ROYAL ACADEMY
The choice of a President for this Society is one of some nicety. Where there is not any individual taking a decided and indisputable lead in art, it requires a combination and balance of qualities not always easily to be met with. The President of the great body of art in this country ought not merely to be eminent in his profession, but a man of gentlemanly manners, of good person, of respectable character, and standing well in the opinion of his brother artists. He should be a person free from peculiarity of temper, from party spirit, and able to represent the elegant arts (of which he stands at the head) as the last ostensible link connecting scientific pursuit with the enlightened taste and aristocratic refinements of their immediate patrons. The choice has fallen upon Mr. Shee, and his honours will sit well upon him. This artist has been long a favourite with the public in the most popular branch of his art, and is scarcely less distinguished by his occasional brilliant effusions as a poet and his accomplishments as a man. The characteristics of Mr. Shee’s style of portrait painting are vivacity of expression, facility of execution, and clearness of colouring. He has attempted history with some success. Perhaps if he had done more in this way, it might have been to his own detriment; and the habits and studies of the historical painter, immersed in a world of retirement and abstraction, are such as hardly serve for an introduction to situations of ornament and distinction in social life. Mr. Wilkie’s merits as a painter of familiar subjects have procured him the deserved honour of being appointed ‘historical painter to the King’—the admirable busts of Mr. Chantrey might also have been thrown into the opposite scale; but, upon the whole, the judgment of the public will not take the laurel from the head where the hands of the Academy have placed it. If we might hint a fault where so much praise is due, it would be by expressing a wish that Mr. Shee could more boldly say with Rembrandt, ‘Je suis peintre, non pas teinturier.’ His tones are too pure, approaching too nearly to virgin tints. For one department of his office the new President is happily qualified—we mean the delivery of lectures from the Chair of the Royal Academy. The art of painting is dumb but Mr. Shee can borrow the aid of a sister muse.