The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-18 00:00:00

THE FRENCH GALLERY.

(THIS-DAY.)
On Saturday afternoon we attended at the.pri-
vate view of the pictures collected together for the
current season in this now favourite and widely
popular exhibition. The present is the eighth
annual display of the paintings contributed,
spring after spring, to the walls of the Gallery of
the association at 120, Pall Mall, opposite the
Opera Colonnade. The contributors, as the con-
noisseurs of London are well aware by this time,
are artists of the French and Flemish schoots—
pupils many
of them of renowned Dutch and Gallic
painters, some among their number being already
(witness Mdlle. Rosa Bonheur) world-famed
celebrities themselves. Altogether there are now
on view in the single apartment constituting this
" Gallery" little less than 150 separate productions.
Including three charming little sketches at the
vestibule, there are in all 137 pictures arranged—
(alphabetically so far as relates to the names of the
contributors, but not in sequence according to the
order, the anything but numerical order, in which
they are hung)—and numbered consecutively in
the catalogue. According to the courtly regle de
societe," place aux dames," and in obedience to the
dictates of that priority of homage always due to un-
questionable genius, we should refer in the first in-
stance under any circumstances to the renowned ar-
tist already mentioned—Rosa Bonheur, as some may
call her, the Landseeress of her age. Surely that,
remembering her marvellous "Horse Fair," and her
other extraordinary masterpieces in the representa-
tion of the animal kingdom, more particularly of
quadrupeds. Her contributions to the present col-
lection number only three, however, and these three
of the slightest pretension—little unambitious cabi-
net pictures. No. 8. A group of " Shetland
Ponies."—No. 9. A cluster of " Scotch Cattle,"—
and No. 10, the gem of the three, one of the gems
of the gallery, a knot of Donkeys, on a furze
common, a charming little sketch from nature, en-
titled, comically, " The Three Brothers." Numeri-
cally the first picture in the collection, and in some
respects the most ambitious out of the 137 there
assembled together, is No. 1, a wonderful represen-
tation of a " Waterfall," painted by Andrew
Achenbach. The frothing and foaming and swirls
of the roaring waters are marvellously depicted—
and there are portions of the foliage that would
have gladdened even the eyes of Hobbima. Very,
different indeed is the representation of the boister-
ous billows in Theodore Gudin's picturesque
limning (61) of " The Signal"—wher.t, though one
can almost hear the slapping and splashing of the
spray on the rocks, the green waves and the
greenish white spray scattered from their
crests, almost one might say glare and
smell of the bladders of pigment, the smearing
brush and the daubed pallette. This season, how-
ever, it should at once be remarked, the glory of
the French and Flemish gallery is in its children !
Turn to No. 40, for example, " The Naughty Boy,"
by T. E. Puverpr, and particularly note there the
little sister on the wee stool in the foreground, finger
in mouth, listening awe-stricken to the remon-
strance of father, there, the leather-aproned black-
smith ! Look at that delightful urchin—standing
a-stride, looking up, on the broad grin, hearkening
sympathetically to the old man's " Comic Story," in
No. 69, by Louis Knaus ! Or gaze above the Line
upon another side of the gallery, upon Henry
Schlesinger's bewitching representations—here (in
No. 111) of " Sanshine"—there (in No. 112) of
" Shadows"—the same 'addle and the same lassie
under different moods, now prettily coquetting,
now pouting in anger back to back—companion
pictures that we may yet hope to meet in engrav-
ings, as we have already met the two kindred pic-
tures (were they not by the late Frank Stone P)
"Going with the Stream," and " against the
Stream !" Glance then awhile, a little below the
line, upon the same wall, at J. L. Gerome's sweet
little cabinet picture of (59) " Soliciting Alms"--a
calm little saint-headed acholyte, seated on one of
the rush-bottomed chairs, the dole-bag on his
knee, in that daily almonry of the people
aoroad, close by the benitier, just in-
side the porch of church or cathedral. In
another part of the Gallery the same artist,
Gerome, a not unworthy pupil of the late Paul
Delaroche, has a far more ambitious and re-
markable painting than this pretty miniature
glimpse of the acholyte namely (No. 57),
" Diogenes at Athens," the half naked cynic seated,
cross-legged, on straw inside his tub—(a huge
earthen vessel turned upon its side in the
Athenian street)—just lighting his lantern to
go in quest of "an Honest Man" (according to
his view, as the world well knows, " a non est
man !") with a number of dogs squatting upon
their haunches round his tub watching his proceed-
ings. Turning back again, however, to what we
have called the glory of the French Gallery this
year, its children—who will not gaze with an
emotion of pleasure upon E. P. Frere's (No. 51)
"Feeding the Baby ;" who will not stand awhile
studying with delight every face and feature of the
same artist's admirable painting (No. 49), the
"Infant School at Dieppe," a picture that none
will admire more, we doubt not, than W. C.
T. Dobson, our Academy associate, or than.
Thomas Webster, our Royal Academican. C.
Fortin's (No. 48), though simply entitled " The
Offering," and telling quietly much the same story
in a different way, has evidently,we cannot but thiuk,
been painted with a vivid remembrance in the
artist's mind the while, of Beranger' dainty chanson
of La Mere Aveugle. Only here, sleep comes in-
stead of blindness ; and it is the mother (or com-
panion) not the daughter who is supposed to have
been spinning. Otherwise, we can but stand before
the picture, humming to one's self the while—
" Quoique avengle, je surveille ;
A tout je prete l'oreille,
Et vous soupires tout bas.
Votre Colin n'est qu'un traitre.
Mais vous ouvrez la fenetre ;
Lise, vous ne filez pas l"
A delicious little riverside view is (No. 72) Emile
Lambinet's " Towing-path mil the Seine, near
Bougival," the artist being a pupil of Horace
Vernet, of Drolling and of Boisselier. There are
two nobly conceived and solemnly impressive scrip-
tural pictures by another pupil of the late Paul
Delaroche, a pupil of his not yet mentioned in this
notice—namely, Monsieur C.F. Jalabert—an artist
whose exquisite limning of another scripture scene.
a scene long since hackneyed in art, L'Annoncia-
tion, has long been to ourselves an object of
peculiar admiration. The young Hebrew
maiden startled from her prayers—(while yet
kneeling, as it were sidelong, in adoration)
—by the celestial apparition of Gabriel the Arch-
angel! Here in these two latest pictures from the
brush of M. Jalabert, the themes are chosen
from the life of our Lord himself, not from that
of the Mater Christi ever Blessed and
Virginal.
In No 57, it is " Christ Preaching" from the boat
upon the lake of Genesareth—and in No. 58, it is
"Christ in the Garden of Olives" rousing Peter
and John from their slumbers to the awful on-
coming of the Passion and the Crucifixion.
Enough has been here said, however, already, we
trust to induce all the lovers of art who have leisure
now in London, to pay at least one visit to the
Gallery in Pall Mall now adorned with this varied
contributedaninterestingdby seventy-six of the most skilled
collection. of paintings—pictures
pupils in the Art Schools of France and n 4 an ers.

DzATir of LORD LILFORD.—We have to an-
nounco the death of Lord Lilford, who expired on Friday
last, at Lilford•ball, the family seat near (kindle, after
protracted and painful illness. Thomas Atherton Powys,
Baron Lilford, of Lilford, county of Northampton, in the
Peerage of Great Britain, was the eldest of the six sons of
Thomas, second Lord, by Henrietta Maria, eldest daughter
and coheir of Mr. Robert Atherton, of Atherton-hall, Lan-
cashire. He was born '2d December, 1801, and on the death
of his father in July, 1825, he succeeded to the title ail
estates. The deceased nobleman married the 24th of May,
1830, the Hon. Mary Elizabeth Fox, daughter of Henry
Richard, third Lord Holland, and sister of the late Lord.
By her ladyship, who survives him, he leaves issue four sons
and six daughters. The late peer was educated at Chrig.tr-
church, Oxford, where he was second class in
.classis.nino.
1824. His Lordship was for several years a Lord in Wir_t_.
to her Majesty. Ile is succeeded in the family honours
and large estates in Northamptonshire and LanscaV!lr:tg
his eldest son, the Hon. Thomas Lyttleton PowYs, Du
18th of March, 1833, and married m 1859 to.
of Low Goforth, Northumberland,
Brand-
ling, youngest daughter of Mr. Robert Witham/di,
jo_sraßarbman.