The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-04 00:00:00

Mr. Simpson's Water Colour Drawings

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(THIS DAY.)
This afternoon there Ills been opened to the
general public at the German Gallery, No. 168, New
Bond-street, a collection of Witter Colour Drawings

of it very remarkable character indeed—a collection
that we had the gratification of examining in detail
at the Private View on Saturday. This collection,

which is among the fruits of three years' persever-
ing and often-interrupted labour oa the part of the
artist, labour to him often interrupted, that is to say,

by reason of his extended travel, may be pronounced
at once, we believe without any risk of exaggeration
in our so designating it—one hitherto, wholly and
absolutely, unparalleled. Mr. Witham Simpson, the
artist in question to whose skilled and unassisted
right hand we are alone indebted for these beauti-
ful and varied water colour drawings, will be
remembered by many thousands of the lovers of art
in this country as having already won for himself a
high reputation at once as a Traveller and as a
Painter by his wonderfully vivid and realistic
series of illustrations of the Crimean War.

Putting his implements of art again into his
knapsack, he has now in a tour of three years'
duration "done" India, Thibat, and Cashmere. The
collection of drawings resulting from this tour will
eventually, it is announced, number some two
hundred and fifty altogether. Of those two hundred
and fifty-158, fully completed (the rest are in pro-
gress at the artist's studio), now adorn the walls of
the German Gallery. Visiting that gallery, taking
a luxurious stroll around it, catalogue in hand,

examining one by one those charming watercolour
drawings of Mr. Simpson, to the number already,
as we have said, of more than one hundred and
fifty—it is for all the world like taking an
easy hop, step, and a jump across the chief
part of the width of this eastern hemisphere of
ours: that interval, namely, called by an ab-
surd misnomer the route of the Overland
Journey, the over land part of it being j ust infinites-
simal as compared with the extent of the sea
voyage—it is for all the world, we say, like taking
aflying hop, step, and a jump across the whole width
of that route (measured as the crow flies) and alighting
upon the far-off soil of Hindostan ! Aided by our
artist we are (there at 168, New B )nd-btreet) enabled
to make one at the gorgeous Durhar held by the Go-
vernor-General of India—in Mr. Simpson's time
the late .amented Lord Canning. We are gazing,
not without emotion, at the lovely gothic memorial
now erected over that ghastly well at Cawnpore,
we are watching the fierce contest at the direst of
the gates of Delhi. We are gazing in wonder
and bewilderment at the Buddhist devotee
whirling his devout cylinder, in other words
(literally) praying by mat:binery ! We are being
trotted along (half asleep) in the torch-
lit dooly—the Indian palanquin. We are being
jolted (not half asleep) along the Grand Trunk
Road at the tail of the Oriental post horses. We
are listening to the whirr and clatter of treddles and
shuttlesin the weaving of the pushm into the famous
shawls of Cashmere. Now we are loitering inside,
now again outside, one of the Anglo-Indian Bunga-
lows, dropping in at tiffin and being faintly cooled
as we it at table by the flapping of the punka over-
head. The whole of the beauties, splendours, pecu-
liarities, eccentricities, habits, customs, costumes,
architecture, landscapes, street views, &c., 8z3., of
Hindostan are portrayed upon the walls of this ex-
hibition, by the magical brush of our great travelling
voter-colourist. When we attended on Saturday
afternoon at the Private View, it was interesting to
note there, among the crowd of fashionable visitors
to the gallery, the keen bright face of perhaps the
Master Diplomatist of the Age—now unhappily
shelved in the midst of all this diplomatic con-
fusion, born of meddling and muddling, " the Great
Eltchi," as Mr. Kinglako loves to call him, other-
wise Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.
Mr. Simpson's collection, we observe, is to be sold
either as a complete whole (the Nation ought to pur-
chase it !) or it is to be scattered piecemeal among a
crowd of purchasers, supposing no One purchaser
should present himself. Meanwhile the Messrs.
Day are preparing the work for publication, as
another of their costly and magnificent specimens
of chromolithography. A thousand subscribers will
thug have the opportunity of obtaining the work in
a serial form, that is in forty-two monthly parts,
each part, price two guineas.