The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-06 00:00:00

THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION'

As if in compliment to the Prime Minister of
England, the motto selected for the Catalogue of
this year's [The One Hundredth] Exhibition of the
Royal Academy has been taken from Isaac
Disraeli's work on " The Literary Character." The
passage chosen is one inculcating the truth that
Poet and Painter are only truly great by the
mutual influence of their studies"--Milton, Michael
Angelo, and Handel, according to the argument
of Disraeli the Elder, belonging to the same cite-
gory, " the same imaginative powers and the same
sensibility, only operating through different mate-
rials." The distinction is just and the motto appo-
site.

Since last season, the Academy has lost three great
names—now sorely missed from the new Catalogue
and the new Exhibition. Clarkson Stanfield, the
painter (among other great marine pictures) of "The
Abandoned"—Baily, chiefly famous as the sculptor
of " Eve at the Fountain"—Marochetti, to whose
hand England owes, among other noble art-trea-
sures, that kingly and knightly effigy of " Coeur de
Lion," which in 1851 was conspicuous among the
glories of tie first great International Exhibition,
as it is conspicuous, now, among the few endurable
adornments of the London Streets under the shadow
of the legislative palacedown at Westminster. These
threeare, now, looked back to with mingled regret and
admiration, as we had formerly occasion to look back,
regretfully and admiringly, to Turner and to Mul-
ready. But—as if in compensation to us for our re-
grets over the more recently deceased Academicians of
eminence—the living Academicians have, as a body,
greatly distinguished themselves in 1868 : some
among them, indeed, by successful manifesta-
tions of their genius entitliug them to the
profoundest admiration. Webster, for one, it is
true, contributes nothing whatever to the wall-
of the gallery, but he is happily abe::„..t the
only conspicuous defaulter : and he b '.-es a Homeric
i
right to slumber, for once
in
awhile,
wo
hf
eh , i
s when he
having
so pleases, if only byreason
so often before now sunned •us with the
llomeric (otterwise " hiextinguishable ") laughter
awakened by the lirnnings. of his homely and
humorous pencil.
Millais, who has five pictures, here, is chiefly
remarkable fOr two among the number, namely
(6), " Sisters, " and (70) " Rosalind and
Celia." Admirable though the latter is, espe-
cially in the humour of Touchstone—commend
es to the former as one of the choicest gems
of the whole collection, mere-portrait group
though it is, namely, as a delineation of three
sweet little maidens clad in white, with blue
ribands tying up their bonnie brown hair, and
binding their girlish waists, as they stand clus-
tered together in the garden, among the green and
lowering branches of rose and azalia. Meaning ee
lisparagement whatever to (22) " Felice," one of
Sant's blooming chili-portraitures, Millais beats
Sant on his own ground, as a glance will convince
any ono who cares to make that invilioui com-
parison. Herbert, in (138) " The Valley of
\loses in the Desert of Sinai," is still in his element,
as if, with the great Mosaic Lawgiver, ha, too,
were fresh from the Holy Mountain. The sandy
wilderness, the blinding sunshine, the arid per-
spective, the pink hill-tops, the lights and shadows,
the men and the camels, the broken fragments of
marl and litter in the foreground all its
'details, this landscape is truly wonderful. Stand-
ing before it we are far away, there, upon
the instant, upon the sacred soil of Pales-
tine. Feed, in (172), " Worn Out," has produced
another of his choicest masterpieces. A picture
never told its story more swiftly or more elo-
inently. A labourer (if ever yet a labourer has
oeen depicted by the painter's art) is depicted, there,
to the life, to a hair, to at. The poor Lilo w—
atterly " worn out" with watching all through the
light by the bed of his sick child—has now, himself,
;alien as soundly asleep in his chair as the little
sufferer, who lies, there, near him, on the humble
pallet, hard-by, comfortably tucked under poor
•‘ faither's" coat for greater warmth. The horsy
right hand of the father still laxly holds the
.pectaeles with the aid of which he has been
reading out, we perceive, for the enjoyment of
the wee bairn, from the child's story-book dropped
on the floor near the " clouten shoon" on each
poor outstretched limb. The fag-end of the dip
is burning; down towards the socket. The early
laylight is gleaming in through the windows. It
is a home scene of the homeliest character that goes
straight to our heart, and that lives afterwards
rividly in our remembrance. Not far removed from
his is the picture of the year (188), a dream of the
Father of English Poetry, realised at last by a
living English Poet-Painter. Chaucer's Cus-
ttaunce sent adrift by the Constable of
Alla, King of Northumberland—lepictel iu
a flood of wonderful moonlight in an
open boat on the waters at midnight 1 Custaunce,
ms she appeared, when--
" Mr litel child lay wepying in hir arms,
And unto haven hir eyghen up sche caste,"
as Geoffery Chaucer wrote of her with his pen 01
light, and as Paul Falconer Poole has here deli•
aeated her with a pencil to the full as luminous. It
is :an exquisite work of art, and takes rank at
once among the painter's greatest achievements.
O'Neil's (247) " Before Waterloo" realises to us
the distinctive peculiarity of the artist's composi-
tions, namely, that his figures are, as a rule,
grouped on an inclined plane, and are either always
going up or coming down. Here, for once, they
tre doing both—the scene depicted being the stair-
mse after the ball at the Duchess of Rich-
.nond's. Goodall has two companion pictures
lelineative of the Blessed Virgin—one (267), "Mater
eurissima," the other (284), "Mater Dolorosa"—the
former being wonderfully beautiful in its virginal
purity. Hook has three of his green, briny sea
pieces, the best of the three, to our mind, being
(270) " The Morning after the Gale," the senti-
ment and feeling of which are most happily ex-
pressed. The little sailor boy balancing himself
on the rail in the foreground is charmingly
drawn in every tint and line. Richmond
has never been in greater force than he
is this season but, admirable though all
seven of his portraits this year are without one
:xception, the happiest achievement among them
dl, evidently a labour of love with the artist,
is (59) that of the Bishop of Oxford. It is a
breathing likeness. And among all Richmond's
works is only surpassed to our mind by his noble
crayon head of Dr. Newman, produced many years
tgo, and now in the possession of Mr. Henry
Wilberforce. The Hogarth of our Day—meaning
Frith—has five works in the gallery, all of them
good, one among them a masterpiece. The last-
nentioned is, as a matter of course, the Johnson
Ind Garrick picture (87), representing that
mmortal incident, in Boswell, of Goldsmith
trrayed complacently in the bloom-coloured
.;oat made by John Filby, of the Harrow in
Water-lane. Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, Rey-
molds, Murphy, and Boswell, all are there, with
Davies and Bickerstaff. The place, in fact, is Bos-
vell's Lodgings in Bond-street. The time is 1769.
Che central figures in the group are those of
•1 Garrick playing round Dr. Johnson with a fond
vivacity, taking hold of the breasts of his coat, and
ooking up in his face with a lively archness, compli-
.nenting him on the good health which he seemed
hen to enjoy, while the sage, shaking his head,
meholds him with a gentle complacency." Leigh-
, nu's chief success this year is (328) " Ariadne
tbaudoned by Theseus"—the dead, white, lovely
;imbs, and the flowing, delicious drapery being very
triumphs of art. Though Sir Edwin Landseer has
t much larger picture in the place of honour in
he chief apartment, his happiest eff art, to
our mind, is (347) a delineation of a dead deer
just shot down among the snows on the hill
top, with a deer-hound couched beside it. Bur-
gess, Spanish Eurgess, as he is called, contri-
butes to the Gallery, in (391) " Stolen by
Gipsies," the most important work he has pro-
duced since the memorable Bull-fight scene
that first fixed attention upon him as a marvellous
delineator of character. Maclise has two pictures,
both worthy of his great powers, but neither to our
surprise in the principal room. One (439) is "The
Sleep of Duncan," from Macbeth ; the other (585)