The Press.
London, England, 1853-05-14 00:00:00

44

worse still, ungracefully drawn : the head ill joined
to the shoulders ; the attitude i . stiff, the lower limbs
are too short, the waist divides the person too nearly
iuto equal portions, and the foot is turne i inwards in
a manner singularly ungraeeful, and which could
hardly render the necessary support to the figure. The
blue dress, with its heavy black shadows, neither har-
monises nor contrasts with the blue water and blue
distance, from which it is very insufficiently relieved.
The portrait of Mr. Ward's three children, by Sir
W. S. Newton (721), is gaudy in colour and hard in
execution ; unskilful, moreover, in composition, and
deficient in expression. We regret that an artist
once so promising, and still so popular, should have so
fallen oft in taste and execution. These observations
apply with still greater force to Sir Charles Moss ;
his portrait of Lady Ashur Hervey and her children
(753) is the most ambitions and the worst of his mi-
niatures—that of Mr. Lewis (777) is, perhaps, his
best.
Mr. H. T. Wells is an artist of pr. mise, but we
would recommend him to study anatomy : a portrait-
painter is apt to suppose that when he can draw the
face with tolerable accuracy, and perhaps the hand,
his task is completed. The " drawing" of the English
artists is painfully inaccurate, and, in this respect,
our exhibitions show a decided inferiority to those of
foreign capitals. Our portrait-painters have neglected
the study of drawing ; in the next generation, when
the interest of resemblance is gone, their works will
become mere lumber, or at best objects of curiosity,
banished from the saloon to the antechamber and
bedroom. Among Mr. Wells' pertOrmances, N 0.083,
entitled " Portraits," is perhaps his best.
The portrait of Mr. Henry Phillips, by Mr. C. Con-
yers (720), is clever and well drawn ; the likeness is
strong and the colouring rich. The expression in the
countenance, however, is exaggerated, and indicates
a degree of intensity which requires explanation.
The Venetian painters, the greatest masters of por-
trait painting, always avoid this fault ; they invariably
represented both figure and face in a state of perfect
repose, with no more expression than habitually be-
longed to them, and thus they preserved that air of
calm dignity and sedate simplicity which constittous
their greatest charm.
We have already exceeded the utmost. limits to
which we had proposed confining tow remarks. We
must now hasten to the room (or shall we say the
cellar?) in which the sculpture is contained. As far
as the narrow space allotted to this interesting de-
partment of the tine arts permitted us to judge, we
should say that " Pandora" (13•21), by Mr. W. C.
Marshall, and the "Day-t[• cant" (13414), by Mr. P.
Milowell, are among the best statues the collection
can boast, though neither lay any claim to extraordi-
nary originality or vigour of conception : they are both
pleasing and well-executed spechnens of decorative
sculpture.
The present exhibition of sculpture contains a lower
average of merit than we have lately been used to, and
it cannot boast. a single statue of the higher order of
excellence. No. 1334, " Eva," by Mr. E. G. Pop-
worth, sen.; No. 1335,'' Religion consoling Justice in
her grief," by Mr. .1. Edwards: and N 0.13341, the mo-
del of Colonel Delap's monument, by Mr. E. Davies,
are all in the same style of mawkish imitation of the
early period of the arts, and all exhibit fresh instances
of the extravagances to which effect ation and conceit
will lead men of talent and ingenuity.
No. 1310, " Sampson and the Lion," modelled by
Mr. Westmacott and Mr. Hacknel, is a subject un-
fitted for sculpture, which prohibits all sudden, vio-
lent. and complicated action, and from which the pic-
turesque should be banished. The encients have
left us but few instances of deviation from this rule,
and those which could be quoted, are certainly Lot
among their happiest effints.
There are, as usual, long and double rows of smirking
ladies and frowning gentlemen of every age and all
dosses, each, according to sex soil condition, trying to
look log ely, , wise, grave, or benign, and all in t heir several
ways reminding us how unfit a medium marble is forpre •
seising a likeness in this age of external smoothness
and changeable fashions.
unr,ls et passe'

WATER-COLOUR EXHIBITIONS.
(Second Notice.]
is one of the most satisfactory features of the
present Exhibition thnt. there is a considerable display
of talent on the port of its junior members.
We have been much struck with two pictures by
Mr. Atickson—(No. 0) " A Wreck on the Coast. of
Wales," and (No. 105) " Aberystwitb, from the Sea,"
the one representing a storm with all its fearful ac-
companiments, the other a sunset, on
" An evening calm and 1.M."

In both pictures, however. the execution of the fleecy
clondF., and sometimes of the curling foam of the
wave, is too angular and solid ; and in both. espe-
cially the latter, there is a certain opacity of the
atmosphere which we are inclined to attribute to the
injudicious employment of white. Indeed, the
abuse of " body colour " appears to us the beset-
ting sin of the Eiltibitionconsidered as a whole. We

THE PRESS..

willingly admit that its occasional use is productive of
good effect; nor should we be willing to embarrass
the artist by conventionsl limitations as to material or
method. But the facilities which body colour affords
ere very seductive, and few have the resolution to
stop short at the right point. Thus, the transparency
of water colours is lost ; but the strength of oils is
not gained, and the freshness of nature is exchanged
for the dull powdered heavy look of discoloured
plaster.
The works of Mr. Palmer, and of many other ex-
hibitors, look as if they were painted in distemper.
In No. 18, " The Rustic Dinner," the distance is
carefully studied and admirably drawn, but the land-
scape wants substance, the sky wants atmosphere and
light. The foreground trees painted in body colour
are defective in truth of form and of colour.
Mr. Naftel's employment of body colour is not
happy. It adds to the violence of contrast and spot-
tiness of effect, which are the defects of No. (14, A
well-known Spot in North Wales." The execution,
indeed, of this drawing is vigorous, but there is a
want of distance and aerial perspective.
"A Church at Treves," by M.. J. Burgess, shows
great talent, but the figures are too large, too attrac-
tive, and not well placed for the purpose of giving
effect to the architecture. This error is avoided by
Mr. C. Smith in his tine drawing of " The Tomb of
the Black Prince" (No. UM, and is much amended
by Mr. Burgess in " The Tomb of the Due de
Brizi" (No. 135). But how, we must ask in a
parenthesis, could Mr. Burgess expect to give the
rich transparent hues of stained glass with body
colour ?
It is, in fact, the common detect of" landscape and
figure" pieces to distract the attention between the
landscape and the group offigures, and, when neither
is kept subordinate to the other, the effect of both is
injured by the combination.
Let it not be supposed, however, that, if the figures
are to be of secondary importance, they should there-
fore be executed carelessly. On the contrary, the
less they are made out in detail the more necessary
it is that their general outline and air should be
faithful to nature. It was in the clumsiness of that draw-
ing that consisted the true defect of Turner's figures,
not in the want of detail. Far from it :he was often
obliged improperly to insert detail in order to show
that the uncouth amorphous mass was really intended
ter a human being.
Among the veteran exhibitors we fancy we
see many indications of a desire to avoid re-
peating their favourite subjects. The accomplished
president, Mr. Copley Fielding, has fewer of his grey
storms, and scuds of w indand rain—against which, how-
ever, we have not a word to say except their too fre-
quent recurrence. 'We think his representations of clear
summer skies, in a northern latitude, with a cold air and
bright sun, very true to nature, and brilliant in effect
(Nos. Ott, 117).
In a large drawing, " Windsor" (No. 27), we ob-
ject to the blueness of the sky and distance. In na-
ture both are often of an intense hue, which for want
of a more precise nomenclature we must call blue ;
but the blue of the atmosphere, whether peering
through the rents of the rolling clouds of an English
summer, or graduating from horizon to zenith in one
unbroken sheet of intense colour in an Italian tra-
montane, is not the blue of raw cobalt nor of
French blue, nor of any pigment of the colour-box.
Artists, when their blues aro found fault with, are
apt to appeal to the intensity of the blues of nature.
We also appeal to nature. It is not the quantity of
their colour that we censure, but its quality.
Mr. D. Cox seems to have modified his style, as
he certainly has changed his paper. We have no
longer the fresh greens of his dewy foregrounds, aud
middle distances partially overshadowed as the
fleecy clouds hurry across the bright blue of the sky.
In No. ss, " Barden Castle," he has
" Breathed a browner horror o'er the woods."

-- -
There is a lowering darkness, which we know not
whether to attribute to a coming stoi m or the deepening
shades of evening. In No. 110 (" View of the Coast of
Cumberland") be has exchanged his usual pastoral
landscape for huge piles of granite rock wreathed in va-
pour. But throughout the picture there is a want of re-
lief andcontrnst. The lines all run the same way, the
colour wants variety, and the gloom is equable and
monotonous. No. 175. by the same artist—" The
Challenge"—so called because two bulls are pre-
paring for nn encounter—is a noble drawing.
The sentiment is highly poetical. and the effect is
very tine. It is not. however, free from what we con-
sider the usual fault of Mr. Cox's manner. He has a ten-
dency to substitute clumsiness of execution for vigour,
and this defect, under the influence of the coarse ab-
sorbent paper above alluded to is much exaggerated.
These coarse papers are admirably adapted for
showing with what slight labour an accomplished ar-
tist may, by a Judicious employment of means, pro-
duce a brilliant result. But the facilities they ntford
hold out strong inducements to carelessness and man-
nerism. and we could gladly see them employed only
for rapid sketches and studies of effect.

SATURDAY,

The Cathedral of Abbeville, by Mr. W. Callow, is
a very tine drawing, but we observe a poverty in the
details cf the principal mass 4 buildings in the
middle distance ; the artist will no doubt tell us that he
feared to break up his shadow and injure the gran-
deur of his composition. We admit at once the taste
and good sense of his intention, we demur only to the
skilfulness with which it is carried into execution.
ln the depth of the shadow, architectural details
would naturally be blended and lost; but in retiring
from the eye they would not leave behind them.
as the only indication of their existence. a slight.
sketchy outline. On the contrary, it is the outline
that would first be blended and lost, while the sub-
stance of the object remained distinctly visible. It
is this mode of handling which gives an air of sketch-
iness to Mr. Callow's most tinished works.
[The pr,!ss of other matter obliges us to postpone
our further remarks on " The Water-colour Exhibi-
tion' till next week.]