The Express.
London, England, 1865-05-08 00:00:00

THE DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL
EXHIBITION.

(mon ova uncut ormaisiostreme.)
DURUM, EAT 5.
The goods will make a goodly show, both for
fltity and novelty, but • second visit only eon-
finis nay first impression that the great attraction
of the Exhibition will be in the fine arta department.
Mr. Henry Doyle gets on famously, hanging bis
pictures and arranging his marbles, receiving
able assistance with the former from Mr. Mulvany,
and with respect to the latter owing numerous
obligations to the xeal, critical acumen,
and energy of Lord Southwell. His lordship, who
L quite an authority in sculpture, works
tremendously, and it will be greatly to his exer-
tions that the public will owe the treat which is in
store for them in the sculpture gallery. Set off as
these splendid marbles will be by the artistic
painting of the gallery, which I have promised to
mention, is being executed under Mr. Doyle 's
directions by Mr. Sibthorpe, of Cork-hill, they
will have an attraction in Dublin which has never
been vouchsafed to them in any previous Exhibi-
tion—namely, that of being shown by gas as well
as
by daylight. A white statue or &group always looks
best nuder an artificial light, and the contents of
the Dublin gallery will have this advantage every
evening. One experimental lighting has already
taken place, and the effect wiz. wonderfully beau-
tiful. There is one Sleeping Fawn, by Mies Roemer,
an American lady, pupil of our own Gibson,
which I am sure will, when seen under the
gaslight, become at once a bone of contention
amongst all the rich connoisseurs —I never
saw any work of art in the same material in
which the best of all standards, nature, waist once
so truthfully and so gracefully followed as in this
youthful sleeping figure. If it prove not one ofthe
gems of this part of the Exhibition I shall be very
much mistaken. The Florentines come out strong
in all those graceful nymphs, and Cupids, and
Venuses for which they are so celebrated, and are
rich not only in statues but in statuettes; the latter
of the most exquisite form and finish, and sure to
be picked up for purposes of drawing-room
ornamentation. There is • cage filled with tiny
Cupids, which, although all cut out of one block,
seem to be all in motion, and struggling to buret
the bare of their prison. It is only a conceit, but
a pretty one, and will be a worthy suoceeeor to the
Ailed figures which proved so attractive "to the
general" in 1862. On the occasion to which I have
alluded above, the whole of the interior, en
well as the sculpture gallery, was beautifully
illuminated, and thus became • perfect fairy
mdam, and destined no doubt, when the
Exhibition is thrown open, to be an attractive
promenade. The exterior facade and the beautiful
glass framework will be also illuminated, so that
on fine evenings, what between the palace and the
gardens, the company may fairly fancy themselves
on enchanted ground.
The pictures, although being hung with the 1
greatest possible expedition, are still lying literally
in heaps against the walls, and I cannot too soon
call the attention not only of connoisseurs, but of
artists, to this part of the Exhibition. The very
latest productions of Dresden, Dusseldorf, Munich,
and the Belgian schools have been sent over, and
there is consequently the peculiar charm of fresh-
ness added to their undoubted merit. The com-
mittee ordered that they should all he sent in with
a price affixed, from which no deviation was sub-
sequently to be made, and the consequence is that
Lord Powerscourt and other distinguished col-
lectors are already fast securing gems of art at
the very moderate prices which the coati-
motel artists in their humility had put upon
their work. One beautiful cattle-piece, after the
Coyp manner, has been sold for 601., which, in the
opinion of judges, would easily fetch 2001. at
Christie's. There is a wonderful portrait by the
French lady who works under the name of Henri-
etta Brown, which is much contended for, and
various other pieces of which the novelty alone
makes the inspection quite a treat, and which is
certain to catch the notice of the %unskilled, that is
to say, the unconventional public. The Belgian
Frith sends a large picture of the interior of a
Turkish harem, the fair inhabitants of which are
submitting the costume of a Frankish lady to a
rather close inspection. The wonderful crinoline,
with its innumerable bars and gratings, has already
been made manifest, and the bright Georgians, the
lytbe Legghians, and the swarthy Africans, are all .
holding up their hands in astonishment at the
complicated machinery. The art critics will •
not say much for this really well-painted plc-
tore of the utter realistic school, but the same
crowds that gathered round Megni's "Reading
Girl," or Frith's " Derby Day," will establish it as
$ lion of the Exhibition. There is a fine picture of
" Henry the Fourth doing penance at the church .
door, at the bidding of Pope Boofface," and next ;
to it a still finer one of another German Emperor,
Barbarous, interposing with a thorough assumption
of authority between the Pope's Legate and one of
his own nobles, the latter seeming to have a violent
inclination to run hie profane sword through the j
sacred body of the representative of the church.
Again, there is a wonderful canvass of Beatrice di ;
Cenci, dead, and placed on a bier in the street. 1
Monks pray at the bead of the bier, and women i
gaze compassionately at the foot. The beauty of
the fair corpse, spiritualised by death, is wonder-
fully rendered, and the subject altogether is so full
of human interest, that I prophesy for it
also a grand success. I mention these pictures
at random, to be taken as so many bricks out of
Babylon, and as showing how rich this gallery will
be in novelty, which I hold to be the great deside-
ratum with our modern artiste. There is novelty
not only in the choice of subjects, but in the mode
of treatment; and many a valuable hint as to the
wodaction of striking effects will, I have no doubt,
be derived by competent observers in the course of
the present season.
The arrangemeate for the opening day are at last
all complete, and the programme, which I enclose,
will be rigidly adhered to. I perceive that Mr.
Pope Hennessy has discovered an Irish grievance
of great novelty as well as gravity in the exclusion
of -Irish airs from the opening music. But if Mr.
Henowey were as skilled a musician as he is a pro-
found statesman, he would have remembered that
the opening of the Exhibition, like all our
great festivals of the kind, will partake
greatly of the character of a religious ceremonial,
and that the Irish music, although of great
beauty, and abounding in mirth as well as
pathos, does not contain a single specimen which •
would cut in quite appropriately between Mendels-
aohn's " Hymn of Praise " and the "Hallelujah
Chorus." A very striking effect might perhaps be
produced by the introduction of a baud of pipers or '
fiddlers heading his Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales and the procession of "grave and reverend
seigniors," and marching them up to the dais to
the exhilarating strains of "Garry Oweu " or 1
" Patrick's Day," but the Dublin public are tool
good judges of the proprieties of solemn festivals
to seek for anything of the kind. The grievance, 1
I can assure you, festers exclusively in the too
sensitive bosom of Mr. Pope Hennessy, as not a I
newspaper here, no matter what its politics,
alludes to the ridiculous matter, nor is there
single word beard of it in conversation. The
ooly problems that disturb the Irish metropolitan
mind are " Will he come r meaning the Prince,
and, Will his royal highness, like his royal
mother on similar occasions, be favoured with a
fine day l I may mention here that nothing can
shake the conviction of the Irish people that all
that is necessary to produce their beau ideal of
an earthly paradise—namely, a dry summer—is
that her Majesty should come over, and they
triumphantly instance the royal visit to Killarney,
when not a drop fen for nearly a week, a fact with-
out precedent in that delightfully vaporous locality.
If his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales should
be equally favoured by the weather gods the uni.
versa verdict in Ireland will be that he is "one
at the real old stock," which is the highest
menpliment that an Irishman can pay to anycne,
however distinguished. His Royal Highness is
imputed to arrive, without ostentation or parade,
on Monday evening, in time for dinner at the Vice-
legal lodge • on Tuesdayi he will open the building,
god on Wednesday honour the Lord Meyor's bell