Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850
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.
We have already mentioned several pictures in the Portland Gallery, including a portrait by Mr R. S. Lauder, (the president of this new society,) which is perhaps the best, although one of the most unpretending, of the seven pictures he exhibits. We do not discern any very great merit in two carefully painted illustrations of Quentin Durward. We should like to know on what authority Mr Lauder makes a tall, large-limbed man of Louis XI., and how he intends to get him and the raw-boned Scot through the door in No. 166, without a most unkingly deviation from the perpendicular. There is here a fault of perspective. And Mr Lauder should beware of repetition. We remember the lady behind the tapestry in No. 45, in at least a dozen of his pictures. This, however, is the best of the pair, and there is good painting in it. His most important picture this year is that of Christ appearing to two of his Disciples on the way to Emmaus. This is certainly a fine work, although there is much opposition of opinion respecting it. There is undoubtedly a fine sentiment in the colouring, which is peculiarly applicable to the subject. Mr M'Ian is in great force here, with no less than ten pictures. We like this artist for the character and energy he infuses into his productions. His most attractive picture this year is No. 55, Here's his health in Water! thus explained – "A Highland gentleman of 1715, in Carlisle prison, the day previous to his execution, receiving the last visit of his mother, wife, and children, and instilling into his son – the future Highland gentleman of 1745 – the principles of loyalty." The face of the condemned Highlander is full of vigour and determination, as is also that of his mother, a resolute old lady, who seems to confirm his precepts to her grandchild. The countenances of the sorrowing wife and of the little girl, whose attention is distracted by the opening of the prison door, are natural and pleasing. The boy, a sturdy scion of the old stock, drinks King James's health out of the prison-mug of water. We will not omit to praise Mrs M'Ian's very well-painted picture of Captivity and Liberty– gipsies in prison, with swallows twittering in the loophole that affords them light. There is a nice feeling about this picture, which includes a handsome gipsy face; it is careful in its details, and very effective in point of chiaroscuro. No. 251, A Jealous Man, disguised as a Priest, hears the confession of his Wife, is a subject (from the Decameron) of which more might have been made than there has been by Mr D. W. Deane. The countenances lack decided expression. Several artists have this year painted scenes from the Tempest, and Mr A. Fussell is one of the number. It were to be wished he had abstained. His picture of Caliban, Ariel, and his fellows, is very bad indeed. He should be less ambitious in his subjects, or at least less fantastical in their treatment. It is unintelligible to us how this picture illustrates the passage quoted. Nos. 264-5 are Mr H. Barraud's pictures: —Lord have mercy upon us, and We praise thee, O God! the engravings of which have for some time past been in every shop-window. We are really at a loss to comprehend the engouement for these pictures, which seem to us as deficient in real sentiment as they are feeble in execution. They are pretty enough, certainly, but that is all the praise we are disposed to accord them. There is no great beauty in the faces; and one of the boys (on the spectator's right hand) is a mere lout, without any expression whatever. The Messrs Barraud have a great many pictures in this exhibition – amongst others, No. 199, The Curfew, their joint production, which is pretty, but in respect to which it strikes us that they have read Gray's poem wrong, for the light in their picture is not that of parting day, but of approaching sunset. Mr Rayner's Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, is a good picture; Mr Niemann's Kenilworth from the Tilt-yard, and Landscape, No. 72, also deserve praise; Mr Dighton is very effective in some of his landscapes and studies. Upon the whole, this young exhibition promises well.
Driven to our utmost limits, we must conclude, without further mention than we have already here and there made of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street; and we do so with the less regret because that gallery contains but a small proportion of pictures of merit. Mr Anthony contributes a very large number of his odd paintings, some of which are rather effective at a distance; but it is not a style we admire. Finally, we have with pleasure noticed, during our many rambles through the different galleries, that the public not only visit but buy; and we trust that the year 1850 will prove profitable and satisfactory to British artists, in the same proportion that it undoubtedly is creditable to their industry, and, upon the whole, highly honourable to their talents. One word more we will say at parting. In this article we have written down opinions, formed neither hastily nor partially, of whose soundness, although critics will always differ, we venture to feel pretty confident. We have applied ourselves to point out merits rather than defects, and to distribute praise in preference to blame; but we should have failed in our duty to ourselves and the public, had we altogether abstained from the latter. We well know, however, the many difficulties and discouragements that beset the path of the painter. And it would be matter for sincere regret to us, if, in the freedom of our remarks, we had unwittingly hurt the feelings of any man who is honestly and earnestly striving in the pursuit of a very difficult art – although his success may as yet be incommensurate with his industry and zeal.