In our recent notice of the Exhibition of the Royal Academy we passed shortly over the works of Messrs. Millais, Hunt, and Collins. But we think that their example may be eminently useful in showing what should be avoided. They have gibbeted themselves as the voluntary martyrs of conceit, affectation, and ignorance.
Painting is an art both imitative and creative.
The generation who sat to Reynolds were probably in no respect more beautiful than their grandchildren, and the fidelity of Rembrandt leaves us in no doubt as to the quality of the subjects of his magnificent portraits. In both it is the creative, not the imitative faculty in the mind of the artist that has conferred immortality on the work. The duty of the painter when he deals with these subjects is, to give material form and colour, to render palpable to the outward sense the image created in the mind by the grandest and holiest associations. Let any of our readers who doubt this try the experiment Mr. Millais plunges headlong into this revolting absurdity when he represents the infant Christ under the semblance of an unhealthy, unwashed, whining brat, scratching itself against rusty nails in a carpenter's shop in the Seven Dials. The subject is the same as Mr. Millais' picture of last year.