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—and despair as each effort tails ) , that if last week I pronounced him an actor , not a mete droll , this week I will say with all who saw him that he is a great actor , one of the greatest living . . Not only does he represent emotion in its varying aspects , but he preserves throughout the consistem-v of a character . Others might have shown the quivering lip / the wild " restlessness of eye , the physical exponents of anxiety ami terror—although even in these he reached the really tragicbut I know of no one except Boufte who could preserve the essentially comic elements of the character amidst this tragedy . It made you tremble , and yet it made you laugh ; his emotion was communicated to you , and yet he had not passed from a comic actor into a tragedian . He never committed the error of " doing the tragic business . I his may seem a small matter ; it is immense ; it implies that mastery over the emotions even in abandonmentwhich only Art can achieve .
, Take my word , the next time they play L'JEtourneau , forego any engagement to witness it . You cannot often in your life see such acting . Of the other pieces . Le Chevalier des Dames , and Tambour Baitant , ± can ' t sav much . The former is droll , contains a novel idea , that of a modern " Quixote , whose " mission" it is to save women from peril—le chien de Terre Neuve du beau sexe /—a sort of Lady ' s Retriever—and all for the mere sake of gallantly , not for any recompense . The complication of incidents was ingenious , but the piece nagged towards the close .
Bavel was very funny—but when is he not funny ? When ? why in Tambour Battant for example . Last June an imitation of this piece was produced at the Lyceum , under the title of Taking by Storm . I then declared laughter prevented the audience from being troubled by the fact that the piece was outrageously improbable ; and said it was " an extravagance rendered amusing by good acting . " So it was . I made an enemy of the author , and yet the fact remains as stated .
Charles Mathews , as the voluble , gay , confident , imperturbable young artist , painting horses yellow " for the sake of breadth—to carry the sand across the picture ! " —and little Suter as the disbanded fifer , gazing at the nautical Miss Dickinson with more than military ardour , make me laugh whenever I see them ; and I expected Havel would be immense . But no . The piece is so extravagant that it needs breathless rapidity—such as will not allow time for reflection—and Kavel , generally so rapid , was slow , and , I thought , scarcely amusing . Was this because I had seen Charles Mathews first , and that " first come" is everything in theatricals ? I don't know ; but this I do know , that although Charles Mathews has not a tithe of the vis co / m ' ca of llavel , I laughed " consumedly" at the one , and not at all at the other . Vivian .
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HAY MARKET THEATRE . Mb . M . Morton succeeded , at the Haymarket , on Saturday , with a farce entitled To Paris and Back for £ 5 , in which Mr . Buckstone produce the average amount of laughter by personating a cockney tourist , who , on his way to Paris , stops at Tunbridge Wells , and there finds himself in a series of scrapes consequent upon accidentally falling into love . The piece has one negative merit , we know not bow far it can be considered an advantage : it is not from the French . Ostensibly at least : —have we not heard of a Palais Eoyal farce , Lcs Trains de Plaisir , of which the adventures of a Parisian bourgeois to London and back again formed the fun—or the want of it ?
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MR . ELLA'S MUSICAL WINTER EVENINGS . Mr . Ella commenced a Second Series of his delightful Musical Winter Evenings , on Saturday last . "During the dreary months , " says his Synopsis , " which precede the busy excitement of the short musical season of London , amateurs are thus offered a series of Evening Entertainments , conducted on the principle of the Musical Union . " To those who know the Musical Union —( and who does not P)—this brief announcement will epeak at once of the selectcst music , performed in the best manner , before the best of company , with the pleaaantest arrangements for tho comfort of the audience , and the quiet enjoyment of the Art . On this occasion the programme consisted of tho following selection : — Quartet , in D , No . 10 Mozart . Allegretto . Minuet and Trio . Adiigio . Finale . Sonata , A " flat . Op . 26 ....... Beethoven .
Andante eon Variazioni . Scherzo ami Trio . Marcia Funebre , sullii morto cl'un Kroe . Finale . Quintet , in A . Op . 18 Mendelssohn . Allegro . . Intermezzo . Seherzo . Hondo . Trio , E Hat . Op . 100 . . . Schuhert . Allegro . Andante . Minuet ami Trio . Finale . The executants were Molinue , Piatti . Mellon , Goffrie , Webb , and
Charles Halle " . Tliesn names attest tho quality of the performance . Hallo ' s playing of the " Mareia Kunebiv , " in the Sonata of Beethoven , was perhaps tho event of tho evening , ho culm , masterly , and brilliant . It created a sensation . Altogether the concert waswell worthy of the director , who , not content with ho admirable an inauguration of his musical ' year , sent uh homo happy with good tidings . Wilhelmine Clauss , tho idol of Paris nil the winter , aH hIic was of London all lust summer , returns to us in time for the fourth and last of tlio Winter Evening ' s . That excellent pianist , llorr Pauor , in engaged for the second .
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TIIK BRITISH INSTITUTION . What is there to see at " The British f" Of subject-painting , in the technical House , very little ; at the utmost , wo am name Home half-dozen jmV- // r > r . v ,-but there ib a good average number of compositions , artistic jimsv ' . s- of the living form , tho painters having generally inverted the licence of art , and narrowed liio to the Ntudio-ideal . Exceptions will Htriko the spectator ; and nono , perhaps , more forcibly than Sant ' s " Foinale Head , " tho second contribution oi" hiH in U » e catalogue ; but for tokens of a broad and general HuiiBo of beauty , ko will have to look princmaJly among the luudscapes ;
where as in A . W . Williams ' s "Llyn Llyddaw , " the summer twilight leaves ' the dun hills in sharp profile against the faintly-glowing sky ; or where day is closing over a scene richer in gradations of loveliness , as in Hering ' s " B orrowdale , " a noble picture ; or even where a trick of climate is accommodated , as in more than one considerately timed study— -Boddineton's , for instance , with its wet foreground of ducks and dock leaves fflisteninff in the sun—aesthetically true to a flat bit of field-and-nver after a showerThe best fulfilment * d ™^ *** " ^ » ¦
Scenery , . BUcULCly , Ul LCI a > » " « " ~* — ~~ - ^ . i ' iiI perceived in a large picture by Nieriiinn . The figures occupy very little space in the scene , but to them the eye goes at once , whrie everything else falls naturally into place round the mam subject . The result is , that you look longer at this picture than at any other in the gallery . A tew words describe the composition . A wild heath , strewn with massive fragments of rock , lies bare and bleak , as far as the sight can reach , beneath a stormy evening sky . In the centre , a company of border lances , trallommr over the "broken ground , are seen to divide , at a signal from
their leader . Mr . Glass ' s "Night March , " a less carefully stuaiea pic ture , has an incident of a similar kind—a troop of free-booters , fording a river by moonlight , scarcely seem to break the solitude of the rugged glen their guide peers curiously into the stern , onward-looking lace ot the chief , while pointing out tlie track they are to take . In both pictures the moment is exactly given , the action well maintained , and all artistic necessities made good , with a judgment which the artist only will know how to appreciate . A scene from Macbeth , b y Selous , the murder of Duncan , will attract little admiration , though it is a painfully-finished its detailsand in the
work , recalling Maclise in the dead certainty of , picked neatness whioh is made to attend upon horror . The two pictures by J . E . Lauder , surprise by their effective finish and mastery over textures and one of them , " Bailie Macwheeble at breakfast , is the best work of its kind here . The group of travelling Spanish peasants , by John Gilbert , is a fine composition , ' resembling the design for a picture of the flight into Egypt . An anatomical diagram of the brood Samaritan , a cleverly finished , but very inartistic representation of John ILnox bringing home his second wife and Miss MacLeod ' s painstaking attempt at a new pictorial version of the arrest of Effie Deans , bring up the
list of " subject" pictures . The R . A . ' s present are Stanfield , Creswick , Cooper , Lee , Pickersgill , Uwins , and Jones ; and they occupy a modest space on the line with works of little interest or pretension . Stanfield leads off with a view ot Dort , filling the number—one space , over the fireplace in the North . Room . A delicacy incidental to the multitude and minuteness of the objects is made to seem like finish , and the picture is covered with glass , as a watercolour painting would be , which may add a little to the deception . But the work is really in Stanfield ' s slightest manner , and is altogether a poor
affair besides . Creswick ' s landscape is the merest trine—a diminutive sketch , painted apparently ^ some years ago ; and Lee ' s , though of considerable size , is not of much greater importance . There is a large picture of an Italian girl , by Uwins ; an ordinary face , rendered coarse by Uwins ' s flat , staring , ungenial style . Cooper sends three common-place pictures . The most remarkable is one of his well-kaown skirmishing scenes ; two or three troopers cutting off the retreat of a waggon ; there is some pistolling , and a good deal of rearing and plunging and rolling over on the part of the horses . But the work is not comparable with the least among his Marston-moor sallies , and in some parts is ill drawn ; a rare fault with Cooper . Mr . Jones ' s picture is not a battle of
Waterloo , nor of Aliwal , nor of Meeaneo ; but only a slight and really clever sketch taken in the village of Waterloo , and showing the inn where Wellington slept the night before and after the battle . As for Mr . Pickersgill's Archer , though we have met that " party" in various guise , so often here , before—in chain-mail , and in suit of mendicant friar ; in trooper ' s buff and steel , and in every possible doublet , besides his present one of merry lioshcrville green—not all the recollections of all his wardrobe will disturb an impression that we once met him in Cheapside . Frost is followed by Colby and Holt , who are neck and neck in the chase .
In tho " Cool Retreat "—that ia the name of Frost ' s picture—our old acquaintance with the yellow hair is discovered just after her bath . Round and pearly as ever is her tapering form ; very indifferent to tho delights of her situation does she appear , to judge from any expression that may animate her face . There is as much life in those tapering ash-leaves , on which the tempered light falls so tenderly , as in the downcast face and dainty limbs of our old acquaintance . Tho orgie in that impudent drama of Mcssal—that is , of Valerie , might have been more fully worked out by a man like Phillips ; the face is not in drawing even ; but what a meaning is hinted in those snd eyes , wandering from the revel , while tho faco is tortured to a laugh .
For faces with a thought in them , Gale is earning himself notice . One study of bis , in the South Room , is a model of refined expression . O'Neil , whoso pensive- beauties aro a familiar attraction at "The British , " sends a graceful and tender St . Agues . Natural History in well represented by Wolf and Key ] ; tho former of whom makes a striking subject of two hawks , in whoso contending clutch a teal has left her tail . Ansdell , too , besides a sheep-gathering scene in tho Isle of Skye , has a capital sccno on LylJiara Common , where a seedy , scampish-looking young donkey tries to show a determined front to a ferocious wether , but backs cautiousl y towards bis dam all the time . Marl ' s dogs belong to an improving breed . The landscapes , excellent as many arc , afford little bold for description . Tho excellence is of tho kind which tho painters' names , and those of tho
places depicted , will indicate to most portions . Sidney Percy and the WillianiHos , to whose prolific family he belongs ; Gilbert , . lutHiim , the young Danbys , Ferguson , and . Doll , have all contributed liberally . Copley Fielding shows best in a sen piece , a view- of tho isle of Stalia . There is some want of spaces and distance , especially on the left and darkest side of tho picture , but the tossed mid broken son reminds us of a picture of Baekhuysen ' s , which hung near tho spot during ono of tho recent exhibitions of tho Old Masters . His landscapes arn things of the past . It is among younger men than Copley Fiolding that signs of an English school of luiidscapo arc advancing . Q .
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166 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 12, 1853, page 166, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1973/page/22/
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