Chapter X: Part XI (4)

From such monstrosities it is a relief to turn to Mr Frank Stone's graceful creations. He also has taken a subject from the second scene in the _Tempest_, No. 342, Miranda's first sight of Ferdinand. Compared with Mr Millais' Ferdinand, that of Mr Stone is a demigod. Estimated by its intrinsic merits, it strikes us as a little theatrical--rather too much of the stage-player in the air and attitude. Miranda has a sweet and youthful face; Prospero is too young, and does not look his part. This is not one of Mr Stone's happiest efforts, but it is a nice picture, and we prefer it to his other in the same exhibition, _The Gardener's Daughter_, a young lady attitudinising under a rose-tree, with a pair of admiring swains in the distance. This artist is too apt to give his male lovers a sickly look, as if their love disagreed with them. The best picture he has shown this year is one in the British Institution--_Sympathy_--two very pretty maidens, with an expression of pleasing sentiment in their faces. Barring a little occasional mannerism, Mr Stone is a very delightful painter; and in our opinion, if he had had his deserts, he would some time since have been a member of the Academy. Were it not invidious, we could cite a few, who write _Associate_ after their names, who have less claim than he has to that honorary distinction. Mr Stone has a great deal of fancy, a fine feeling for the beautiful, and we are indebted to him for many charming compositions and lovely female faces. And certainly if popularity be a test of merit, which we admit is not always the case, he ought years ago to have figured in the list of Academicians.

That very conscientious and careful artist, Mr Charles Landseer, has a pretty and well-painted _Girl in a Hop-garden_, and a larger and still better picture--perhaps the best he has for some years produced--of _Æsop_, surrounded by several of the animals celebrated in his fables. There is a great deal of quiet humour and nice finish in this picture: the figure and face of the hump-backed fabulist, and those of a girl, who seems admiringly to listen to his allegorical wisdom, are exceedingly good. Mr Dyce has only one picture, and really that had been as well away. An ugly Jacob is protruding his lips to kiss a vulgar Rachel. The colouring is hard and bad, and there is a pervading gray tint which is not natural. We hope Mr Dyce, R.A., can do better things than this. We prefer Mr Cope's _King Lear_, which has considerable merit. There is fine expression in the old monarch's head. Cordelia pleases us less; and perhaps, upon the whole, the best figures in the picture are those of the musicians and singers. There is a something in this painting that reminds us of Maclise. Of Mr Cope's other pictures, _Milton's Dream_ has a nice tone of colour; and the two sketches for fresco of Prince Henry's submission to Judge Gascoigne, and the Black Prince receiving the order of the Garter, are spirited and good. Mr Redgrave's principal picture is No. 233. _The Marquis having chosen patient Griselda for his wife, causes the court ladies to dress her in her father's cottage._ Griselda has a pretty face, and sits in an easy, graceful attitude: the ladies are coarse, and the expression of scorn upon their countenances is theatrical and affected. The heads of some of them are too big, and out of proportion with their bodies. _The Child's Prayer_, by the same artist, is a pleasing picture; well painted, particularly the woman's head and hand, which latter has a look of Rubens. Mr E. M. Ward has two pictures of very different subjects. _Isaac Walton Angling_ hardly claims any particular notice; _James II. receiving the News of the Landing of the Prince of Orange in 1688_, has more pretension and greater merit. It certainly contains good painting: the grouping of the figures and the expression of some of the faces are also praiseworthy; but yet it hardly satisfies us. The queen's face and attitude, as she advances, already sympathising with the agitation visible on his countenance, to her husband's side, are very charming. James's physiognomy is almost too much discomposed to accord with the passage from Dalrymple quoted by Mr Ward. And it strikes us, although this may seem hypercritical, that there is something ludicrous in the eternal suspension in the air of the letter that he has just allowed to escape from his fingers. Upon the whole, however, this is a clever picture, and, as far as we had opportunity of observing, it attracts a very full share of public attention; although that is no criterion of merit, so large a proportion of the loungers through an exhibition being more readily attracted by a piquant subject than by artistical skill. And probably no subjects are more generally popular than those that may be styled the homely-historical; scenes in the private apartments of royalty; the personal adventures and perils of princes, whether in the palace or the prison--on the steps of the throne or the verge of the scaffold. There is a fair sprinkling of such pictures in the four exhibitions now under notice; and as we have no pretension to be otherwise than exceedingly desultory in this article, whose limits, and the heterogeneous subject, preclude our being otherwise, we will at once dispose of such of them as deserve notice, and have not already received it, commencing, in order of catalogue, with Delaroche's picture of _Cromwell looking at the dead body of Charles I._ This is a picture concerning which the most conflicting opinions have been uttered. It has received fulsome praise and unwarranted abuse. Some have lauded it as perfection merely because it is by Paul Delaroche; others have decried it with a virulence and injustice warranting the suspicion that some envious brother of the brush had temporarily abandoned the palette for the pen, and applied himself to slander merit he himself was hopeless of equalling. We are aware but of two valid objections that can fairly be made to the picture. The subject is certainly ghastly and horrid; but, on the other hand, it has been rendered as little so as possible by the consummate skill and good taste of its treatment. And none, we think, but the very fastidious, will dwell upon this point. The other objection (technical only) is to the coppery tone of colouring of certain parts of the picture, particularly of the flesh. This premised, we are aware of little else that can fairly be alleged against this very fine picture. The countenance of Cromwell certainly does not agree with the most authentic portraits that have been handed down to us, or with the written and traditional accounts of his features. The artist has idealised his hero--has abridged his nose, increased his under jaw, and thrown nearly the whole expression of the face into and around the mouth. M. Delaroche having taken such liberties, we ought to be particularly grateful to him that he has not gone farther, and, in aiming at a great effect, fallen into exaggeration. Out of twenty French artists, nineteen, we suspect, would have given us, with the strong and dangerous temptation of so striking a subject, an unpleasant caricature. It has been objected that the face is deficient in character and expression, and would perfectly suit any one of Cromwell's Ironsides, who through curiosity should have lifted the lid of the deceased monarch's coffin. It is, to our thinking, an evidence of skill on the part of the painter thus to have left the expression doubtful--a matter of speculation to the beholder. We interpret it as merely meditative. Any emotion it includes is one of exultation at the great and important step the Usurper has made in his upward progress. Of pity or remorse there is no trace.

The next picture in the Exhibition of the Academy, of the class at present under notice, that particularly caught our eye, is No. 491, _The Burial of the two sons of Edward IV. in the Tower_, by Mr Cross, whose painting of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, exhibited at Westminster Hall, will be remembered by many of our readers. The present picture does not redeem the promise of its predecessor. It has a washy, fresco-like look, and a great want of light and shade, which is the more striking because the subject is one particularly favourable to the display of a Rembrandt-like vigour in that respect. The arrangement of the dead bodies is very bad, and they have an emaciated look which was quite uncalled for. On the other hand, the faces of two of the murderers, (one sustains the stone beneath which the grave is dug, and the other grasps the arm of one of the children,) and that of the turnkey, are very expressive. The chief of the gang and the grave-digger are rather strained and theatrical. Upon the whole, the picture disappoints us much. A report, however, has reached us, that it was painted under the disadvantage of ill health, so we will hope that Mr Cross may yet do better things. No. 569, _The Abdication of Mary Queen of Scots at Lochleven Castle_, by J. Severn, is a very tame affair. And we do not greatly admire Mr Lucy's _Parting of Charles I. with his Children_. The subject has been better treated before. But we delight in Mr Joy's conception of Cromwell coveting, and yet daring not to grasp, the crown of England. A bilious misanthrope, with flabby cheeks and lacklustre eye, is seated beside a table on which stands the crown, whose covering he has partly withdrawn. The notion is amusingly matter-of-fact. Does Mr Joy really suppose that such a man as Cromwell could find enjoyment in the deliberate physical contemplation of the jewelled bauble--the substantial crown--the mere emblem of the dignity and sway for which he thirsted? We cannot compliment this artist on either the conceit or the execution. We prefer his picture in the British Institution, although that is not very remarkable. The subject is the interview between James IV. of Scotland and the outlaw Murray on the banks of Yarrow. In this Exhibition we find another Cromwell, of a very different cast from the one just referred to. The Lord Protector of England dictates to John Milton his celebrated despatch in favour of the persecuted Piedmontese Protestants. Here there is a fire and energy mingled with the coarseness of Cromwell's physiognomy, which gives the character of the man as we read of him and believe him to have been. Milton's face wears a look of gentle enthusiasm and approval, as he admiringly weighs the words that fall from the lips of his great patron. In his eyes there is a sort of haziness that seems to foreshadow the darkness which later is to come over him. The picture does great credit to a very rising artist, Mr F. Newenham, who also exhibits a painting at the Portland Gallery, which we like quite as well as his Cromwell. The subject, _The Princes in the Tower_, is not a very new one, but there is imagination and novelty in its treatment. It is just the same point of time that Delaroche has chosen in his painting of this subject, but there is nothing like an imitation of the great Frenchman. Here the younger child still sleeps, whilst the elder, a princely-looking lad, roused by the noise at the door, gazes anxiously, rather than fearfully, at the shadow cast upon the wall by a hand bearing a lantern. The picture is suggestive and interesting, and in an artistic point of view, also, it merits high praise. In this Portland Gallery (which we may observe, by the way, is most excellently constructed and lighted for the advantageous exhibition of works of art) is a painting by Mr Claxton, _Marie Antoinette with her Children, escaping by the Secret Door from her apartment in Versailles, when the palace was attached by the mob_, which we mention rather on account of the interest of the subject than of its merits as a work of art, these being but of a negative description. Marie Antoinette, dressed rather like a fashionable of the year 1850, is accompanied by a terrified lady, who looks back at the door, half-masked by smoke, through whose broken pannel the bayonets of the rebels cross with those of the loyal grenadiers. Another picture from French history, but selected from a much remoter period, is that of _The Excommunication of Robert, King of France, and his Queen Bertha_, (No. 159 in the Portland Gallery.) which Mr Desanges has executed with some skill. The king, having married his cousin in defiance of the Pope, but with the sanction of three prelates of his kingdom, incurs the pontifical anathema, in common with the prelates and royal family. In the picture, the fiat has just been pronounced, and the extinction of their torches by the officiating priests symbolically completes their mission.

This is not one of Mr Clarkson Stanfield's best years. We prefer this careful and able artist on a grander scale than that of the comparatively small pictures he this year exhibits. Nor do we think he has been particularly happy in his choice of subjects. His scene from Macbeth, viewed as a landscape--for we do not take into account the figures, which are insignificant, and might as well have been left out--is a good picture, but not in his happiest taste. We prefer his _Scene on the Maas_, and his _Bay of Baiæ_, which are both excellent. No. 288, _Near Foria_, is not a very good subject. But Mr Stanfield is a pleasant, natural painter, quite free from affectation, and a most excellent representative of the English school. Mr Roberts is another favourite of ours. Belgium and the East, Egyptian temples and Catholic shrines, furnish subjects for his seven pictures. What we particularly like in him is the strong impression of correctness and fidelity conveyed by his representations of distant scenes. Without having seen the places, one feels convinced of the accuracy of his delineations, and that he gives the real effect of the objects depicted--just as, in certain portraits, one feels certain of the resemblance without knowing the original. The subjects of his pictures this year do not demand any detailed criticism, and his good qualities are so universally appreciated as to render general commendation superfluous.

Before passing on to landscapes and portraits we will glance at a few pictures of various classes, which happen to have attracted our attention, and which deserve better or worse than to be left unnoticed. Diving into the gloom of the Octagon, we are struck by the very remarkable merit of two pictures, which ought never to have been placed there. Only by kneeling or sitting upon the ground is it possible to examine Mr Van Schendel's poacher detected, No. 633, _Un Braconnier au moment qu'on vient le prendre_. Of ordinary visitors to the Exhibition, not one in five will notice the existence of the picture--not one in twenty, probably, will go through the painful contortions requisite to get even a bad view of it. Very few, if any, critics will have sought it out or written a comment on it. Yet this is a picture on which greater talent and labour have been expended than on dozens that hang in conspicuous places and good lights. A dark picture, too--a night scene--it required a strong light; and it was most unjust to put it thus in the very darkest nook, and in the lowest range of the whole Academy. For hospitality's sake to a foreigner, this excellent painting should have been differently placed. The only other picture which we noticed in the Octagon--there may be others of great merit, but we never have patience to linger long in the gloomy closet--is No. 586, _Flowers and Fruit_, by T. Groenland--an artist far superior to Lance, who seems to us to fall off instead of improving. Fruit and flower pieces are things that few people care much to look at--and, for our part, we confess that we seldom afford them more than a very cursory glance; but our attention was seriously and pleasingly arrested by both of those exhibited this year by Mr Groenland, remarkable, as they are, not only for the accuracy with which he imitates the texture of the different fruits--whether pulpiness, bloom, or transparency be their chief characteristic--and for the admirable delicacy of his flower-painting, but also for his skill in elevating and giving interest to the walk of art he has chosen. This is strikingly the case in No. 1254, apropos of which we have another piece of injustice or carelessness--let them call it which they like--to notice on the part of the Hanging Committee. Of all the seven rooms of the Academy, not one is so little visited as that which, in the catalogue, is headed Architecture. Accordingly, the hangmen have placed at one end of it five as pleasing pictures--each in its own style--as any in the Exhibition. Here we have the _Vierge Route du Simplon_, a charming airy landscape by Harding; _Esther_, by O'Neil, one of the best, perhaps, he ever did; _The Port of Marseilles_, by E. W. Cooke, very like and very well painted, with excellent water; _A Winter Evening_, by H. Horsley, a most clever piece of snow scenery, with a cold look that makes one shiver, and a capital effect of setting sun through an archway; and, last in our enumeration, but not in merit, Mr Groenland's second fruit and flower piece, with a landscape background, a gorgeous and life-like peacock, a flush of rhododendrons, and painstaking and talent in every leaf and flower. Another picture in the same vicinity, by W. Fisher, _The Coulin_, a subject taken from Moore's melodies, is rather affected, but by no means destitute of merit.

Mr Martin's picture, _The Last Man_, is far from one of his best. The subject is unpleasing, and there is a decided fault of perspective; the human corpses and carcasses of strange beasts, in the foreground, being much too small in proportion with the figure of the man, who stands on an elevation which is doubtless intended to be much in advance of, but which in reality is almost on a line with, the spot where they are spread pellmell in grisly confusion. Mr Hannah's _Lady Northumberland and Lady Percy dissuading the Earl from joining the wars against Henry IV._ is oddly coloured, and acquires a cold, insipid look from the profusion of blue and gray; but it is a good and clever picture. A similar class of subject has been selected by Mr T. J. Barker, from Professor Aytoun's ballad of _Edinburgh after Flodden_. Randolph Murray, bearing news of the defeat, is the centre of a throng anxious even to agony.

"Why art thou alone, unfollowed?
Is it weal, or is it woe?"

Perched up as this picture is above the door in the West Room, it is difficult to arrive at a correct appreciation of it. As far as we could distinguish, it is not without merit, and the expression of exhaustion in the figure of Murray is pretty well rendered; but altogether it is hardly worthy of the nervous and admirable verse it is intended to illustrate. Mr Armitage's _Aholibah_ has a good deal of pretension, but we cannot compliment him on it in any one respect. In the first place the subject is disgusting, and shows wretched taste in the artist who would select it. Then the face of Aholibah is ugly and repulsive, and the expression coarse in the extreme: the drawing of the limbs under the drapery is faulty, and the gazelles are out of place and out of perspective. Mr Armitage can do better than this. We prefer his picture in the Portland Gallery, of Samson tying firebrands to the foxes' tails for the destruction of the Philistine crops; although the face is a great deal too black, and we cannot understand why Samson should allow a fox to bite into the muscle of his thigh, as one of those in his grasp appears to do. Why does Mr Armitage persist in his French style of painting? It is quite a mistake. Let him be natural, and rely upon his own taste and judgment, and we think he may do better things.

Mr Hook's _Dream of Venice_, a clever imitation of Paul Veronese, is a very pleasant picture. Mr F. Williams' _Holy Maiden_ is a pretty head, full of sentiment. We are glad to see such good promise given by Mr Leslie, junior, in a very humorous picture entitled _A Sailor's Yarn_. A thoroughbred and unmistakeable Cockney greedily listens to some astounding narrative, whilst, behind the credulous landsman, a second sailor grins admiration of his messmate, and contempt for the "green hand." _The Young Student_, by W. Gush, is a very nice picture of a youthful painter, with an artist's eye and a pleasing Vandykish contour of face, and with carefully painted hands. One of the most comical pictures in the Exhibition is a wild boar by Wolf. The bristly forest-ranger is making its way through the deep snow, leaving a long furrow behind it, along which it has apparently been nuzzling for provender, for its snout is garnished with the snow, which, combined with the sudden fore-shortening of the body, produces a ludicrous effect. No. 121, _Autumn--Wounded Woodcock_, from the same hand, has mellow and natural tints.

We have kept back, almost to the last, one of our chief favourites in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. Mr Sidney Cooper is in great force this year. He has six pictures; four of them all his own, two painted in conjunction with Mr F. R. Lee, R.A. With all respect for this artist, to whose landscapes we shall refer in their place, we prefer Cooper alone to Cooper in partnership. The two styles do not blend well, nor does Lee put his best landscapes into Cooper's cattle-pieces. Take the first of their pictures--No. 23--_Cattle crossing a Ford_. As a whole it is agreeable--and the cattle, we need hardly say, are worthy of the best English cattle-painter of the day; but the landscape is feeble. In No. 298, _The Watering-place_, the rather heavy paint of the foliage gives a thin washy look to the foreground. We advise Messrs Lee and Cooper to hang their pictures side by side, if they will, as excellent specimens of their respective walks of art, but not to associate themselves on the same canvass. People find fault with the landscape part of Cooper's pictures; but it is in good keeping with the rest, and moreover he improves in that respect, as in others. We will instance No. 278, _A Mountain Group--Evening_, some charming goats, where the background, bathed in soft light, harmonises admirably with the more prominent parts of the picture. No. 454, _A Group on the Welsh Mountains_, is most delicately finished, quite a gem; and _Fordwick Meadows--Sunset_, in a somewhat broader style, is equally excellent. Mr Cooper's is a class of art which strongly appeals to the domestic and rural tastes of Englishmen. He excels in it, and need fear no competitors, although several artists this year exhibit cattle-landscapes of some merit. And here we should perhaps say a word about Mr Ansdell, who has put some Brobdignagian sheep into a landscape by Mr Creswick, (British Institution, No. 123, _Southdowns_,) and who has rather a pretty thing in the same exhibition--No. 40, _The Regretted Companion_--an old hawker perplexed and mournful beside the body of his dead ass. We would gladly see this artist cease to imitate Landseer. He sacrifices his originality without succeeding in catching the best points of his model.

Nos. 80, 405, 407 in the catalogue of the Academy, are Mr Lee's landscapes--uncombined with Cooper's cattle. The second, _A Calm Morning_, is the one we prefer; and a very charming picture of repose it is. Mr Creswick is the next upon our list. His cold unnatural grayness of colouring greatly detracts from the merit of his pictures. We are quite aware that the same reproach has been repeatedly addressed to him, and we should hardly have referred to a fault which hitherto he has either obstinately clung to, or been unable to correct, did not one of his pictures in the Academy this year give us hopes that he is on the verge of a change. No. 542, _A Forest Farm_, is the best picture of Creswick's, in point of colouring, that we remember to have seen. The _slaty_ look is replaced by an agreeable transparency. No. 289, _In the Forest_, is also warmer than usual. The others are in the old style. Mr Linnell is more to our taste, although we cannot approve his _Christ and the Woman of Samaria at Jacob's Well_. In the first place the colour seems unnatural, altogether too brown; at the same time it is just possible nature may assume that extraordinarily russet tint in Samaria--a country to which our travels have not extended. But we can more confidently object to the figure of the Saviour as altogether unpleasant, with a harsh darkly-bearded face, devoid alike of resemblance to the received type, and of any divine expression whatever. Mr Linnell is a landscape-painter, and should not attempt sacred subjects or portraits, things which are quite out of his line. No. 395, _Crossing the Brook_, is of a better tone of colour; and the same artist has two other pictures, of about his usual average of merit, in the British Institution. The chief fault with which we tax Mr Linnell, (whilst freely admitting his great talent,) and one which may also be imputed to Mr Creswick, and to other clever landscape-painters of the present day, is the undeviating smallness of their touch, which gives, to use a colloquialism, a niggled look to their pictures. Hobbima, and Ruysdael, and others of that class--in whose footsteps we presume no living landscape-painter is too proud to tread--avoided this fault, and proportioned the fulness of their touch to the size of their picture. We may select an example of what we mean from the works of an able and industrious artist, who figures advantageously this year in all four exhibitions, and who, in most instances, is very free from the defect we refer to. Mr Sidney Percy's _Woodland River_, No. 207, in the Portland Gallery, is a good picture, but to our thinking the touch is too small for the size. Mr Percy, however, is a man of talent and a rising painter. In the same gallery we call attention, as to one of the best landscapes exhibited this year, to his No. 277, _Welsh Mountains_. There is an effect of aërial perspective in this picture, especially in the grass valley, on the spectator's left hand, which deserves the very highest praise. Several others of his eighteen pictures for 1850 deserve much commendation; but we can only point out No. 576, in the Academy, _A Limpid Pool_, and 394, _A Quiet Vale_, in the British Artists'. The water in the last is very good,--otherwise it is hardly one of his best. We would have Mr Percy to beware of hardness of treatment, the fault to which he is most prone. His lines are apt to be too sharply defined, especially his distant outlines. He should guard himself against this defect, and with care he may expect to attain great eminence as a landscape-painter. If we mistake not, he is one of a talented family, which also comprises Messrs Boddington and Gilbert, and several artists of the name of Williams, all of whom, we believe, devote themselves chiefly, if not exclusively, to landscape-painting, and either by identity of name or affinity of style, form a most puzzling group for conscientious critics, desirous, like ourselves, to sort their works and fairly distribute praise. We can mention but a few of their pictures, taken, nearly at random, from amongst a number we have marked as of merit or promise. In the Academy, 344, _A Valley Lane_, by A. W. Williams, is a charming subject, excellently treated. In the Portland Gallery, where many good landscapes are to be found, most of them by this family, we were particularly attracted by No. 41, _Noon_, also by A. W. Williams, and by No. 65, _Medmenham Abbey--Evening_, by G. A. Williams. No. 161, _A Showery Afternoon in Sussex_, by A. Gilbert, is remarkable as an example of the admirable effect he knows how to produce by the judicious and little-understood application of the various gradations between opacity and perfect transparency of colour. Mr Boddington has two nice pictures in the Academy.

We cannot compliment Mr F. Danby on either of the two specimens of his art that he this year displays. We find it impossible to comprehend his colouring. That of _A Golden Moment_ (British Institution) is surely unnatural. Certainly it is a very rare effect of sunset; and the background is too bright to be consistent with the sombre foreground. If we turn to his picture in the Academy, _Spring_, we are no better pleased. That sort of dusky glow is quite an exaggeration of nature. Of Mr Witherington's four pictures, we prefer _Coniston Lake_ and _The Mountain Road_. Mr Hering's _Porto Fesano_ (British Institution) is a pleasing picture, and improves on examination; and there is a great deal of light and some pretty colour in the same artist's _Ruins of Rome_ in the Academy. Mr J. Peel has rather a pretty _Canal view_ in the Portland Gallery, in which, oddly enough, he has thrown the shadow of a tree the wrong way; and in the same exhibition Mrs Oliver has a bit of Welsh scenery which is pretty in spite of its finical touch. Of Mr Linton, who has pictures both in the Academy and British Institution, we cannot but speak with respect, recognising the ability of his works, the study they evince, and his close observation of the aspect of places. But they are quite for distant effect; on near approach they look rough and granitic, and are not a very pleasing or popular class of pictures.

We beg Mr Boxall not to think we have forgotten him. We were desirous to commence the brief paragraph we can afford to portraits, by praising his _Geraldine_, an undraped fancy portrait, which shows a capital feeling for colour, and is perhaps the best specimen of flesh-painting in the Exhibition. It wants finish; but even without that it is nearly the first thing that attracts the eye when we glance at that side of the Middle Room. There is good colour also in the same artist's portrait of Mr Cubitt.

Proceeding, with this exception, in numerical rotation, we notice No. 6, _The Hon. Caroline Dawson_, by Dubufe. The arms are rather flat, but it is a nice portrait, well painted, and infinitely superior to the same artist's picture in the British Institution--a French grisette with a Jewish face and an ugly mouth, holding a rose; the motto "Wither one rose and let the other flourish,"--a poor conceit and very indifferently executed. No. 52 is Mr Francis Grant's, the first, but not the best, of seven which he exhibits. Mr Grant is getting very careless. Such hands and clothes as he gives his sitters are really not allowable. The only carefully finished portrait he exhibits this year is that of Lady Elizabeth Wells, after which that of Miss Grant is perhaps the best. The Countess Bruce has an odd sort of resemblance, in the attitude or something, to the same painter's picture of Mr Sidney Herbert. The Duke of Devonshire looks vulgar. Viscount Hardinge is feeble, for Grant, who can do so much better. We urge this artist to take a little more pains, or his high reputation will dwindle. His portrait of Sir George Grey, now on view at Colnaghi's, is another example of carelessness. The face is the only finished part. Mr Watson Gordon understands the portrait-painter's vocation after a different fashion, and is most conscientious in his practice. Apart from their striking resemblance, his portraits are admirable as carefully finished works of art. His sitters this year have been, upon the whole, less suited to make interesting or pleasing pictures than several of the persons who have sat to Mr Grant; but Watson Gordon has done his work far more carefully. Perhaps the best of his three portraits is that of a lady, No. 137. The child in the same picture pleases us rather less. No. 175, Daniel Vere, Esq. of Stonebyres, is a striking likeness of that gentleman; and nothing can be better, in all respects, than the portrait of the Lord Justice-General of Scotland. Mr Buckner is, we are sorry to say, retrograding sadly. He rose very suddenly into public favour, and if he does not take care, he will rapidly decline. His portrait of Miss Lane Fox is perhaps his best this year. Rachel is flattered. Lady Alfred Paget is badly coloured, and looks in an incipient stage of blue cholera. We do not like Mr Pickersgill's portraits this year. For those who do, there are seven in the Exhibition, besides an ugly thing called Nourmahal. Mr G. F. Watts has painted Miss Virginia Pattle. It is one of the most affected pictures in the whole Exhibition. The young lady is perched on a platform, her figure standing out against the blue sky, and her feet completely hidden under her dress, which latter circumstance gives her an unsteady appearance, and inspires dread lest she should be blown from her elevation. The flesh is very pasty, and the general effect of the picture jejune in the extreme. No. 282, _The Duke of Aumale_, is by V. Mottez, and presents a singular combination or monotony of colour, the artist having seemingly carefully avoided all tints that would give warmth to his picture. With the exception of the insipidly fair countenance of the Duke, the painting is nearly all blue. It is not a disagreeable picture, and it perhaps gains on repeated examination; but one cannot get rid of an unpleasant impression of coldness. Placed next to Boxall's Geraldine, the flesh looks like chalk. That coarse but clever painter Knight has eight portraits, including several celebrities of one kind or other--Buckstone the comedian, Keate the surgeon, Sir J. Duke the mayor, Cooper the cattle-painter, and Mrs Fitzwilliam the actress. The picture of Sir J. Duke (who is represented in all the glory of civic office) is well put together; Cooper is laughably like; Mrs Fitzwilliam is perhaps as delicate a female portrait as Knight ever painted--which is not saying much for the others. Mr Say's portrait of Guizot is softened down and idealised till the character of the man is lost. In the Portland Gallery, No. 1 and No. 70 are by an artist whose historical pictures we have already commended, Mr Newenham. The first is a full length, size of life, of Mr Ross, the engineer; the other, Mrs Gall, is a sweet female countenance. Both are very good; but Mr Newenham is always particularly successful--indeed we can call to mind no living painter who is more so--in his portraits of ladies. Whilst avoiding flattery, he still invariably paints pleasing as well as correct likenesses. Such at least is the case with all those of his lady-portraits we have had opportunities of comparing with the models. Middleton has some nice portraits in this exhibition, and Mr J. Lucas shows a pleasing one of a young lad. And one of the most lifelike and speaking portraits exhibited this year is No. 286, by R. S. Lauder, the likeness of our old friend and much-esteemed contributor, the Rev. James White. A more exact resemblance we never saw.

We have not counted them, but we are informed, and have no difficulty in believing, that there are 450 portraits (or thereabouts) in this the eighty-second exhibition of the Royal Academy. A very large number, out of 1456 works of art. Adding the portraits in the three other exhibitions, we attain a total of which, even after deducting drawings and miniatures, it is impossible for us to notice one fourth-part. And we must particularly remark, with respect to portraits and landscapes, what also applies in a less degree to the less numerous classes of pictures, that we have unavoidably--on account of our limited space to deal with so compendious a subject, and also because we would not reduce this article to a mere catalogue--omitted notice of many artists and pictures whose claims are undoubted to mention more or less honourable; as we have also forborne, for the same reason, and much more willingly, certain censures which we should have been justified in inflicting. Concerning portraits, however, we would gladly have been rather more diffuse, had we not still to take some notice, within the compass of a very few pages, of those exhibitions to which as yet we have done little more than incidentally refer.

The restoration to the galleries of purchasers and studios of painters, of the five hundred pictures exhibited this year by the British Institution, diminishes the interest now attaching to that exhibition, and induces us to be tolerably brief in our notice of some of its leading features. No. 52, _The Post Office_, by F. Goodall, is a pretty picture enough, but displays no genius, and the subject suggests a comparison with Wilkie, which is not favourable. Mr Bullock's _Venus and Cupid_, No. 124, is about as sickly a piece of blue and pink as we remember to have seen. Mr Sant's _Rivals_ gives the impression of a copy from the lid of a French plum-box. We have surely seen the Frenchified group in some engraving of Louis XV's times. Mr Woolmer's _Syrens_ displays some imagination, but the colouring is very bad. The sky is exaggerated, and the water seems to have flowed from a cesspool, suggesting unsavoury ideas of the extent of its contamination by the dead bodies that float upon it. It is a picture, nevertheless, that one is apt to look at twice. T. Clark's _The Horses of Rhesus captured by Ulysses and Diomed_, has plenty of faults, certainly, but it has also boldness and spirit, and makes us think the painter may hereafter do better things. No. 205, _Lance reproving his Dog_--left unfinished by the late Sir A. W. Callcott, and completed by J. Callcott Horsley--includes a pretty bit of landscape, and the dog is not bad; but, as a whole, the picture does not strike us as remarkable. No. 231, _A French Fishing Girl_, by T. K. Fairless, is a nice bit of colouring, very fresh and judicious; and R. M'Innes's _Detaining a Customer_, tells its story well, and is of careful finish, but insipid colouring. Lady Macbeth, by T. F. Dicksee, is repulsive and unnatural; not the murderess Shakspeare conceived and Siddons acted, but a saucer-eyed maniac standing under a gas-lamp. No. 290, _Our Saviour after the Temptation_, is by Sir George Hayter, who has bestowed great pains without producing, as a whole, a very satisfactory result. The picture has certainly good points, but it speaks against its general excellence that we are driven to praise details. All the hands are particularly well done--Sir George's experience as a portrait painter having here availed him. The colouring of Christ's dress is good, but generally there is an abuse of yellow in the picture. The angels have no backs to their heads, but this phrenological defect is perhaps intentional, to convey the artist's notion of an angel by indicating the absence of gross passions. G. Cole's _Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Pedro's hut_ is humorous, but quite a caricature. The painter seems to have studied to establish a resemblance between the men and their respective beasts. Another laughable picture is Mrs C. Smith's _Irish Piper_, whose companion _The Irish Card-cutter_ is No. 206 in the British Artists'. As works of art, they have little merit, but one cannot help acknowledging and laughing at the vulgar humour and truth to nature they both contain. Mr Selous' _The First Impression_, Gutemberg showing to his wife his first experiment in printing from movable types, is perhaps the best picture in the South Room. There is an air of nature about Mr W. Wyld's _Smugglers' halt in the Sierra Morena_; but the figures, although well grouped, are on too small a scale for much interest, and the landscape lacks attraction. Our old friend George Cruikshank gives full scope to his rich humour in No. 100, _Sancho's surprise on seeing the Squire of the Wood's Nose_; and 455, _Disturbing the Congregation_. This last is inimitable--brimful of fun. A charity boy has let his peg-top fall during service, and the awful clatter upon the church pavement draws all eyes in the direction of the delinquent. This is a picture that must be seen, not described; but our readers will imagine all the fun Cruikshank would make of such a subject--the terrified face of the culprit, in vain affecting unconsciousness, and the awful countenance of the beadle. We must say a word of Mr J. F. Herring's _A Farmyard_, which contains some good horses; but he has huddled his objects too much together, his colouring is very opaque, and there is a want of air and perspective in the picture. There is the same defect of thick colour in Mr H. Jutsum's pretty composition, _Evening--coming home to the Farm_.

We have already mentioned several pictures in the Portland Gallery, including a portrait by Mr R. S. Lauder, (the president of this new society,) which is perhaps the best, although one of the most unpretending, of the seven pictures he exhibits. We do not discern any very great merit in two carefully painted illustrations of Quentin Durward. We should like to know on what authority Mr Lauder makes a tall, large-limbed man of Louis XI., and how he intends to get him and the raw-boned Scot through the door in No. 166, without a most unkingly deviation from the perpendicular. There is here a fault of perspective. And Mr Lauder should beware of repetition. We remember the lady behind the tapestry in No. 45, in at least a dozen of his pictures. This, however, is the best of the pair, and there is good painting in it. His most important picture this year is that of _Christ appearing to two of his Disciples on the way to Emmaus_. This is certainly a fine work, although there is much opposition of opinion respecting it. There is undoubtedly a fine sentiment in the colouring, which is peculiarly applicable to the subject. Mr M'Ian is in great force here, with no less than ten pictures. We like this artist for the character and energy he infuses into his productions. His most attractive picture this year is No. 55, _Here's his health in Water!_ thus explained--"A Highland gentleman of 1715, in Carlisle prison, the day previous to his execution, receiving the last visit of his mother, wife, and children, and instilling into his son--the future Highland gentleman of 1745--the principles of loyalty." The face of the condemned Highlander is full of vigour and determination, as is also that of his mother, a resolute old lady, who seems to confirm his precepts to her grandchild. The countenances of the sorrowing wife and of the little girl, whose attention is distracted by the opening of the prison door, are natural and pleasing. The boy, a sturdy scion of the old stock, drinks King James's health out of the prison-mug of water. We will not omit to praise Mrs M'Ian's very well-painted picture of _Captivity and Liberty_--gipsies in prison, with swallows twittering in the loophole that affords them light. There is a nice feeling about this picture, which includes a handsome gipsy face; it is careful in its details, and very effective in point of chiaroscuro. No. 251, _A Jealous Man, disguised as a Priest, hears the confession of his Wife_, is a subject (from the _Decameron_) of which more might have been made than there has been by Mr D. W. Deane. The countenances lack decided expression. Several artists have this year painted scenes from the _Tempest_, and Mr A. Fussell is one of the number. It were to be wished he had abstained. His picture of _Caliban, Ariel, and his fellows_, is very bad indeed. He should be less ambitious in his subjects, or at least less fantastical in their treatment. It is unintelligible to us how this picture illustrates the passage quoted. Nos. 264-5 are Mr H. Barraud's pictures:--_Lord have mercy upon us_, and _We praise thee, O God!_ the engravings of which have for some time past been in every shop-window. We are really at a loss to comprehend the _engouement_ for these pictures, which seem to us as deficient in real sentiment as they are feeble in execution. They are pretty enough, certainly, but that is all the praise we are disposed to accord them. There is no great beauty in the faces; and one of the boys (on the spectator's right hand) is a mere lout, without any expression whatever. The Messrs Barraud have a great many pictures in this exhibition--amongst others, No. 199, _The Curfew_, their joint production, which is pretty, but in respect to which it strikes us that they have read Gray's poem wrong, for the light in their picture is not that of parting day, but of approaching sunset. Mr Rayner's _Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick_, is a good picture; Mr Niemann's _Kenilworth from the Tilt-yard_, and _Landscape_, No. 72, also deserve praise; Mr Dighton is very effective in some of his landscapes and studies. Upon the whole, this young exhibition promises well.

Driven to our utmost limits, we must conclude, without further mention than we have already here and there made of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street; and we do so with the less regret because that gallery contains but a small proportion of pictures of merit. Mr Anthony contributes a very large number of his odd paintings, some of which are rather effective at a distance; but it is not a style we admire. Finally, we have with pleasure noticed, during our many rambles through the different galleries, that the public not only visit but buy; and we trust that the year 1850 will prove profitable and satisfactory to British artists, in the same proportion that it undoubtedly is creditable to their industry, and, upon the whole, highly honourable to their talents. One word more we will say at parting. In this article we have written down opinions, formed neither hastily nor partially, of whose soundness, although critics will always differ, we venture to feel pretty confident. We have applied ourselves to point out merits rather than defects, and to distribute praise in preference to blame; but we should have failed in our duty to ourselves and the public, had we altogether abstained from the latter. We well know, however, the many difficulties and discouragements that beset the path of the painter. And it would be matter for sincere regret to us, if, in the freedom of our remarks, we had unwittingly hurt the feelings of any man who is honestly and earnestly striving in the pursuit of a very difficult art--although his success may as yet be incommensurate with his industry and zeal.

THE YEAR OF SORROW.--IRELAND--1849.

SPRING SONG.

Once more, through God's high will and grace,
Of Hours that each its task fulfils,
Heart-healing Spring resumes its place;--
The valley throngs and scales the hills,

In vain. From earth's deep heart o'ercharged,
The exulting life runs o'er in flowers;--
The slave unfed is unenlarged:
In darkness sleep a nation's powers.

Who knows not Spring? Who doubts, when blows
Her breath, that Spring is come indeed?
The swallow doubts not; nor the rose
That stirs, but wakes not, nor the weed.

I feel her near, but see her not,
For those with pain-uplifted eyes
Fall back repulsed; and vapours blot
The vision of the earth and skies.

I see her not; I feel her near,
As, charioted in mildest airs,
She sails through yon empyreal sphere,
And in her arms and bosom bears

That urn of flowers and lustral dews,
Whose sacred balm, o'er all things shed,
Revives the weak, the old renews,
And crowns with votive wreaths the dead.

Once more the cuckoo's call I hear;
I know, in many a glen profound,
The earliest violets of the year
Rise up like water from the ground.

The thorn I know once more is white;
And, far down many a forest dale,
The anemones in dubious light
Are trembling like a bridal veil.

By streams released that singing flow
From craggy shelf through sylvan glades,
The pale narcissus, well I know,
Smiles hour by hour on greener shades.

The honeyed cowslip tufts once more
The golden slopes;--with gradual ray
The primrose stars the rock, and o'er
The wood-path strews its milky way.

--From ruined huts and holes come forth
Old men, and look upon the sky!
The Power Divine is on the earth:--
Give thanks to God before ye die!

And ye, O children worn and weak,
Who care no more with flowers to play,
Lean on the grass your cold, thin cheek,
And those slight hands, and whispering, say,

"Stern Mother of a race unblest--
In promise kindly, cold in deed;
Take back, O Earth, into thy breast,
The children whom thou wilt not feed."

IRELAND--1849.

AUTUMNAL DIRGE.

Then die, thou Year--thy work is done:
The work ill done is done at last.
Far off, beyond that sinking sun,
Which sets in blood, I hear the blast

That sings thy dirge, and says--"Ascend,
And answer make amid thy peers,
(Since all things here must have an end,)
Thou latest of the famine years!"

I join that voice. No joy have I
In all thy purple and thy gold,
Nor in the nine-fold harmony
From forest on to forest rolled:

Nor in that stormy western fire,
Which burns on ocean's gloomy bed,
And hurls, as from a funeral pyre,
A glare that strikes the mountain's head;

And writes on low-hung clouds its lines
Of cyphered flame, with hurrying hand;
And flings amid the topmost pines
That crown the steep, a burning brand.

Make answer, Year, for all they dead,
Who found not rest in hallowed earth,
The widowed wife, the father fled,
The babe age-stricken from his birth.

Make answer, Year, for virtue lost;
For Faith, that vanquished fraud and force,
Now waning like a noontide ghost;
Affections poisoned at their source:

The labourer spurned his lying spade;
The yeoman spurned his useless plough;
The pauper spurned the unwholesome aid,
Obtruded once, exhausted now.

The weaver wove till all was dark,
And, long ere morning, bent and bowed
Above his work with fingers stark;
And made, nor knew he made, a shroud.

The roof-trees fall of hut and hall,
I hear them fall, and falling cry--
"One fate for each, one fate for all;
So wills the Law that willed a lie."

Dread power of Man! what spread the waste
In circles, hour by hour more wide,
And would not let the past be past?--
The Law that promised much, and lied.

Dread power of God! whom mortal years
Nor touch, nor tempt; who sitt'st sublime
In night of night,--O bid thy spheres
Resound at last a funeral chime.

Call up, at last, the afflicted Race
Whom Man not God abolished. Sore,
For centuries, their strife: the place
That knew them once shall know no more.

IRELAND--1849.

WINTER DIRGE.

Fall, Snow, and cease not! Flake by flake
The decent winding-sheet compose:
Thy task is just and pious; make
An end of blasphemies and woes.

Fall flake by flake: by thee alone,
Last friend, the sleeping draught is given:
Kind nurse, by thee the couch is strewn,
The couch whose covering is from heaven.

Descend and clasp the mountain's crest;
Possess wide plain and valley deep:--
This night, in thy maternal breast
Forsaken myriads die in sleep.

Lo! from the starry Temple gates
Death rides, and bears the flag of peace:
The combatants he separates;
He bids the wrath of ages cease.

Descend, benignant Power! But O,
Ye torrents, shake no more the vale;
Dark streams, in silence seaward flow;
Thou rising storm, remit thy wail.

Shake not, to-night, the cliffs of Moher,
Or Brandon's base, rough sea! Thou Isle,
The Rite proceeds:--from shore to shore
Hold in thy gathered breath the while.

Fall, snow! in stillness fall, like dew
On temple roof, and cedar's fan;
And mould thyself on pine and yew,
And on the awful face of man.

Without a sound, without a stir,
In streets and wolds, on rock and mound,
O omnipresent comforter,
By thee, this night, the lost are found.

On quaking moor, and mountain moss,
With eyes upstaring at the sky,
And arms extended like a cross,
The long-expectant sufferers lie.

Bend o'er them, white-robed Acolyte!
Put forth thine hand from cloud and mist,
And minister the last sad rite,
Where altar there is none, nor priest.

Touch thou the gates of soul and sense:
Touch darkening eyes and dying ears;
Touch stiffening hand and feet, and thence
Remove the trace of sin and tears.

And ere thou seal those filmed eyes,
Into God's urn thy fingers dip,
And lay, 'mid eucharistic sighs,
The sacred wafer on the lip.

This night the Absolver issues forth:
This night the Eternal Victim bleeds--
O winds and woods--O heaven and earth!
Be still this night. The Rite proceeds.

LONDON AND EDINBURGH CHESS MATCH.