Studio: international art (8.1896)

Some Pictures at the Royal Academy

Luke Fildes contributes a portrait of a lady as a
shepherdess in the charming rocailk style of the
bergeres of the eighteenth century. The enormous
Babylonian grandeur which one realises in London
is not to be found in Mr. Wyllie's picture, if he will
allow me to say so. Mr. Ralph Peacock's exhibit
proclaims him poet and painter both, and Mr. La
Thangue's various canvases are all most interesting
—A Little Holding particularly, a fine impression
of nature seen through an excellent piece of bold
and solid painting. It is the work of an artist.

In Gallery II. we once more find Mr. La Thangue,
and writing here at a distance, I will simply record
the notes I made in front of his picture. In a
Cottage Garden is most truthful in effect, albeit a
trifle dark. The trees and the flowers scarcely give
the idea of the light, transparent springtide. With
a little more poetry and charm added to his solid
qualities in drawing and colour this artist's work
will be as nearly perfect as possible. Mr. Arnesby
Brown sends a landscape—twilight, with the lovely
mists of evening, and the moon slowly rising be-
hind them—most poetical of moments, full of a
sense of the dying day and the end of the hazy
autumn. There is poetry, too, but more in subject
than in treatment, in Miss Alicia Blakesley's pic-
ture. To satisfy my painter's eyes I must needs
say all the good that is to be said of Mr. Sargent's
portrait, with its delicate values of subdued grey
and white, relieved only by a black which has
nothing of coarseness about it. His boldness of
touch is a boldness of the right sort, with no use-
less extravagance, and ever in complete accord with
the softness of his tones, and the delicate type of
his models. The neighbouring picture, yellow-
looking and lacking freshness, pleases only, it
must be admitted, on account of its excellent draw-
ing. Mr. Herkomer sees things in monochrome.
A tenderness of tone and of atmosphere would have
added so much to the subject—the child coming
back to life by the aid of the life around it. Yet
one is conscious that in the end one would have to
like this picture, and that the man who composed
it is an artist. The group to the left of the canvas
is quite charming, and contrasts well with the lan-
guid weakness of the little invalid. I should like
to know the meaning of Mr. Herbert J. Draper's
picture, for it is very interesting—the lovely pose
of a woman hanging a long golden chain about her
neck. In Mr. Charles Sims's portrait there are
delightful qualities that Mr. Whistler would appre-
ciate.

In Whispering Noon the defect of Mr. Alma
Tadema's work is that his sky and flowers and

women are all as though made of marble; and
this fault is equally apparent in his Coliseum in
Gallery III. In art the greatest difficulty consists,
as does the highest ability, in making sacrifices,
and in knowing how to simplify. But Mr. Alma
Tadema looks on things with an implacable eye ;
and instead of toning down he would even do just
the reverse. Art must be synthetical, and he who
will not summarise, as it were, but strives after the
exact reproduction of things, will make no work of
art. Besides, the minute representation of sub-
sidiary objects and bits of still-life is childish, how-
ever great the ability bestowed upon them. This
kind of cleverness will produce a skilful workman,
but never a real artist. What profits it to imitate
marble well, when in the very same frame flesh
and faces, cushion-stuffs and flowers, even the fan
of peacock's feathers, have the same rigid appear-
ance as this same marble ? Different things must
be painted in different styles. This is laborious
painting, into which art does not enter ; while its
author, fed on archaeology and the classics, rises
from his task more archaeologist than artist.

In Mr. Leslie's clear landscape one regrets
the absence of that atmosphere suggesting dis-
tance, especially as mists are frequent in the coun-
try he is painting, while the title of his picture—
September—suggests the early haze of autumn. Rash
and inquisitive Pandora, as represented by Mr.
J. W. Waterhouse, seems to lack that air of mystery,
befitting the weird old myths of the days of the
gods. Mr. Orchardson exhibits a fine and striking
portrait, the figure clothed in a Titianesque red
robe edged with fur, with a chain, bearing a large
gold medal, about the neck. The head is beautiful,
and stands clearly out from the dark background—
a rich, but sober work, full of genuine art.

Mr. Prinsep's La Revolution is, unfortunately, no-
thing but a model posing, and is not likely to
cause any revolution in art. Nor will the large
and cold portrait by Mr. Reginald Arthur, whose
chief desire would seem to be to reproduce marble,
when flesh is so lovely and stuff so soft! Mr. La
Thangue charms once more with his Man with the
Scythe, a beautiful picture, quite moving in its sweet
humility and melancholy. Mr. Frank Dicksee's
work inspires this reflection : Art ceases where mere
dexterity at reproduction begins; and a throne,
incrusted with mother-of-pearl, no matter how
lovely, is less beautiful and less noble than the
human form seated upon it.

Mr. MacWhirter's truly grand landscape effaces
its neighbour, the late Lord Leighton's Clytie, de-
spite its fine dramatic pretensions. Here is the