is difficult to arrive at a correct appreciation of it. As far as
we could distinguish, it is not without merit, and the expression
of exhaustion in the figure of Murray is pretty well rendered; but
altogether it is hardly worthy of the nervous and admirable verse
it is intended to illustrate. Mr Armitage's _Aholibah_ has a good
deal of pretension, but we cannot compliment him on it in any one
respect. In the first place the subject is disgusting, and shows
wretched taste in the artist who would select it. Then the face of
Aholibah is ugly and repulsive, and the expression coarse in the
extreme: the drawing of the limbs under the drapery is faulty, and
the gazelles are out of place and out of perspective. Mr Armitage
can do better than this. We prefer his picture in the Portland
Gallery, of Samson tying firebrands to the foxes' tails for the
destruction of the Philistine crops; although the face is a great
deal too black, and we cannot understand why Samson should allow a
fox to bite into the muscle of his thigh, as one of those in his
grasp appears to do. Why does Mr Armitage persist in his French
style of painting? It is quite a mistake. Let him be natural, and
rely upon his own taste and judgment, and we think he may do better
things.
Mr Hook's _Dream of Venice_, a clever imitation of Paul Veronese,
is a very pleasant picture. Mr F. Williams' _Holy Maiden_ is a
pretty head, full of sentiment. We are glad to see such good promise
given by Mr Leslie, junior, in a very humorous picture entitled _A
Sailor's Yarn_. A thoroughbred and unmistakeable Cockney greedily
listens to some astounding narrative, whilst, behind the credulous
landsman, a second sailor grins admiration of his messmate, and
contempt for the "green hand." _The Young Student_, by W. Gush, is
a very nice picture of a youthful painter, with an artist's eye and
a pleasing Vandykish contour of face, and with carefully painted
hands. One of the most comical pictures in the Exhibition is a wild
boar by Wolf. The bristly forest-ranger is making its way through
the deep snow, leaving a long furrow behind it, along which it has
apparently been nuzzling for provender, for its snout is garnished
with the snow, which, combined with the sudden fore-shortening of
the body, produces a ludicrous effect. No. 121, _Autumn--Wounded
Woodcock_, from the same hand, has mellow and natural tints.
We have kept back, almost to the last, one of our chief favourites
in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. Mr Sidney Cooper is in
great force this year. He has six pictures; four of them all his
own, two painted in conjunction with Mr F. R. Lee, R.A. With all
respect for this artist, to whose landscapes we shall refer in
their place, we prefer Cooper alone to Cooper in partnership. The
two styles do not blend well, nor does Lee put his best landscapes
into Cooper's cattle-pieces. Take the first of their pictures--No.
23--_Cattle crossing a Ford_. As a whole it is agreeable--and
the cattle, we need hardly say, are worthy of the best English
cattle-painter of the day; but the landscape is feeble. In No. 298,
_The Watering-place_, the rather heavy paint of the foliage gives a
thin washy look to the foreground. We advise Messrs Lee and Cooper
to hang their pictures side by side, if they will, as excellent
specimens of their respective walks of art, but not to associate
themselves on the same canvass. People find fault with the landscape
part of Cooper's pictures; but it is in good keeping with the rest,
and moreover he improves in that respect, as in others. We will
instance No. 278, _A Mountain Group--Evening_, some charming goats,
where the background, bathed in soft light, harmonises admirably
with the more prominent parts of the picture. No. 454, _A Group on
the Welsh Mountains_, is most delicately finished, quite a gem;
and _Fordwick Meadows--Sunset_, in a somewhat broader style, is
equally excellent. Mr Cooper's is a class of art which strongly
appeals to the domestic and rural tastes of Englishmen. He excels
in it, and need fear no competitors, although several artists this
year exhibit cattle-landscapes of some merit. And here we should
perhaps say a word about Mr Ansdell, who has put some Brobdignagian
sheep into a landscape by Mr Creswick, (British Institution, No.
123, _Southdowns_,) and who has rather a pretty thing in the same
exhibition--No. 40, _The Regretted Companion_--an old hawker
perplexed and mournful beside the body of his dead ass. We would
gladly see this artist cease to imitate Landseer. He sacrifices his
originality without succeeding in catching the best points of his
model.
Nos. 80, 405, 407 in the catalogue of the Academy, are Mr Lee's
landscapes--uncombined with Cooper's cattle. The second, _A Calm
Morning_, is the one we prefer; and a very charming picture of
repose it is. Mr Creswick is the next upon our list. His cold
unnatural grayness of colouring greatly detracts from the merit of
his pictures. We are quite aware that the same reproach has been
repeatedly addressed to him, and we should hardly have referred
to a fault which hitherto he has either obstinately clung to, or
been unable to correct, did not one of his pictures in the Academy
this year give us hopes that he is on the verge of a change. No.
542, _A Forest Farm_, is the best picture of Creswick's, in point
of colouring, that we remember to have seen. The _slaty_ look is
replaced by an agreeable transparency. No. 289, _In the Forest_,
is also warmer than usual. The others are in the old style. Mr
Linnell is more to our taste, although we cannot approve his _Christ
and the Woman of Samaria at Jacob's Well_. In the first place the
colour seems unnatural, altogether too brown; at the same time it
is just possible nature may assume that extraordinarily russet
tint in Samaria--a country to which our travels have not extended.
But we can more confidently object to the figure of the Saviour as
altogether unpleasant, with a harsh darkly-bearded face, devoid
alike of resemblance to the received type, and of any divine
expression whatever. Mr Linnell is a landscape-painter, and should
not attempt sacred subjects or portraits, things which are quite
out of his line. No. 395, _Crossing the Brook_, is of a better tone
of colour; and the same artist has two other pictures, of about
his usual average of merit, in the British Institution. The chief
fault with which we tax Mr Linnell, (whilst freely admitting his
great talent,) and one which may also be imputed to Mr Creswick,
and to other clever landscape-painters of the present day, is
the undeviating smallness of their touch, which gives, to use a
colloquialism, a niggled look to their pictures. Hobbima, and
Ruysdael, and others of that class--in whose footsteps we presume
no living landscape-painter is too proud to tread--avoided this
fault, and proportioned the fulness of their touch to the size of
their picture. We may select an example of what we mean from the
works of an able and industrious artist, who figures advantageously
this year in all four exhibitions, and who, in most instances, is
very free from the defect we refer to. Mr Sidney Percy's _Woodland
River_, No. 207, in the Portland Gallery, is a good picture, but to
our thinking the touch is too small for the size. Mr Percy, however,
is a man of talent and a rising painter. In the same gallery we call
attention, as to one of the best landscapes exhibited this year,
to his No. 277, _Welsh Mountains_. There is an effect of aërial
perspective in this picture, especially in the grass valley, on
the spectator's left hand, which deserves the very highest praise.
Several others of his eighteen pictures for 1850 deserve much
commendation; but we can only point out No. 576, in the Academy, _A
Limpid Pool_, and 394, _A Quiet Vale_, in the British Artists'. The
water in the last is very good,--otherwise it is hardly one of his
best. We would have Mr Percy to beware of hardness of treatment,
the fault to which he is most prone. His lines are apt to be too
sharply defined, especially his distant outlines. He should guard
himself against this defect, and with care he may expect to attain
great eminence as a landscape-painter. If we mistake not, he is
one of a talented family, which also comprises Messrs Boddington
and Gilbert, and several artists of the name of Williams, all of
whom, we believe, devote themselves chiefly, if not exclusively,
to landscape-painting, and either by identity of name or affinity
of style, form a most puzzling group for conscientious critics,
desirous, like ourselves, to sort their works and fairly distribute
praise. We can mention but a few of their pictures, taken, nearly
at random, from amongst a number we have marked as of merit or
promise. In the Academy, 344, _A Valley Lane_, by A. W. Williams, is
a charming subject, excellently treated. In the Portland Gallery,
where many good landscapes are to be found, most of them by this
family, we were particularly attracted by No. 41, _Noon_, also by
A. W. Williams, and by No. 65, _Medmenham Abbey--Evening_, by G. A.
Williams. No. 161, _A Showery Afternoon in Sussex_, by A. Gilbert,
is remarkable as an example of the admirable effect he knows how
to produce by the judicious and little-understood application of
the various gradations between opacity and perfect transparency of
colour. Mr Boddington has two nice pictures in the Academy.
We cannot compliment Mr F. Danby on either of the two specimens
of his art that he this year displays. We find it impossible to
comprehend his colouring. That of _A Golden Moment_ (British
Institution) is surely unnatural. Certainly it is a very rare effect
of sunset; and the background is too bright to be consistent with
the sombre foreground. If we turn to his picture in the Academy,
_Spring_, we are no better pleased. That sort of dusky glow is quite
an exaggeration of nature. Of Mr Witherington's four pictures, we
prefer _Coniston Lake_ and _The Mountain Road_. Mr Hering's _Porto
Fesano_ (British Institution) is a pleasing picture, and improves
on examination; and there is a great deal of light and some pretty
colour in the same artist's _Ruins of Rome_ in the Academy. Mr J.
Peel has rather a pretty _Canal view_ in the Portland Gallery, in
which, oddly enough, he has thrown the shadow of a tree the wrong
way; and in the same exhibition Mrs Oliver has a bit of Welsh
scenery which is pretty in spite of its finical touch. Of Mr Linton,
who has pictures both in the Academy and British Institution, we
cannot but speak with respect, recognising the ability of his works,
the study they evince, and his close observation of the aspect of
places. But they are quite for distant effect; on near approach they
look rough and granitic, and are not a very pleasing or popular
class of pictures.
We beg Mr Boxall not to think we have forgotten him. We were
desirous to commence the brief paragraph we can afford to portraits,
by praising his _Geraldine_, an undraped fancy portrait, which shows
a capital feeling for colour, and is perhaps the best specimen of
flesh-painting in the Exhibition. It wants finish; but even without
that it is nearly the first thing that attracts the eye when we
glance at that side of the Middle Room. There is good colour also in
the same artist's portrait of Mr Cubitt.
Proceeding, with this exception, in numerical rotation, we notice
No. 6, _The Hon. Caroline Dawson_, by Dubufe. The arms are rather
flat, but it is a nice portrait, well painted, and infinitely
superior to the same artist's picture in the British Institution--a
French grisette with a Jewish face and an ugly mouth, holding a
rose; the motto "Wither one rose and let the other flourish,"--a
poor conceit and very indifferently executed. No. 52 is Mr Francis
Grant's, the first, but not the best, of seven which he exhibits. Mr
Grant is getting very careless. Such hands and clothes as he gives
his sitters are really not allowable. The only carefully finished
portrait he exhibits this year is that of Lady Elizabeth Wells,
after which that of Miss Grant is perhaps the best. The Countess
Bruce has an odd sort of resemblance, in the attitude or something,
to the same painter's picture of Mr Sidney Herbert. The Duke of
Devonshire looks vulgar. Viscount Hardinge is feeble, for Grant,
who can do so much better. We urge this artist to take a little
more pains, or his high reputation will dwindle. His portrait of
Sir George Grey, now on view at Colnaghi's, is another example of
carelessness. The face is the only finished part. Mr Watson Gordon
understands the portrait-painter's vocation after a different
fashion, and is most conscientious in his practice. Apart from their
striking resemblance, his portraits are admirable as carefully
finished works of art. His sitters this year have been, upon the
whole, less suited to make interesting or pleasing pictures than
several of the persons who have sat to Mr Grant; but Watson Gordon
has done his work far more carefully. Perhaps the best of his three
portraits is that of a lady, No. 137. The child in the same picture
pleases us rather less. No. 175, Daniel Vere, Esq. of Stonebyres, is
a striking likeness of that gentleman; and nothing can be better,
in all respects, than the portrait of the Lord Justice-General of
Scotland. Mr Buckner is, we are sorry to say, retrograding sadly.
He rose very suddenly into public favour, and if he does not take
care, he will rapidly decline. His portrait of Miss Lane Fox is
perhaps his best this year. Rachel is flattered. Lady Alfred Paget
is badly coloured, and looks in an incipient stage of blue cholera.
We do not like Mr Pickersgill's portraits this year. For those who
do, there are seven in the Exhibition, besides an ugly thing called
Nourmahal. Mr G. F. Watts has painted Miss Virginia Pattle. It is
one of the most affected pictures in the whole Exhibition. The young
lady is perched on a platform, her figure standing out against the
blue sky, and her feet completely hidden under her dress, which
latter circumstance gives her an unsteady appearance, and inspires
dread lest she should be blown from her elevation. The flesh is very
pasty, and the general effect of the picture jejune in the extreme.
No. 282, _The Duke of Aumale_, is by V. Mottez, and presents a
singular combination or monotony of colour, the artist having
seemingly carefully avoided all tints that would give warmth to his
picture. With the exception of the insipidly fair countenance of
the Duke, the painting is nearly all blue. It is not a disagreeable
picture, and it perhaps gains on repeated examination; but one
cannot get rid of an unpleasant impression of coldness. Placed next
to Boxall's Geraldine, the flesh looks like chalk. That coarse
but clever painter Knight has eight portraits, including several
celebrities of one kind or other--Buckstone the comedian, Keate
the surgeon, Sir J. Duke the mayor, Cooper the cattle-painter, and
Mrs Fitzwilliam the actress. The picture of Sir J. Duke (who is
represented in all the glory of civic office) is well put together;
Cooper is laughably like; Mrs Fitzwilliam is perhaps as delicate a
female portrait as Knight ever painted--which is not saying much
for the others. Mr Say's portrait of Guizot is softened down and
idealised till the character of the man is lost. In the Portland
Gallery, No. 1 and No. 70 are by an artist whose historical pictures
we have already commended, Mr Newenham. The first is a full length,
size of life, of Mr Ross, the engineer; the other, Mrs Gall, is
a sweet female countenance. Both are very good; but Mr Newenham
is always particularly successful--indeed we can call to mind no
living painter who is more so--in his portraits of ladies. Whilst
avoiding flattery, he still invariably paints pleasing as well as
correct likenesses. Such at least is the case with all those of
his lady-portraits we have had opportunities of comparing with the
models. Middleton has some nice portraits in this exhibition, and Mr
J. Lucas shows a pleasing one of a young lad. And one of the most
lifelike and speaking portraits exhibited this year is No. 286,
by R. S. Lauder, the likeness of our old friend and much-esteemed
contributor, the Rev. James White. A more exact resemblance we never
saw.
We have not counted them, but we are informed, and have no
difficulty in believing, that there are 450 portraits (or
thereabouts) in this the eighty-second exhibition of the Royal
Academy. A very large number, out of 1456 works of art. Adding
the portraits in the three other exhibitions, we attain a total
of which, even after deducting drawings and miniatures, it
is impossible for us to notice one fourth-part. And we must
particularly remark, with respect to portraits and landscapes, what
also applies in a less degree to the less numerous classes of
pictures, that we have unavoidably--on account of our limited space
to deal with so compendious a subject, and also because we would
not reduce this article to a mere catalogue--omitted notice of many
artists and pictures whose claims are undoubted to mention more or
less honourable; as we have also forborne, for the same reason, and
much more willingly, certain censures which we should have been
justified in inflicting. Concerning portraits, however, we would
gladly have been rather more diffuse, had we not still to take some
notice, within the compass of a very few pages, of those exhibitions
to which as yet we have done little more than incidentally refer.
The restoration to the galleries of purchasers and studios of
painters, of the five hundred pictures exhibited this year by the
British Institution, diminishes the interest now attaching to that
exhibition, and induces us to be tolerably brief in our notice of
some of its leading features. No. 52, _The Post Office_, by F.
Goodall, is a pretty picture enough, but displays no genius, and the
subject suggests a comparison with Wilkie, which is not favourable.
Mr Bullock's _Venus and Cupid_, No. 124, is about as sickly a piece
of blue and pink as we remember to have seen. Mr Sant's _Rivals_
gives the impression of a copy from the lid of a French plum-box. We
have surely seen the Frenchified group in some engraving of Louis
XV's times. Mr Woolmer's _Syrens_ displays some imagination, but the
colouring is very bad. The sky is exaggerated, and the water seems
to have flowed from a cesspool, suggesting unsavoury ideas of the
extent of its contamination by the dead bodies that float upon it.
It is a picture, nevertheless, that one is apt to look at twice. T.
Clark's _The Horses of Rhesus captured by Ulysses and Diomed_, has
plenty of faults, certainly, but it has also boldness and spirit,
and makes us think the painter may hereafter do better things. No.
205, _Lance reproving his Dog_--left unfinished by the late Sir
A. W. Callcott, and completed by J. Callcott Horsley--includes a
pretty bit of landscape, and the dog is not bad; but, as a whole,
the picture does not strike us as remarkable. No. 231, _A French
Fishing Girl_, by T. K. Fairless, is a nice bit of colouring, very
fresh and judicious; and R. M'Innes's _Detaining a Customer_, tells
its story well, and is of careful finish, but insipid colouring.
Lady Macbeth, by T. F. Dicksee, is repulsive and unnatural; not the
murderess Shakspeare conceived and Siddons acted, but a saucer-eyed
maniac standing under a gas-lamp. No. 290, _Our Saviour after the
Temptation_, is by Sir George Hayter, who has bestowed great pains
without producing, as a whole, a very satisfactory result. The
picture has certainly good points, but it speaks against its general
excellence that we are driven to praise details. All the hands
are particularly well done--Sir George's experience as a portrait
painter having here availed him. The colouring of Christ's dress is
good, but generally there is an abuse of yellow in the picture. The
angels have no backs to their heads, but this phrenological defect
is perhaps intentional, to convey the artist's notion of an angel by
indicating the absence of gross passions. G. Cole's _Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza in Pedro's hut_ is humorous, but quite a caricature.
The painter seems to have studied to establish a resemblance
between the men and their respective beasts. Another laughable
picture is Mrs C. Smith's _Irish Piper_, whose companion _The
Irish Card-cutter_ is No. 206 in the British Artists'. As works of
art, they have little merit, but one cannot help acknowledging and
laughing at the vulgar humour and truth to nature they both contain.
Mr Selous' _The First Impression_, Gutemberg showing to his wife
his first experiment in printing from movable types, is perhaps the
best picture in the South Room. There is an air of nature about Mr
W. Wyld's _Smugglers' halt in the Sierra Morena_; but the figures,
although well grouped, are on too small a scale for much interest,
and the landscape lacks attraction. Our old friend George Cruikshank
gives full scope to his rich humour in No. 100, _Sancho's surprise
on seeing the Squire of the Wood's Nose_; and 455, _Disturbing the
Congregation_. This last is inimitable--brimful of fun. A charity
boy has let his peg-top fall during service, and the awful clatter
upon the church pavement draws all eyes in the direction of the
delinquent. This is a picture that must be seen, not described;
but our readers will imagine all the fun Cruikshank would make of
such a subject--the terrified face of the culprit, in vain affecting
unconsciousness, and the awful countenance of the beadle. We must
say a word of Mr J. F. Herring's _A Farmyard_, which contains some
good horses; but he has huddled his objects too much together, his
colouring is very opaque, and there is a want of air and perspective
in the picture. There is the same defect of thick colour in Mr H.
Jutsum's pretty composition, _Evening--coming home to the Farm_.