The Sun.
London, England, 1857-05-05 00:00:00

THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

(SECOND NOTICE.)

Ye•terday, in our introduct ry no`ice of the
Royal Academy Exhibition for the present season
—a collection opened at last to Public View this
morning—we took occasion to regret the absence of
six eminent artists from the list of exhibitors in the
current catalogue. At the same time we hastened
to congratulate ourselves and the visitors generally
upon the conspicuous success achieved this year by
six other eminent artists, their contemporaries.
The regretted defaulters being—Eastlake, Webster,
Hunt, Lee, Ward, and Elmore. The successful ex-
hi bitors—Mulready, Herbert, Leslie, Dyce, Danby,
and Landseer. In the latter category we rejoice to
think that many other distinguished names may be
enumerated. Several of these, indeed, would not
have remained until now to be enumerated,
but for the time and space occupied in the record
of their competitors' aahieverneuts. Prominent
among these in truth—though this, be it said, more
by reason of his remarkable reputation than because
of any immediately present achievements—there
was one whose name we did mestiiin yesterday—
perforce, however, but cursorily—Daniel Maelisel
A name sounding pleasantly to us all—fort-most
among our genre pain'ers, now th Mulready has
almost laid aside the brushes and the palste—chief
among the chiefs of his high Art in this country
now for many years—renowned among the having
celertrities of our English School, thrr ugh that
magnificent series of poetical and li i-torical creations
by which his baud has so nobly illustrated our Na-
tional Annals and our National Literature Yet
Maclise in 1857 disappoints us ! Recogni-ing in
him all this, he disappoints us, this year neverthe-
less. Possibly this may be sinipy because "we re-
cogn.se in him all this"—because he himself has
rendered us, in his own regard, exacting and fasti-
dious. May be—but, however it is, it is ! We
are disappointed ;we are dissatisfied. Yet No. 78
is an exCasrdinary work in many particulars—iu
invention, in minute detail, in grouping, &s. It is
a large canvas crowded with celebrated personages
—Peter the Great, Czar of Mitscovy, working in
the midst of them, in old Deptford dockyard, as a
shipwright. The young Riissian, riughly clad, his
cheek blooming with health, his limbs muscular
and well-proportioned, his eyes la: ight and keen,
pauses suddenly in his labour, leaves the saws ick-
ing (we can almost fancy it still vibrating) in the
plank under his knee, and looks up curiously
etiqiiiringly, observantly at his visitor. That
Visitor—William the Third, late of Oratige, brown
wigged, hook-nosed, cold, cautious, and self-pos-
sesse I. In attendance up in the King are Lords Car-
marthen and Shrewshury, his Majesty's President
of the Council and Foreign Secretary. In attend-
ance upon the Czar a motley gathering enough—a
monkey, a dwarf, a negro-boy, a young Drury-lane
actress, two or three other flaunting lasses, frilled
and furbelowed—and, together with these, scattered
about the dockyard as Peter's fellow workmen in

*hipbuilding, some of his great nobles from the
countries of till Don and the Volga, Menzikoff,
Golownin, Galitzin, and Siberaki, planing, filing,
hammering—a very babel of art zan-p ttricians. Ali
the accessories are wonderfully painted—the princi-
pal actors in the ecene (for Macli.,,e) most unsafs-
factorily! The chips and shavings littered about the
ground, the metallic portions of the implements, the
wooden models, all are marvellous for their vrai-
semblance. But with regard to the face!, the
figures, the very clothing of the historical persons
introduced, it is, alls ! be it said, diarne rically the
reverse. The c mplexions are hec'ic and unnatu-
ral, the texture of the raiment unlike any known

textile fabrie—velve,, silk, or woollen. The atti.

to les are extravagant and theatrical. The expres-
sion, in the majority of ifistatices, improbable and
exaggerated. Altegethcr this extraordinary pic-
ture, while asteni-hing us by its unmistakable evi-
dences of power, oppresses us, we repeat, with a
sense of disappointment. Not so the architectural
marvels reveale 1 to us by the canvas of David
Roberts—conspieu nis among whose three contri--
butions to the Gallery is unquestionably, to our
mind, No. 41, "Interior of the Duomo at Milan."
Although there are many rare beauties discernible
even at a glance in h's two other productions, No.
88, "The Pizza Novena at Rome," and No. 418,
the "Interior of the Chureh of St. Gemmaire, at
Lierre, in Brabant." The third of Sir Edwin Land-
seer's admirable pictutes in this year's collection
still remains to be briefly particulerieed by us— as
it deserves to be—most eulogistically. No. 93,
"Rough and Ready," not equal, of course, to the
two reinaf kable peintings from the samehand else-
where in this really noble Academy Exhibition—but
still very admit ahle —as it might well be even then,
seeing that each of those is in its way a veritable chef-
d'ceuvre. The Landseer under notice merely re-
presents a very plump and fussy little hen cackling
as hens can cackle when they have laid an egg !
Looking down calmly upon Dame Partlet a ragged
hack, apparently rather tremulous at the knees,
in the straw-littered yard, sedately impassive and
serenely unimpassioned ! Cope, in No. 503, has
upon a verf considerable scale, and with no incon-
siderable genius, pourtrayed " The Pilgrim
Fatters— sphope i arf ture of a Puritan Family for New
England." Yet, shall we confess it ? we infinitely
prefer his undoubtedly minor productions this
ew
season, No. 39i, " Affronted," a charming picture
of the pret lest, little, wayward minx imaginable,
pouting over her untested dinner, with her tabooed
doll tucked defiantly and perversely under the
tablecloth ! An 1 No. 172, "Breakfast-time—Morn-
ing Gain. s," where mamma, sugar-tongs in hand,
is playing off the old, old practical joke of the
nursery, "Open your mouth and shut your eyes,''
playing it off delightfully upon a little shut-eyed,
open-mouthed Toddle, to the watchful wonder of a pet
dog, and the intense delight of thatyoung puss, little
Two-Shoes, in the background. Egg—pre-occu-
pied no daunt by the responsibility of presiding over
the complicated regulations of the approaching Fine
Arts Eshibit'ou at Maeches•er—has ceutriliu* ed
but one solitary picture to the present collection.
A most interesting and an eminently meritorious
paining j is howbeit, No. 331, " Esmond returns
after the Battle of Wynender—gracefully illus-
trating an incident recorded in the Hist n-y of
Henry Esmond, by W. M. Thackeray. There is
an illustration in anotlur part of the Academy
Exhibition of another fiction, by another Eminent
Novelist. It is Frith's pretty portraiture (No.
125) of "Kate Nickleby at Madaese Mantalini's"
—a picture which will affird many a reader of Biz
the unexpected pie tsure of gazing once more upon
the features of perhaps the most atuntl, certainly
ono of the most loveable and womanly of all Mr.
Dickens's heroines ! Fieth has another painting,
however, and a better painting than this in the Ex-
hibition, No. 152, " A London Flower Girl"—a
sketch in every way redol-nt, and be it added deli-
ciously redolent of the Wel "of thestreets streety,"
the laud of Ceckaigee Redgrave, besides three
other meritori ins pro luctions—one of those much
more thin simply meritorious, exquisitely beautiful
indeed in its sylvan freslines=, No. 189. "The Cradle
oftheßiver,'' with itsfloating shadowand itswoo.led
perspective—has one little picture in the Academy,
whichwe easitstenet to pronfiuticeainasterpiece. It
is No. 62. The Well-knownFootitep"--.A picture
that t':lls its own story at a glance, and tells it how
touchinely and how el quently ! Yet a story as
old as the hills. A soldier, his arm in a sling,
coming home from the wars, openifig the latched
gate of his little garden, striding- along the pa... 1-
way to his cottage Hidden. from , a view of him,
but hearing his forystep-4h, "The Well-known
Footstep"_(seated in the doorway) his wife
and his children ! It is
a lovely composi-
tion—charmingly rendered in every particular.
Horsley surpas-es himself this season, in
No. 338, " Hide and Seek—Found !" A
production very sparkling. and humorous. A
stripling has hidden himself behind the trunk of a
tree where he is atrociously discovered to be by a
beautiful barking wretch of a spaniel—the pet of
the two young ledieq, who have been vainly seek-
ing their playmate in the dis ante, but who now
(one sees the whole thing at a glance) perfectly
well understand chat is the meaning of their four-
foo' eil Friend's noisy greeting. of A Something
behind the tree-trunk ! The Discomfited Hide-er
all the while comically grinding his teeth, and sup-
pressedly shaking his fist at his abominable Discov-
erer ! Not tee last of these successes, not even the
only one of LTorsley's successes in the Academy
Exhibition for 1857. Others may readily he ene-
merated, others we shall take occasion to enume-
rate at our earliest available opportunity.