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conscious of the human event , the % winging its way through the verv storm of passion , conscious only of the sunshine , the still life , the clothes the mechanical embroidery over the most throbbing heart-a range of objects , in short—from the most divine human countenance , even down to the shoe or the glove—far too innumerable to be recited in a catalogue and running the round of science thoroughly to analyze . Such scenes present innumerable phases to the artist , or rather for many artists in many branches of art ; and are oapable , therefore , of many separate kinds of treatment , but totally defy a grasp of the whole . Many artists view the scene—each after his kind would select for it that particular portion—the passion , the anatomical action , the landscape , the natural history , the still life , or other
section wnicn suited his powers and training , and he would omit the rest . In completeness on great occasions Nature excels the greatest of artists , but the works of Nature pass , and the works of the artist remain for contemplation . An artist ' s greatest praise , however , is to have it said , that he has attained the fulness of life in the phase which he endeavours to arrest for contemplation . The rules of art are but the application of experience to materials and method , in order to teach the artist not to waste his time by attempting to arrive at the representation of nature in t he wrong way . There are many methods , each of which may be true , without the others being false ; and the methods adopted by the great masters were true paths to their end , starting from the common truth of nature . They were progressive truths , beginning with that one universal truth ; and in any path , the result is to be judged by the amount of life attained .
It is in the works of nature , that the rules of art are found , from the concentration of light to the grouping of figures . Let some striking event happen , such as an accident in the streets , and note how the living people gather around , and , by the force of concentration , group themselves into artistical forms . Let your eve be fixed upon one striking object , and the force of the light transmitted from that to your excited nerve , will eclipse the rays reflected from objects beside the one of your attention ; scattered grouping , dazzling and scattered light , will prevent your seeing the picture of nature as well as the picture of the artist . Life , and beauty , and composition , and artistic excellence , if not convertible terms , are terms essentially associated . Look at those stags , fighting in the moonlight , by Landseer—they are
not studying the pose in which they shall be painted . They are going hard at it , to dig their antlers into each other . They are not arranging themselves for the moon to fall upon them in any particularly convenient fashion , but stand , rather , between it and the spectator . But they are well-grown and strong animals ; their action has the beauty of organic symmetry and strength ; a deadly purpose which moves the sympathy of all living creatures . The moonlight which bathes them would shine equally upon other objects . If there is a striking fault in the picture , it is that the blue pigments , which thicken where the mist should be , fail to represent the true movements and translucency of atmospheric life . Its power consists in its exact infusion of organic life .
Ward ' s picture of the executioner tying Wishart ' s book around the neck of Montrose , at the execution at the cross at Edinburgh , on the 21 st May , 1650 , is full of animation . The figures are all in action ; the expression of the countenances is much as it would be moved at such a scene some sympathising , some indifferent , some hating . The colouring is infinitely better than has been in Mr . Ward ' s earlier pictures , less fogged with opaque white , although still too much marked by black patchy shadows . It is a scene of real living figures , engaged about a stirring and painful business . It is still not perfect ; there is a want of concentration in it . The action of the different figures around the margin of the scene is , in some cases , too much scattered , and does not carry the eye back to the centre . If the artist had witnessed the scene himself , he would
have been struck with the concentration of attention from all around ; if any of the persons had been more remote and unconcerned , he would hardly have seen them , or he would have been , not the historical painter of the scene , but the satirist of the inconsistencies of human nature . Prso-JJaphaelites made the mistake of going back to nature , trying to be content with naturalistic truth , and doing without the truth of art . They could not indeed , even in the most exaggerated view of their mission , quite do without art . But they accepted the crudest form—the methods to which art had attained in Italy after the first struggle from the
mannerism of the old Greeks . Artists were in earnest in those clays , and as the PravRaphaelites were also in earnest , they thought they ought to paint . figures in the same uncouth stylo , with tho same uncouth manipulation of materials . Truth , however , is prolific . The strongest of tho Pra > Iiaphaelites painfully followed out nature ' s truths , and found that it is necessary to have some consistency in nature ' s art ; and honco those strongest of tho Pra > Raphaolitcs arc working at a style of their own , which begins closely to approximate it in its essentials to tho styles of tho best painters . . in the oriinal mate
Art arrives at the same results working upon g - rials of landscape . Life , orgunic and inorganic , has its own composition . A fertile soil , a friable earth , becomes broken up by tho elements lying probably on a gontlo undulation , it ia blown or washed into drift sharply ridged and gently sloping . The organic life of vegetation arises from tho varied surface , bringing tho slope of tho hill to the more delicate and symmetrical points , or growing up into tho trunks of trees , which send their leafy Hpires towards tho skies . But then ) is a unity and a method of disposition in tho forms almost like what tho human mind desires to call " intention , " an architecture of nature , separated into innumerable parts , varied in its forms , but still suggesting design —exactly tho kind of scene which Jtodgrave , an off-lying Prm-liaplmohto , has painted in his " Forest Portal , " whore tho slighter vegetation of the plain has arisen to tho tall architecture of tho forest . The sumo law governs the composition of animated form * , lne > * ito in Millais ' picture of the " Order of JlokW ' .-a young Scotch wi ^ -is coming with the proper certificate , which she is presenting to a military iailer to release her wounded husband , a jacobite who has been lightuw Xnst < ' I ^ George upon his throne . " She has brought a young child
in her arms , a fair sturdy boy , tired with their long journey in the open air , and dropping the field flowers which he has been carrying in his hand , now relaxed in sleep . The wife is a strong woman , with a hearty wifely affection for her husband , proud of her mission , and bent upon executing it forthwith . With , one arm holding her child , the other holds out the order to the jailer ; and if it passes round the neck of the husband , it is rather because he , in his weakness , is seeking repose on the faithful bosom of his wife . She knows all that ; but is specially bent on getting the sick man back to his home ; wherefore , not stopping for caresses she is impressing the certificate on the official regard of the slow-reading old soldier . Now , there is the whole story ; except that the dog is of the party , and is rampant to greet his master . But the beauty of the thing is , to see the whole life of the people and the story
set out distinctly before your eye , and yet not displayed by any special artistic arrangement beyond the true arrangement of fidelity to nature . This is the true mastery of art ; the Greeks who wetted their draperies were bunglers compared to it . Raphael is supreme amongst painters , who could give you a beautiful female form delicate and full , clothed in drapery coarse and loose , and yet making the form and its action as intelligible as we see it in life . Now , how did he perform that feat P Bv close fidelity to the matter of fact . Not that Raphael was a stilllife painter ; he did not stop , like Gerard Dow , to paint you out each , thread of the garment : but each one of the great lines that the drapery made in its sweep ; the masses of its lines and shades ; the fall of its half tints were of the pattern true to nature . If you will put a loose
woollen robe on a beautiful female figure , set that figure in motion so that the robe has accommodated itself to the form , and then arrest the motion suddenly , you will find that , although the robe hides the figure in many parts , yet in other parts the limbs come near to the outline ; and from their disposition , together with the data which you derive from the portions which you see — such as the hand , the wrist , the ankle , the countenance , the outlines of the neck , the proportions from the neck to the waist , the proportions of the loosening of the robe from the outline where you see the limb—from all these things you can , as it were , extract the entire figure . Now , the artist can fix all these passing traits of form ; and Raphael , we say , was supreme in this particular . But in the " Scotch Wife , " MiJlais has in that one characteristic
equalled his master or predecessor . Here is a well-grown woman , in a loose robe , which she has been at no pains to tighten so as to show off her 'figure , only she has pinned it up to be out of the road-dust ; and yet such slight knowledge of artistic anatomy as any admirer of the sex attains will enable you to trace the whole figure as if it were before you like a naked Venus . And that consummate skill is earned by simply following lifelife as it is . The whole story of the picture ,- its forms , its compositions , are nothing more than the direct result of life faithfully fixed by the artist . In some particulars , the "Release" is a still higher picture ; but we must reserve it for another notice .
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EXHIBITION OF THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY . This always pleasant and always pretty exhibition opened its doors for tho first time this season on the last Saturday of last month . As on all former occasions , the landscapes take the first place , both in respect of numbers and of merit—water-colour being , in truth , a weak and insufficient material for any figure painter of ambition to work with , as compared to oil or fresco . This remark may not apply to sketches , or to the expression of one simple idea in a single head ; but it does to works which assume historical rank , and challenge our attention as pictures . Mr . Topham , for instance , in his deliciously-coloured little study of peasant life , called " Wild Flowers ; " and Mr . Hunt , in his " Devotion "
—a girl ' s head , full of exquisite simplicity of feeling , and fidelity to Nature—are both entirely successful , because they have in neither case pushed water-colour art beyond the limits to which it can fairly go . Mr . John Gilbert , on the other hand , in his " Richard the Second resigning 1 the Crown , " has tried to paint a historical picture in water-colours , and has failed—failed through the weakness of his medium , in spite of great pains-taking , great knowledge of tho resources of his art , and great attention to details ( except , indeed , somo of tho details of drawing ) , in every part of his composition . So , again , Mr- Carl Haag ' s " Marino Faliero and the Spy , " attempts to be mysteriously gloomy and dramatical ! v impressive : but does not succeed in being either , principally because
water-colour wont let it . Aa for Miss E . Sharpe's drawing of a "Soldier ' s Widow , opening for the first time the wardrobe of her late husband , " if gallantry to a lady did not forbid us to be as sincere as unual in this case , we should bo apt to ascribe the failure of figure-painting in watercolours here to other causes than the poverty of the material worked with . Hut as it is , we prefer being politely ready to believe , against tho evidence of our own senses , that the recumbent widow in Mjhh Sharpe ' s drawing in prostrate from grief , and not from drunkenness ; and that tho child who stands by her is really very sorry to nee mamma on the ground , and is expressing grief artlessly by scratching its head with tho scabbard of the deceased hero's sword .
Hut , after all , excepting Mr . Topham and Mr . Hunt ( the hitter has many charming " Studies" in tho exhibition besides his " Devotion" ) , it is to tho landscapes that we turn instinctively , and never in vain , for the most genuine enjoyrnont to bo derived from the works of tint Water-Colour Society . This year the room is u » brilliant anil as beautiful as ever with cool sea-shores , shad y valleys , peeps of woodland , and panoramas of mountain scenery , Copley . Molding , as usual , takes the lead ; and may he long continue to do eo f David Cox may excel him in dash and vigour ; Richardson , in steady , sustained power ; and CaHtineau , in Bconio brilliancy ;—hut tho President of tho Water-Colour Society is still first and foremost—m u President oughtto bo . First in tho grand requisite of all art , —in truth to Nature : foremost as a professor of that good old school of water-colour painting , which rim be powerful without " bod y-colour , " and brilliant without the flaring purples and yellows of the dashing " now style . " With tho single exception of his " View of Windsor Cuatlo /
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May 14 , 1 & ? 3 . ] THE LE AD E B . 477
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 14, 1853, page 477, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1986/page/21/
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