The Sun.
London, England, 1856-03-31 00:00:00

THE_ CRIMEAN EXHIBITION.

There is yet another very noticeable Shilling
Exhibition not enumerated among those particu-
larly mentioned in cur remarks of Thursday. We
allude here, of course, to the important and sin-
gularly interesting "Crimean Exhibition," dis-
olayed upon the walls of the Gallery of the Fine
Arts, No. 121, Pall-mall, a gathering of many at-
tractive and really beautiful pictures, illustrative
of the recent struggle before Sebastopol. A con-
jecture may readily enough be formed as to the
peculiar interest attached to this same " Cri-
mean Exhibition," when it is observed that,
it comprises all the original drawings made
in the East by William Simpson—the gifted artist
engaged by the enterprising and munificent firm
of the Messrs. Paul and Dominic Colnaghi
and Company, for the celebration, in an
enduring form, of the great events of the War with
Russia, the celebration of those events, that is to
say, through the medium of a splendid and costly
serial publication. Added to which, the Gallery of
the Fine Arts, Pall-mall, has now banging upon its
walls, in the midst of those celebrated drawings
from the pencil of Mr. Simpson, two large and am-
bitious oil paintings from the brush of Edward
Armitage, long since famous, even among the chief
celebrities of the Academy, as the painter of the
great picture of the Battle of Meanee ; of another
great picture, representing Samson grinding in the ,
will of the Philistines; and of yet another, perhaps
the greatest of all three, the one representing (if
we may so phrase it, very reverently) a scene of
Biblical voluptuousness, such as might have bung
in the palace halls of ancient Nineveh, or have
adorned even the council chamber of the imperial
Nebuchadnezzar. The two important works of
art from the easel of Mr. Armitage, but very
recently completed, and just now added to the
numerous attractions previously stored up in
the Gallery of the Fine Arts in Pall-mall, por-
traying—the one, the Soldiers' Battle, the terrible
and sanguinary struggle among the ruins of luker-
man—the other, the renowned light cavalry
charge, the theme of the Laureate's Ode, the
fatal but glorious feat of arms, accomplished
under the breathless observation of the op-
posing armies, by the Earl of Cardigan
and his men, in the valley of Balacklava. Mr. Ar-
mitage has celebrated both these heroic days with
extraordinary power, with a hand not less skilled
in its way than that which guided in eloquent
prose the pen of William Russell, or than that
which guided in impassioned poetry the peu of
Alfred Tennyson. Each of these two great pic-
tures tells its tale with thrilling effect. Neither
of them can by possibility be examined without
exciting feelings of profound emotion in the heart
of the spectator. The incidents depicted are ter-
rible, but their terror is not that of the raw-head-
and-bloody-bonds class—a spectacle of mere animal
horror or brute ferocity. Foot soldiers and
horsemen are stabbing, cutting, probing, hack-
ing, shooting each other with rifle and pistol,
thrusting at each other with lance and bayonet,
struggling together pell-mell in horrible confusion,
some dying, some dead, some terribly and some
again but slightly wounded—but nowhere is the
appetite for the merely morbid gratified by the in-
troduction of anything in the shape of simple and
immitigable ghastliness. Nowhere has the artist
dashed in Igleams of horror comparable in any
way to those lighting up with a lurid glare the
battle scenes painted in verse by a poet like Leigh
Hunt. As—

" Behold him ! By a ditch he lies
Clutching the wet earth, Ms eyes
Beginning to be mad. In vain
His tongue still thirsts to lick the rain
That mocked but now his homeward tears ;
And ever and anon he rears
His legs and knees with all their strength,
And then as strongly thrusts at length.
Raised or stretch'd he cannot baar
The wound that girds bite, weltering there ;
And Water !' he cries, with moonward stare."
Or again—
" A wound unutterable—Oh GA !

Mingles his being with the scd.
Ills nails are in earth, his eyes in air,
And ' Water !' ho etieth—he may not forbear.
Brave and good was he, yet now he dreams
The moon looks cruel ; and he blasphemes."
Nothing of all this horrifies the beholder, who
pauses in front of Mr. Armitage's battle scenes,
and yet they are no less powerful in their way than
those penned in ringing couplets by the gentle-
hearted reprobater of these terrific spectacles of
human butchery. Besides the pictures already
alluded to as adorning the Gallery of the Fine
Arts, there aro various other objects of considerable
interest lending the 'aid of their attractions to
the ample and various collection there happily
grouped together. A recently completed full-length
portrait of Her Most Gracious Majesty, robed in
white satin, and wearing the ribbon and star of
the most noble Order of the Garter—a likeness
painted expressly for the loyal corporation of the
City of Dublin—will be examined with interest, not
merely by every Englishman, hut by every foreigner
also who may visit the Crimean Exhibition. Re-
gard will also be had by every one indiscriminately,
wo doubt not, to the relics of the war dangling on
hooks, here and there, in between the many picture
frames, as, for example, articles of the dress of a
Russian soldier, or portions of the costume of
one of the gallant Zouaves, fragments of uniform
actually worn by one of these heroic soldiers at
the taking of the Malakhoff ! It deserves, more-
over' to be here especially notified that, in addi-
tion to the original drawings made by Mr. Simp-
son, and which hare long since been familiar to
the general public, there are several new ones re-
cently produced by the • same artist, including a
comprehensive representation of the retreat of the
Russians across the harbour to the north forts of
Sebastopol.