The thirty-seventh Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy opened on New
Year’s Day, consisting this year of a very excellent and representative
collection of works by the old masters and deceased masters of the
British School. The exhibition is particularly strong in paintings by
Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, and Turner; and among more recent
painters represented are admirable examples of Millais and Burne-Jones.
Sporting and animal subjects are not very numerous on the walls.
Attention may be drawn to J. F. Herring’s “Return from Deer-stalking”
(No. 40); to Sir Edwin Landseer’s “The Catspaw” (No. 50), which, it will
be remembered, furnished the late Sir John Tenniel with a text for one
of his cleverest _Punch_ cartoons; and to Ralph Caldecott’s animated
“Hunting Scenes” (Nos. 240 and 243); “Rabbiting near Cromer” (No. 51),
by James Stark, deserves notice, and so does James Ward’s spirited
picture of “The Hetman Platoff on the charger which he afterwards gave
to Hugh, Earl Percy” (No. 67). The charger, a grey Arab, is a singularly
fine piece of work, though it may be objected that no horse, even an
Arab, possesses eyes so large as those in the head of this otherwise
perfectly drawn animal. The Arabs or Barbs in J. F. Lewis’s “Study of
Horses” (No. 246) are well worth close examination as masterpieces of
equine anatomy.