Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850
We turn with pleasure to Leslie's pictures. Were we disposed to find fault with this very agreeable artist, our objections could only be technical. With want of imagination, and feeling for beauty, none can tax him. Two of his three pictures contain the sweetest female faces in this exhibition. How admirably has he interpreted Shakspeare's description of Beatrice stealing to the woodbine bower, to play the eavesdropper on Hero and Ursula.
"Look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground."
The painter has exactly rendered the poet's graceful idea. As she glides along, we seem to detect the slight flutter and palpitation attendant on the clandestine movement. Expression and attitude are alike charming. Sophia Western deserves even higher praise. She is indeed a lovely creature. Tom Jones bids her behold herself in the mirror, and say whether such a face and form do not guarantee his fidelity. It is altogether a most agreeable composition; and if we have any fault to find, it is with the face of the enamoured foundling, which wants refinement, and has a sort of overgrown schoolboy's ruddy fulness. Katherine of Arragon beseeching Capucius to convey to Henry VIII. her last recommendation of her daughter and servants to his goodness, is the most important of Mr Leslie's pictures; and although by many it will not be deemed the most attractive, none can deny it great merit and interest. The suffering countenance of Katherine, and the tearful faces of her attendants, are full of expression. The ambassador is rather tame, and one scarcely recognises in his face or bearing the energy with which he vows to do the bidding of the unhappy queen.
Mr Eastlake has one scriptural and one historical picture in this year's exhibition. A passage from Sismondi, telling the escape of an Italian noble and his wife from the persecution of the Duke of Milan, has suggested the latter, which is painted for the Vernon Gallery. There is some good expression in the faces in this picture, which has more interest and novelty than its companion The Good Samaritan, and also greater vigour. Both show the hand of the experienced and skilful artist, although perhaps neither can be classed amongst the best things he has produced. We should gladly see a little more nerve in Mr Eastlake's style, and this we think might be advantageously combined with his beautiful transparency of colouring, and other excellent qualities as a painter. There is no diminution in the purity of style and thought which has always been one of his finest characteristics.
Mr Frith is an improving artist. There is humour and progress in No. 543, a scene from Goldsmith's Good-natured Man. Mr Honeywood introduces the bailiffs to Miss Richland as his friends. He must beware, however, of running into caricature in subjects of this kind. The bailiffs are perhaps a little overdone. Miss Richland has a very pretty face, but she looks more like a soubrette or smart actress than a woman of fashion. Mr Frith's other picture, Sancho proving to the duchess that Don Quixote is at the bottom of the table, is well painted, and, in a technical point of view, it must be spoken of with respect. He has not been quite so successful as we should have expected in the expression of the faces, – that of the duke excepted, which is a good and thoroughly Spanish countenance, with its habitual gravity disturbed by Sancho's quaint humour and his master's manifest distress. But painting ladies is not Mr Frith's forte. His duchess is pretty, but there is a want of aristocratic distinction in her face and bearing; and as to the ladies grouped behind her chair, they are cookmaids in masquerade. Very few living artists, besides Leslie, should venture upon Sancho. We will not say that Mr Frith is not one of those few, but his delineation of the shrewd esquire, although very humorous, is rather coarse, and he has made him ragged and filthy to an unnecessary degree. The vexation and embarrassment of Don Quixote are ludicrously portrayed.
Four very small, very unpretending pictures by Thomas Webster, R.A., must be sought for, but, when found, cannot fail to be admired. They are a feature, and a very charming one, of this year's Exhibition. High finish and truth to nature are their chief characteristics. Mr Webster is getting quite into the Ostade manner. His colouring, too, is admirable. No. 54 is a boy in a chimney corner, supping pottage, with an old woman knitting opposite to him. Both faces are excellent, and full of character. A Cherry Seller is a perfect bijou– the woman weighing out the fruit; the boys, looking on with eager eyes and watering mouths; the fruit itself, with its Dutch nicety of finish: – altogether it is a most desirable picture, such as one can hardly pass, even for the twentieth time, without pausing for another view. A Peasant's Home is upon the whole too gray, and perhaps the least attractive of the four; but in the Farmhouse Kitchen are a couple of figures, a farmer and his dame, than which nothing can be better, either in colour or expression. Mr Webster shows great taste and judgment in adhering to a pleasing simplicity, without ever falling into quaintness or affectation. And it is a study for a young artist to observe the skill with which he throws his lights, and the transparency and absence of paintyness (to borrow a term from the studio) which characterise his pictures.
Mr Solomon Hart's Kitchen Interior at Mayfield will not do after Webster. This, however, is one of the least important of his six pictures, which comprise two other interiors, two heads, and a Jewish festival. This last is perhaps the best picture he has painted. The MSS. of the Pentateuch are being carried round the synagogue at Leghorn, amidst chanting of hymns. There is a strong devotional character in many of the faces; and, as a work of art, the picture is more than respectable. The interest of the subject is a question of taste. For us, we confess, it possesses very little attraction; and the Jewish physiognomy, so strongly marked as it is in all the occupants of the synagogue, is, to our thinking, incompatible with beauty. We do not much admire either A Virtuoso or Arnolfo di Lapo. The latter is the best of the two: the former, carefully painted, is merely an ordinary-looking Jew.
What can we say of Mr Turner? Perhaps we had better content ourselves with mentioning that he has four pictures in the Exhibition, all in his latest manner, all illustrative of that far-famed, but, unfortunately, unpublished poem, The Fallacies of Hope, and all proving the fallacy of the hope we annually cherish that he will abjure his eccentricities, and revert to the style which justly gained him his high reputation. It were absurd of us to attempt to criticise his present productions, for to us they are unintelligible; and, judging from the extremely puzzled looks we see fixed upon them, we suspect that not many of those who pause for their examination are more successful than ourselves in deciphering their meaning, and in appreciating the beauties which a few stanch adherents pretend to discover in those strange compounds of red, white, and yellow. What if Mr Turner were to seek his inspirations elsewhere than in the aforesaid MS.? Can it be that the poet's halting verse influences the painter's vagaries? From the specimens afforded us, we are not inclined to think highly of The Fallacies of Hope. Take the following, exempli gratiâ: —
"Beneath the morning mist
Mercury waited to tell him of his neglected fleet."
And this —
"Fallacious Hope beneath the moon's pale crescent shone,
Dido listened to Troy being lost and won."
Enough of such poetry, and enough, as far as we are concerned, of a great painter's unfortunate aberrations.
Apropos of aberrations, we have a word to say, which may as well be said here as elsewhere. Affectation, however, is a more suitable word for the mountebank proceedings of a small number of artists, who, stimulated by their own conceit, and by the applause of a few foolish persons, are endeavouring to set up a school of their own. We allude, to the pre-Raphaelites. Let not Messrs Millais, Hunt, Rosetti, & Co. suppose, because we give them an early place in this imperfect review of the exhibitions, that we concede to them an undue importance. As to admiration, we shall presently make them aware how far we entertain that feeling towards them. Meanwhile, let them not plume themselves on a place amongst men of genius. Just as well might they experience an exaltation of their horns, because their absurd and pretentious productions get casually hung next to pictures by Landseer or Webster. It appears they have got into their wise heads certain notions that the ideal of expression is to be found in the works of the artists who flourished previously to Raphael. And they have accordingly set to work to imitate those early masters, not only in the earnestness of purpose visible in their productions, but in their errors, crudities, and imperfections – renouncing, in fact, the progress that since then has been made; rejecting the experience of centuries, to revert for models, not to art in its prime, but to art in its uncultivated infancy. And a nice business they make of it. Regardless of anatomy and drawing, they delight in ugliness and revel in diseased aspects. Mr Dante Rosetti, one of the high-priests of this retrograde school, exhibits at the Portland Gallery. Messrs Millais and Hunt favour the saloons of the Academy. Ricketty children, emaciation and deformity constitute their chief stock in trade. They apparently select bad models, and then exaggerate their badness till it is out of all nature. We can hardly imagine anything more ugly, graceless, and unpleasant than Mr Millais' picture of Christ in the carpenter's shop. Such a collection of splay feet, puffed joints, and misshapen limbs was assuredly never before made within so small a compass. We have great difficulty in believing a report that this unpleasing and atrociously affected picture has found a purchaser at a high price. Another specimen, from the same brush, inspires rather laughter than disgust. A Ferdinand of most ignoble physiognomy is being lured by a pea-green monster intended for Ariel; whilst a row of sprites, such as it takes a Millais to devise, watch the operation with turquoise eyes. It would occupy more room than the thing is worth to expose all the absurdity and impertinence of this work. Mr Hunt's picture of a Christian Missionary sheltered from Druid pursuit is in as ridiculous taste as any of the group.
From such monstrosities it is a relief to turn to Mr Frank Stone's graceful creations. He also has taken a subject from the second scene in the Tempest, No. 342, Miranda's first sight of Ferdinand. Compared with Mr Millais' Ferdinand, that of Mr Stone is a demigod. Estimated by its intrinsic merits, it strikes us as a little theatrical – rather too much of the stage-player in the air and attitude. Miranda has a sweet and youthful face; Prospero is too young, and does not look his part. This is not one of Mr Stone's happiest efforts, but it is a nice picture, and we prefer it to his other in the same exhibition, The Gardener's Daughter, a young lady attitudinising under a rose-tree, with a pair of admiring swains in the distance. This artist is too apt to give his male lovers a sickly look, as if their love disagreed with them. The best picture he has shown this year is one in the British Institution —Sympathy– two very pretty maidens, with an expression of pleasing sentiment in their faces. Barring a little occasional mannerism, Mr Stone is a very delightful painter; and in our opinion, if he had had his deserts, he would some time since have been a member of the Academy. Were it not invidious, we could cite a few, who write Associate after their names, who have less claim than he has to that honorary distinction. Mr Stone has a great deal of fancy, a fine feeling for the beautiful, and we are indebted to him for many charming compositions and lovely female faces. And certainly if popularity be a test of merit, which we admit is not always the case, he ought years ago to have figured in the list of Academicians.
That very conscientious and careful artist, Mr Charles Landseer, has a pretty and well-painted Girl in a Hop-garden, and a larger and still better picture – perhaps the best he has for some years produced – of Æsop, surrounded by several of the animals celebrated in his fables. There is a great deal of quiet humour and nice finish in this picture: the figure and face of the hump-backed fabulist, and those of a girl, who seems admiringly to listen to his allegorical wisdom, are exceedingly good. Mr Dyce has only one picture, and really that had been as well away. An ugly Jacob is protruding his lips to kiss a vulgar Rachel. The colouring is hard and bad, and there is a pervading gray tint which is not natural. We hope Mr Dyce, R.A., can do better things than this. We prefer Mr Cope's King Lear, which has considerable merit. There is fine expression in the old monarch's head. Cordelia pleases us less; and perhaps, upon the whole, the best figures in the picture are those of the musicians and singers. There is a something in this painting that reminds us of Maclise. Of Mr Cope's other pictures, Milton's Dream has a nice tone of colour; and the two sketches for fresco of Prince Henry's submission to Judge Gascoigne, and the Black Prince receiving the order of the Garter, are spirited and good. Mr Redgrave's principal picture is No. 233. The Marquis having chosen patient Griselda for his wife, causes the court ladies to dress her in her father's cottage. Griselda has a pretty face, and sits in an easy, graceful attitude: the ladies are coarse, and the expression of scorn upon their countenances is theatrical and affected. The heads of some of them are too big, and out of proportion with their bodies. The Child's Prayer, by the same artist, is a pleasing picture; well painted, particularly the woman's head and hand, which latter has a look of Rubens. Mr E. M. Ward has two pictures of very different subjects. Isaac Walton Angling hardly claims any particular notice; James II. receiving the News of the Landing of the Prince of Orange in 1688, has more pretension and greater merit. It certainly contains good painting: the grouping of the figures and the expression of some of the faces are also praiseworthy; but yet it hardly satisfies us. The queen's face and attitude, as she advances, already sympathising with the agitation visible on his countenance, to her husband's side, are very charming. James's physiognomy is almost too much discomposed to accord with the passage from Dalrymple quoted by Mr Ward. And it strikes us, although this may seem hypercritical, that there is something ludicrous in the eternal suspension in the air of the letter that he has just allowed to escape from his fingers. Upon the whole, however, this is a clever picture, and, as far as we had opportunity of observing, it attracts a very full share of public attention; although that is no criterion of merit, so large a proportion of the loungers through an exhibition being more readily attracted by a piquant subject than by artistical skill. And probably no subjects are more generally popular than those that may be styled the homely-historical; scenes in the private apartments of royalty; the personal adventures and perils of princes, whether in the palace or the prison – on the steps of the throne or the verge of the scaffold. There is a fair sprinkling of such pictures in the four exhibitions now under notice; and as we have no pretension to be otherwise than exceedingly desultory in this article, whose limits, and the heterogeneous subject, preclude our being otherwise, we will at once dispose of such of them as deserve notice, and have not already received it, commencing, in order of catalogue, with Delaroche's picture of Cromwell looking at the dead body of Charles I. This is a picture concerning which the most conflicting opinions have been uttered. It has received fulsome praise and unwarranted abuse. Some have lauded it as perfection merely because it is by Paul Delaroche; others have decried it with a virulence and injustice warranting the suspicion that some envious brother of the brush had temporarily abandoned the palette for the pen, and applied himself to slander merit he himself was hopeless of equalling. We are aware but of two valid objections that can fairly be made to the picture. The subject is certainly ghastly and horrid; but, on the other hand, it has been rendered as little so as possible by the consummate skill and good taste of its treatment. And none, we think, but the very fastidious, will dwell upon this point. The other objection (technical only) is to the coppery tone of colouring of certain parts of the picture, particularly of the flesh. This premised, we are aware of little else that can fairly be alleged against this very fine picture. The countenance of Cromwell certainly does not agree with the most authentic portraits that have been handed down to us, or with the written and traditional accounts of his features. The artist has idealised his hero – has abridged his nose, increased his under jaw, and thrown nearly the whole expression of the face into and around the mouth. M. Delaroche having taken such liberties, we ought to be particularly grateful to him that he has not gone farther, and, in aiming at a great effect, fallen into exaggeration. Out of twenty French artists, nineteen, we suspect, would have given us, with the strong and dangerous temptation of so striking a subject, an unpleasant caricature. It has been objected that the face is deficient in character and expression, and would perfectly suit any one of Cromwell's Ironsides, who through curiosity should have lifted the lid of the deceased monarch's coffin. It is, to our thinking, an evidence of skill on the part of the painter thus to have left the expression doubtful – a matter of speculation to the beholder. We interpret it as merely meditative. Any emotion it includes is one of exultation at the great and important step the Usurper has made in his upward progress. Of pity or remorse there is no trace.
The next picture in the Exhibition of the Academy, of the class at present under notice, that particularly caught our eye, is No. 491, The Burial of the two sons of Edward IV. in the Tower, by Mr Cross, whose painting of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, exhibited at Westminster Hall, will be remembered by many of our readers. The present picture does not redeem the promise of its predecessor. It has a washy, fresco-like look, and a great want of light and shade, which is the more striking because the subject is one particularly favourable to the display of a Rembrandt-like vigour in that respect. The arrangement of the dead bodies is very bad, and they have an emaciated look which was quite uncalled for. On the other hand, the faces of two of the murderers, (one sustains the stone beneath which the grave is dug, and the other grasps the arm of one of the children,) and that of the turnkey, are very expressive. The chief of the gang and the grave-digger are rather strained and theatrical. Upon the whole, the picture disappoints us much. A report, however, has reached us, that it was painted under the disadvantage of ill health, so we will hope that Mr Cross may yet do better things. No. 569, The Abdication of Mary Queen of Scots at Lochleven Castle, by J. Severn, is a very tame affair. And we do not greatly admire Mr Lucy's Parting of Charles I. with his Children. The subject has been better treated before. But we delight in Mr Joy's conception of Cromwell coveting, and yet daring not to grasp, the crown of England. A bilious misanthrope, with flabby cheeks and lacklustre eye, is seated beside a table on which stands the crown, whose covering he has partly withdrawn. The notion is amusingly matter-of-fact. Does Mr Joy really suppose that such a man as Cromwell could find enjoyment in the deliberate physical contemplation of the jewelled bauble – the substantial crown – the mere emblem of the dignity and sway for which he thirsted? We cannot compliment this artist on either the conceit or the execution. We prefer his picture in the British Institution, although that is not very remarkable. The subject is the interview between James IV. of Scotland and the outlaw Murray on the banks of Yarrow. In this Exhibition we find another Cromwell, of a very different cast from the one just referred to. The Lord Protector of England dictates to John Milton his celebrated despatch in favour of the persecuted Piedmontese Protestants. Here there is a fire and energy mingled with the coarseness of Cromwell's physiognomy, which gives the character of the man as we read of him and believe him to have been. Milton's face wears a look of gentle enthusiasm and approval, as he admiringly weighs the words that fall from the lips of his great patron. In his eyes there is a sort of haziness that seems to foreshadow the darkness which later is to come over him. The picture does great credit to a very rising artist, Mr F. Newenham, who also exhibits a painting at the Portland Gallery, which we like quite as well as his Cromwell. The subject, The Princes in the Tower, is not a very new one, but there is imagination and novelty in its treatment. It is just the same point of time that Delaroche has chosen in his painting of this subject, but there is nothing like an imitation of the great Frenchman. Here the younger child still sleeps, whilst the elder, a princely-looking lad, roused by the noise at the door, gazes anxiously, rather than fearfully, at the shadow cast upon the wall by a hand bearing a lantern. The picture is suggestive and interesting, and in an artistic point of view, also, it merits high praise. In this Portland Gallery (which we may observe, by the way, is most excellently constructed and lighted for the advantageous exhibition of works of art) is a painting by Mr Claxton, Marie Antoinette with her Children, escaping by the Secret Door from her apartment in Versailles, when the palace was attached by the mob, which we mention rather on account of the interest of the subject than of its merits as a work of art, these being but of a negative description. Marie Antoinette, dressed rather like a fashionable of the year 1850, is accompanied by a terrified lady, who looks back at the door, half-masked by smoke, through whose broken pannel the bayonets of the rebels cross with those of the loyal grenadiers. Another picture from French history, but selected from a much remoter period, is that of The Excommunication of Robert, King of France, and his Queen Bertha, (No. 159 in the Portland Gallery.) which Mr Desanges has executed with some skill. The king, having married his cousin in defiance of the Pope, but with the sanction of three prelates of his kingdom, incurs the pontifical anathema, in common with the prelates and royal family. In the picture, the fiat has just been pronounced, and the extinction of their torches by the officiating priests symbolically completes their mission.
This is not one of Mr Clarkson Stanfield's best years. We prefer this careful and able artist on a grander scale than that of the comparatively small pictures he this year exhibits. Nor do we think he has been particularly happy in his choice of subjects. His scene from Macbeth, viewed as a landscape – for we do not take into account the figures, which are insignificant, and might as well have been left out – is a good picture, but not in his happiest taste. We prefer his Scene on the Maas, and his Bay of Baiæ, which are both excellent. No. 288, Near Foria, is not a very good subject. But Mr Stanfield is a pleasant, natural painter, quite free from affectation, and a most excellent representative of the English school. Mr Roberts is another favourite of ours. Belgium and the East, Egyptian temples and Catholic shrines, furnish subjects for his seven pictures. What we particularly like in him is the strong impression of correctness and fidelity conveyed by his representations of distant scenes. Without having seen the places, one feels convinced of the accuracy of his delineations, and that he gives the real effect of the objects depicted – just as, in certain portraits, one feels certain of the resemblance without knowing the original. The subjects of his pictures this year do not demand any detailed criticism, and his good qualities are so universally appreciated as to render general commendation superfluous.
Before passing on to landscapes and portraits we will glance at a few pictures of various classes, which happen to have attracted our attention, and which deserve better or worse than to be left unnoticed. Diving into the gloom of the Octagon, we are struck by the very remarkable merit of two pictures, which ought never to have been placed there. Only by kneeling or sitting upon the ground is it possible to examine Mr Van Schendel's poacher detected, No. 633, Un Braconnier au moment qu'on vient le prendre. Of ordinary visitors to the Exhibition, not one in five will notice the existence of the picture – not one in twenty, probably, will go through the painful contortions requisite to get even a bad view of it. Very few, if any, critics will have sought it out or written a comment on it. Yet this is a picture on which greater talent and labour have been expended than on dozens that hang in conspicuous places and good lights. A dark picture, too – a night scene – it required a strong light; and it was most unjust to put it thus in the very darkest nook, and in the lowest range of the whole Academy. For hospitality's sake to a foreigner, this excellent painting should have been differently placed. The only other picture which we noticed in the Octagon – there may be others of great merit, but we never have patience to linger long in the gloomy closet – is No. 586, Flowers and Fruit, by T. Groenland – an artist far superior to Lance, who seems to us to fall off instead of improving. Fruit and flower pieces are things that few people care much to look at – and, for our part, we confess that we seldom afford them more than a very cursory glance; but our attention was seriously and pleasingly arrested by both of those exhibited this year by Mr Groenland, remarkable, as they are, not only for the accuracy with which he imitates the texture of the different fruits – whether pulpiness, bloom, or transparency be their chief characteristic – and for the admirable delicacy of his flower-painting, but also for his skill in elevating and giving interest to the walk of art he has chosen. This is strikingly the case in No. 1254, apropos of which we have another piece of injustice or carelessness – let them call it which they like – to notice on the part of the Hanging Committee. Of all the seven rooms of the Academy, not one is so little visited as that which, in the catalogue, is headed Architecture. Accordingly, the hangmen have placed at one end of it five as pleasing pictures – each in its own style – as any in the Exhibition. Here we have the Vierge Route du Simplon, a charming airy landscape by Harding; Esther, by O'Neil, one of the best, perhaps, he ever did; The Port of Marseilles, by E. W. Cooke, very like and very well painted, with excellent water; A Winter Evening, by H. Horsley, a most clever piece of snow scenery, with a cold look that makes one shiver, and a capital effect of setting sun through an archway; and, last in our enumeration, but not in merit, Mr Groenland's second fruit and flower piece, with a landscape background, a gorgeous and life-like peacock, a flush of rhododendrons, and painstaking and talent in every leaf and flower. Another picture in the same vicinity, by W. Fisher, The Coulin, a subject taken from Moore's melodies, is rather affected, but by no means destitute of merit.
Mr Martin's picture, The Last Man, is far from one of his best. The subject is unpleasing, and there is a decided fault of perspective; the human corpses and carcasses of strange beasts, in the foreground, being much too small in proportion with the figure of the man, who stands on an elevation which is doubtless intended to be much in advance of, but which in reality is almost on a line with, the spot where they are spread pellmell in grisly confusion. Mr Hannah's Lady Northumberland and Lady Percy dissuading the Earl from joining the wars against Henry IV. is oddly coloured, and acquires a cold, insipid look from the profusion of blue and gray; but it is a good and clever picture. A similar class of subject has been selected by Mr T. J. Barker, from Professor Aytoun's ballad of Edinburgh after Flodden. Randolph Murray, bearing news of the defeat, is the centre of a throng anxious even to agony.
"Why art thou alone, unfollowed?
Is it weal, or is it woe?"
Perched up as this picture is above the door in the West Room, it 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.