New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1851-04-17
THE FINE ARTS.
The National Academy OF Design.

The National Academy OF Design'
l.
The exhibition is so rich in landscapes that our
critical notices naturally begin with them, and we
shall say all that we have TO say upon this depart
ment before proceeding to that Of figures
Mr. DURAND the President. has nine works
upon the walls. OF these it strikes as that NO.
70, "a Landscape" in the second gallery, is the
most characteristic and the most Satisfactory, al
though undoubtedly it is not the one upon which
he has labored most. But it has in sentiment that
sweet tranquility aud in treatment that maturity
and grace OF manner, not without ieebleness' that
always mark this artist. Mr. DURAND finds his
parallel in poetry, in the descriptive, pastoral
school. He ranks with Thomson and Bloomfield
with the poets who have a deep and just feeling
efthe commonest aspects Of Nature, and faculty
of expression whose character indicates the kind
Of satisfaction it expresses. Il is an objective
school, as the Germans would say-thRtis, school
which is content with the portrait Of Nature, and
does not care to penetrate it's spirit. Hence there
comes to be no individual character in its works
They are pleasing transcripts of natural scenes,
as such. The artist of this school has not seized
Nature and welded il as a symbol to express his
own meaning, but what we all consciously see
and feel in Nature he puts into graceful form. His
pictures do not smite US with the suspicion Of
something yet unHpprehandsd by W, folded a.. >hs
massive foliage, or gliding along the haunted hor'
ION Of the moor. The pictures OF this school are
sunny and soft. We like to hang them upon the
walls in rooms where we live. There they breathe
the same consolation aud rofreshment over the
sodium Of the day that the original scenes in the
landscape sugsestto the man escaped from cities
oJoy tohm "a his retreat,
ImmAuilsd "a amsfosa dak.
10 DRINK tie cooler ar, aud marx
The Ian tcale wintug ttrough tie heat
But Nature no less inspires than consoles She
tempts every man in the degree of his genius to
WOO her profoundest secret, and in the degree Of
his genius he wins it Thus Turner uses Nature
as means. In his famous picture of the Lo
eomotive and Train at full speed upon the Great
Western Raiway--it is not that scene which he
primarily wishes to show u.s. but that, only as the
Indication Of something deeper, and to make us
feel and see, in contemplating his picture, all
that the artist saw and felt in contemplating
the scene. so in that remarkable picture Of
the casting Of Wellingtons statue. For the
frst moment the eye is simply dazzled There
seems to be whirlpool only Of fire. And no
wonder at the dazzle and surprise, and no won
der at the profound and astonished satisfaction
that ensues-for into that furnace the artist has
thrust the Orient and India, and Spain and the
long line of brilliant victories, that flash along
Wellisstons career. The artist thereby proves
that he s an artist, in revealing to the friends Of
Wellington the real significance of the statue
they had erected In Turner picture We are made
TO see all that occasioned the erection of the
statue.
This illustrates the character Of the demand
naturally made by the mind upon the artist. 1t
10 to show us the significance of what We see in
Nature. The artist stands by my side and looks
over the same landscape or into the same face,
and then reveals to me all the character Of which
Twas unconscious. 1t is this alone that redeems
his creation from the charge of nero imitation,
by which we mean, q mere superficial resem.
blance. In the last rigid analysis Of course. all
art 10 resolved into imitation. because oil types
exist originally in Nature. But the highest art
is the vision Of those types and the ability to
make all men see them. This truth can be very
clearly illustrated in Poetry. Walking in a June
sunset after thunder shower, every susceptible
man is conscious Of singular glow OF feeling in
the exceeding beauty of the moment. Bat the
emotions is very vague. He perceives only that he
has some Kind Of feeling, which gradually reels
away into revery, leaving sadness quite as
much because he could not fix the feeling, as be-
cause it was essentially mournful. Now to all
such men, who are of the POLITICALLY sensitive la.
ture, he will be the poet who most fully shows
them what they saw and felt and this special
service 10 done for them, as one instance, in the
sith poem of Tennyson's In Gemorlan," 20
which We refer the reader beginning
Sweet after she wsrs, AnbrcsalGr,-
Thin Kind OF success is achieved by Turner and
also BY Claude-whOse finest pictures are the ex.
preston OF that peculiar spirit Of Italian life and
climate which every poetic person perceives in
Italy.
OF course, in such remarks, we DO not mean
strictly to compare poetical descriptions With
paintings, nor do We forget that every landscapes,
has the same theme to treat and the same mate.
rial to treat it with. You may say that il the AZ
list truly paints what he sees in Nature the same
result mus. be necessarily produced upon the
mind That in portrait painting, also, if the out
line Of the face is iustly drawn and the VARIOUS