Punch (58.1870)

118

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[March 26, 1870,

PEEPS INTO THE STUDIOS.

enough to find their productions accepted, decidedly
below the average by those who are so unlucky as to have their works
rejected, and about the average by old ladies, general public, and
young people who talk to you of Landseer and Millais at drums,
dances, &c.

It may interest our readers to glean something beforehand of the
principal pictures that will confront their gaze, on the inaugural
Monday in May, on the walls of the salons of Burlington House.

Highflyte (in addition to his other work, The Gordian Knot)
will show a magnificent classical subject just completed. iEscHYLUs,
Sophocles, Qulntilian, and Euripides are represented welcoming
to the Elysian Fields, brilliantly illuminated with the Electra-ic
light for the occasion by Messes. Vulcan and Cyclops, the
principal characters in their affecting dramas. These personages,
grouped in trilogies, are seen clustered round Pelops on Mount
Hippocrene, who is consulting jEsculapius as to the rheumatism in
his ivory shoulder, while Ajax dismounts from his ivy-wreathed dithy-
ramb, drawn by coursers from the Augean livery stables, and kisses his
flashing thyrsus to Iphigenia (in Tauris), engaged in an archery
contest with Philoctetes, who wears the poisoned peplum which
Hercules gave as a wedding present, along with six silver nectarspoons,
to Prometheus on his marriage (after he recovered from that dis-
tressing liver complaint) with Clytemnestra in the gardens of the
Choephorae, attended by ten bridesmaids. An efficient chorus, in-
cluding the Musts, the Graces, the Euries, the Harpies, and the blue-
eyed Symplegades, their brows bound with amaranth and fresh cadu-
ceus, and with snakes, chimaeras, &c, in their gory locks, are depicted j
singing a selection in the back garden from the (Edipus Vinctus,
Hecuba accompanying them on a new Grand Concordance, made by
Orpheus expressly for the performance. To the thousands of visitors
to the Academy who have the Greek Tragedians at their fingers' ends,
this splendid picture, with its well balanced composition, its brilliant
colouring, its tender feeling and refined motive, cannot fail to prove
a rich and intellectual treat.

Holme Paynter has again produced several of his charming
transcripts of that domestic happiness and fireside felicity which make
us the envy of surrounding nations. We have only space to describe
one, his chef d'eeuvre, in which he has, if possible, transcended even
himself—it is entitled, simply, " The Eirst Pancake." A dear little
fellow, three or perhaps three and a quarter, nicely dressed in the costume
of the time, with a clean white pinafore, is seated anxiously on a high
chair, at an ordinary dining table completely covered with a snowy
cloth, while Mamma proudly deposits on his plate the delicate pancake
(or is it a fritter ?) with which the smiling nursemaid has that moment
entered from the kitchen. An elder sister, in red hair and bright
Tartan frock, is busily engaged cutting a large and tempting orange

into quarters ; and the life-like fidelity with which the pips are depicted
only needs to be seen to be recognised as a triumph of naturalistic
manipulation. We are much mistaken if this little gem does not elevate
its gifted author to the highest rank in his profession.

Comeshaw has once more had recourse to the annals of his native
land (see Doomsday Book, pp. 1008-11) for a most touching scene—
Charles the Second, after the fatal Battle of Tillietudlem, hiding with
the great seal between two feather beds in a public-house at Wapping,
while an infuriate mob, headed by Lord George Gordon and Titus
Oates, are breaking open the doors, clambering in at the windows,
swarming up the spouts, peering down the chimneys, peeping through,
the keyholes, tearing up the gas-piping and door-scraper, and demanding
beer and their sovereign's blood of the trembling landlord, who is seen
cautiously opening the postern, in a well-worn buff jerkin and scarlet
beretta, armed with a rusty petronel, and accompanied by Elora
Macdonald (in the forty-second plaid) and the Ordinary of Newgate.
Comeshaw's well-earned laurels will not suffer by the exhibition of
this his last, and perhaps best mor^eau.

Mountayne Dewe revels in a landscape of supreme beauty and in-
finite pathos. A wild and solitary campagna, sparsely strewn with
cairn and cromlech on which moss and lichen stray in unchecked
luxuriance, stretches away in its lonely might to the glimmering
horizon. Wild creatures ramble about in the foreground, and in the
middle distance a party of convalescent carbonari slowly return to their
evening meal. The golden-crested eagle and the many-hued kingfisher,
softened by the beauty of the scene, rest together in harmonious
juxtaposition, and gaze on the westering sun sinking in his evening
glory behind the Transpontine Hills, covered to their summits with the
lovely blossoms of the beautiful Alpinulapeppermintiiis, amid which goats
and their young gambol sportively to the sound of the vesper bell. Over
all the black rebellious clouds, gathering from every known quarter ot
the compass, portend the approach of the much-dreaded Malaria, before
which the benighted condotliere, wrapping his capote more closely round
his gaunt form, hurries to the nearest Villeggiatura for shelter and refresh-
ment. All is in keeping, in perfect harmony, in this weird-like delinea-
tion of Nature in her sterner aspects—the high lights are beyond praise
—and Mr. Mountayne Dewe may be congratulated on having struck
the right key in his selection of sober pigments.and in the "vehicle"
he has adopted for the material embodiment of the conceptions of his
lofty genius. _

The portraits we have had the privilege of examining are many in
number and unrivalled of their kind. We were particularly struck
with one by Touchup, of the Mayoress op Bartlemere receiving a
deputation of its most influential inhabitants, to present her with a
silver cradle, in commemoration of her having presented a son and
heir to the Chief Magistrate of that ancient city, Abraham Erosby
Hawelnson, Esq., during his period of office. The trame is magnifi-
cent, and the attitude of the portly nurse who is in attendance on her
mistress (with the baby) dignified and imposing. Touchup will not
recede from the place he occupies in public estimation by this felicitous
rendering of a pleasant and genial custom in our borough municipabtie3.

In the Sculpture Gallery Eve, Undine, Ophelia, CEnone, Joan of
Arc, and our own Boyal Eamily, will be adequately represented,
There will be a great many busts ; and some extraordinary figures—
amongst the spectators.

THE INFALLIBLE OUT-AND-OUTER.

It is pleasant to have any thing to say that redounds to the Pope's
credit. Here is somewhat, from the Times .—

" The bishops have been very clamorous lately for leave to go home by
Easter, and make ' holy oil ' for the ensuing year, Pius the Ninth is
equal to the emergency, and has issued a document t6 the effect that the
remaining stock of holy oil is to be mixed with sufficient new oil to make a
supply for the next year, and that the oil so mixed is to have the same virtue
i as if every particle of it had been consecrated."

So no doubt it will. In that matter of " holy oil" Pio Nono has
managed his bishops with an adroitness equal to any ever exercised in
dealing with corresponding parties, though of another persuasion,
whose scruples were obstructive, by Oliver Cromwell. Who does
not admire his determination? His Holiness believes in his own claims,
he disbeheves in modern Progress, and he acts out his belief and disbelief
in defiance of everything and everybody. In this thoroughness there
is real sublimity.

j ==========-

The Obstinacy of the Green Fever.

People must not wonder that an exacerbation of the Irish febrile
symptoms has followed the administration of the Church Act sedative,
nor should they be surprised if the Land Bill anodyne should be thrown
in without immediate effect, though the Peace Preservation astringent
may produce a better tone. Rome was not built in a day, nor will
Ireland be, ha, ha! cured in an instant.