The Sun.
London, England, 1856-12-08 00:00:00

THE FLEMISH EXHIBITION.
AT 121, PALL-MALL.

On Saturday afternoon we attended at the
Private View of " The Flemish School of Arts"—

opened this day to public inspection in the Cal•

ery, 121, Pall-Mall—the present year being the

first annual exhibition of this particular School in
London and Westminster. At the Gallery, 121,
Pall-Mall, 121 Pictures are now displayed and

catalogued ! Although a rather considerable

number of these paintings are to our thinking
curiously indifferent as works of art—many others

are of a merit really remarkable. The " indiffe-

rent" portion of the collection, let us acknowledge
at once are, fairly, a puzzle to us. For we pre-
sume the Paintings now hanging on the walls of
the Gallery may be regarded in some sort as
" picked" Paintings. Hence, assuredly it may
bee predicated reasonably enough—either that the

" Flemish School of the Fine Arts" as at pre-
sent constituted is anything but a model School
after all—or that the taste and judgment
of those entrusted with the responsibility of
selecting the " exemplars" of that School con-

stituting the present Collection, are any-
thing but infallible. However, we content
ourselves with this general reference to the
least meritorious part of the Exhibitiox now

opened to public view in the Pall-Mall Gallery—
making this reference, nevertheless, be it said,
almost, let us observe, in simple justice to our
own national School of the Fine Arts ! That exilt-

ing English School so long, and so pertinaciously,
and so pretentiously "schooled" by the existing
Flemish School as of little worth, as mistaken,
and puerile, and blundering. Really—with the
picked paintings now at 121, Pall-Mall, before us
—we don't think England, in regard to her Fine
Arts, need fear the result of any Flemish com-
parison—whether it be in regard to the land-
scape, seascape, historical, sacred, portrait, or
even genre departments. Even, we say, in
regard to the genre class of pictures, in
which, if in any, the Flemish School may
rationally claim for itself a position of pre-emi-
nence. For if in landscape and seascape the Eng-
glish School could boast very recently of the
greatest name of which (as that of a grand Reflec-
tor of Nature upon Canvass !) the world has any
record—the glorious and immortal name of J. W.
M. Turner—can we not exult even now in the
possession of Herbert and Eastlake, in regard to
the Scriptural ? Of Maclise, and Dyce, and
Poole, and Elmore, in regard to the Historic ?
Of Stanfield, and Pyne, and latterly, too, in this
particularly national department, Lee, also to
sea views ? Of Witherington and Redgrave in
landscape painting ? Of Lee and Cooper—
jointly the Cuyps of these latter times
in Great Britain in pastoral scenery ? Of
Landseer and Herring—the worthy con temporaries
of Rosa Bonheur—in animal portraiture ? Of
Frost and Piekersgill in classical and mythological
representations ? Of Everett Millais and Holman
Hunt, and divers others of the " New Genera-
tion " in the Field of the Fine Arts, as the re-
vivers of what is called, for want of a better
naive, Pre-Raphaelism ? And so on—and so on—
step by step—department by department—through
all the various branches and sections of the great
and varied Art of Painting. Until we venture
boldly to challenge comparison even with the
Flemish school in the genre class of pictures—
justifying the challenge by the simple mention of
such men of genius and master-hands as William
Mulready and Thomas Webster. Enough—with
this " provoked" flinging down of the gauntlet
at the feet of all the perverse Depre-
ciators of the living Great Artists of England,
let us assuage for a moment our long dormant
indignation. And, having eased our heart just
the least bit, in the world by so doing, let us turn
for a few moments to a consideration of one or
two things appearing to us not unworthy of notice
in regard to this First Exhibition of the Flemish
School of the Fine Arts in London.
It is an exhibition obviously drawn into the
light of day in England by the cordial and genial
reception accorded during the two or three seasons
last past to the French Collection. It is displayed
in the same Gallery, and appears to be con-
ducted under very similar if not absolutely
identical arrangements. Mr. F. Pilgeram is
the Secretary— Mons. Vouillon, the Manag-
ing Director Herr Van Der Broeck, the
Agent in Brussels. Conspicuous among the ex-
hibitors is Pierre Van Schendel, a pupil of the
academy of Antwerp, whose night scenes are
something wonderful. He has no less than five
remarkable works of art hanging on the walls of
the Gallery. " The Poultry Market" (104) is a
charming little cabinet picture, two larger pictures
of the same class being " The Charity" (105), and
"The Fruit Market" (103)—the last mentioned
quite marvellous in its blended lights and sha-
dows, produced harmoniously, yet conflictingly,
by lamplight and moonlight ! Fiorent Willems,
in a sketch of an " Algerian Woman"
(118), gives a rather artificial limning of
form, features, and costume, all coloured into
a glow of Egyptian voluptuousness. Ilde-
phonso Stocquart, in his " Drove of Cattle at
the Watering Place" (90), gives, us very boldly, a
huge cattle-piece, emost as daring in size as
Mademoiselle Bonheur's " Horse Fair"—but suc-
cessful, it seems to us, only in one of the sheep to
the left, a creature as like the reality as like could
well be. Alfred Stevens arrests attention by his
large melodramatic picture of a " Poor Woman
Arrested as a Vagabond" (89)—the snow scat-
tered about the causeway and piled on the top of
the dingy wall in the background, " bringing out"
the dark figures of the Gensdarmes, of the Pauvre
Femme, of her little son the dirty young gamin
at her side, and of the lady-passer-by, who is
hurrying after the group with her extended purse
—rather vividly. Henri le Bon has a lovely,
reedy, rushy " View near Ambleteuse" (67), with
watter-lilies littered luxuriantly over, we had
almost said the foreground, meaning, instead of
that, the forewater ! "After the Storm" (66),
by the same hand, being a foaming, washing,
weltering sea, one might almost fancy it, not of
salt water, but of froth and snow. Adolphe
Lamme, in " Reading the Will" (65)—anything
but like Wilkie—presents to view a clever picture
enough, but one replete with affectations. Adolph
Knyff's "Shady Brook and Cattle Drinking"
(61) has a most pre-Raphaeliteforeground. Edward
Hamman's " Andrea Vesale " (47), peremptorily
commanding the passer-by to tarry before it, as a
vigorous specimen, if not a very agreeable one, of
the genre historique. Dominique Holfelirs
" Visit of His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon
and Her Majesty the Queen Victoria to the Ex-
hibition in Paris" (52), will be recognised by
many at a glance, as the original of the well-
known engraving displayed of late in the windows
of the priutsellers. Paul Hagelstein's " Guinea
Pig" (46), is the oddest picture imagin-
able, in one respect, seeing that it is a
sort of a Murillo beggar-boy, without the merest
ghost of a guinea pig anywhere at all visible—it,
the guinea pig, lying perdu, we suppose, inside
the little vagrant's cage—a chile, we take
it, just after the heart of Mr. Hurlstoue.
" Don't you believe it" (23), by Adolph
Dillens, is the glimpse of a Pastoral Court-
ship on a stile in amongst the meadows—
so prettily and naturally painted, that we could
almost fancy a child-spectator longing to clamber
over the stile into the field beyond, to pick a
handful of the daisies growing in among the grass
with such a silvery luxuriance. Another eourt-
ship in the room, is "The Proposal" (8), by
Ferdinand De Braskeleer, so surprisingly true to
of the silly Serving Men of Shakspere stepped from
life, that we could imagine the hero of the piece one
the stage into the painting. The first picture
of all, out of the 121 in the Collection, is the oie
would be
very affecting, we dare say, but
for the ludicrous
we shall cud with—" The Last Study of Geri-
can't " (1) by Belloin—a scene which
mischance of the artist's
pencil (as he draws)
resting, as ill-luck would have it, !
As a whole the
upon the very
tip of the young girl's nose
Flemish Exhibition is interesting, and will fully
repay the visitor for the toil of its examination.