Returning with the circling year, and advancing _pari passu_ with the
multitude of metropolitan musical attractions, comes the more silent
reign of the picture exhibitions--those great art-gatherings from
thousands of studios, to undergo the ultimate test of public judgment
in the dozen well-filled galleries, which the dilettante, or lounging
Londoner, considers it his recurring annual duty strictly to inspect,
and regularly to gossip in. As places where everybody meets everybody,
and where lazy hours can be conveniently lounged away, the exhibitions
in some sort supply in the afternoon what the Opera and parties do in
the evenings. Nearly all through the summer-day, they are crowded with
a softly-rustling, humming, buzzing crowd, coming and going perhaps,
taking little heed of the nominal attraction, but sauntering from room
to room, or ensconcing themselves in colonies or clusters of chairs,
and lounging vacantly in cool lobbies. At energetic sight-seers, who
are labouring away, catalogue and pencil in hand, they stare
languidly. They really thought everybody had seen the pictures; they
know they have: they have stared at them until they became a bore. But
this sort of people, who only come once, why, of course, they suppose
this sort of people must be allowed to push about as they please. But
it is a confounded nuisance; it is really.
The great army of art amateurs, connoisseurs, and the body who are
regarded in the artistic world with far greater reverence--the noted
picture buyers and dealers, have come and seen, and gone away again;
after having lavishly expended their approbation or disapprobation,
and possibly in a less liberal degree, their cash. After the first
week or so, the galleries begin to clear of gentlemen of the class in
question; even artists have got tired of coming to see their own
pictures, particularly if they be not well hung; and so the exhibition
is generally handed over during the greater part of its duration to
the languid _far niente_ elegant crowd we have seen thronging its
corridors. The grand day for the moneyed amateurs, who come to
increase their collections, is, however, that of the private view.
This generally occurs on a Saturday, and the public is admitted on the
following Monday. Within an hour of the opening on the former day, the
rooms are crowded with a multitude of notabilities. You see that you
are in a special class of society, or rather, in two special
classes--literary and artistic on the one hand; wealthy and socially
elevated on the other. The fact is evident in the general mutual
acquaintanceship which prevails, principally within each respective
circle, but by no means exclusively so. First, you are sure to observe
a cluster of those peers and members of parliament who busy themselves
most in social, literary, and artistic questions. Bishops, too, are
regular private-view men; capital judges, moreover, and liberal
buyers; and we seldom miss catching a glimpse of some dozen faces,
whose proprietors are men standing at the very top of our historic,
philosophic, and critical literature, and who move smilingly about,
amid the keen but concealed inspection of the crowd, who pass their
names in whispers from group to group.
But the class of regular picture-buyers is quite _sui generis_. You
may pitch upon your man in a moment. Ten to one, he is old, and has
all the shrivelled, high-dried appearance of the most far-gone and
confirmed bachelorism. Everything about him looks old and
old-fashioned. His hair is thin and gray, and he shuffles along on a
couple of poor old shanks, which will never look any stouter unless it
be under the influence of a fit of the gout. He wears a white
neckcloth, arranged with the celebrated wisp-tie--shoes a great deal
too big for him--and to his keen, twinkling eyes he applies a pair of
heavy horn or silver-set glasses. These old gentlemen appear to know
each other as if by magic. They cluster in groups like corks in a
basin of water, and then go hobbling eagerly along, peering closely
into the more promising works, jerking their heads from side to side,
so as to get the painting in as many lights as possible; and full of
talk--good critical talk--about the productions in course of
inspection. True, there may be something in their observations
speaking too much of the technical, and too little of the more ideal
faculty. They are greater upon flesh-tints and pearly grays, middle
distances and chiaroscuro, than upon conception, expression, or
elevation or magnificence of sentiment. Nevertheless, they know
thoroughly what appertains to a good picture. They give a work its
place in a moment, and assign it to its author by internal evidence,
with an unfailing accuracy, which speaks of long training and constant
familiarity with all the main studios of London. Perhaps you observe
one of our friends apparently fascinated before a particular canvas:
he dances about, so as to get it in every angle of light. Then he
shuffles off, and brings two other skilful old foggies, holding each
by an arm; and the three go through the former ceremony as to the
lights, and then lay their heads together; and then our original
personage glides softly up to the table where the secretary's clerk
sits with pen and ink before him, and whispers. The clerk smiles
affably--turns up a register: there are two or three confidential
words interchanged; and then he rises and sticks into the frame of the
lucky picture a morsel of card, labelled 'Sold;' and leaves the
purchaser gloating over his acquisition.
And where do these pictures go? Frequently to some quiet, solemn old
house in the West End, or to some grange or manor far down in the
country. The picture-gallery is the nursery of that house--its pride
and its boast. Year after year has the silent family of canvas been
increasing and multiplying. Their proprietor is, as it were, their
father. He has most likely no living ties, and all his thoughts and
all his ambitions are clustered round that silent gallery, where the
light comes streaming down from high and half-closed windows. The
collection gradually acquires a name. Descriptions of it are found in
guide-books and works upon art. Strangers come to see it with tickets,
and a solemn housekeeper shews them up the silent stairs, and through
the lonesome mansion to its _sanctum sanctorum_. At length, perhaps,
the old man takes his last look at his pictures, and then shuts his
eyes for ever. It may be, that within six weeks the laboriously
collected paintings are in a Pall-Mall auction-room, with all the
world bidding and buzzing round the pulpit; or it may also chance that
a paragraph goes the round of the papers, intimating that his
celebrated and unrivalled collection of modern works of art has been
bequeathed by the late Mr So-and-so to the nation--always on the
condition, that it provides some fitting place for their preservation.
The government receives bequests of this kind oftener than it complies
with the stipulation.
In the beginning of March, the first of the galleries opens its
portals to the world. This is the British Institution, established at
the west end of Pall-Mall, and now in existence for the better part of
a half century. The idea of the establishment was to form a sort of
nursing institution for the Royal Academy. Here artists of standing
and reputation were to exhibit their sketches and less important
works; and here more juvenile aspirants were to try their wings before
being subjected to the more severe ordeal of Trafalgar Square. The
idea was good, and flourished apace; so much so, that you not
unfrequently find in the British Institution no small proportion of
works of a calibre hardly below the average of the Great Exhibition;
while the A. R. A.'s, and even the aristocratic R. A.'s[1] themselves,
do not by any means disdain to grace the humble walls of the three
rooms in Pall-Mall. This year, the only picture of Sir Edwin
Landseer's exhibited--a wild Highland corry, with a startled herd of
red deer--is to be found in the British Institution. But the merit of
the works is wonderfully unequal. They are of all classes and all
sizes, in water-colour and in oils. Clever sketches by clever
unknowns, rest beside sprawling frescos by youths whose ambition is
vaster than their genius; and finished and accomplished works of art
are set off by the foils of unnumbered pieces of unformed and not very
promising mediocrity. Among them are the productions of many of the
more humble painters of _genre_ subjects--the class who delight in
portraying homely cottage interiors, or troops of playing children, or
bits of minutely-finished still life--or careful academical studies of
groups with all the conventions duly observed: this class of pictures
musters strong, and connoisseurs, without so much remarking their
imperfections, carefully note their promise.
A month after the opening of the British Institution, three galleries
become patent on the same morning: the Old Water Colour, in Pall-Mall
East, the New Water Colour, in Pall-Mall West, and a still more
recently founded society, called, somewhat pompously, the National
Institution of Fine Arts. These are mainly composed of dissenters from
the other associations--gentlemen who conceive that they have been
ill-treated by Hanging Committees, and a large class of juvenile but
promising artists, who resort to the less crowded institutions in the
hope of there meeting with better places for their works than in the
older and more established bodies. The two water-colour galleries are
both highly favoured exhibitions, and present works of an importance
quite equal to those of the Academy itself. Water-colour painting is
indeed a national branch of art in England. Neither French, Germans,
nor Italians, can presume for a moment to cope with us in the matter
of _aquarelles_. They have no notion of the power of the medium, of
the strong and rich effects it is capable of producing, and the
transparency of the tints which a great water-colour artist can lay
on. Nearly twenty years ago, there was but one water-colour society;
but increasing numbers, and the usual artistic feuds, produced a
partly natural, partly hostile, separation. The ladies and gentlemen
who withdrew were mainly figure painters; those who stayed were mainly
landscape artists; and thus it happens, that while in the new society
you are principally attracted by historic and _genre_ groups and,
scenes, in the old you are fascinated by landscape and city pictures
of the very highest order of art. The painters, too, you observe, are
very industrious. The fact is, they can work more quickly in water
than in oil. Copley Fielding will perhaps exhibit a score of
landscapes, blazing with summer sunshine; David Cox, half as
many--stern and rugged in tone and style; George Tripp will have
painted his fresh river and meadow scenes by the dozen; and the two
brothers Callum will each have poured in old Gothic streets and
squares, and ships in calm and storm, which catch your eye scores of
times upon the walls. As in the other society, many of the finest
'bits' contributed by the water-colourists are not much above
miniature size. The screens on which these gems are hung attract fully
as much as the walls with their more ambitious freight; and Jenkin's
rustic lasses, and Topham's Irish groups, and Alfred Fripp's dark-eyed
Italian monks and Campagna peasants, are as much gazed at as
Richardson's sunny landscapes or Bentley's breezy seas.
Five minutes' walk takes us to the new society. No lack of landscape
here; but it is inferior to that in the rival institution, and its
attractions are eclipsed by ambitious pictures of historic or
fictitious interest; the scene almost always laid in the picturesque
streets or rooms of a mediæval city, and the groups marvels of display
in the matter of the painting of armour, arms, and the gorgeous
velvets, minivers, and brocades of feudal _grande tenue_. See Mr
Edward Corbould. He is sure to be as picturesque and chivalrous as
possible. There is the very ring of the rough old times in his
caracoling processions of ladies and knights, or his fierce scenes of
hand-to-hand fight, with battered armour, and flashing weapons, and
wounded men drooping from their steeds. Or he paints softer
scenes--passages of silken dalliance and love; ladies' bowers and
courtly revels in alcoved gardens. Mr Haghe is equally mediæval, but
more sternly and gloomily so. He delights in sombre, old Flemish
rooms, with dim lights streaming through narrow Gothic windows, upon
huge chimney-pieces and panellings, incrusted with antique figures,
carved in the black heart of oak--knights, and squires, and priests of
old. Then he peoples these shadowy chambers with crowds of stern
burghers, or grave ecclesiastics, or soldiers 'armed complete in
mail;' and so forms striking pieces of gloomy picturesqueness.
Figure-paintings of a lighter calibre also abound. There is Mr John
Absolon, who is in great request for painting figures in panoramic
pictures; Mr Lee, whose graceful rural maidens are not to be
surpassed: Mr Warren, whose heart is ever in the East; and Mr Mole,
who loves the shielings of the Highland hills. Landscape, though on
the whole subordinate to _genre_ pictures, is very respectably
represented; and the lady-artists usually make a good show on the
screens, particularly in the way of graceful single figures, and the
prettinesses of flower and fruit painting.
We can merely mention the Society of British Artists and the National
Institution of Fine Art. Both are mainly composed of the natural
overgrowth of artists who prefer a speedy and favourable opportunity
for the display of their works in minor galleries, to waiting for
years and years ere they can work themselves up to good positions on
the walls of the Academy. Many of these gentlemen, however, exhibit
both in the smaller and the greater collection; but here and there an
artist will be found obstinately confining his contributions to one
pet establishment--possibly entertaining a notion that he has been
deeply wronged by the Hanging Committee of another.
Both of the exhibitions under notice are very various in merit; but
each generally contains some able works, and the specialties of one or
two painters distinguished by notable peculiarities. Thus the
president of the British Artists, Mr Hurlstone, has for several
seasons confined himself to Spanish subjects; Mr West paints Norwegian
landscape; Mr Pyne sends to this gallery only his very splendid
lake-pictures; and Mr Woolmer's curious sketches, which seem
compounded of the styles of Turner and Watteau, blaze almost
exclusively upon the walls. The best men of the National Institution
contribute also to the Royal Academy--as, for example, Mr Glass, with
his capital groups of hunters or troopers, so full of life and
movement; and Mr Parker, with his smugglers and coast-boatmen. In this
exhibition--and, indeed, in all the London exhibitions--a family, or
rather a race or clan of artists, connected at once by blood and
style, and rejoicing in the name of Williams, abound and flourish
exceedingly. These Williamses are dreadful puzzlers to the students of
the catalogue; they positively swarm upon every page, and the
bewildered reader is speedily lost in a perfect chaos of
undistinguishable initials. Sometimes, indeed, the Williamses come
forth under other appellations--they appear as Percies and Gilberts;
but the distinguishing mark is strong, and a moment's inspection
convinces the amateur that the landscape before him, attributed to Mr
So-and-so, is the work of 'another of these everlasting Williamses.'
But the first Saturday of May arrives, and with it many a rumour, true
and false, of the state of matters within the Royal Academy--of the
academicians who exhibit, and of what are to be 'the' pictures. From
early morning, St Martin's bells have been ringing, and a festival
flag flies from the steeple; no great pomp, to be sure, but it marks
the occasion. About noon, the Queen's party arrives, and Her Majesty
is conducted about the rooms by the leading members of the Academy.
Between one and two, she departs; and immediately after, the crowd of
ticket-holders for the private view cluster before the closed
gratings. Punctually as the last stroke of the hour strikes, the
portals are flung open, and a cataract of eager amateurs rush up the
staircases, and make their way straight to the inner room, or room of
honour, all in quest of _the_ picture, to which the _pas_ has been
given, by its being hung upon the line in the centre of the eastern
wall of the apartment. The salons fill as by magic; in half an hour,
you can hardly move through a crowd of dignitaries of all
kinds--hereditary, social, literary, scientific, and artistic.
Perhaps, indeed, there is no muster in London which collects a greater
number of personages famous in every point of view. The ladies of the
aristocracy swarm as at a drawing-room. The atmosphere is all one
rustle of laces and silks; and it is anything but easy to make one's
way among the bevies of clustered beauties who flock round their
chaperone, all one flutter of ribbons, feathers, and flowers. And to
the Academy, at all events, come all manner of political notabilities:
you find a secretary of state by your elbow, and catch the muttered
criticism of a prime-minister. Ordinary peers and members of
parliament are thicker than blackberries. Bishops prevail as usual;
and apropos of ecclesiastical costumes, peculiar looped-up beavers and
single-breasted greatcoats, the odds are, that you will be attracted
by the portly figure and not very refined face of the Romish dignitary
whose pretensions, a couple of years ago, set the country in a blaze.
The muster of literary men is large and brilliant. Mr Hallam is most
likely there as Professor of Ancient History to the Academy; and Mr
Macaulay as Professor of Ancient Literature. Sir George Staunton puts
in an appearance as Secretary for Foreign Correspondence; and blooming
Sir Robert Harry Inglis, with the largest of roses at his button-hole,
looks the most genial and good-humoured of 'antiquaries.' The
Academicians--lucky Forty!--muster early. Happy fellows! they have no
qualms of doubt, or sick-agonies of expectation as they mount the
broad flight of steps. They have been giving hints to the Hanging
Committee, or they have been on the Hanging Committee themselves. Well
they know that _their_ works have been at least provided for--all on
the line, or near it; all in the best lights; and all titivated and
polished up and varnished on the walls, and adapted, as it were, to
the situation. You may know an R. A. on the private view-day by the
broad, expanding jollity of his visage, if he be a man of that stamp,
or by a certain quiet, self-satisfied smile of self-complacence, if he
be a man of another.
But he looks and bears himself as a host. He cicerones delighted
parties of lady-friends with his face all one smile of courtesy, or he
does the honours with dignity and a lofty sense of--we do not speak
disrespectfully--of being on his own dunghill, in respect to the more
important exigeant connoisseurs, whom he thinks it right to patronise.
He always praises his brethren's works, and discovers in them hidden
virtues. For the Associates, he has minor smiles and milder words. The
ordinary mob of exhibiters he looks down upon with a calm and
complacent gaze, as though from the summit of a Mont Blanc of
superiority. At any bold defier of the conventions and traditions of
the Academy drawing-school, he shakes his head. The pre-Raphaelite
heresy was a sore affliction to him. He looked upon Millais and Hunt
as a Low-church bishop would regard Newman and Pusey. He prophesied
that they would come to no good. He called them 'silly boys;' and he
looks uneasily at the crowds who throng before this year's picture of
the Huguenot Couple--not recovering his self-complacency until his eye
catches his own favourite work, when he feels himself gradually
mollified, and smiles anew upon the world.
Not so the nameless artist, whose work of many toiling days, and many
sleepless nights, has been sent in unprotected to take its chance. He
knows nothing of its fate until he can get a catalogue. It may be on
the line in the east room; it may be above the octagon-room door; it
may not be hung at all. Only the great artistic guns are invited to
the private view, the rest must wait till Monday. Possibly a stray
catalogue puts him so far out of his pain on Sunday. If not, he passes
a feverish and unhappy time till the afternoon of Monday; and then,
first among the crowd, rushes franticly up stairs. We had an
opportunity the other day of seeing the result of a case of the kind.
The picture--a work of great fancy and high feeling, but deficient in
manipulative skill--the artist, a poet in the true sense of the word,
had spent months in dreaming and in joying over. He found it in the
dingiest corner of the octagon-room. His lip quivered and his chest
heaved. He pulled his hat further down on his face, and walked quickly
and quietly out.
We would gladly, indeed, see the octagon-room abolished. A picture is
degraded, and an artist is insulted, by a painting being hung in this
darksome and 'condemned cell.' The canvas gets a 'jail-bird' stamp,
and its character is gone. In France, at the Palais-Royal, the young
artists have a far better chance. After a stated time, the pictures,
which, as the best have primarily had the best places, change stations
with their inferiors; so that everybody in turn enjoys the advantages
of the brightest lights and the most favourable points of view.
No need, of course, of attempting even the most summary sketch of the
styles and ordinary subjects of the great painters who bear aloft the
banner of the British school of art--of Landseer's glimpses of the
Highlands; or Stanfield's skyey, breezy landscapes; of the quiet
pieces of English rural scenery--meadows, and woodland glades, and
river bits, fresh and rich, and green and natural--of our Lees, our
Creswicks, our Coopers, our Witheringtons, our Redgraves, our
Ausdills; of the classic elegance and elevated sentiment of groups by
our Dyces and our Eastlakes; of the abundance of clever _genre_
subjects--scenes from history or romance--poured in by our Wards, our
Friths, our Pooles, our Elmores, our Eggs; or of--last, not least--the
strange but clever vagaries of that new school, the pre-Raphaelites,
who are startling both Academy and public by the quaintness of their
art-theories, and the vehement intensity of their style of execution.
All the summer long, the world is free to go and gaze upon them. All
the summer long, the salons are crowded from morning till night--in
the earlier hours, by artists and conscientious amateurs, the humbler
sort of folks, who have daily work to do; in the later, by our old
friends, the staring, _insouciant_, lounging, fashionable mob, whose
carriages and Broughams go creeping lazily round and round Trafalgar
Square. And at parties and balls, and all such reunions, the
exhibition forms a main topic of discourse. Bashful gentlemen know it
for a blessing. Often and often does it serve as a most creditable
lever to break the ice with. The newspapers long resound with critical
columns apropos of Trafalgar Square. You see 'sixth notice' attached
to a formidable mass of print, and read on, or pass on, as you please.
But you distinctly observe, at any rate, the social and
conversational, as well as the artistic importance of the Royal
Academy; and you confess, that a London season would be shorn of its
brightest feature if you shut the gates of the National Gallery.