The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-21 00:00:00

NEW SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN

WATER COLOURS.

(THIS DAY.)

The approach of the spring season is again
heralded by the opening of this popular and attrac-
tive Exhibition. The gallery of the New Society
of Painters in Water Colours—although the public
will not be admitted until Monday morning—ac-
cording to annual custom allowed, this forenoon,
the privilege of an anticipative inspection of its
accumulated works of art, to that portion of
the general public whom we can hardly call
the select few, but should rather designate
the select many, seeing that they occasionally
cause that long apartment at 53, Pall-Mall, to bear
a resemblance to the crush room at the Opera upon
the night of a Farewell like that new threatened
to her admirers by Piccolomini. The present is the
twenty-sixth annual exhibition of the New Society
of Water Colourists, so that the title of the associa-
tion is fast becoming somewhat of a misnomer. It
is in many respects as meritorious as any one of
its quarter•of-a-hundred predecessors—in several
instances, moreover, being distinguished by works
of unusual excellence. The collection—including
the smaller pictures hung up on the two double
screens—extends to the number of 372 pro-
ductions altogether. Although we were in
attendance at the Private View this morning very
early it was noticeable et a glance that already
there were sprinkled over the collection—sparsely
at the time of our entrance, but more plentifully
before our departure—those charming little green
tickets which are surely as the droppings of manna

to the exhibitors! One of which tickets, it may be
remembered by the readers of Mr. Thackeray's
masterpiece, was once upon a time so charm-
ingly transferred to her own fair bosom like a
brooch :(to the horror of old Lady Kew) by that
wilfullest of heroines, Ethel Newcome, then
affianced to the most lion. Fergus Angus Malcolm
Mungo Roy, Marquis of Farintosh ! Among the
very earliest of these early " sold" pictures was
No. 339, the exquisite " /Enid" of the Poet-
Laurate's Idylls of the King—as deliciously and
delicately portrayed by the pencil of Augustus
Bouvier as .by the pen of Alfred Tennyson—
where—

" Likco a blossom vermeil white,
That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath,
Moved the fair 'Enid All in faded silk l"

One of the most ambitious pictures in the whole
gallery is (No. 224) the dreamlike vision of " Queen
Mab," valued by the artist (Henry Tidey) at £2so—
circular glimpse of dreamland and fairyland that
would have rejoiced the heart, could it but have
gladdened the eyes, of Shelley. The contribution
to the Gallery this year from the easel of Edward
Corbould is not unworthy of that popular artist,
either in imagining or in execution. It is scrip-
tural and yet eltrich—No. 250, " The Visit of
Saul to the Witch of Endor " —Saul prostrate
by the margin of the charmed ring, the
ghost just risen at the mandate of the wierd incan-
tation. Hard by (No. 240) is Henry Warren's
limning of the tawny beauty depicted by Moore
in his " Lalla Rookh," dreaming away childhood
among the roses of Bendemeer. Carl Werner
has a clever pre-Raphaelite limning of a Monk in
white serge (No. 167) by the garden cloister of S.
Zeno, at Verona, and a little further on (N 0.169), ho
gives us a wonderful peep at " Venice as it is," near
the Palazzo Delfini. Aaron Penley and Charles
Vacher have shown themselves as industrious as
usual. Louis Haghe has, in No. 78, produced a
rich and glowing representation of the Murder of
Rizzio—the apartment in which the murder is being
perpetrated having not the smallest resemblance in
the world to that little unsightly den in the Palace
of Holyrood now shown to visitors (with the
bloodstains on the floor) as the actual
scene of the assassination. We must hurriedly
close our remarks, however. They are but the
momentary record of our first hasty survey of the
Exhibition. Amongst the earliest of those in
attendance this morning at the private view, we
observed the Bishop of Oxford—the number of the
visitors to the gallery before our departure begin-
ning rapidly to multiply.