The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-04 00:00:00

THE SUFFOLK STREET GALLERY.

Although, according to custom, we duly at-
tended ►upon the occasion of the Private View of
the pictures here collected together, and although
we have since then revisited the Gallery for the
express purpose of subjecting its contents to a
more careful and deliberate examination, we have
been precluded until now from making any com-
ment upon this, The Society of British Artists'
thirty-eighth Annual Exhibition. Upon considera-
tion, however, the delay is by no means matter
of regret to ourselves. For upon a closer scru-
tiny of the 877 works of art here distributed
over the walls of this ample suite of apartments
—upon a much closer scrutiny than was in any
way practicable upon the afternoon of the Pri-
vate View, when the Five Rooms were thronged
by far more than the usual number of art con-
noiseurs, we have found reason to modify in some
particulars our estimate of the general character
of the present year's collection. Several of the
less obtrusive and more meritorious contributions
to the Gallery win the attention only after the
eye has become accustomed to the glare of the
great majority of productions here exhibited,
those more gorgeous, and in one sense more am-
bitious paintings by which they are surrounded.
Scattered at rarest intervals through the
collection, there are undoubtedly noticeable
here and there, even at a superficial glance,
a " select few" among these 877 pictures,
that are at once recognised as remarkable,
that almost instantly captivate more or less of our
admiration. But with the mass of paintings iu
this collection, it is really and truly (without one
particle of exaggeration) very much indeed what
it was with a certain class of quasi poetry, accord-
ing to a memorable phrase in one of Lord Macau-
lay's most formidable criticisms. The art here
revealed for the most part is indubitably, as Ma-
caulay pronounced its sister art to be in the instance
of the unfortunate metrical aspirant then under
the lash of that terrible Edinburgh Reviewer—of
the " Turkey•carpet " school or character. " His
writing," quoth Macaulay, " bears the same rela-
tion to poetry which a Turkey-carpet bears to a
picture. There are colours in the Turkey-carpet
out of which a picture might be made. There are
words in these writings which when disposed in
certain orders and combinations, have made, and
will again make, poetry, But, as they now
stand, they seem to be put together on prin-
ciple in such a manner as to give no image
of anything, in the heavens above, or on
the earth beneath, or in the waters under the
earth.'" It is, we repeat, with the bulk of these
paintings as it was with the bulk of that sot-disant
poetry : here, as there, the art is unquestionably of
the Turkey-carpet style or character. Remember-
ing what the limner's art can accomplish, remem-
bering what it can be and has been—
" Caraeci's strength, Corregio's softer line,
Paulo's free stroke and Titian's warmth divine—"
(Pope's Epistle to Jervas.)
one cannot 'view the generality of tne pictures here
exhibited without a certain sense of depression, with.
out experiencing a certain solicitude for the prospects
of the British Artists of whose skill (or rather want
of it) they are the manifestation. Altogether the

twofold character (already specified) of the Exhibi-
tion now opened for the current season in the Suf-
folk-street Gallery is, to us, in one sense exceed-
ingly like a realization of
.Mason's art-rule from
Du Fresnoy—

" Forbid two hostile colours close to meet,
And weave with middle tints their union sweet ;
Yet varying all their tones, let some aspire
Fiercely in front, some tenderly retire."
Here, without doubt, the more flagrant majority of
the pictures now being exhibited do certainly aspire
"fiercely in front"—with a vengeance. While some
as certainly—the consoling minority—'tenderly
retire," have for the most part to be looked for—but
these " when found," after Captain Cattle's plan, we
" make note of" on the margin of our catalogue.
Conspicuous among the more outrageous majority
of the Exhibitors, however, must assuredly be
classed Mr. Hurlstone himself, the Society's Presi-
dent. His industry, season after season, we pre-
sume, meets with its reward somewhere—certainly
wins from us, and we believe from the gene-
rality also, but a very small modicum of admiration.
Magnificence of colouring he does unquestionably
impart to his canvass, with the affluent brush of a
house-painter, almost, one might fancy, at times
with the lavish trowel of a plasterer. No 284,
" Spanish peasant girls of thespurs of the Alpujarras
mountains," estimated in the catalogue at 125 guineas
may be particularised as one of the most notable
among the six specimens displayed by him this
year, exemplars of his bad drawing and of his
gaudy audacity as a colourist. Another well known
member of the society, Mr. Woolmer, contributes
to the Gallery this season as many as seven of his
mannered productions—productions almost equally
glaring in hue, decidedly better in drawing, occa-
sionally more careless in manner, always more
vague and mystical in significance. Of these, No.
28
NyWhio'claet
seven,h,''
may
Iy be specified, as,
perhaps, the least meretrici-
ous. Mr. Tyne, another eminent member, once one
"The
out Bridal
of the
of the glories of the Society's Gallery, contents him-
self this year with a single production, a little cabi-
net picture : No. 73, quite unworthy of his genius,
showing us "Rome from the Ilex Walk," in the
piacian Gardens. Unworthy of Mr. Pyne's
genius, that is to say, not so much intrin-
sically, not so far as the little painting itself goes
—but simply viewing it as the one solitary product
of his indisputably large abilities. A charming
embodiment.of '‘‘ Summer," No. 172, by J. J. Hill
(another popular member of the Society), a picture
.amostinstantaneously lit up in the margin
by that little green ticket so dear to an
artist's eyes—the little green ticket roguishly
pinned, to her stomacher by Ethel Newcome
when affianced to the Marquess of Farintosh—
" Summer," as she is there depicted by Mr, Hill,