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

THE SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS,

(THIS DAY.)
At this popular Gallery the annual " private
vie w,"so called, is about the absurdest of misnomers.
'On Saturday afternoon, when we attended (having
a remembrance of the past) w:th a very faint hope,
indeed, of finding the opportunity for ones of any-
thing at all like a " Private" view, the noble suite
of five rooms constituting the Saffolk•street Gallery
proved to be fairly crammed full of fashionable con-
noisseurs. The merest glimpse—as at the Royal
Academy exhibition—could alone consequently be
obtained of the most important pictures of all
in the collection—namely, those hung in the place
of honour, namely (where Pope tells us the spider
" lives," that is, feels and. thrills with a subtle
sentience) along the line. Any deliberate criticism,
therefore, as the result of a Private View, after
hustling among a throng of crinolines and black
coats, peering at momentary intervals of the most
tantalising brevity between perpetually alternating
spoon-bonnets and chimney-pot hats at works of art,
now oil, now water-colour—any deliberate criti-
cism, as the result of a view thus obtained in the
midst of so much babble and confusion, would be
idle for anyone seriously to adventure upon.
Occasionally, when the throng of visitors would
for a while thin, almost disperse, so as to afford
one the opportunity of an instant's observation
of some picture thus accidentally brought within
reach of anything like appreciation, we were re-
warded for our perseverance in " doing" the gallery
—that is, inienduring the crush unavoidably.having
to be encountered by anyone making, as we
perseveringly did, the tour of the whole five apart-
ments. The old familiar exhibitors were there
in as strong force many of them as ever. The
President, Mr. Hurlstone, insisted upon recogni-
tion by every one entering the gallery—and this,
as usual, by reason of those obtrusive Family Por-
trait groups, in some of which we are almost fain
to look for—an orange in the hand of each of the
children—as in the instance of the famous family
portraitures in the Vicar of Wakefield. Mr. J.
B. Pyno this year appears to greater advantage
than he has done now for many past seasons—
holding his own vigorously, as, in one department
of landscape painting, an artist wholely unrivalled.
A single picture is alone contributed to the
gallery this year by J. J. Hill, but it is an ex-
quisite work—simple as simple can be in the
idea of it—yet, for all that, an exquisite work
a work worthy of the gifted artist when
at his best. "The Gleaner" is the title of
it—this same gleaner being a charming specimen of
rustic English beauty, a poppy in her hair, a bench
of corn ears in her hand. There is a wonderfully
animated, but for a reason immediately to be men•
tioned, a wonderfully eccentric anti. even ridicu-
lous painting, upon a large scale, by Roberts,
entitled "Beaching the Lite Boat," the odd thing
in which is that every creature represented, the
savers and the saved, in all the drench and whirl of
the boiling surf is as dry as a bone, clothing and all,
in spite of the world of waters through which one
and all of them must have passed I Holmes has a
capital bit of humour in humble life, in " A Sana-
tory Commission," particularly as the fun of the
incident is expressed in that half prcfile of the f
blonde boy who is scrubbing the poor wretch of
dog in the tub—a boy so fat that he can hardly, one
might fancy, kneel. Colo's " Harvesting in Surrey"
is a wonderful effect of level sunset glory, shining
over the harvest-fields under a black cloudy sky
bringing to view a myriad mystic lights and sha-
lows, and setting one or two of the picturesque old
farm-house or old manor-house windows in the back-
ground all ablaze ! There appeared to us—througl
the throng—to be several charming contributions to
the gallery this season from the Bouviers—both
from J. Bouvier and J. Thuvier, senior—
but one only among the works emanating
this season frcm any member of that accomplished
family could we on Saturday obtain anything like