ART.
M. SIMON HUSSY'S PASTELS.
NEARLY all Englishmen are lovers of natural landscape, and, for that very reason, a large number of Englishmen take their aesthetic pleasure in looking at a pictorial representation of it. There they will look for likenesses of the objects which' give them such keen enjoyment in their country walks ; and in nearly all English landscape paintings, from those of Turner onwards, whatever may be the painter's artistic aim, there is always incidentally to be enjoyed the simple representation of beautiful and familiar things.
Up to a certain point this pleasure will be felt by every visitor to M. Simon Buesy's exhibition of pastels of the South of France, Venice, and Tyrol now to be seen at the Goupil Gallery. He will find in these landscapes space and light, two natural phenomena which go so far to give the wayfarer his sense of delight in country scenery. But if he is without an added capacity for the appreciation of purely aesthetic beauty, it is doubtful whether lie will receive all the pleasure he might from the measured effects, the studied choice, and the exquisite style of these marvellous little pictures. The spectator will find it impossible to say : " I like that tree and that hill ; but I do not like the sky." He will find that they exist in the picture only for the sake of their relationship to one another, and that only that portion of the aspect of an object is chosen which plays its part with other forma, tones, and colours to complete a whole, and reproduce the deliberate impressions of the painter. It is this deliberation, this inten- tional suppression of certain natural details, in order to convey a sustained and essential impression, that will perhaps cause some people to exclaim : " Well, I never saw anything look like that I " But that is berdly the point, which is rather : " Are we not glad flat M. Missy has P " Any one who has deeply felt the calm and tremendous beauty of Nature on a clear evening among mountains will be really grateful to the artist for capturing so completely a transient sensation, as he has in Petit Lao dans le Tyrol (No 22), or in Sapins et Plagues d'Eau dans le Tyrol (No. 20) ; and who that has come under the spell either of the splendour or subtlety of Southern colouring could fail to be delighted by the daring beauty of the many Venetian pictures, with their reds upon red, and grateful blues, especially No. 26, or by the lovely variations in delicate greys and blues and greens that make La Baie de Menton (No. 16) and the little Vice de Roquebrune (No. 5) perhaps the most enjoyable of all P But each visitor will choose his own favourites among those thirty-six pictures, each of which expresses in a surprisingly complete and classic manner some intimate mood that Nature, in one aspect or another, has evoked in this most
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