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Mat 2,1857.1 THE LEAD E'R. 42?
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v — NATURE AND ART. EXHIBITIONS OF THE W...
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ROYAL ACADEMY: PRIVATE VIEW. Varietv and...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Mat 2,1857.1 The Lead E'R. 42?
Mat 2 , 1857 . 1 THE LEAD E'R . 42 ?
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V — Nature And Art. Exhibitions Of The W...
v — NATURE AND ART . EXHIBITIONS OF THE WATEU-COLOUR SOCIKTT , THE NEW WATER-COLOUR , BRITISH INSTITUTION , AND NATIONAL INSTITUTION . An interesting paper on photography in the Quarterly Review hazards one indiscreet remark . It speaks of the photographic art as ministering to the matter-of-fact spirit of the present age , and as something different from tasteful art if not antagonistic to it . The fact is , that the photograph has been the <* reatest auxiliary to the elevation of taste , of thorough intelligence and perception on the p ; irt of the artist as well as of the public ; and if any one doubted that inference , lie might have confirmation of the fact in the exhibitions , especially in the exhibitions of this year . At the very first the photograph gave us a matter-of-fact standard in form and chiaroscuro . The earliest productions in which the form struggled through a dim shadow at once corroborated the handling and method of the greatest artists . You had reproduced by the machine " the same simple , -well-defined , yet organically varying outline that you found in Raphael : the same sharpness and flatness combined with roundness
that gave the vital character to Titian ; the same simplicity of chiaroscuro with an endless gradation of tint that you find in the most elaborate colourists like Titian , or the broadest masters of chiaroscuro like Corkeccio . But since the machine has become more perfect and can seize forms in the flash of an instant , all these characteristics have been brought to much greater perfection ; they stand out more distinctly , and the most unlearned eye , with a little patient scrutiny , can now compare the fixed mirror of nature with the works of art ; the effect is , to corroborate the greatest masters , to fix a standard towards which able men of a second rank can now work and do work with considerable success , and to throw into the shade of condemnation those jobbers that may have some qualities of taste , but have no real power of mastery or execution . In the present year this effect of the photograph seems upon the whole rather disheartening . None of the smaller exhibitions , even those of the highest rank , are quite up to their own standard .
The Old Watek Colour is not unlike an Old Water Colour collection without so many of the very striking subjects that we have been accustomed to see upon its walls . The incidents chosen by those who formerly gave the greatest animation to the collection are mostly of a tame character , but still we recognize the handling of the master . In Frederick Tayleb ' s " Highland Drovers , " for example—the men sending the cattle before them over an undulating ¦ country—you have all the sharpness , the exactness , the identity of the photograph , with something more . The photograph has given us the picture of men in motion—a body of soldiers marching , for example—but the motion must be comparatively slight and at right angles to the plane of the picture ; if it be anything more , motion in the object becomes mist in the portrait . Nor can the
photograph colour ; indeed , sometimes the natural colouring distorts the chiaroscuro . ~ Many an English spectator will be disappointed with photographs of the Campanile , or bell-tower of Florence , because the yellow reddish tint of the stone , which looks so light and brilliant between the blue sky , becomes , with the darkening of the yellow , dull and heavy in the photograph , and even obscures the forms . In " A Kide through the Heather , " by Tayler , you have all the animation of youthful cavaliers scampering across an open country . Art has fairly ridden away from the photograph , but in the meanwhile it has confirmed the artist in the strength of his own style , and lias helped to fix his excellence as the standard for other artists ; in short , the photograph disciplines the artist . through the model , and he must add the action and colour for himself . It has not taught him only form , it lias taught him chiaroscuro ; and it has also taught
him to base the reproduction of his own imagination upon nature . We might carry the same lesson with fresh illustrations through all the most interesting pictures of a really interesting collection . Take Davidson ' s " Corn-field near Hastings . " It is better than the photograph , in proportion as it rivals the photograph in cxaetuess , but surpasses it in a photographic exactness of colouring . Davidson ' s " Haymaking : Lewes , Sussex , " and E . Dus-• can ' s "Sheep Feeding " in a winter scene , excite a feeling of perfect delight , they are so thoroughly filled with the vitality of vegetation , of peaceful animal iife , of the open atmosphere . Harding has always been an exact painter ; his ¦ " Scene near Blair Athol , " in Scotland , is an admirable specimen of his style ;
but he has never before arrived at the freedom which the photograph , we are inclined to think , as well as the practice of a long life , have enabled hiui to develop . The same natural standard has helped to chastise painters like the Coxes , who suffer one to see the material us well as the intended scene . There is great skill , great freshness of colour , whether you take pictures like the "Caernarvon Castle" or " Vale of Con way ; " but you desire to see the landscape , and you can scarcely do so uninterruptedly , because you equally see the paper and pigments . Naftkl has great power in reproducing pure- tints , and lie has sometimes victimized the scene for the sake of exhibiting that power . This year , it appears to us , he is sober , and being sober , exhibits more real strength .
The same npplies even to the figures . Nothing can be better as reflexions of character , as a matter of beauty , than Cakl IIaag ' s " Liuly of Albano , " or " Savaeinescan Girl . " Nash reproduces many old buildings , such as tho terrace of the mansion called Bnunshill , in Hampshire . He dramatises the scene by "A Summer Afternoon ' s Diversion . " Gentlemen in a costume of the Stuart days are fencing on the carpeted terrace , while their companions , ladies , and children , are looking on or loitering about . The master of the Water Colour has always , to us , appeared to be W . Hunt , who roproduoes gross , flowers , and fruit , and " humans , " as if he had actually assisted in the Creation . He has few thia year , but tho "Poacher" is amongst tho most characteristic—tho head of a bearded rustic , audacious and sinister . Primroses , quinces , apple-blossoms , rosea , and blackberries , lie upon pieces of veritable earth . Tho blackberry , with its leaf pointing towards you , is like a
piece out of a ( stereoscope ; but no sterooscopo could give that perfuet identity of tho grey green , or unable you to eeo through the sharp red of tho crude fruit . It is in the naturalist class of landscapes that tho New Watkii Colour ia most successful . Following the modern movement , men like Jamkb Faiucv , William Bennett , and Kuwahu G . Warren , strive to take in tho endless variety of forms , tho sharpness of nuluve , in foliage , rising corn , rook , or broken ground , to catch the flash of light across u country ; and thoy attain a wonderful success . Mr . Wahukn is peculiarly powerful and happy this year . Wo still observe a common struggle with the pigments in the Hides : tho blue- id blue tint upon paper ; tho clouds are pa £ > ur left blank , with a certain ragged sharpness that hus no resemblance to nature . In ono of Air . Ruiuns ' s pictures , " . Blowing Hard on tho Downs , " with Dutch luggers cutting tho sharp waves for Kamsgale , Una sharpness , of cloud ia conquered , and tho olleefc of miaty , moving musses is
excellently copied . The same hand is not so happy in another picture . The sky , as well as the ground , is well finished in Warren ' s Scottish scene , " Glen Soumochs . " John Absolon , who still paints simple figures after a certain " old English" fashion of his own , ventures upon landscape in " A Peat-field near Capel Arthoj ' , North Wales ; " and although there treatment is too flat , the effects of aerial space , of broad light , and open air , are admirably conveyed . The figure-painting in this exhibition is far . less interesting than usual , Corhould has a " Scene at a Prussian Fair , " in which the picture is filled -with highly finished figures in various animated attitudes ; but his chief painting is illustrated by a few lines from liogers's Italy , and is the critical scene in the life of Buondelmonte Buondelmonti , —that where the Lady of -the Amidei discovers to him the bride that she has been keeping for him , and he becomes at once enthralled . The young lady Is a pretty girl , but by no means endowed with such extraordinary beauty or audacity of expression as to account for the infatuation of the cavalier . The whole group , however , serves to display
costume and accessories . Louis Haghe has several striking pictures ; the principal illustrating a passage in the life of the painter Cornells Vroom , when he was wrecked on the coast of Portugal , and rescued by some monks for the sake of his religious pictures . The scene consists of nothing more than a group of monks in a convent , examining some pictures ; but it has in every trait—in the perspective , the architecture , the relief of the figures , and their individuality of character—all the force of the photograph ; not a coloured photograph , but a photograph executed in colours . Mr . Weiinert is not in force ; as is seen in an Exeter Hall illustration of the life of John Pounds , the worthy voluntary ragged-schoolmaster . Charles Vaciier has several striking scenes from Algeria , which he has lately visited . D'Egville , admirable portraits of Venice . Henry Warren , a dramatic scene in Cairo , a wedding procession viewed from a shop . It-will be observed that the best pictures have a strictly matter-of-fact character ; and that " design , " in the popular sense of the word , is dormant in the exhibition of the New Society .
Turning into the contemporary exhibition of British Artists at the British Institution , we find a very various collection ; the most striking of which , perhaps , is the first picture . It is Frank . Dillon ' s illustration of Shelley ' s " Ozymandias "—colossal figures in the Egj ^ ptian desert , with no effect of setting sun nearer to actual light than any that we have seen in modern painting . But the most striking characteristic of the exhibition is the remarkable scarcity of really bad paintings . Any one who remembers " the exhibition" years ago , would be astonished to find so few daubs , and , although so little that rises above the middle level , so much merit . The same must perforce be said of the National Institution of the Portland Gallery , our notice of which has long been deferred . There are a number of meritorious landscapes by the well-known hands ; there are a few animated designs by Latjder , but most of the men who give character to the exhibition have either gone , or have sunk into the level ; and the staple consists of clever landscapes , good in proportion as they become matter-of-fact transcripts from nature .
Royal Academy: Private View. Varietv And...
ROYAL ACADEMY : PRIVATE VIEW . Varietv and sameness appear at once to characterise the exhibition of the Royal Academy this year . Glancing round the walls , one is struck with the absence of any very prominent or commanding picture ; there is no such thing . Some of the most popular painters are absent , or are more than absent , —are present only in works that may be considered an incognito . Many paint according to pattern ; with the absence of commanding pictures there is an absence also of incident ; and yet , within a certain quiet range , there is an unusual variety in the pictures actually exhibited . At the first view it appears to us rather an unusually small proportion of portraits . It may be that among the portraits were many " Crimean heroes , " and other gentlemen who vary the general array . Thus the show of pictures is above the average in point of interest , although there is nothing that at once strilces the eye .
In the hasty glance , amidst the interruptions of a private view , it is difficult to do more than catch that which lies on the line or above it ; and we are well aware that we must have passed pictures which challenge notice . Many of the portraits catch attention , simply because they are effigies of persons in whom the public is interested—such as Sir lloderiek Murehison , Dr . . Livingston , Sir John Burgoyne , JDr . Adler , Sir George Pollock , Sir George Simpson , & o . & . c . One of the first pictures to arrest you is Millais ' s " News from Home , " which demands closer scrutiny before we can judge of it . It represents a soldier in the trenches of the Crimea reading a letter ; the most conspicuous objects being the redcoat and gaiters of the gallant warrior . " Fort Socoa , " by Stanfield , begins a , series of great pictures by the master-hand , which rules the elements of the marine palette as if his youth would never depart . " The Well-known Footstep "—a soldier returning to his homestead , and approaching up an avenue of green , is a happy work in Hedgrave ' h new manner . Near it " Heading the Psalms" —two pretty , pure-faced children , by Dobbon ; then conies Landsicijr ' s " Scene in the Brae Mar , " with deer the size of life ; and Maclisp ' s strenuous piece of grouping—William III ., in respectable
selfpossession , visiting Peter the Great at his shipwright labours . Dyce gives us Titian preparing to make his first essay in colouring—the boy about to tint the drawing of a Madonna with the juice of flowers ; Fhitu , " Kate Nickleby at Madame Mantalini ' s , " humbly holding articles of dress for Miss Kuagg , who is seen in the looking-glass ; J . C . Hook , "A Signal on tho Horizon "—a sailor family looking out , with n . highly-finished piece of landscape foreground ; Coimc , a breakfast scene , witli a young lady and children , one of whom she is making to shut her eyes and open her mouth ; Houbluy , a scene in a lane , which we shall have to examine for the brilliancy of its light and colouring ; Fkank . Stone , " Margaret at her marvellously-fine Spinning-wheel ; " Stahfikld , again , "The Wreck of a vessel of the Spanish Armada off tho Giant ' s Causeway ;" Leslie , " Sir Hoger de Covorley in Church ; " J . Philip , " The Prison Window , Seville , 1857 "—a young wife holding up a child for the imprisoned husband to kiss ; , 1 . li . Hkruickt , a landscape scene on the coast of Franco ; Uanuv , "A liuddy Morning in tho Gardens of the Alcinoiis "—a sort of dawning sunset . Those are but a few of tho pictures in the first room , and wo have passed over many that will detain tho visitor on a second visit .
In tho middle room , tho most striking picture ia Millais ' s " Dream of tho Past , Sir Isumbras at the Iford" —a picture which commands attention from the force of its painting ; though whether Ihe horee is a toy-horse or a veritable horse , whether the knight himself is a real cavalier or a paper portrait , wo have not yet divined . Next , in point of force is Sir Edwin Lanxmsbwk ' s " Uncle Tom and hia Wife for Sale , a pair of bulldogs leisurely awaiting the purchaser ; tho husband by no means likely to furnish a moral illustration of Mrs . Boucher Stowe ' s tale . Kao has , a charming picturo from Thackeray ' s Henry Ifiainond ; Kauiond returning from tho battle of Wynendol ; Horsloy , a young gentleman ., when young guutlcnjeu wore- protfcy costumes , hiding behind a tree ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 2, 1857, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_02051857/page/19/
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