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

THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

(SECOND NOTICE.)

Yesterday, in our introduct,,ry notice 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 regrett:d defaulters being—East'ake, Webster,
Hunt, Lee, Ward, and Elmore. The euccessful ex-
hibiters—Mulready, Herbert, Leslie, Dyce, Denby,
and Laudseer. In the latter category we rejoice to
think that many other distinguished names may he
enumerated. Sever dof these, indeed, would not
have remained until no to be enumerated,
but for the time and space occupied in the record
of their competitors' achievements. Prominent
among these in truth—though this, be it said, more
by reason of his remarkable reputation than because
of any immedietely present achievements—there
was one whose name we did mentien yesterday—
perforce, however, but cursorily—Daniel Maclisel
A name sounding pleasantly to us all—foremost
among our genre paireers, now that Mulready has
almost laid aside the brushes and the palet. e—cbief
among the chiefs of his high Art in this country
now for many years—renowned among the living
celebrities of our English School, thrcugh that
magnificent series of poetical and historical creations
by which his hand has so nobly illustrated our Na-
tional Annals and our National Literature ! Yet
Macßae in 1857 disappoints us ! Recognising in
him all this, he disappoints us, this year neverthe-
less. Possibly this may be simply because "we re-
cognise 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 extraordinary work in many particulars—in
invention, iu minuee detail, in grouping, dec. It is
a large canvas crowded with celebrated personages
—Peter the Greet,' Czar of Muscovy, working in
the midst of them, in old Deptford dockyard, as a
shipwright. The young Russian, roughly clad, his
cheek blooming with health, his limbs muscular
and well-proportioned, his eyes bi ight and keen,
pauses suddenly in his labour, leaves the saw s irk-
ing (we can almost fancy it still vibrating) in the
plink under his knee, and looks up curiously
enqiiiringly, observantly at his visitor. That
Visitor—William the Third, late of Orange, brown
wigged, hook-nosed, cold, cautious, and self-pos-
Hesse 1. In attendance upen the King are Lords Car-
marthen and Shrewsbury, 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
shipbuilding, some of his great nobles from the
countries of the Don and the Volga, Menzikoff,
Golownin, Galitzin, and Siberski, planing, filing,
hammering—a very babel of artizen-p etrician.s.
the accessories are wonderfully painted—the princi-
pal actors in the scene (for Maclise) most unsatis-
factorily The chips and shavings littered about the
ground, the metallic portions of the implements, the
woodeh models, all are marvellous for their vrai-
semblance. But with regard to the faces, the
figures, the very clothing of the historical persons
introduced, it is, alas ! be it said, diatnerrically the
reverse. The c .mplexione are hectic and unnatu-
ral, the texture of the raiment unlike -any known
textile fabric—velve, silk; or woollen. The atti-
tudes are extravagant rend theatrical. The expres-
sion,of instances, improbable and
exaggerated.
Altogether this extraordinary pic-
i n the m ajLltt
pic-
ture, while -eetoni-hing us by its unmistakable evi-
dences of power, oppresses us, we repeat, with a
sent',3 of disappointment. Net so the architectural
eararvels revealed to us by the canvas of David
Roberts—conspiqums among whose three contri-
butions to the Gallery is unquestionably, to our
mind, No. 41, " Interior of theDuom.o at Milan."
Although there are many rare beauties discernible
even at a glance in his two other productions, No.
88, "The Pizza Novena. at Rome," and No. 418,
the "Interior of the Church of Sr. Gommaire, at
Lierre, in Brabant." The third of Sir Edwin Land-
seer's admirable pictures in this year's collection
still remains to be briefly particularised by us— as
it deserves to be—most eulogistically. No. 93,
"Rough and Ready," not equal, of course, to the
two remarkable paintings from the same hand else-
where in this really noble Academy Exhibition—but
still very admirable —as it might well be even then,
seeing that each of those is in its way a veritable chef-
d'auvre. The Landseer under notice merely re-
pre,ents 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 verj considerable scale, and with no incon-
siderable show of genius, pourtrayed "The Pilgrim
Fathers—De, arture of a Puritan Family for New
England." Yet, shall we confess it ? we infinitely
prefer his undoubtedly minor productions this
season, No. 394, " Affronted," a charming picture
of the prettiest, little, wayward minx imaginable,
pouting over her untested dinner, with her tabooed
dull tucked defiantly and perversely under the
tablecloth ! And No. 172, "Breakfast-time--Morn-
ing Gam- 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 de!ightfally upon a little shut-eyed,
open-mouthed Toddle, to the watchful wonder of a pet
dog, and the intense dolight of thatynung puss, little
Two-Shoes, in the background. Egg—pre-occu-
pied no doubt by the responsibility of presiding over
the complicated regulations of the approaching Fine
Arts Exhibition at Manchester—has cmtributed
but one solitary picture to the present collection.
A most interesting and an eminently meritorious
paining it is howbeit, No. 331, " Esmond returns
after the Battle of Wynendel"—gracefully illus-
trating an incident recorded in the History of
Henry Esmond, by W. M. Thackeray. There is
an illustration in another part of the Academy
Exhibition of another fiction, by another Eminent
Novelist. It is Frith's pretty portraiture (No.
125) of "Kate Nickleby at Madame Mantalini's"
—a picture which will afford many a reader of Bez
the unexpected pleasure of gazing once more upon
the features of perhaps the most Natural, certainly
one of the most loveable and womanly of all Mr.
Dickens's heroines ! Frth has another painting,
however, and abetter painting than this in the Ex-
hibition, No. 152, " A London Flower Girl"—a
sketch in every way redolent, and be it added deli-
ciously redolent of the land "of the streets streety,"
the land of Cockaigne ! Redgrave, besides three
other meritorious productions—one of these much
more than simply meritorious, exquisitely beautiful
indeed in its sylvan freshness, No. 189. "The Cradle
ofthe River,'' with itsfloati ng shadowand its wooled
perspective—has one little picture in the Academy,
whichwe hesititenot to pronouncoa masterpiece. It
is No. 62. "The Well-knownFootstep"—a picture
that tells its own story at a glance, and tells it how
touchingly and how elequenty ! Yet a story as
old as the hills. A soldier, his arm in a sling,
coming home from the wars, opening the latched
gate of his little garden, striding along the path-
way to his cottage ! Hidden from a view of him,
but bearing his footstep—Ah, "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 1" 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
auwretch of a spaniel—the pet of
the
ettwiful barking
oyouug ladies,
who have been vainly seek-
ing their playmate in the dis'ance, but who now
(one sees the whole thing at a glance) perfectly
well understand what is the meaning of their four-
foo!od Friend's noisy greeting of A Something
behind the tree-trunk ! The Discomfited Hilc-er
all the while comically grinding his teeth, and sup-
pressedly shaking his fist at his abominable Discov
erer ! Not the last of these successes, not even the
only one of Horsley's successes in the Academy
Exhibition for 1857. Others may readily be enn-
merated, others we shall take occasion to enume-
rate at our earliest available opportunity.