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of MA THE Ii - EAIfciEi Bfj- [No. 338, S...
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EXHIBITION OF THE BOYAL ACADEMY. THE LAN...
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MADLLE. JOHANNA WAGNER The climax of Mad...
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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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A Batch Of Books. Wk Must Announce, And ...
minimum of labour arida . ^ m wages '' ™ UUkS * 2 % b ^ Gertrude wages and a very low rate of labour . J Oitoii » ' ^ Jftw ,. by ( rtrtnrte ?? SS ( Boswortb ) > P ^ W-w and Physic , by Dr . James O . S . mpson ( A . and cXck ) ; ^ Vindication of the O * gan > \> j the Rev . A Cromar ( A ^ andC . Ha ^ -sensible and well-arg ued ; and Pictures of Nature S ^ nind Malvern , by EdWLees ( Malvern : Eamb ) , may be lef t to find the . r way onto the particular circles whieh they are designed to p lease , mform , or trouble . As I literary fragment , Mr . G . Mitchell Charles ' s ^ r * . his Ltfe Adventures , anTlTorks ( Chapman and Hall ) , is worth the attentionl of the Italian scholar , and 7 generaUy , of readers of Italian literature . It is a pleasant , thoughtful essay , not graceful in style , or worth much as a criticism , but interesting as a sketch of biography . Meister KarVs Sketch-Book , by C . G . Leland ( Trubner ) , is a fantastic amalgamation of prose and prosody , ot Wends / iokes impertinencesfaridom gossip , extracts , translations ,
quo-, , tations , amid which the reader may or may not find that which is good for his constitution . A second volume of The Annals of England : an Epitome of English History ( Parker ) , compiled from contemporary writers , the rolls of Parliament , and other public records , may be noticed , with a third series of the work entitled British Eloqtience ( Griffin and Co . ) . This contains literary addresses by Mr . Layard , Mr . S . Warren , the Duke of Argyll , and other popular lecturers . Sir Robert Peel has not been invited to contribute his epic of Sea-sickness . The United States ; their Constitution and Power > by Charles Browne ( Kent and Co . ) , is a volume written for popularity , and likely to attain it . It gives the right sort of information , iu the proper way , and at the proper time . ...... .
Of Ma The Ii - Eaifciei Bfj- [No. 338, S...
of MA THE Ii - EAIfciEi Bfj- [ No . 338 , Saturday ,
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Exhibition Of The Boyal Academy. The Lan...
EXHIBITION OF THE BOYAL ACADEMY . THE LANDSCAPES . This creation in which we live has no aspect present to our senses which has not its influence over our life ; and it is through that manifold influence that we acknowledge a common life , even with the vegetable world , if not with the very elements that build the globe , or sway and change its unstable surface . The " powers of nature , " as vre vaguely call them , are apparent to us , momently , in the effect which they produce on what we call " inanimate nature , " by which we mean nature with a life unlike our own . It is the business of the landscape painter to portray these effects ; he is successful in his portraiture if he is faithful in copying what he sees , but to see correctly is not always an easy task . lie is powerful in proportion as , by the help of simple figments and plain fidelity to nature , he makes us conscious of the greatest of natural powers through their pietorial " effects . "
We have never stood among the hills looking upon the stream that flows from Llyn Idwal in Carnarvonshire ; but whether it is an exact portrait of the scene or not , it is quite certain that the cabinet picture by A . W . Hunt presents rock , grass , green mountain , air , and running water ; and that the artist has so completely seized the effect produced by different texture , different position , altered shape , intervening air and glancing light , that within the space of the frame the pigments are entirely subdued , and the eye rests upon the rocky mountain side . The eye is cheated in its estimate of space and size exactly as it is ia nature . On the grass lowland between the spectator and the mountain are sheep grazing ; and by the miniature size to which the animals are reduced you see the distance that you span ; and then the vast extent of the mountain expands upon the comprehension . k
Something of this effect of space is produced in Stanfiecd's wrecin the open sea , " The Abandoned "—a nameless hulk drifting on the billows . Stanfi e ld has caught the varying shapes- into which the water is tossea : you can see in one place the sullen roll of the swell ; in another you can almost hear the sharp clash where two waves meet and toss the summit perpendicularly upwards ; you seem to feel the sweep of wind that is driving the clouds in broken masses . But the artist—perhaps he now has a right to acknowledge the fatigue of lengthened years—has not been able so completely to subdue the pigment that its character is entirely lost . The touch of light upon , the foam of the waves , especially where they are lost in the general glare of mist behind the hull , is too heavy . Tho texture of the medium usurps the- place of natural effect ; the eye rests upoa a solid dead white ; and , so far , the effect of the whole is marred . ' #
The difficulty with which the artist has to contend consists mainly in following these endless changes in the form , position , tints , arid shades of nature . The Naturalist style has introduced a manner of endeavouring to give an individuality even in the innumerable groups of weeds and foliage . Redgrave took up this manner some years back , and pursued it with much promise , but he has not been able to develop the manner into a complete masterhood . He fails in two particulars . In the first place , there is a great deal too much of uniformity in the set of the leaves and the stalks of the trees . In the picture entitled " Little Bed Bidinghood , " it will be observed that the stalks of the herbage on the ground are too parallel . The same tendency to parallelism is seen in the leaves of tho apple-tree under which Newton is sitting in Mr . Hannah ' s clever picture , where the dull effect of an autumn is laudably attempted . The leaves which cluster round tho branch to the right hand of the trunk of the tree fall into positions somewhat after the manner of tiio pot-hooks and hangers of the young writer . Now tho leaves upon the static of an apple-trcc
are arranged , not only laterally upon the branch , but in a spiral form , causing to tho view of tho spectator an endless variety in the set of tho leaves , whose stalks constantly depart from a new circle ; and tho varying in size completes the changefuJnoss of the spiral arrangement . In such foliage , though there is a principle of regularity , nothing resembling parallelism is possible . In Mr . Kedgravb ' b " Little Red Itidinghood , " again , the whole of the green foliage on the trees 1 b upon a level tint , with comparatively little variation . Wo know that in a broad sense this levelness of tint will suggest itself to the spectator ; but if he looks into the matter , lie will find a diversity in the gradations which absolutely defy the measurement , almost defy conception by tho mind , while tho very eyes are looking . Both these errors maybe corrected by that great teacher the photograph . This beautiful instrument is becoming gradually applied to increased uses , but we ore especially delighted to seethe manner in which it ia illustrating landscape . You na * . y see specimens in many places ; the walker in tho streets can scarcely rates them in the window * of the prinUeller . Beautiful examples may be seen any day In tho window of Mr . Spoonbr , the prinUeller at tho corner of
Southampton-street , in the Strand . In that window , lately , there has been a photo , graph portrait of a piece of wall with a chesnut-tree hanging over it , and fern on the ground beneath . Here the artist who desires to note the endless variety , coupled with the regularity of vegetable life , cau see it fixed for bis more steady contemplation . In the same picture he will observe how the light of nature masses the light leaves together , here and there presenting the character of the individual forms , in other places merging the individual forms in broader heaps , and again separating the different masses of the foliage by broad distinctions of tint—full light , deep shade , and half-tint between . . One of the prettiest touches in Mr . Waixis's dead " Chatterton" is the distant landscape seen partly through the dull and dirty glass and partly through the pure air of the open lattice , with a flower interposed between the spectator and the light . It is in the flower that Mr . Wallis ' s apprehension of nature's '
endless variety has failed . The leaves of the rose-tree are in too many instances presented parallel to the plane of the picture , as they might be in a hortus siccus . In nature the leaf is presented in so many directions , that to the eye the form is incessantly altered and disguised . But the mind , constantly turning to the mechanical and the typical form of what it " knows" on reflection , is as often dragged back to give the leaf in its diagram shape ; and the eye itself , which " sees , " can scarcely restrain the mind , and" therefore the hand , from that me cbanical tendency to the inorganic in lieu of the organic . It is real mastery when the artist overcomes this tendency , and equals nature in its diversity . Mixlais gives us the example , in his " Autumn Leaves , "—in which the effect of the autumn sunset grows upon us as we see it again : the dried leaves collected into masses have fallen into the same endless variety that they would show in nature—they display the same endless form , of tint , and of shade . should
It is not to be expected that artists of established manner entirely profit by the progress of schools that are rising up around them . The " Breakwater of Plymouth , " by F . B . Lee , has many excellences . In order to give that effect of space , in order to display the contrast betweea the vehement water outside and the calmer water within , it was necessary that the artist's mind should be able to conceive the motion of the winds and waters with their incessant change of shape and tint , even in the fixed things subject to their action , and he has in great part succeeded , but not entirely . The waters within , especially , are too regular , too much arranged diamond fashion for the truth ; and the intractable white lead has not let him master it so completely as to imitate the driven foam of the broken wave . Withekington paints glens with peeps between the trunks of trees , and beneath the leaves , showing the distance beyond or the sky above ; he too has profited by the incessant movement of the day , but he retains something of his set manner . Still " The Glen , Chudleigh , Devon , " is amongst his best works , in a school that draws its life from the very genius of English landscape .
_ . . . .. ,. „ With all its power over contrasts of colouring , giving the effect of brilliancy , J . Linnell cannot conquer a tendency to arrange all his forms in crumbled style , as if the texture of the world were a kind of pastry , while his tints have a metallic glare , as though he were compelled to work with pigments used in decorating tea-trays . His harvest sunset has a powerful effect , but the forms of the rutted road are all arranged like piecrust border , while road , and grass , and cloud , and water , and sky , glare like tinseL There is a far greater command of light in Miljcais ' s " Autumn Leaves ; still more in Sidney Cooper's dark meadow scene with cattle , " After Sunset . " Cooper lives abroad , among the elements ; he does not study nature in
cultivated gardens . He knows how the ever deviating surface of the earth defies the level of the engineer , and by faithfully copying just what nature shows him , he sets before us a surface ever changing , but changing not too violentlyshadows that , dark and deep , are not black or impenetrable ; glows of sunset , rich and red , but not either blood-stained or metallic . By coming as close to this as his palette will let him , he cheats the eye and makes us see the very distance , —know the very air of the breezy meadow , the damp of the evening dew , —almost feel the atmosphere that makes the cattle hang their heads with willingness for sleep . There is the skill which rewards the true piety of the a rtist , and makes us recognize in his work something of the divine .
Madlle. Johanna Wagner The Climax Of Mad...
MADLLE . JOHANNA WAGNER The climax of Madlle . Johanna Waonek ' s reputation in England may be said to have been attained at the moment when a court of law condemned the celebrated prima donna of Berlin to silence in this metropolis , arid when her high dramatic reputation , suspended between the two Opera houses , preserved all that enchantment which belongs to the distant , and all that splendour which is eagerly bestowed upon the unknown . We cannot say that the result of her actual appearance has been of a nature to satisfy expectation , or to justify the excitement and the litigation that signalized her conspicuous non-appearance some years ago . Apparently , the musical palate of a London audience ia very differently formed from that of the Berlin public , who gave Madlle . Johanna Wagner her fame , and , without pretending at this moment to decide on the superior acuteness of either , we will content ourselves with frankly confessing our entire sympathy with the taste of the London audience . The memorable and somewhat disrespectful letter of Waoneu pere , in which that gentleman expressed his belief that the . English were no judges of music , and only good for money , finds a melancholy comment in the fact that the enthusiastic admirers of Jenny Lind are the cold and astonished sufferers under Johanna Waonbk .
No one , it is true , would believe , from the tone of our most powerful organs of public criticism ( with one signal and important exception ) , that Madlle . Waonkk had not created an extraordinary sensation in London . J 3 ut it is not our fault that the criticism of almost all our contemporaries has degenerated into a dilution of vapid and unnecessary eulogy of nil new singers , good , bad , or indifferent , who have found their way into the paradise of puffery , it is our humble but earnest duty to speak what we conceive to bo the truth . Wo are , therefore , bound to record tho fact that Madlle . Johanna Wagnek has narrowly es caped a total Jiaaco in this country . Whether the effect would have been tho reverse had she made her first appearance in German opera wo are not enabled to conjecture ; we think it would have been impossible to have selected a nitore unfavourable introduction than / Capuletti e < l I Montecchi . This feoblo and trashy opera , with its meagre and effeminate pasticcio of worn-out reminiscences of tunes strung on to the silliest travesty of a beautiful story , is as dull and worthless a performance as any audience can desire .
Tho weakness of tho opera is rendered monstrous by its Teutonic interpreters . Three ( Germana to sing BeixiniI Madlle . Waonbk looks like MiNianvA in her armour , with her tall and lithesome liguro , and tho grace and ease of her bounding stops ; but the incessant attitude-striking , after the manner not of sculpture , but of those prints of penny warriors so dear to children ( Id . plain , 2 d . coloured ) , fatigues the admiring , and diverts the doubtful critic . There has been 00 much nonsense talked about tho statuesque , that it is time to
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 5, 1856, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05071856/page/20/
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