The Sun.
London, England, 1858-03-22 00:00:00

FINE ARTS.

Portrait of lord Palmerston. Painted by Francis
Cruickshank. Engraved by G. Zobel. Pubs
lished by Owen Bailey.
There is now on view at 123, Pall-Mall, a grand
national portrait of the late Prime Minister of
Great Britain, the Right Hon. Henry Temple,
Viscount Palmerston. It is of full length life-size,
and was painted during the months of June and
July, 1857, from actual sittings given by his lord-
ship at Cambridge-blouse, Piccadilly. The scene
is the interior of the House of Commons. The
occasion is the assembling of the new Parliament
on Thursday, the 7th of May, 1857, the day on
which the ex-Premier returned to-power triumph-
antly after appealing to the country upon the
Chinese War question, and having his appeal re-
sponded to, far and wide, as it were, by acclamation.
In the backgrouud of the picture there may be
dimly recognised the Bight Hon. the Speaker in
the chair, and scattered here and there upon the
benches, on the other side of the table, some of the
leading members of what was then her Majesty's
Opposition. There, for example, is the Right Hon.
B. Disraeli, now himself once more Leader of the
House of Commons. There, by his side, is the
Crichton of his party, Sir Edward Lytton, now no
longer conspicuous upon the front bunch, but ban-
ished by circumstances to the shadowy seclusion of the
third—the seat occupied of late by the tabood
chief of the Liberals, Lord John Russell. Alto-
gether the picture is a startling reminder of what
was and what is—it is a significant memento
enough of the recent transformation. The Ins are
out, and the Outs are in. The victor of yesterday
is the vanquished of to-day. It is a type of the
evanescence of popularity and of the instability of
power. As a portraiture of the ex-First Lord of the
Treasury the painting is singularly truthful. Its
truthfulness in this way is as the truthfulness of a
daguerreotype—uncompromising. Mr. Francis
Cruickshank is in this respect not the least bit of a
Lawrence or a Winterhalter. His brush is not
dipped in the daintiest pigment upon the pallet—.
flattery. His pencil is never guided from the direct
line of fact by the perturbing influence of compli-
ment. Ile.would never do for a court painter—he
is too scrupulously accurate. He is rather one of
those faithful artists for whom old red-nosed Oliver
had a preference—a man who would copy a wart
not less unmistakeably than a dimple. It is in this
honest and true spirit that Mr. Cruickshank
has painted the present life-size full-length
portrait of Lord Palmerston. It is the noble
viscount as he is with his seventy* odd years
upon him—not as he may have been before
be was fifty, with his hair neither grey
nor thinned, and his face unwrinkled. Precisely
as he looks now—he is here represented. In this
way the painting will be all the more acceptable to
after times. As such, contemporaries cannot but
regard it, as we-have regarded it, with satisfaction.
The engraving of the work is announced to have
been entrusted to G. Zobel, in whose hands the
truthfulness of the graver will emulate the truth-
fulness of the brush, already commended as the
conspicuous merit observable in the painting by
P. Cruickshank. The production can hardly fail to
be very welcome to the still numerous admirers of

the ♦eterau statesman, of whom it is the exact por-
traiture, or, as Shakspere has it, the "counterfeit
presentment."

" God Save the Queen." Painted by Mrs. E. M.
Ward. Engraved by W. H. Simmons.

In the same Gallery, 123, Pall-Mall, there is
hanging a cabinet picture, entitled, " God Save the
Queen," from the easel of the accomplished wife of
one of the youngest and most gifted of our Royal
Academicians. It represents the fair artist herself
in her maternal character—seated at the piano,
playing an accompaniment to the _National
Anthem, chaunted by the three eldest of her bloom-
ing children. The fourth is visible in the back-
ground, clambering, baby-like, down the staircase---
evidently bent upon adding another voice to the
domestic concert. It is a charming picture alto-
gether ; a tasteful, graceful limning, in every way
worthy of Mrs. E. M. Ward ; one of the most
bewitching of whose previous productions we very
well remember to have been a realization upon
canvass of the toilet-scene' of the exquisite Queen
of the May, of the poet Laureate, Alfred Tennyson.

fVood Carving. By William Bryce.
A really wonderful specimen of artistic ingenuity
is on view at the present moment at 3, Pall Mall
East, the well-known gallery of the Messrs.
Colnaghi. How shall we describe it ? .How can
it in any way be realized without being actually'
seen, and not only seen but studied minutely and
examined almost microscopically ? Fancy a solid
block of box-wood, about nine inches by six, carved
by no more delicate implements than—a penknife !
a bradawl !! and a needle !!! Fancy the surface so
cut and punctured that on the close of the artist's
labours there should be revealed a marvellous
delineation of what Mr. Bryce aptly calls "The
Moment of Victory !" It is the moment of
victory in a duello between a couple of game-
cocks. The conqueror radiantly triumphant,
as we may almost term it, in the vibra-
tion of every feather—for one can hardly
imagine the bird to be motionless. The c::nquered
being, on the contrary, prostrate in all the abjec-
tion of a defeat the most complete and ignominious.
Besides these two principal figures in this extraor-
dinary specimen of wood-carving, there are wonders
of artistic skill to be detected in all parts of the
background —human figures, above all human
faces, trees, houses, a whole landscape. There is
an old woman looking out of the lattice window at
the tight with features expressive of eager curiosity,
which said old woman alone is worth five or ten
minutes' careful scrutiny. Again, there is an
urchin's countenance thurst between the rails of a
wayside paling—cheek, mouth, eye, every atom of
it beaming with delight and admiration. William
Bryce is proving himself to be a worthy disciple in
the school of Grinling Gibbons. After this
example of his " cunning-of-hand" we look to him
for nobler works-of art of a kindred description.
More ingenious productions of this kind we almost
defy him or any one else to accomplish. " The
Moment of Victory" might apply to the comple-
tion of the artist's toil upon it hardly less than to
the close of the " carvelled" contest between the
box-wood gamecocks.