tiT arts.
THE INSTITUTE OF PAINTERS IN WATER COLOURS. Ix may appear rather late to be reviewing pictures that have been exhibiting for the last two months, but of the many galleries opened in the spring-time some must come late ; and when an exhibition has in it anything of unusual merit it is better to point it out late than never. This society, which last year repudiated any further protection from its comparative youth, which threw sway its scabbard and determined to fight its way on its intrinsic merits, has not been slow to prove its activity and to give signs of healthy improvement. Report speaks highly of new members elected since the opening of the present exhibition, and giving the electors credit for a continuance of the good judgment which they displayed in choosing the new exhibitors of this and last year, sound hope may be entertained that the society will fully defend the position it has assumed. Meantime it may safely be stated that Mr. Hine and Mr. Shalders are artists that would do credit to any society, and possess qualities, especially the former, which more than any other were needed in this, viz , firmness and delicacy in drawing, with modesty and refinement in colour. Take Mr. Hine's "Rocks on the Shore of Swartage " (243), and his " Gravesend " (286) ; nothing can be simpler than his materials, or more natural than his way of dealing with them. In the first a few weedy rocks standing in the shallow water that laps lazily round them, with a chalk cliff in the distance and the deep sea between, the whole lying in placid repose under a pearly sky ; in the second, an old wharf jutting into the yellow Thames, with a fresh breeze driving the river craft over the short chopping waves,—these are the materials; which might be insipid enough in some hands, but which Mr. Hine, seizing with sure but tender pencil upon cha- racteristic traits, has compelled to convey the sense of refresh- ment which in nature a view over a free expanse of water never fails to give. The delicate grey of the skies in these pictures is beyond praise, and the gradation of tone by which the appearance of space is got is so subtle as to be almost imper- ceptible except in its results. The colour of both is modest without dullness, and the compositions are particularly com- mendable in this,—that they are free from the common fault of overcrowding. It requires some courage to leave spaces sufficiently vacant, and many a picture, especially among landscapes, is spoiled by having too many things put into it. But then of course the spaces must be spaces indeed, and not blank washes of paint ; they must be made te tell, though there be no detailed objects painted in them. And this is what Mr. Hine has done. The picture may possibly cost less manual labour, but it will demand more thought ; and overcrowding too often looks like a refuge from the troubles and difficulties that beset the intellectual part of an artist's work. One man marshals his few troops like a skilful general, the other pushes aimlessly on, seeking sueceas by mere force of numbers. Another picture by Mr. Hine shows that he is not an artist with a single idea. His "Fortified Parsonage at Corbridge " (293) is as remarkable for strength and solidity as the pictures already noted are for deli- cacy. The quaint old peel-tower, with the bats flitting ,round it, stands among the gravestones itself like the monument of a departed age. The rising damps of evening, indicated one scarcely knows how, but with consummate skill, follow quick on the last glow of departing day, and with the yew tree's dark shadow and the gravedigger's coat and spade lying on the grass (himself with
admirable art omitted), play up to the simple and solemn feeling of the picture. The artist sends four other pictures, all of character- istic merit, of which "Rye from the Fishmarket" (55), and "Morning after the Gale " (223), may be particularized. It should be added that his figure-drawing is far beyond the standard usual with landscape-painters.
Mr. Shalders is also a landscape-painter, but with a special taste for sheep. Sheep browsing, sheep panting in the shade, or sheep fold- ing, may be seen in all his pictures, yet so well done that one feels
hardly disposed to throw at him the accusation toujours moutons. It would nevertheless be a pity if he allowed his success or popularity
in a narrow sphere to restrict him from other subjects. His best works are both twilight subjects. " Evening " (60), a charming Surrey landscape just flushed with the warm twilight, where a flock of sheep is being folded for the night, is the principal one, and very beautiful it is in feeling and colour. His mid-day pictures
are apt to be black and heavy in the shadows, and to want massive- ness in the arrangement of tone. But in twilight things mass
themselves, and Mr. Shalders's eye, which seems almost blinded by the brilliance of day, marks with delicacy the gradations of tone that occur in the more sober evening. Another, " Evening" (149), though less of a picture, has most of the good qualities of the larger and fuller work. The sky in particular is very good. Body- colour seems to have been very freely used in all Mr. Shalders's pictures, but probably without danger to their durability, though with some sacrifice of the pellucid brilliance which belongs to transparent colour.
Among the elder members Mr. Bennett, Mr. Leitch, Mr. Vacher, Mr. Whymper, and Mr. D'Egville, are conspicuous. There is much to be learned by a student from Mr. Leitch's pictures. Solid, though sometimes common-place, forms, and *grand and well- arranged masses mark all that he does ; while not seldom a touch of imaginative power shows that his great popularity as a teacher has not entirely quenched his fire as an artist. Mountain-tops wreathed with clouds, and mingled with their shadows, or gleaming with a solitary glint of fairy-like sunshine, are charms which never fail to please. But it must be confessed that artificiality has taken too strong a hold of him, and that his brush appears to move too much according to a settled and fixed recipe. His colour lacks day-light, the cause lying apparently in the false contrast between his lights and shadows, the latter not possessing the true silvery tone of nature. Mr. Bennett is better in this respect. His pictures are full of fresh and tender passages of colour, but he is deficient in the qualities which constitute Mr. Leitch's chief merit. He has travelled for material to the grandest scenery in Scotland, yet his mountains are feeble and even ignoble in outline, and are not modelled with any appreciation for their grand and swelling forms.
His "Loch Maree " (62) has more of the gentleness of the English lakesthan of the wilderand nobler character of theScotch Highlands. His "Castles in the Air" (261) is more satisfactory, inasmuch as the towering rain-clouds that crowd round the setting sun are more easily rendered by his method of working ; but the upper part of the sky is too blue. Mr. Whymper exhibits a very good drawing from the flat country near Benfieet (246), with the Thames at low water. It is very large and spacious in effect, though coldish in colour. Mr. D'Egville has a good Venetian subject (218), very sunny, and with much of the uncrowded quality already insisted on; and a quiet broad sketch on the Mole, near Esher (172). Mr. Vacher aims at something more than producing a sketch or a study from nature.
All his works have a singleness of purpose, and the best of them are for that reason very impressive, but they are apt to be woolly in texture. Mr. Philp chooses good subjects, but treats them too carelessly and coarsely, and there is an inkiness or heavy plum- colour pervading all his pictures. It is pleasant to see Mr. E. G. Warren, -while adhering closely to his favourite subjects, freeing him- self from this fault of blackness, and from the forced contrast of light and shade by which he sought to produce brilliance. "The Hay-time" (260) is a very creditable performance, with an amount and variety of reflected light and colour which shows a decided ad- vance. Mr. Henry Warren's little picture (258), though painful in subject, is tender and refined in colour. It is useless to look for much of these niceties in Mr. M'Kewan's sketches. If here and there you get from him a tumbling stream brightly and boldly knocked in (245) it is as much as he has ever led you to expect. Mr. Reed has in him far more of the student and of the stuff that makes a real artist. There is much honest study in his large work " Nant Frangon " (315), but it wants putting together. There are few ranges of Welsh mountain more impressive in nature and more puzzling to the artist than those which close the wild valley here represented. Compare this picture with Mr. Penley's much smaller view from the same neighbourhood. In most points it is
inferior to Mr. Reed's ; but superior in this, that it makes the mountains look large. In fact Mr. Reed's picture wants air. Mr. Rowbotham once, in some views from the Isle of Wight, gave indications of a more conscientious study of nature than he had previously exhibited,—once, and once only. He has returned to his second-hand mannerisms, and it is to be feared that the relapse is final.
The figure subjects offer little food for comment. Neither Mr. Tidey's feeble Biblical illustrations, nor Mr. E. Corbonld's melo- dramatic interpretations of Mr. Tennyson, do any credit to the gallery. Mr. Absolon repeats his expressionless wearers of knee- breeches and farthingales; and notwithstanding much skill in the workmanship there is an overpowering vulgarity about Mr. Jop- ling's study (232) which makes it absolutely disagreeable. V.
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