THE SOUTH ROOM
With the exception of two pictures of the modern German school, this room contains the works of English artists not living. Only one of the German school is a picture of any pretension, "Christ blessing the Little Children"—Professor Hesse. The reputation of this painter led us to expect something better. We must consider it apart from its German peculiarities, and with respect to what it gains or loses by them. As a design, the story is well and simply told. As a composition, it is a little too formal, lacking that easy flowing of lines into each other, which, though eschewed by the new school, is nevertheless a beauty. The expression in the heads is good generally, not so in the principal figure. There is throughout a character of purity and tenderness—it is a great point to attain this. But none of this character is assisted by the colouring, or the chiaroscuro. The colouring, though it has a gold background, is not rich, for the gold is pale, even to a straw colour, and the pattern on it rather gives it a straw texture. We presume it is meant to represent the dry Byzantine style of colouring, purposely avoiding the richer colours; as power is lost, by this adoption, it is impossible to give either the tones or colours of nature—there is no transparency. To preserve this old simplicity, softening and blending shadows are avoided, by which a positive unnaturalness offends the eye; hence the hands and feet not only look hard, but clumsy—they may not be, but they look, ill drawn. The figures, indeed, look like pasteboard figures stuck on; there is a leaden hue pervading all the flesh tints. It fails, too, in simplicity and antique air, which we suppose to be the objects of the school. For there is too much of art in the composition for the former, too little quaintness for the latter; and indeed its perfect newness of somewhat raw paint prevents the mind from going back to ancient time; and that failure makes the picture as a whole, a pretension. It does not, then, appear to gain what that old style is intended to bestow—and it loses nearly all the advantages of the after-improvements of art—of its extended means. It rejects the power of giving more intensity to feeling, of adding the grace of nature, the truth and variety of more perfect colouring, by the opaque and the transparent, and does not in any other way attain any thing which could not have been more perfectly attained without the sacrifice. The collection of the British school contains good and bad—few of the best of each master. West's best picture is among them, his "Death Of Wolfe"—everyone knows the print; the picture is good in colour and firmly painted, and contrasts with some others where we see the miserable effect of the megillups and varnishes which our painters were wont to mix with their colours. We should have been glad to have seen better specimens of Fuseli's genius—we suppose we must say that he had genius. The best piece of painting of his hand in the room is the boy in Harlowe's picture of the "Kemble Family;" a picture of considerable artistic merit, but ruined by the coarse vulgarity of a caricature of Mrs Siddons. How unlike the Lady Macbeth! The corpulent velvet dark mass and obtruding figure is most unpleasant. It is much to be regretted Mr. Harlowe did not redesign that principal figure. There are several landscapes of Gainsborough's, and one portrait—the latter excellent, the former poor. There is much vigour of colouring and handling in the "Horses at a Fountain;" but as usual, it is a poor composition, and of parts that ill agree. The mass of rock and foliage are quite out of character with the bit of tame village scene, and the hideous figures. Here, too, his "Girl and Pigs," for which he asked sixty guineas, and Sir Joshua gave him a hundred. We do not think the President had a bargain. There is not one of Wilson's best in this collection. The "Celadon and Amelia" is dingy, and poor in all respects. It verifies as it illustrates; for Thomson says,
"But who can paint the lover as he stood?"
Very coarse is Opie's "Venus and Adonis." He had not grace for such a subject—nor for "Lavinia." We should have been glad to have seen some of his works where the subjects and handling agree. We are sorry to see Hogarth's "March to Finchley" so injured by some ignorant cleaner. His "Taste in High Life" is the perfection of caricature. We have not the slightest idea what Constable meant when he painted the "Opening of Waterloo Bridge." The poor "Silver Thames" is converted into a smear of white lead and black. "Charles the First demanding the Five Members," surprised us by its power—its effect is good. Here is no slovenly painting, so common in Mr. Copley's day—the general colour too is good; and the painting of individual heads is much after the manner of Vandyck. There are some pictures on the walls which might have been judiciously omitted in an exhibition which must be considered as characteristic of English talent.
As the British Gallery is for a considerable period devoted to works of English art, and as so many other exhibitions offer them in such profusion, we would suggest that it would be more beneficial to art, and to the success and improvement of British painters, if the original intention of the governors of the institution were adhered to, of exhibiting annually the choicest works of the old schools.