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404 THE LEADER , ___ jgg . jgg ^ Agira 24 , 1885
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sustained . For the reason already shown this form is one that we may pretermit in the case of the Suffolk-street Society , which is not liable to important fluctuations . The cause of the British artist ' s constancy to a fixed scale of qualities may be worth knowing . The Society was formed , thirty-five years ago , by certain painters disaffected to the supreme rule of the Royal Academy , and has ever since remained in open rebellion . Banded in a desperate defiance ot R . A .-dom , these mutinous artists are avoided by all who desire to stand well with the superior powers . The president of the Suffolk-street bodj ' , Mr . Hijrl-8 TONE , joins officially in all attacks on Sir Charles Eastlake , 'jobbery , picturecleaning , ' vandalism * ' and other established respectabilities . On the other hand , the Royal Academy does not scorn reprisals . When Mr . Anthony , a man of undoubted genius , transferred his contributions from Suffolk-street to the great exhibition in Trafalgar-square , he was but coldly welcomed ; and he now seems to have been discouraged from any attempt to get a great picture well hung . His loss to the rebel side is immense ; but he will never be pardoned by the Academy for having , while in opposition , distinguished himself by painting well . ....
The first picture that calls for notice—going by the catalogue—is a ' grene wode scene by Mr . Gosling ( 13 ) , with figures in old forester dress It is a pity that a picture so near being clever should not be something more . The first effect of the bright masses of foliage is decidedly agreeable ; but this effect loses greatly on acquaintance . Before you have stood five minutes before the picture , you will be painfully aware that the distance is only a muddle of blue , white , and green , and is no more distant than the top branches of the nearest trees . The artist ' s capacity is exhausted in the clever slap-dash of his foreground ; and here , too , we observe that he has the trick of a bad school , and * puts in figures as carelessly as dock-leaves and nettles ; which , to be sure , ought not to be put in carelessly either . Arded conversation in the
" While the army was encamped before a arose tent of Sextus . " Probably the passage in Roman history may be in the reader ' s recollection and we need not continue the extract from the catalogue . Mr . Waterhousb has caught a faint tinge of the spirit of Angelica Kaufhann in his picture of * Lucius Junius Brutus' ( 34 ) , and if any Niebtjhr of art should object that the scene is utterly untrue to nature , probability , sentiment , or artistic romance , to say nothing of history , he would not in the least degree interfere with the production of such works for the future . We have not got clear yet of the most ridiculously false conventions in Art ; as witness the picture by Mr . Waterhouse , as well as those pictures ' The Moor of Venice' ( 263 ) , by Mr . Sa-i / teb , the ' Cavalier and Puritan' ( 269 ) , by Mr . Hall , and 'The Death of Lord Marmion' ( 97 ) , by Mr . Montaigne . Mr . Salter ' s work is quite worthy his" fame . Anything more solemnly stupid in purpose
and weaker in execution it would be difficult to imagine . The scene is that in which Othello speaks his famous apology before the Duke . Everybody who knows Mr . Salter ' s style may guess that the expressions of the faces are all absurdly wrong ; but to tell how wrong they are it will be necessary to see the picture . The Cavalier and Puritan' is a joke which is repeated by certain painters with a constancy quite wonderful . A sallow and sour-faced man , in extravagantly hideous black garments , is walking in some public gardens with a damsel who , like himself , is one of the elect , and whose hand a waxy young ' gentleman is wickedly kissing , unseen by the sallow person . The time is that unexplored period of Charles II ., which we have often thought would furnish a good subject for a novel or a play . A Cavalier lover and a Puritan mistress would supply a great deal in the way of original incident . ' The Death of Lord Marmion' is simply the worst painting on a large scale that we ever
saw , here or elsewhere . The Ladies' Valley' ( 109 ) is Mr . Woolmbb ' s chief production this year . Vide Decameron , sixth day , in the note attached to its title in the catalogue . Mr . Wqolmer hrs a certain eye for natural beauty ; but he invests it -vith artificial graces , dressing it in the most bewitching neglige , and touching it here and there with just the slightest soupcon of rouge . A dimpled arm , a plump little coquettishly turned bit of sleek shoulders , a milk-white neck and bosom , a tiny bare foot saucily peeping forth , a face all innocence and pearlpowder , derive wonderful piquancy from the studied carelessness of rich brocade and of delicate linen . Can there he a more abrupt transition than from Woolmer to Hurlstone ? It is like turning from champagne to black draught . What grim ugliness has Mr . Hurlstone set before us this season ? ' The Modern Silenus' ( 196 ) is an old Italian peasant teaching a young one to play
on . a pipe , which has not , apparently , any stops . Is this painting , Mr . Huulbtone ? Had you any particular fabric in view , serge or leather , or stained wood or brown paper , when you daubed in that flat surface , which is meant to represent part of a cloak ? The ruins in the background are simply disgraceful . They are literally nothing but uncertain smudges , which a sot might huvc executed with his grimed fingers dipped in beer . It is an insult to common sense to show such a picture as this . Can anybody point out one redeeming feature in this mass of sheer slovenliness ? Lips like that boy ' s wero never seen ; they are dots of staring red paint , as utterly without form as arc other dots of the same colour , distributed over the knee—such a knee !—of the old man . There are three pictures besides by Mr . Hurlstone ; and , though neither is quite so hideous as the one we have described , they are all daringly bad specimens of painting .
Mr . Noble should confine himself to the class of genre pictures with which his name has been creditably associated . It is not easy to guess how lie was tempted out of his depth by a prize of no greater value than the statement , in D'Aubignb ' s Histoire de la Reformation , that " about this time Albert Durkr presented a fine picture to his friend Luther . " Mr . Noble ' s design ( 64 ) does not betray any peculiar inspiration or proof of a special call to paint this presentation scene . The picture which Albert Durer is showing to his friend is as unlike anything of Duhru ' s painting as could very well be . Altogether this is the least satisfactory work of Mr . Noble ' s with which wo are acquainted . Among the landscapes , Mr . Boddington ' s * Windings of the Wye' ( 188 ) is the most happy in selection of scenery and standing-point ; while two or three
of Mr . Sykhs ' s works arc the most indicative of painstaking , But , if we wore asked to guess which landscape had been moat nearly brought to perfection out-of-doors , and with the actual objects before tho painter ' s eyes , it would be Pettxtt , that wo should name as that oxygemc production . A few of tho details in this rocky nook of Welsh scenery uro unsurpasaably truthful ; and in particular wo will point to tho close-fitting character of the moss which clothes the huge boulders in tho foreground ; but wo uro unable quite to make out tho intention pf certain red dots which uro sprinkled in several places—on the foliage , on the ground , and on tho water . Tho ' Fruit' ( y& \ exhibited by Miss IIuuluy lias less bloom than might have been bestowed with n little extra , care and finish ; but it is very pulpy und fruitliko . There is u melon , the rough
rind of which is painted with much force of truth ; and , indeed , that is tlT general characteristic of the lady ' s work . She seems to know her way perfectl well as far as she cares to go ; and we should say it would be easy for her to farther , and to give her pictures the charm of refinement as well as of natural force .
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KING LEAR AT THE PRINCESS'S THEATRE . Mit . Charles Kean has now closed and completed the magnificent series of Shakspearean revivals which have made a dramatic epoch of his management of the Princess ' s Theatre . Hypercritical objectors have denounced the brilliant illustration of Richard IT ., Henry VIIL , and the Tempest with all th e scenic accessories suggested by antiquarian research and all the mechanical ' properties' supplied by modern invention , as something base and excessive and betokening the rank luxuriance of dramatic decadence and decline . Certain enthusiastic formalists , jealous of the purity of Shakspeare ' s text , have attacked Mr . Charles Kean unmercifully for improving upon the stage management to the days of James I ., and for making the ' Elizabethan' drama attractive to the nineteenth century . These formalists insist upon Shakspeare being presented in his original simplicity without the aid of factitious ornament , and had they been Athenians of the age of Sophocles , they would have insisted
upon the Antigone being performed from a waggon . But it is only fair to add that while demanding an anachronism with all the courage of fanatics , they ¦ would as soon go to see a play of Shakspeare ' s as to hear a sermon , unless in the one case it were a spectacle and in the other a Spurgeon . May it not be worth consideration whether Shakspeare himself , were he now living would not be the very man of all men to approve of " the introduction of these illustrative adjuncts" in the performance of his plays , which Mr . Charles Kean believes to be " not only necessary but advantageous to the stage ? " Certainly he would not allow the drama itself , as an " exhibition of human feelings and passions , " to be submerged in canvas and upholstery , but he would tell us that if the machinist and the scene painter were too much for the actors , it must be the fault of the actors and not of the dramatist or the manager . Even hypercritical objectors , however , can find no fault with the manner and degree in which Mr . Charles Kean has scenically illustrated King Lear . Indeed , no
scenic wonders can compete with the transcendent power of the poet in this sublime tragedy . It would be simply impossible to overlay the majestic desolation of the old king and the loving truth and tenderness of his child Cordelia The scenic representation of a chamber in King Lear's palace is an admirable picture from the life of our rude forefathers ; but who remembers the ingenious fidelity of the antiquary in the presence of that old man sinking on his knees in the agony of desertion , and calling on Heaven to curse a thankless child ? The storm on the heath is a marvellous illusion , but who can gaze at the cloud-rack and the haggard gleams of the lightning , in the sight of that awful human loneliness in the foreground of the picture ? Mr . Charles Kean , therefore , while employing upon his illustration of King Lear at his theatre all the resources of decorative and mechanical art , under the direction of his own fine taste and discrimination , and in a spirit of due reverence for the dramatist , relies on the drama itself and upon the personation of the great central figure of the and lad to record that
drama / or the success of the revival , we are g his . high ambition has been nobly justified . It is easy to perceive that Mr . Kean has bestowed upon his personation of Lear the most careful and devoted study , and that every tone , look , and gesture is the result of a strong conception , wrought out with an ardour and concentration of purpose that lends to art the semblance of instinct , and to elaboration the communicative sympathy of irrepressible impulse . Needless to say that no point was lost , and that the great traditional passages brought the house down ; we confess , however , that the profounder subtleties of the character appeared to us to be most happily seized by Mr . Kean , and most skilfully presented . Here and there , in a performance challenging not mere eulogy but positive criticism , we might have desired a different modulation , so to speak , in the actor ' s voice , a different sense in his reading ; but , such as it is , Mr . Kean ' s personation of Lear completely masters the emotions of the audience , and in its most minute details satisfies the critical by its exquisite filling-up of a majestic outline . The general performance of the play is careful and creditable , especially Mr . Kvders Gloster cannot much
Edgar , Mr . Cooper ' s Kent , and Mr . Graham ' s . We say for Miss Heath and MissBuFTON ' s Goneril and Regan , except that they present the strong-minded woman" in an attractive shape ; and Miss Kate Jerrys Cordelia would be more pleasing if she could be persuaded to renounce a spinil movement of the arms , which befits the dainty Ariel , but is tiresome in gentle creatures of flesh and blood . We should be false to the duty and purpose of honest criticism if we forbore to mention Mr . Walter Lac k ' s assumption of the part of Edmund in the most unequivocal terms of condemnation . Either Mr . Walteh Lacy sinks under the part , or he presumes to consider it unworthy ot nis powers . In either case lie deserves censure , not unmixed with pity . lhe pan of Edmund is an admiruble part for an actor of spirit , grace , and impulse ; anu it has been played by the best dramatic artists known to the annals ot the wigusu stage . It is , moreover , evidently a favourite character with Shakspeahe «»»>«« " Mr . Walter Lacy slurs it and drawls it as if he either had not the slightest notion what to do with it , or deemed it beneath his genius ; at all events , ho PW « like a tenth-rate man about town , or perhaps like a barber ' s apprentice nD % a Talleyrand . In short , Mr . Walter Lacy ' s ICdmund , instead of being spirucu and gallant , is sly , awkward , and sneaking in his air and gait , intuousiy cunning , and cynicully dull .
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OLYMPIC THEATRE . „ A- ** rai «~ CQiuQdy ^ frQm-th . Q- ^ brought out at the Olympic , on Monduy evening , and lins boon played < 1 """ « g week with equal apirit and Bucceas . It is spnrklingly written , but us » o nmy be conaidorcd duo to tho livoly and finished acting of Mrs . . ; _ , ' ,,,,, 1 part of a fascinating widow , and to tho capital make-up mid porlcct cllH " , j naturalness of Mu . GKORon Vininu as a blull'but sensitive , and slightly view » ¦ Colonel , and lovor of middle age . Need wo add that it is put on tho atiifeu y ^ all tho euro and elegance that distintjuishes tho Olympic of . tho prcaoiu t , u former ) day .
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HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE . . _ Madkmoisellk Piccolomini roappeared for the season na Nonnn in Poaquale on Tuesday evening , and was received with a spoiled darlings come . She played the coquettish widow with infinite archness ana nw bewitching airs , and warbled like the first bird of spring . 8 i S " or " ; " 'l , light tenor who made so agreenble an impression nt the close of . '" f . " ^ ' wub the Ernesto , und confirmed tho prepossession of tho audience iu lna « 'ivou
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 24, 1858, page 404, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2240/page/20/
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