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162 Qttte 3Lea%et+ [Saturday,
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PAINTING IN LONDON: THE EXHIBITIONS. A s...
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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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The Drama. The Drury Lane Season : The V...
that . We hear the Keans , who are now starring m the provinces , have made several promising engagements ; notably , three beautiful young women . Beauty is essential in a theatre .
FRENCH PI-AYS . Mr . Mitchell has now a strong company . Regnier , Lafont , and the charming dark-eyed Nathalie are sufficient to carry off any piece . What a study for dramatic authors is Lea Demoiselles de St . Cyr , by the matchless Dumas ! How rapid the action , how dexterously evolved , how easy and effective the dialogue ! This comedy , which was nearly the occasion of a duel between Dumas and Jules Janin—neither of them men to fight—was originally produced with Plessy , Brindeau , and Regnier . It is much better cast at the St . James ' s . Nathalie
has more truth , pathos , and concentration than Plessy she is not so pretty , but more loveable . Liafont is worth a score of Brindeaus , and Regnier is ever the gay , comic , finished Regnier , whose manner is as flexible as his voice is hard . The acting of these three is a study . Observe how the simplicity of Nathalie ' s gestures intensifies her performance , and how the quiet subdued tones of her grief deepens the pathos ; and observe the effect of the same absence of violence in Lafont . If our actors wish to see the superiority of truth and nature over their conventional stagey modes of representation they should study Nathalie , Regnier , and Lafont .
JEBROIiD S CATSPAW . Jerrold ' s long-expected comedy , The Catspaw , was produced at the Haymarket , on Thursday . He is beyond a question the wittiest writer of our day , and his dramatic successes have been so frequent and enduring , that a comedy from his pen is sure to attract a large and eager audience . And such an audience was attracted : the house was crammed to the ceiling , and the jokes , which rattled like a roll of musketry , were responded to by " thunders " of applause . With our sides still aching from laughter we are in no mood to detail a story which stands
out but confusedly to our own mind . Imagine Keeley as a man persecuted by a widow and her chancery suit , by a beggar-letter-writer assumi g three different forms of effrontery , and coddled by a quack whose Paradise Pills" have found a purchaser in him ; imagine Buckstone as a drummer of the 101 th , the Lovelace of Pimlico kitchens , and the adored of " Rosemary" ( Mrs . Keeley ) , who buys him out of his regiment , " scrapes him together shilling by shilling , " and you have before you the pivots upon which the comedy may really be said to revolve . Talk not of plot , situation , or construction ; Jerrold has
the marvellous power of dispensing with them . His wit is so exuberant and telling , it flashes out so incessantly that he abandons himself to it , certain of his laugh , and careless of aught else . Strangely enough , Jerrold , who in his shorter pieces has exhibited such power of construction , and has seen the necessity of story and strong situations , has nevertheless marred all his five-act comedies by the slenderness of their tissue . They are orgies of wit , they are not works of art . In the present comedy there is perpetual activity but no action , there is no movement ; and the interest which the first two acts raise by their dashing
life and animation , languishes somewhat in the third net , positively droops in parts of the fourth and fifth . But even hert > , where the audience is getting impatient at situations long drawn out , or at tiresome repetitions , it is ever and anon revived again into merriment by some irresistible joke or volley of jokes . It was , on the whole , admirably acted : Keeley was perfect , —voice , look , manner , and intention ; his wife as the fond and proud ' ? Rosemary , " idolizing her Drummer as only Drummers are idolized , was in her best spirits and played in her best style . Buckstone was irresistible . These three delivered their
jokes with an unctuous appreciation which sent them home to the audience : they rolled them over their tongues with an inward chuckling as if certain of the roar which was to follow ; and the roar did follow . It was quite evident they enjoyed their parts ; and still moro evident that the audience enjoyed them . Webster had a poor farcical part—the intention of which was true but the exaggeration became not humorous . Ho dressed the three assumptions with great effect , nntl played well . Wallack had an
ungrateful and improbable part , and he played it ungratefully . The success of the comedy was boisterous ; and after a few curtailments it will bo one hearty laugh from the rising to the falling of the curtuin . Never was the power of writing moro triumphant ! We assure the reader that we are at this moment fatigued by our laughter , and yet though we have not been half an hour from the theatre , we have but the vaguest possible idea at what we have been laughing !
162 Qttte 3lea%Et+ [Saturday,
162 Qttte 3 Lea % et + [ Saturday ,
Painting In London: The Exhibitions. A S...
PAINTING IN LONDON : THE EXHIBITIONS . A stkanoku coining to London wishing to know what art in England can do , would find this week precisely the best time to answer his question broadly , since all the leading exhibitions are open-the Royal Academy in Trafalgar-square , ihe Old Society of Painters in Water Colours , Pall-mall East , the Now Society in Pall-mall , the National Institution in
Northern Regent-street , and the Society of British Artists in Suffolk-street . And in all , too , the exhibitions ar « at least up to the average ; in some surpass it .
ROYAL ACADEMY . The collection of the Royal Academy is by no means remarkable for great pictures ; and the paintings greatest , whether in size or aspiration , are far from being good . The large history pictures , of which there are some , are tame and vapid . Art has not much to say for itself in this line . Mr . Pickersgill , who aims to be a chastened Etty , has put some kind of animation into the large picture of " Delilah " which overlooks the great room . The sprawling Samson is a fair sample of prostrate vigour , —the
barbarians who rush in to clip the fated locks perform their task assiduously , and the Delilah looks sufficiently treacherous , but not voluptuous ! And the . semi-naked women who contribute as-coryphees to get up a theatrical show of cumulative voluptuousness do not aid the cardinal point of the story . It is Samson subdued ., with the power that subdued him left out—a sort of artistic licence inverted . Of some other historical pictures we shall have to speak subsequently . The most notable is Mr . Dyce ' s " Jacob kissing Rachel , " a pair of youthful lovers , belonging to our day rather than the patriarchal .
A strange demonstration of new life m the historic branch is made by Mr . Millais and his colleague , Mr . Hunt , juvenile fathers of what is called the Pne-Raphael School . " The method of the school consists in attempting to restore the earnestness of the earliest painters by reverting to the most puerile crudities of art as it struggled out of the merely formal mechanism of the dark ages ; as though a modern author should attempt to recover the simplicity of Chaucer by adopting his immatured language and uncouth veise . Only the case of the is
Pra > Raphaelesques is far worse . The attempt , of course , fatal to itself : the greater the success , the more ludicrous the failure ; and , as Mr . Millais possesses the greater power and succeeds better , to use candid language , he triumphs largely in making the greater fool of himself . We do not commonly use language of this kind ; but , in truth , the young man does exhibit powers far above the level of common life , and we should be glad if we could help , with some others , to startle him into a sense of the preposterous folly by which he is wasting away his natural powers in an impracticable and ridiculous course .
Pictures drawing their materials from history , but treated in a matter-of-fact , daily-life kind of style , show far greater mastery according to their kind . There is , for example , Leslie ' s ' Dying Katharine sending her Message to her Husband , " from Shakspeare ' s Henry the Eighth ; a picture in which the artistic disposal of the stage seems to be sobered down into the truth of real life . The whole treatment is matter of fact , from the clothes and furniture and the scattered grouping of the figures to the touching death-stricken countenance of the respectable lady herself . In E . M . Ward ' s " James the Second hearing that the Prince of Orange has landed " there is more stir . The ghastly despair of the King , the pallid alarm of the Queen , the unconcern of the
young Churchill , the general estranged indifference of the courtiers , the animated grouping and wellstudied costume , recal the scene as though the memoirs from which it is described were embodied before you . Egg ' s " Peter the Great , " at his first interview with Catherine , his future Empress , comes more within the bounds of romance . Peter is here represented as an ingenuous young officer , with a countenance more like that of the painter than of the energetic Emperor . Catherine is a stout country wench , with a face of natural gentility running to great delicacy of feature . A couple of cavalry officers make up the group . It is a painted " story founded on fact . The figures are drawn with more mastery than Egg hns yet displayed ; the incident is interesting , the expression is appropriate and agreeable .
It is after passing completely this boundary between history and fiction , however , that you come to the real strength of the exhibition . Here you have such pictures as Leslie's Tom Jones and Sophia ; Frith ' s Sancho and Don Quixote at the Duke ' s ; the same artist ' s Goodnatured Man with the Bailiffs ; Elmore ' s Griselde ; Redgrave ' sGriselda ; and Maclise's Moses Primrose returning home with the green Spectacles . In this class the genius of English novel-writing seems to be set forth in figures .
There is the same individuality of character , the same animation , the same matter-of-fact imagination , and the same disposition to elaborate the truth by high finish . Leslie is the most finished ; Elmoro the most vigorous ; Redgrave the most tender ; Frith the most delicate and complete in his conception , and the most forcible , too , in execution . But the class may be said to form a new school in English art of a peculiar kind , very suitable to the genius of the nation ; and hence we regard it as promising to do more for art than some higher styles have succeeded in doing .
Lnndsccr , a school in himself , has three pictures : the Duke of Wellington on horseback , acting as cicerone on the field of Waterloo to the Marchioness of Douro ; a portrait of a little dog belonging to
Lady Monson ; and a Highland shepherd and dogs striving to recover sheep buried in the snow . The two latter have all Landseer ' s characteristics his perfect apprehension of animal character and action , and his mastery over the characters of those human beings who are much engaged about animals The more ambitious picture is not so happy . The Iron Duke is by no means a felicitous portrait ; the characteristics of the man are not there ; the asto
nished face that Hazlitt satirized is converted to a ponderous profound countenance ; the somewhat narrow , rigid frame has grown bulky and heavy ; and the notoriously short legs have marvellously lengthened . This gentleman comes within the category of what is called " heavy plant . " If he has any striking qualities , it must be in the nature either of solid philosophical acquirements , or power in moving a dead weight . It is Dr . Johnson as a cavalry officer .
Some of the fancy pictures which are popular , such as Mr . Frost's group of Nymphs and Mr . Patten ' s Venus and Cupid , may be said to belong rather to the obsolescent Keepsake school , than to any permanent or national school of art . Young ladies undressed and disporting , not in the action of habitual unrestraint , among woodlands more parklike than wild , do not pertain to genuine art in any clime or time : they may pass as prettinesses , but they satisfy none , and can develope no faculty whatever , in painters or people .
Among the portrait-painters , one unquestionably is also the founder of a new school — Thorburn ; whose grave broad style of miniature-painting has effected a revolution in that branch . He has some very graceful works this j'ear , and others are following him with promise . In landscape the English painters preserve their place ; foremost in this collection standing Sidney Cooper—who is familiar with nature as a rustic , and enters upon the business of his art in the true workman spirit . Stanfield , the veteran scene-painter—and scene painting has produced some great masters ; Linton , who may be called an Italian scene-painter ; Redgrave , the poet of English woodlands ; Roberts , the scene-painter of Egypt ; and others attest the sustained power of the English pencil .
Of the sculpture much cannot be said . There are in the washhouse below some of tho ^ e frigid abstractions which remind one of Greek art ; and there is a very fair monument of Dr . Howley , after the rigid style of mediaeval monuments , by Richard Westmacott . THE WATER-COLOUR . EXHIBITIONS . We have not much space for making up our leeway in noticing the other exhibitions that opened before that of the Royal Academy . We may yet pay them a visit , " when weather serves and wind . " The Water-colour Exhibition is known for what it
is almost to the whole of the London resident or London visiting public . The smooth elegance of Copley Fielding , the sublime upholstery of Joseph Nash , the perfect verity of Hunt —whom the Greeks would have feigned to have received a gift from Nature herself , to reproduce her works by a patent from her royal hand—the fresh sea and wind of Bentley , the Irish life of Topham , the Venetian architecture of Prout , the pretty girls of Jenkins , the rustics of Oakley , the dashing sketches of Cattermole , the prismatics of Nesfield , the matter-of-fact English country of Branwhite , David Cox , and
George Fripp , —all these things did not wait to be proclaimed by the Leader . The novelty of the exhibition this year is the interior of John F . Lewis's " Hhareem , " a slightly-painted spirited drawing , purporting to show you Eastern life in its penetralia , and exhibiting a fatigued voluptuary much encumbered by an embarras de richesses in the way of female beauty . " They manage these things better in France . " This Eastern mode of enjoying life is not very attractive to Western notions . The gentleman before us , who looks much like a Christian renegade , does not appear to have attained that stage of civilization which " Captain Macheath"
expresses— " How happy could I be with either . Were t ' other dear charmer away ! " The Turk in question is not up to that philosophy , and one pities him accordingly . The New Water-colour Society is able to contend with its elder rival , though that had so wide a start , through its greater variety , aided by the novelist turn which we have mentioned above . Haghe , who began by painting interiors , with persons as accessories rather than principals , now elevates his figures to tht-ir due importance . Wchnert , who was overmuch
grown both in Iralkimd action , has developed a more symmetrical mastery . Edward Corbould carries a still-life exactness beyond the boundary of still life . Miss Setchcll keeps up the strain of her moralities . Admirable landscapes are contributed by W . Bennett — a new man with a keen eye and vigorous hand — Charles Davidson , Jumes Fahey , Varhcr , d'Egville , and others , give you urban views vigorous and vivid . The gallery is the best lighted in London ; and the finished and very improving works exhibited in it do justice to the ample tlood of light which they court .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 11, 1850, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_11051850/page/18/
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