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NATURE AND ART . EXHIBITIONS OF THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY , TirE 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 irre ' atest auxiliary to the elevation of taste , of thorough intelligence and perception on the part of the artist as well as of the public ; and if any one doubted that inference he 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 Corregcio . 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 Water 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 Tayler'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 Kidc through the Heather , " byTAYLER , you have all the animation of youthful cavaliers scampering across an open country . Art has- fairly ridden away from the photograph , but in the mcaijwhile'it has confirmed the artist in the strength of his own style , and has 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 has 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 bettor than the photograph , in proportion as it rivals the photograph in exactness , but surpasses it in a photographic exactness of colouring . Davidson ' s " Haymaking : Lewes , Sussex , " and E . Duncan ' 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 life , 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 him to develop . The same natural standard has helped to chastise painters like the Coxes , who sulfur one to sec the material as well as the intended scene . There is great skill , great freshness of colour , whether you take pictures like the " Caernarvon Castle" " 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 . Nafticl has great power in reproducing pure tints , and he 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 applies even to the figures . Nothing can be better as reflexions of character , as a matter of beauty , than Carl IIaao ' s " JLndy of Albano , " " Saracinescan Girl . " Nash reproduces many old buildings , such as the terrace of the mansion called Bramshill , in Hampshire . He dramatises the scene by "A Summer Afternoon ' s Diversion . " Gentlemen in a costume of the Stuart days arc fencing on the carpeted terrace , while their companions , ladies , and children , arc looking on or loitering about . The master of the Water Colour has always , to us , appeared to be W . Hunt , who reproduces grass , flowers , and fruit , and " humans , " aa if he had actually assisted in the Creation . He has few this year , but the " Poacher" is amongst the most characteristic—the head of a bearded rustic , audacious and sinister . Primroses , quinces , apple-blossoms , roses , and blackberries , liu upon pieces of veritable earth . The blackberry , with its loaf pointing towards you , is lileo a
piece out of a ( stereoscope ; but no stereoscope could give that perfect identity of the grey green , or enable you to see through the sharp red of the crudo fi ' uit . It is in tho naturalist class of landscapes that the New Watkk . Colour is most successful . Following the modern movement , men like James Jj ' ahbv , William Bennett , and Edward G . Warren , strive to take in tho entllosa variety of forms , tho sharpness of nature , in foliage , rising corn , rock , or broken ground , to catch the flash of light across a country ; and they attain a wonderful success . Mr . Wariien ia peculiarly powerful and happy this year . We still obaorvo a common struggle with the pigments in tho skies : the blue is bluo tint upon paper ; tho clouds are paper left blank , with a certain ragged sharpness thathns no resemblance to nature . In ono of Mr . Roiunb ' s pictures , " Blowing Hard on tho Downs , " with Dutch luggers cutting the sharp waves for Uumsgalc , thin slurnueaa of cloud ia conquered , and tho oQ ' oofc of misty , moving masses is
excellently copied . The same hand is not so happj' 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 Arthoy , 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 . Corboulp has a " Scene at a Prussian Fair , " in which the picture is filled with highly finished figure ' s in various animated attitudes ; but his chief painting is illustrated by a few lines from Rogers ' s Italy , and is the critical scene in the life of Buondelmonte Buondelmonti , —that where the Lady of the Aniidei discovers to him the bride that she has been keeping for him , and he becomes at once enthralled . The young lady ia 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 Hag-he 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 Vaguer 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 Egyptian desert , with an 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 " 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 o £ 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 Laudkr , 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 .
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ROYAL ACADEMY : PRIVATE VIEW . Variety 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 , —rare present only in works that may be cousidered an incognito . Many paint according to £ > attern ; 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 strikes the eye . it is difficult
In the hasty glance , amidst the interruptions of a private view , 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 Roderick Murchison , Dr . Livingston , Sir John Burgoyne , Dr . Adler , Sir George Pollock , Sir George Simpson , &c . & . 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 tho trenches of the Crimea reading a letter ; the most conspicuous objects being the red coat 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 Redgrave ' s new manner . Near it " Reading the Psalms "—two pretty , pure-faced children , by Dobson ; then comes Lands unit ' s " Scene in the Brao 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 . Dvce 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 ; Frith , " Kate Nickleby at Madame Mantnliui ' s , " humbly holding articles of dress for Miss Knagg , who is seen in the looking-glass ; J . C . Hook , "A Signal on tho Horizon "—a sailor family looking out , with a highly-finished piece of landscape foreground ; Cope , a breakfast scone , with a young lady and children , ono of whom she is making to shut her eyes and open her mouth ; IIorhlky , a scone in a lane , which we shall have to examine for the brilliancy of its light and colouring ; Frank . Stone , " Margaret at her marvellously-fine Spinning-wheel ; " Stanfteld , again , " The Wreck of a vessel of tho Spanish Armada ofF tho Giant ' s Causeway ;" Leslie , " Sir Hogor do Coverley in Church ; " J . l'mui' , " The Prison Window , Seville , 1857 " —a young wife holding up a child for the imprisoned husband to kiss ; J . It . Herbert , a landscape scene on tho coast of Franco ; Danby , "A Ruddy Morning in tho Gardens of the Aleinoiis "—a sort of dawning sunset . These aro but a few of the pictures in the first room , and we have passed over many that will detain tho visitor on a second visit .
In the middle room , tho most striking picture is Millais ' s " Dream of tho Past , Sir Isumbras at the Ford '—a picture which commands attention from tho force oi' its painting ; though whether tho horse is a toy-horse or a veritable horse , whether the knight himself is a real cavalier or a paper portrait , wo have nut yet divined . Next in point of forco is Sir Edwin LA « i > HEisn ' s " Uncle Tom and his Wife for Sale , " a pair of bulldogs leisurely awaiting the purehusor ; tho husband by no means likely to furnish a moral illustration of Mrs * Beecher Stowo ' s talc . Eaa has u charming picture from Thackeray ' s Henry Esmond ; Esmond . returning from tho battle of Wynendol ; liorsloy , a yo ung gentleman , when young gentlemen wore pretty costumes , hiding behind o . tree ,
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May 2 , . 1857 J THE "LEADER . 4 , 2 ?
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Leader (1850-1860), May 2, 1857, page 427, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2191/page/19/
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