FINE ARTS.
BRITISH INSTITUTION.
Tars year's exhibition of modern pictures is, if any thing, worse than -ordinary. The attempt to better it by reviving the prize-giving system Bias signally failed. Suppose fairness were tried—that would be the greatest novelty here.
A second visit has made us acquainted with two or three pictures in the class of DESIGNS that we had not noticed in the glimpse we got at the private view,* owing chiefly to their being placed in unfavourable situations : but the instances of successful story-telling are few and in- significant ; all the attempts at elevated subjects are failures, and many provoke a smile.
STONE'S picture, (360 is the most striking and dramatic : a handsome- featured, well-limbed page, is lounging on the seat of a garden-arcade, playing with a hawk, regardless of the lovely girl who leans against the wall, fixing on him a reproachful gaze. The artist has given, in- stead of a title, a quotation from Mr. HENRY TAYLOR'S dramatic poem, Philip Van Artevelde ; but the profound pathos of the passage which describes the deep, absorbing love of a noble-minded woman for a shallow coxcomb, is not expressed in the design : it is an every-day piece of flirtation—a common love-quarrel ; and as such is portrayed to perfection. There is a glitter in the eye, and a complacent smile on the mouth of the male coquette, that bespeak a secret satisfaction at the pain his neglect is inflicting—he could not be unconscious of the steady look of deep concern that is fastened on his face : the damsel, too, is evidently piqued, and the scornful curve of her lip in- dicates a kindling anger that may presently burst into flame : the silent rebuke of her grave and beauteous face is indeed most eloquent. Mo- dena artists rarely succeed in depicting strong emotion or deep passion ; but they hit off liking—anger—in short, moods and tempers of any kind—to the life. Here is another love-scene of a different kind, Wait- ingfor an Answer, (7,) by CALLCOTT HORSLEY • a comely rustic, a retainer of the olden time, with the badge of a bleeding heart conspicuous on his shoulder, the bearer of a billet-doux to the mistress, while " waiting an answer," is making love to the maid, who stands in the entry playing with her apron and trying to seem indifferent, though her face is suf- fused with a blush of innocent delight and confusion : the lady writing the answer, seen through one window, the servant with a light to seal it crossing the passage, and the laughing faces peeping through another casement at the lover, are superfluous ; the couple would tell the tale better by themselves, so plainly is the case read in the look and attitude of each.
A Frolic, (310,) by J. P. KNIGHT, is the title of a nursery-scene—a mother washing her children : one of the two elder urchins, whose flesh indicates them to be fresh from the bathing-tub, is splashing the other with water. The figures are life-size, and the painting is powerful ; but the picture, though clever, is not so pleasing as it ought to be for such a genial subject : mamma is a formidable person, and her look causes some misgivings as to what will happen to the little naked child across her knees ; especially as she appears, by the roses in her hair and her • Briefly noticed in the second edition of last Spectator.
yellow satin petticoat, to have left a party as if for the purpose of re- pressing the " frolic ": a globe in the background, too, gives an un- welcome hint of lessons, and the fine china basin and ewer in front seem in danger : those dear boys will certainly catch it ; they're laughing now, but they'll laugh on the wrong side of their mouths presently.
The Temptation of St. Anthony, as depicted by W. SIMSON, (50,) is no very formidable trial of the Saint's virtue ; who, indeed, looks as if he thought so : he turns round his venerable head to the buxom Flemish dame, and shows a sleek face, that bespeaks any thing but fasting and mortification ; while the matron, with one min akimbo, holds out a glass of wine as if she were his wife, saying to him, " Here, Anthony, take drink ; it can't hurt you." The painting is finished, bright, and forcible; and shows a more refined style of execution than the artist's former works. Don Quixote giving Advice to Sancho Panza, (59,) by J. GILBERT, is a spirited and vigorous study ; Sancho, albeit we have seen something like him in LESLIE'S pictures, is a specimen of boorish shrewdness, but the Don is a self-conceited and pragmatical person- age. La Maitresse, (121,) by C. BROCKY, is an elegant and piquant design, inoffensively characterizing the courtly gallantry, licentious- ness, and prodigality of dress of the time of Louis the Fourteenth : a beautiful but meretricious-looking woman is showing a miniature to a handsome cavalier, whose sumptuous costume is set off by a fine person and a princely air of graceful ease : the painting is masterly, uniting the finish of the Dutch school with the free handling and rich colouring of the English. Near to this is a little picture of modest merit, by another new artist, though of illustrious name—The Victory of Mistress Deborah Debbitch over Major Bridgenorth's Scruples against Dancing, (120,) by S. WEST: the sweet earnest look and flushed face of the little Puritan, and her dancing motion, are very charming. F. GOODALL, a very youthful painter of great promise, has two pictures of extraordinary merit for a boy of seventeen,—Baptism, (180,) and Return from the Christening, (12): the last is the smallest and brightest, the least laboured and most pleasing and effective : the family party leaving the church and dropping a son into the hat of the old beggar, is a pretty incident, and they look cheerful and happy ; whereas the group round the font look heavy and lumpish, and the painting is feeble and opaque : Mr. GOODALL has much to learn yet ; and we caution him to be- ware of hardness of texture. The Penitent's Return Home, (327,) has merit enough to attract attention ; but we were surprised and sorry to see the name of COPE to so mean and commonplace a conception and such petite and over-laboured execution : the repentant girl kneeling at the cottage-door is evidently overwhelmed with shame and contrition, though her face is hidden ; but her old father looks unconcerned, and the mother and her gossips within, who could scarcely be aware of what is going on outside, are uplifting hands and eyes in a very lackadaisical fashion. In The Morning of the Duel, (118,) by C. LEES, the husband leaving the bedroom looks at his sleeping wife and child with the gloomy sullenness of hatred rather than regretful tenderness ; and one wishes them well rid of such an ill-favoured protector. In Time Last Interview between Sir Thomas More and his Daughter, (2,) by E. M. WARD, there is little emotion on either side, and we almost question the reality of the daughter's assumption of sorrow. The Interview between Milton and Galileo, (56,) by C. LUCY, is more like a theatrical Hamlet and Polonius ; and Mr. CLAXTON has represented Lady Jane Grey in the Tower, (174,) in the full glare of a court, not like one preparing for death : many other painters, more attentive to costume, go no deeper than " the trappings and the suits of wo." Mr. DICE has imitated the early Florentine painters, not merely in their rigid mannerism, but ha their quaint literal conception, in The Christian Yoke, (262,)—which he has literally rendered by a neatly-turned billet of white wood that Christ has imposed on the shoulder of a naked urchin, who is trudging off with it very contentedly ! There are two or three fine Studies of Heads in the Gallery. One, a female, The Wish, (2550 by VON IIOLST, has character and expression worthy of a better occupation than try ing her fortune by cards : an- other, Head if a Polish Jew, (131,) by GEDDES, is individual and cha- racteristic, and powerfully painted, in a style of solid excellence, with high finish and free handling : the colour is too heavy in its sober brownness, and it wants transparency in the darks and luminousness in the lights to approximate to the Rembrandt-like tone which the painter has emulated : it forms a remarkable contrast to the sign-painter's style of Sir MARTIN SHEE's .1.00 Rabbi, (21,) in the opposite corner ; and makes Mr. Monrox's Polish Jew, (235,) look weak and washy. With a glance at a pleasing and graceful sketch of a A Girl Reading, (8,) by J. W. KING—and a longer look at two of Isisiusas's bright har- monious bits of colour, An Italian Girl, (267,) and an English rustic lass, called A Surry Commoner, (200,)—accompanied by a feeling of regret at his loose, vague, daubing style of painting, (which our ac- quaintance Mr. Smudge admires hugely,)—we leave the figures, and come to the Landscapes. TURNER is not so fiery this year ; but though his colouring is more sober, his meaning is as drunk as ever. Snow-storm, Avalanche, and Inundation in the Alps, (104,) is a wondrous arrangement of tints, and one can make out something like a chaos of elements ; but the scene wants alpine grandeur, and form there is none—excepting a gridiron in one corner, which we suppose is introduced to indicate the painter's fond- ness for a broil. The pendant picture, Blue Lights (close at hand) to Warn Steam-boats of Shoal Water, (112,) is a pictorial problem of chromatic hues, blue, white, brown, and green, in beautiful harmony ; but beyond the rolling clouds of dun smoke, the flashing explosion of white light, and a vegetable mass intended-for sea, nothing is distinguishable. We look at these things with regret, but Smudge is in raptures. TURNER'S reputation dies. dolphin-like, all sorts of colours. Between these two fantastical freaks of genius hangs a bright scene of reality by DAVID ROBERTS, A Street in Cairo, (108,) with the lofty structures built of alter- nate layers of red and white stone, seen under a clear, cool sunlight— too cold for Egypt, we should have thought. EDWARD COOKE'S large coast scene, Mont St. Michel, (41,) opens the wall with its pure, daylight atmosphere, radiant with sunlight, that, striking on the fore-horse of the team crossing the plashy sands, brings out the white coat of the animal and the red tassels of its huge wooden collar with the clear, glowing brilliancy of CUTE. : the " guarded mount" and the summer-clouds flitting across the blue are a little too pinky, perhaps ; but the light, laughing air of " La Belle France " seems t9
breathe from the canvass. This is the painter's best work, and gives Fomise of a broader and mellower style than of his other pictures. His small coast-scene, Burning Vraic, Guernsey, (185,) is in his best early manner, and is a sweet bit of nature, beautiful in tone and nicely finished, without minuteness or rigidity ; his Dutch Mill, (I1,) looks like a mimic scene cut out of wood, and the rainbow is both permanent and palpable ; his French Herring-boat Running into Havre, (175,) is all bustle and movement; you look to the direction of the rudder to see if she will enter the harbour safely : but the tumbling waves are rather edgy, and want fluency. While on the beach, we may notice a bright little view of St. Valery sur Somme, (365,) by H. GarrrEx junior— though the houses look toy-like ; and some well-drawn figures in a
Sea-coast, with Fishermen, (380,) by J. HALES,—who, however, has yet to learn to paint out-door daylight. Now let us to the woods and streams : the fresh sunny atmosphere of CRESWICK'S landscapes first invites us. Following the course of his
Mountain Streams, (125,) we come to "A Ferry "; the placid surface of the stream reflecting the noon-tide sun, which sheds a misty heat over the trees, and piercing the foliage here and there, dapples the shady lane leading to the ferry.; which we cross, and find ourselves in The Old Chace at Haddon, (880 where we will sit down beneath this venerable
old oak "with top emblanched and bare," but clad in a green mantle of ivy, by the side of the brook : following the upland track along the avenue on the ascent, we get sight of the bosky mass of foliage over- shadowing the Garden Terrace, (186,) rich with the full deep green of summer, and belted by the gray stone balustrade, with its ruined flight of steps, up which many lovers' feet have tripped to seek the embow- ered seclusion of the long walk. After basking so long in the sun, we are aware of an arid hue and a metallic brightness in the ground, that we have not met with before in CRESWICK's moist, verdurous scenes, and do not desire to see again ; the foliage, too, has a matted and mossy look occasionally : we see no sign of these defects, however, in the ten- der melting twilight of this road-scene with a Blacksmith's Shop, (24S); the glowing ruddy light of the forge tinges the fine old tree close by, and cheers the dim solitude, while it deepens the gray shadows of even- ing, and makes the crescent moon to " pale its ineffectual fire" as it rises wan and faint in the track of the sunken sun ; the distant village- church recalls the opening lines of GRAY'S Elegy- " Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds."
We are delighted to have met CRESWICK in his evening walk ; and though not tired of our noon-tide stroll with him—for he is fond of shady ways—we hope soon to meet him again in the gloaming. With LEE it is always bleak weather, but we willingly brave the cold to glimpse the ruddy streaks of sunset through the Birch Grove at Red- leaf, (184); and this Trout Stream, (16,) with the overhanging foliage on its banks, and the old red-brick ruin towering above, encircled by a flight of rooks, invites us to pursue its course along the murmuring shallows, for there is no need to fear the descent of the fleecy clouds scudding across the sky. LEE'S trees have certainly a grim, hard look, as though their leaves were ligneous ; and we could not stay by that cold chalk bank to see the warrener Ferreting Rabbits, (4); but we could linger a whole day with STARK under the pleasant shade of these fresh green trees, and watch them Removing the Park-wall at Old Windsor, (9,) and stroll with him through the Avenue of Willow Pollards, (58,) to The Ford Farm, (216); one of the sweetest rural spots to which STARK has introduced us—so tenderly are the gray tints interfused with the green of the distant trees, blending the various masses of foliage and the ruddy old house into one harmonious whole. H. JuTsum has given a daylight freshness to the distant landscape round his Mill in Warwick- shire, (109); but the picturesque mill and the tall trees that overshadow it and the stream are too cold to be agreeable, or quite natural : STAN- LEY, on the other hand, has decked the Village Church on Sunday Morning, (64,) with rather too spruce a garniture of foliage, as if Nature herself had donned her Sunday clothes ; and TENNANT has dressed her out in a holyday suit of many colours, taken from his Hawker's Cart, (37.) In SIDNEY COOPER'S cattle-group, Morning, in the Meadows of Scurry, (31,) the grass is cold and muddy, and the air feels raw and bleak, for all it is summer-time : his cattle are always of the same breed, which is a famous one ; and his landscapes make one feel a touch of the East wind.
Two striking perspective views are PINE'S of The Long Walk, Windsor, (117,) looking up to the Castle; which, however, is marred by the gaudy figures scattered about the meagre foreground ; and a road across a Derbyshire Moor, Storm Coming on, (51,) by H.DAwsoN, which is vigorously pencilled, though in a scene-painter's manner. A View in the Kingdom of Naples, (223,) by W. L. LEITCH, is painted in a broad and masterly style, but inclining to mechanical neatness, and hard, mo- notonous texture : more of the bright local colouring is wanting, that enriches and enlivens HOLLAND'S Venetian scenes; of which St. Georgia Maggiore, (199,) is a brilliant and picturesque example. After our devious wanderings, we will not pursue the Flight into Egypt, (49,) with JARRELL ; but leaving those wild, romantic, woody solitudes, clad in the russet mantle of autumn, throw ourselves down on the shady bank beside the stream of his Gainsborough-like Watering-place, (98,) though the sun is of the hottest.
Before leaving the Gallery, wemust take a glance at Narcissus, (195,) who has pedestalled himself (the peacock !) on an Ionic capital, and spreads out his tail with its hundred eyes to challenge admiration : and it deserves to be admired, though he should not have burnished it with a metallic lustre that is less gorgeous than the shifting hues of purple and green that the gilding conceals : to the red drapery in the back- ground we do not i object, though it is needless. The Sculpture is all in the lobby, where the statues were doing penance in white sheets for the offence of intruding into a gallery where they are not wanted, since there is no room for them on the tray- stand appropriated to works in marble. We are glad the sideboard was big enough, however, to hold this sweet little Child in-a Bath, (395,) by P. PARK, for it is one of the most lovel7 and living images of beau- tiful childhood that ever came from the chisel : the little girl is washing her feet, and pauses from the simple occupation to look up with a smile of engaging innocence full of intelligence.
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