L’Art.
HOLL.LEAVING HOME.

Amongst later artists G. D. Leslie, the son of Charles Leslie, has specially the secret of interpreting innocent feminine beauty, that somewhat predetermined but charming grace derived from Gainsborough and the eighteenth century. A young lady who has lately been married is paying a visit to her earlier school friends, and is gazed upon as though she were an angel by these charming girls. Or his pretty maidens have ensconced themselves beneath the trees, or stand on the shore watching a boat at sunset, or amuse themselves from a bridge in a park by throwing flowers into the water and looking dreamily after them as they float away. Leslie’s pictures, too, are very pretty and poetic, and have much silk in them and much sun, while the soft pale method of painting, so highly æsthetic in its delicate attenuation of colour, corresponds with the delicacy of their purport.

HOLL.ORDERED TO THE FRONT.

P. G. Morris, not less delicate in feeling and execution, became specially known by a “Communion in Dieppe.” Directly facing the spectator a train of pretty communicants move upon the seashore, assuming an air of dignified superiority, like young ladies from Brighton or Folkestone. A bluish light plays over the white dresses of the girls and over the blue jackets of the sailors lounging about the quay; it fills the pale blue sky with a misty vibration and glances sportively upon the green waves of the sea. “The Reaper and the Flowers” was a thoroughly English picture, a graceful allegory after the fashion of Fred Walker. On their way from school a party of children meet at the verge of a meadow an old peasant going home from his day’s work with a scythe upon his shoulder. In the dancing step of the little ones may be seen the influence of Greek statues; they float along as if borne by the zephyr, with a rhythmical motion which is seldom found in real school-children. But the old peasant coming towards them is intended to recall the contrast between youth and age as in Fred Walker’s “Harbour of Refuge”; while the scythe glittering in the last rays of the setting sun signifies the scythe of Fate, the scythe of death which does not even spare the child.

OULESS.   LORD KELVIN.
(By permission of the Artist.)

And thus the limits of English painting are defined. It always reveals a certain conflict between fact and poetry, reverie and life. For whenever the scene does not admit of a directly ethical interpretation, refuge is invariably taken in lyricism. The wide field which lies between, where powerful works are nourished, works which have their roots in reality, and derive their life from it alone, has not been definitely conquered by English art. England is the greatest producer and consumer in the world, and her people press the marrow out of things as no other have ever done: and yet this land of industry knows nothing of pictures in which work is being accomplished; this country, which is a network of railway lines, has never seen a railway painted. Even horses are less and less frequently represented in English art, and sport finds no expression there whatever. Much as the Englishman loves it from a sense of its wholesomeness, he does not consider it sufficiently æsthetic to be painted, a matter upon which Wilkie Collins enlarges in an amusing way in his book Man and Wife.

And in English pictures there are no poor, or, at any rate, none who are wretched in the extreme. For although the Chelsea Pensioners were a favoured theme in painting, there were none of them miserable and heavy-laden; they were rather types of the happy poor who were carefully tended. If English painters are otherwise induced to represent the poor, they depict a room kept in exemplary order, and endeavour to display some touching or admirable trait in honest and admirable people. In fact, people seem to be good and honourable wherever they are found. Everywhere there is content and humility, even in misfortune. Even where actual need is represented, it is only done in the effort to give expression to what is moving in certain dispensations of fate, and to create a lofty and conciliating effect by the contrast between misfortune and man’s noble trust in God.