The Sun.
London, England, 1854-03-02 00:00:00

THE BRITPH INSTITUTION.

A recent visit to the Gallery of the British In-
stitution has afforded us no small gratification,
though productive also, in one or two instances, of
feelings of considerable disappointment. Among
the 587 works of art displayed in the three apart-
ments, there are as usual, and as a matter of
course, abundance of paintings not merely deficient
lin merit, but some of them absolutely detestable,
either on account of their intolerable weakness, or
of their preposterous exaggeration. But scattered
sparsely among these are others, " few and
far between" (nevertheless, for that very
reason only the more peculiarly welcome), eminently
and especially deserving of our earnest commenda-
tion. Let us mention, at once, one of those which
we cannot but regard as one of the noblest pictures
in the collection a landscape in every respect
exquisitely beautiful. It is by T. Denby, No. 64,
" A Summer Evening in North Wales"—one of
those summer evenings when the earth seems to
have recalled the atmosphere, the tranquillity, and
loveliness of her primeval paradise. Every ripple
on the current, every nod of the sedge and the bull-
rush—each individual touch of the brush becomes
a " thing of beauty," under the hand of a young
artist so wonderfully well qualified to be the inter-
preter of " earth, ocean, air "—Shelley, nay, every
true poet's—; " beloved brotherhood." Several
charming little trifles are visible here and there—
such, for example, as No. 6, " Ophelia," by W. E.
Frost, or as No. 46, " Feeding the Swans," by F.
Goodall—the latter a study from one portion
of a well-remembered masterpiece. A huge
picture, in a conspicuous position, No. 22,
" Coiners," by J. Inskipp, is one of the vul-
gar daubs disfiguring the Exhibition. Another,
No. 73, is Sir George Hayter's melo-dramatic
representation of " The Arrest of Cardinal Wolsey
for High Treason," in which the Cardinal may be
said to have what is called, in the coarse verna-
cular, "a fit of the staggers," under the influence
of the gentle touch and subdued whisper of the
Earl of Northumberland. Another picture, from
the hand of J. Inskipp, No. 166, " The Bournous,"
ought to have been catalogued as a specimen of
scene painting. A sort of tea-tray landscape, in a
storm, is No. 165, " The Refuge," by J. Linnell.
There is a fancy portrait, too, by H. W. Pickers-
gill (of course, in armour), No. 157, called, by
some mistake in the catalogue, " The Favoured
Knight," instead of the 111-favoured Knight. Ex-
traordinary skill is displayed by Henry Jutsum in
No. 153, " The Rocky Path of a Mountain Burn,"
in which the autumnal fern and heather are pen-
cilled with admirable minuteness. Sant has
this season two contributions to the gallery
—one of them, No. 148, " The Youthful
Artist," a lovely, blue-eyed boy, a foreshadow-
ing, as it were, of Clive Newcome—before
he had arrived at the epoch of the moustache.
Ansdell has a capital common scene, with sheep and
donkeys.—No. 137, " Lytham Common." T. Earl,
too, favours us with a droll sketch of No. 226, a
" Rabbit Fancier"—and R. Buckner with No.
233, a charming limning of a " Highland Piper.''
Several of the subjects treated in the collection now
on view are admirably selected—as by G. Holmes
from Bulwer Lytton's " Zanoni," and by T. Jones
Barker from Aytoun's " Lays of the Scottish
Cavaliers." Among the pictures which are at once
recognised as already familiar to the generality are
such exceedingly different works of art as No. 542,
Sir G. Hayter's portrait of the Queen taking the
Coronation Oath, at Westminster, or as No. 314,
one of the most extravagantly humorous incidents
in the life cf Grimaldi, edited by Boz, and illus-
trated by Cruikshank. Of further particulars on
the present exhibition of paintings at the British
Institution, we are as dumb as in so many a Joe
Miller anecdote is a certain disappointing knave
called Deponent.