The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-29 00:00:00

PAMPHLETS.

The Pageant is Over. Sermons. Seeleys.
liar with Russia. A Sermon. Rev. W. H. Beamish.
Bosworth.

tint lrts.

SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER
COLOURS.
WHEN an exhibition is first opened there is no ques-
tion so often asked and so variously answered as, " How
does this year's exhibition stand as compared with its
predecessors ?" In the case of the Water-colour Exhibi
tion, which was opened on Monday last, we should be in-
clined to answer the question favourably. The first
impression on entering the room (and it istonly first
impressions that are inquired after) is of more than
usual variety of style and beauty of subject. The
figure pieces are very prominent and attractive.
Among the many which pleased us we must notice
" The Fortune-tellers of Andalusia," by Mr. Top-
ham (No. 26). It is a very pretty composition,
broad in effect and forcible in colour. " The
Drug Bazaar" (No. 34), by Mr. Gillies, has a
fine effect with powerful colouring. The perspec-
tive is excellent, but the execution is, perhaps, a little
ragged ; and the draperies want breadth. No. 0, " The
Rosary," by the same artist, represents the head of
a pretty penitent, but the subject is a mistake. A
rosary is an invention for scoring off, as they are
said, a certain number of Paters Ayes and Credos.
It is not wrapped round and round the hand, but is held
in it, and of course the use of it cannot co-exist with a
state of ecstatic devotion. Nos. 83 and X3l are two
very ambitious pictures, by Mr. Haag, representing
(the first) " The Ascent of Lochnagar by the Royal
Family in the Morning ;" and the second, "The Re-
turn to Balmoral Castle at Night." Considering
the subject, we cannot be surprised that the painter
should have fallen into the natural error of giving
too great a prominence to each figure in the illus-
trious group. In No. 83 the drawing is very often in-
correct. The attitudes are stiff and untrue. Nor can
we admire either the colouring or composition. No.
201, without being better a.s a work of art, bas to con-
tend with the additional difficulty of representing torch-
light, the effect of which scarcely any artist renders
truly, and which, even if well represented, is far from
pleasing. We do not, however, forget the extreme diffi-
culty of the subject, and we trust the courage which has
enabled Mr. Haag to grapple with it will in time
lead him on to complete success. His " Roman
Monk" (No. 114) is admirable, both in colour and
expression. It has a strength and power which we
never saw equalled in water colours.
"The Popinjay," by Mr. F. Taylor (No. 144), is
" painted by command of her Majesty," and, as we
may naturally suppose, with more than the artist's
usual care, and, in spite of some defects, we think
with more than his usual success. The execution is
light, spirited, and easy, and each individual group
is so pretty in itself that we must retire to a distance
before we perceive that there is a want of due sub-
ordination of the parts to the whole—that there is
too much outline and too little shadow. The figures
are so happily proportioned to the surface over
which they are spread, that, in spite of a great want
of aerial perspective, an air of space is given to the
whole which is necessary to tell the story, and without
which the best dramatic composition would fail. We
could have wished a little more importance bad been
given to the beautiful Edith, the heroine of the day,
and the gallant and tender Lord Evandale. Lady
Margaret is a poor and inexpressive figure, and we
must remind Mr. Taylor that the eyeglass at the end
of her whip is an anachronism : a lady whose sight
failed her in the seventeenth century must have con-
tented herself with the old-fashioned barnacles with
which the Dutch pictures make us so familiar. The
colouring is gay and harmonious, but perhaps is

403

deficient in force. A lady occupying a prominent
place in the foreground wears a green joseph, which,
in our opinion, should certainly have been red.
No. 341, " Roman Peasants at the Entrance of a
Shrine," by Mr. Lewis, has the usual merits of his
drawings ; but by a strange assemblage of objects
he has given to this scene rather the air of an
" old curiosity-shop" than a shrine • the interiors
of Italian churches are so picturesque that no
additions to them can be needed, or even tole-
rated. The multiplicity of objects here collected
distracts the attention not less than it violates the
truth of nature. A similar fault may be found with
the figures : there is a bewildering variety of colour, a
want of repose, and a want of effect. No. 24R,
" A Halt in the Desert of Egypt," and No. 305,
" Camels and Bedouins in the Desert of the Red
Sea," are too singular to be pleasing ; but the glare
of an African noonday is forcibly presented to the
mind by the strange and unnatural whiteness and
shadowless distinctness with which every object is
defined.

e had marked many more figure pictures for no-
tice, and we may recur to the subject on some future
day, but we must hasten on to the landscape-painters.
We think the accusation of mannerism which is so
often brought against them is unjust, and most
especially unfair on the part of the public, which
does all in its power to keep them to mannerism.
When an artist endeavours to give variety to his
style or his subjects, he is met by flattering
reproaches from his admirers that he has
" changed his style ;" or, perhaps, what he likes still
less to hear, that he has adopted some other artist's
style. When we consider how great is the natural
tendency of all artists to mannerism, and how strong
is the temptation to reproduce the subjects they call
represent most easily and are surest to sell, we are
inclined on the whole to admire the variety which
we find year after year at this exhibition. There is
a picture by the President (No. 30), which, beside
being admirable in itself, displays, without any
apparent struggle for novelty, a diversity and variety
of feeling, a freedom from self-imitation, which,
after so many years oil assiduous practice as Mr.
C. Fielding now can number, is very uncommon.
But the best receipt against mannerism, and
moreover the only receipt for progress, is close
study from nature. Nothing but the careful and
frequent realising of nature on the spot can enable
the artist to bear steadily in mind what force and
distinctness are compatible with distance, what
strength and what contrast of colour are consistent
with breadth.

I

2

When an artist attempts to make a picture with
insufficient materials, his timidity obliges him to in-
volve the distance in blue, purple, or grey haze; and,
if the other circumstances of the landscape are not
in harmony with this supposed state of the atmo-
sphere, the truth of nature is violated : he secures
breadth by banishing all strong local colours from
his principal light at any sacrifice of truth. But it
is especially in the case of Italian scenery that we
desire to see a freer and fuller recurrence to
nature. Let an artist divest himself of his precon-
ceived notions of Italian colouring, let him put off his
blue and yellow spectacles, and proceed to the spot. We
will then ask him did he ever see scenery of which
the sky was more brilliantly luminous and trans-
parent, and the landscape more full of substance and
solidity ? Turner's solutions of luminous haze,
beautiful as they sometimes are, he will search for
long in vain; nor will he recognise the Italy before
him in the solid cobalt sky, the French blue sea, the
chalky white buildings, the orange foreground and
gigantic vine leaves of preternatural peen and yellow
which have so long passed current for Neapolitan
scenery. The sea and sky of Italy are under certain
circumstances intensely blue ; but then the quality of
the blue and the accompanying circumstances must
be faithfully rendered by the artist. In Mr. Richard-
son's "Sorrento" (No. 25) the blue of the sea is not
true to nature, and any deep shade of blue on the sea
is incompatible with the heavy white clouds with
which the sky is charged. It is when a light north-
erly breeze sweeps every curl of vapour from the
bright clear vault, and gives a gentle ripple to the
sea, that we obtain that intense azure which it is so
difficult to represent with truth, and which so many
of our countrymen believe to be the ordinary charac-
teristic of "Italian colouring." Again, if the artist
desires to represent the glories of an Italian sunset,
no one will deny the richness and the brilliancy of
the foreground ; but, if he wastes on it all the re-
sources of his palette, he has nothing left to repre-
sent the splendours of the setting sun, and every
fresh addition of colour to his sky only makes it
more opaque and gravelly.

" Lagonegro," a very fine drawing by Mr. Richard-
son, is an instance of the defects in composition
which are caused by the deficiency of materials.
Lagonegro is one of the strangest and wildest of thu
many romantic towns in the mountain district"
south of Naples. To snake a view of Lagonegr
look probable and natural the strictest adherence t
truth would be necessary. The architectural addt-

tionp which Mr. Richardson has introduced we attri-
bute simply to his not possessing the necessary
details, and not to a wish to embellish what needs
no embellishment. In the rocky foreground he
has introduced scattered and torn stone pines.
No doubt in painting a wild mountain scene
in Scotland a blasted Scotch fir or two would
have proved a ready resource ; but those fa
miliar with Italy know that the stone pine is to
be found only on the plains, and on the lower
slope, of the mountains. In the region of oak and
chesnut it never appears. This to many will appear
hypercriticism, but it is only by attention to these
congruities that the truth of nature can be rendered.
In portrait-painting a strong likeness approves itself
at once to those who have never seen the original ;
and, by a similar process of thought, an unlike
landscape is at once detected by an observer of
nature.