The Sun. — 1860-04-21 (London, England)

NEW SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN  WATER COLOURS.  (THIS DAY.)  The approach of the spring season is again heralded by the opening of this popular and attractive Exhibition. The gallery of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours—although the public will not be admitted until Monday morning—according to annual custom allowed, this forenoon, the privilege of an anticipative inspection of its accumulated works of art, to that portion of the general public whom we can hardly call the select few, but should rather designate the select many, seeing that they occasionally cause that long apartment at 53, Pall-Mall, to bear a resemblance to the crush room at the Opera upon the night of a Farewell like that new threatened to her admirers by Piccolomini. The present is the twenty-sixth annual exhibition of the New Society of Water Colourists, so that the title of the association is fast becoming somewhat of a misnomer. It is in many respects as meritorious as any one of its quarter•of-a-hundred predecessors—in several instances, moreover, being distinguished by works of unusual excellence. The collection—including the smaller pictures hung up on the two double screens—extends to the number of 372 productions altogether. Although we were in attendance at the Private View this morning very early it was noticeable et a glance that already there were sprinkled over the collection—sparsely at the time of our entrance, but more plentifully before our departure—those charming little green tickets which are surely as the droppings of manna  to the exhibitors! One of which tickets, it may be remembered by the readers of Mr. Thackeray's masterpiece, was once upon a time so charmingly transferred to her own fair bosom like a brooch :(to the horror of old Lady Kew) by that wilfullest of heroines, Ethel Newcome, then affianced to the most lion. Fergus Angus Malcolm Mungo Roy, Marquis of Farintosh ! Among the very earliest of these early " sold" pictures was No. 339, the exquisite " /Enid" of the PoetLaurate's Idylls of the King—as deliciously and delicately portrayed by the pencil of Augustus Bouvier as .by the pen of Alfred Tennyson— where—  " Likco a blossom vermeil white, That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, Moved the fair 'Enid All in faded silk l"  One of the most ambitious pictures in the whole gallery is (No. 224) the dreamlike vision of " Queen Mab," valued by the artist (Henry Tidey) at £2so— circular glimpse of dreamland and fairyland that would have rejoiced the heart, could it but have gladdened the eyes, of Shelley. The contribution to the Gallery this year from the easel of Edward Corbould is not unworthy of that popular artist, either in imagining or in execution. It is scriptural and yet eltrich—No. 250, " The Visit of Saul to the Witch of Endor " —Saul prostrate by the margin of the charmed ring, the ghost just risen at the mandate of the wierd incantation. Hard by (No. 240) is Henry Warren's limning of the tawny beauty depicted by Moore in his " Lalla Rookh," dreaming away childhood among the roses of Bendemeer. Carl Werner has a clever pre-Raphaelite limning of a Monk in white serge (No. 167) by the garden cloister of S. Zeno, at Verona, and a little further on (N 0.169), ho gives us a wonderful peep at " Venice as it is," near the Palazzo Delfini. Aaron Penley and Charles Vacher have shown themselves as industrious as usual. Louis Haghe has, in No. 78, produced a rich and glowing representation of the Murder of Rizzio—the apartment in which the murder is being perpetrated having not the smallest resemblance in the world to that little unsightly den in the Palace of Holyrood now shown to visitors (with the bloodstains on the floor) as the actual scene of the assassination. We must hurriedly close our remarks, however. They are but the momentary record of our first hasty survey of the Exhibition. Amongst the earliest of those in attendance this morning at the private view, we observed the Bishop of Oxford—the number of the visitors to the gallery before our departure beginning rapidly to multiply.