nine others— of Miss Netty Davis, which deserves fuller notice than I can give- at the end of an article. I have some little hesitation in call- ing the attention of my readers to Mr. Rooke's series of "Designs in the Nativity," because they belong to myself ;; but this industrious painter is so rarely seen to advantage in exhi- bitions, and these little compositions might be so easily over- looked, that it is only fair to him to say that these little pic- tures, which were originally designed for Christmas cards, seem to the present writer to be very good work of their kind. They do not, of course, profess to be Michelangelos or Tintorets, but they cer- tainly succeed in telling their stories with grace, propriety, and clearness, and in making a little space beautiful with colour. I fear I must add, that of the drawing, the less that is Add
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