Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-10-10 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL ACAD-3111Y'S EXHIBITION.

THIRD NOTIC.C.
Mr. Solomon exhibits this year a work of larger scope
acid nobler subject than any we recollect to have seen from
his pencil. Ile has turned to good account the h ppy
facility he possesses of expressing character and emotion
without extravigtnce or unnatural effect. " Waiting for
the Verdict" is a p:cture of singular and homely meaning,
telling its story with touchingness and arcafneeed pathos.
No petty sentimentalism, no elaborate mysticism hide
and disfigure its plain tale. A group of humble people
awaits, in thessg my of tortured expectancy, the decision of
a jury, which is to effect, we must euppeee, thedife of acme
dearly-loved being. An old man, with bowel figure, Fits
covering his forehead and eyes with his hand, every nrssele
and vein expressing the anguish of a forced patience
struggling with terror, and perhaps same tantalising hops
A young woman, with nervously clenching fingers, colour-
lees cheek, and wet, wild eyes, sits facing the spectator,
striving to keep down the emotions which are becen4ing
too keen and biter for scppression. A child, tired
with waiting, has fallen asleep at her knees, holding
still to the skirts of her dress. A nurse holds any infant,
who is quite delighted with the novelty of the place, and
is evidently crowing r'ght lustily ; and near the old man a
dog is crouching. One of the doors leading into the court
opens to admit a barrister in wig an I gown, and within
we can catch a glimpse of the crowd and the crimson-robed
figure of the judge One ftncies he cart almost hear the
sleepy hum and suppressed, buzz of conversation which are
murmuring through a crowded court while the jury are
msidering their verdict. There is nothing theatric about
the scene, nor, on the other hand, do the figures seem fixed
in the defined, immovable attitudes which tell one that the
painter only thought of, the present position of the group
he drew, and gave us no reference to what might have been
a few minutes before, or would be a few minutes hence.
The figures here do not see as if they hid dropped down
in the attitudes hey exhibit, and were magically fixed there
for ever. Oee can in expectation hear the rustling and
deep drawn breathings of the crowd when the jury enter
the b ; can anticipate the sudden movement among
the little group of expectants in the foreground.
That usher will presently call out for eileeee ; and the
verdict will be followed by that thrill with which a crowd
evinces its symyathy or its pain. Every one who has ever
sat in a court, awaiting with strained expectation that
indesirable sound of suppressed exelametion which makes
known even to those who cannot see it, that the jury are
entering their box to announce their decision, can recognise
the full reality, the deep pathos of this fine p'cture. It is
enough to say of its details that they are in true keeping
with the artistic spirit which arranged the group and the
surrounding accessories. The effect which the whole
produce upon the mind is enough to make the gavr feel
satisfied that no deficiency and no unreality anywhere
exists. Those who believe that the power of imagination
is most evinced in the creatien of ideas and objects above
the level of human life or in fantastic and extra natural
conceptions, may perhaps consider this pic'ure hunible
in subject and commonplace in its tone. But they
who believe that painter and poet must, whether they
will or not, be content to receive all their ideas,
even the most unreal and extravagant, in some form from
retire around them will think that a simple story, such as
this which Mr. Solomon has chosen, may be made the
means of expressing the ideal no less than the real, as
truly as the vaguest, dreamiest conception of a mind,
straining itself vainly, to teach the hidden and the unat-
tainable.

On the screen in the central room is a painting of a
graceful and poetic character—" The Fall of the Lost
Pieiad," by Mr. J. R. Read. The principal figures are
well painted, with distinctness enough to make them pic-
turesque, and impressive to the eye, but not with the
heavy fleshy colour which make the angels, seraphs, and
goddesses of so many painters so very earthly, and unfitted

for the skies. We not unfrequently see angels or fays
sporting among clouds, whose good condition would indi-
cate substantial earthly feeding, and whose specific gravity
would seem to augur a difficulty in walking on the ground,
not to speak of gambolling in the air. But the Pleiad sis-
ters are serial enough, and thair gauzy drapery vague
enough for the element in which they that. One of the
faces :•enm to have somewhat of a vacuous and unspiritual
expre-sion, and the attitude of the falling sister
s lass graceful than that of the other figures in the group.
Notwithstanding these defects, however, and notwithstand-
ing that the painting belongs to a school whose gradual
extinction we are delights I to watch—that of the modern,
Or mock • classic—it is a picture full of a quiet beauty, not
without much poetic suggestiveness.
The Lone Church by the Bea More," (250), is a
painting by an artist in whose productions we take much
delight, notwithstanding that they have usually some
peculiar defects—Mr. Mark Anthony. This picture of
the " Lone Church " is free from some disfiguring man-
nerisms which belong to others of this artist's works, and
does not seem to have been produced in obedience to the
dictates of any particular school of art, except that great
one which was open long before Raphaelitism, or pre-
Raphaelitism, were talked of, and will be open, we should
think, when those opposing schools are talked of no more.
The "Lone Church" is exquisitely painted. Its name is
hardly a suitable one. It conveys an idea of a dryer and
waste strand, with a dismal edifice dropped down some-
where gloomily, amid blank loneliness all around, and the
picture itself does not in the least realize such sombre
ideas. The- motto, selected from Mrs. Hemans,
" What hidcst thou in thy desert e meg and cells,
Thou ever-sounding and mysterious main ?"

is even less arproptiate, seeing that very little of the
mysterious main is visible at all, and that it forms too
unimportant a feet ure in the p%inting to induce the
spectator to enter into any speculations upon the question
put by the poetess. Another question, however, which
one na'ght ask is, why do artists, when they use quotations
as mottoes, generally select them so very unappropriately,
and from authors of the•second, third, fourth, or fifth class ?

" Tartuffe at Supper." In this instance the artist has
not taken his theme, or his motto, from a secondt.ciaes
author, We cannot, however, think the painting at all
equal to the subject: The scene here depicted does not, we
need scarcely inform the reader, take plac3 in " Tartuffe." at
all, but is described by Dorire to Orlon Whether the artist
was embarrassed by the difficulty of embodying an incident
thus received, as it were, at second-hand, we do not know ;
but it does not appear to us that there is much in the three
figures represented in this picture characteristic of Moliere's
conception. Tartzfffe is unctuous and rosy enough but
Moliere conceived a c' aracter having in it greater depths of
hypocrisy, than are:suggested in a merely sleek and rabi-
cnd visage. Madaiqc is vary unattractive ; indeed, with_
so unwinning an exterior we can hardly see how the
catastrophe which unveils the hypocrite could have bsen
brought about • Dorine is vulgar and shrewish looking,
and nothing more. The accessories and details, of the
picture ore well and carefully painted; bat the whole effect
seems to•us by no means in keeping-with the cha•acter of
the great master of satrical comedy, whose most remarkable
production it endeavours to illustrate.
No. 1001—" Kitty of Coleraine"—is cne of M. Erskine
Nicoll's piquant and characteristic Irieh sketches. This
artist is thoroughly filled with the hnmcnr which h 3 Faints,
and is curiously happy in his mereels of Irish life. In this
instance. however, he has fallen into something of a topo-
graphical error, by giving to "lively Kitty" and her
admirer the garb and outward manner of the peastantry of
the south of Ireland.

" The Tatting of the Shrew," by Mr, Robert B. Mar-
tineau, is an instance, among many others in this Exhibi-
tion, of elab)rate and minute treatment of details, and
general failure of the whole efilict. There is vary much
of careful and admirab'e execution in thi3 picture, but the
spectator who believes that the female figureis in the least
like Shakvere's _Katherine, or the gentleman with his bank
to thA Pnfrtinhin, rso that thooo io the slightest
gleam of genuine humour in either figure, is a more con-
tented critic than most artists are happy enough to have.