Mr E. Corbould still is in the full ambition of water colour power. "Jesus at the House of Simon the Pharisee," is an example of the inappropriateness of this manner to solemn sacred subjects. The Mary is very good—not so the principal figure, it has a weak expression: some parts of this picture are too sketchy for others. His "Woman of Samaria" is a much better picture, has great breadth and grace. It is rather slight. His "Flower of the Fisher's Hut" is very pretty—a lady in masquerade. Absolon's "Uncle Toby" is well told, and with the author's naïveté. Mr Topham's farewell scene from the "Deserted Village," is, we think, too strong of the mock-pathetic—a scene of praying and babying.
There are many pictures we would wish to notice, but we must forbear: we cannot, however, omit the mention of a sea-piece, which we thought very fine, with a watery sky; a good design,—"North Sunderland Fishermen rendering assistance after a Squall."
THE BRITISH INSTITUTION.
Having recently given some account of Sir Joshua, his Discourses, his genius, and his influence upon the arts in this country, we visited this gallery, where as many as sixty of his works are exhibited, with no little interest. The North Room is occupied by them alone. Have we reason to think our estimate of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as a painter, not borne out by this exhibition? By no means. Our first impression from the whole collection, not seeing any particular picture, is of colour. And here Sir Joshua appears inventive; for though he not unfrequently imitated Rembrandt, there is, on the whole, a style that is far from Rembrandt, and is not like any other old master; yet we believe, for it was the character of his mind so to do, that he always had some great master in view in all he did. But he combined. Hence there is no little novelty in his style, and not seldom some inconsistencies—a mixture of care and delicacy, with great apparent slovenliness. We say apparent, for we are persuaded Sir Joshua never worked without real care and forethought; and that his apparent slovenliness was a purpose, and a long studied acquirement. He ever had in view the maxim—Ars est celare artem; but he did not always succeed, for he shows too evidently the art with which he concealed what first his art had effected. Looking carefully at these pictures, we see intention every where: there is no actual random work. We believe him to have finished much more than has been supposed; that there is, in reality, careful drawing and colouring, at least in many of his pictures, under that large and general scumbling and glazing, to which, for the sake of making a whole, he sacrificed the minor beauties. And we believe that many of those beauties were not lost when the works were fresh from his easel, but that they lave been obscured since by the nature of the medium and the materials he used. That these were bad we cannot doubt, for we plainly see that some of these pictures, his most laboured for effect, are not only most wofully cracked, (yet that is not the word, for it expresses not the gummy separation of part from part,) but that transparency has been lost, and the once-brilliant pigments become a caput mortuum. Hence there is very great heaviness pervading his pictures; so that even in colouring there is a want of freshness. A deep asphaltum has overpowered lightness and delicacy, and has itself become obscure. Sir Joshua did not leave his pictures in this state. It is as if one should admire, in the clear brown bed of a mountain river, luminous objects, stone or leaf, pebble or weed, most delicately uncertain in the magic of the waving glaze; and suddenly there should come over the fascination an earthy muddying inundation. In estimating Sir Joshua's mind, we must, in imagination, remove much that his hand has done. Nor was Sir Joshua, perhaps, always true to his subject in his intention of general colouring. His "Robinettas," and portraits, or ideals of children, are not improved by that deep asphaltum colouring, so unsuitable to the freshness, and may we not add, purity of childhood. And there appears, at least now in their present state, that there is too universal a use of the brown and other warm colours; Rembrandt invariably inserted among them cool and deep grays, very seldom blue, which, as too active a colour, is apt to destroy repose, the intended effect of deep colouring. Titian uses it for the sake of its activity, as in the Bacchus and Ariadne and how subdued is that blue! but even in such pictures there are the intermediate grays, both warm and cold, that the transition from warm to cold be not too sudden. We cannot say that Sir Joshua Reynolds did not introduce these qualifying grays, because the browns have so evidently become more intense, that they may have changed them to their own hue.
There are some pictures here which have either lost their glaze by cleaning, or never had it, and these have a freshness, and touch too, which others want; such is the case with "Lady Cockburn and her Three Sons"—a very fine picture, beautifully coloured, and well grouped, very like nature, and certainly in a manner of Vandyck. We remember, too, his "Kitty Fisher," and regret the practice which, with the view of giving tone, often took away real colour, and a great deal of the delicacy of nature. The very natural portrait of "Madame Schindelin," quite in another manner from any usual with Sir Joshua, shows that he was less indebted to his after theory of colouring than people in general have imagined. The most forcible picture among them is the "Ugolino." It is well known that the head of Ugolino was a study, and not designed for Ugolino, but that the story was adopted to suit it; yet it has been thought to want the dignity of that character. Ugolino had been a man in power; there is not much mark in the picture of his nobility. It has been said, too, that the addition of his sons is no improvement in the picture. We think otherwise: they are well grouped; by their various attitudes they give the greater desperate fixedness to Ugolino, and they do tell the story well, and are good in themselves. The power of the picture is very great, and it is not overpowered by glazing. On the whole, we think it his most vigorous work, and one upon which his fame as a painter may fairly rest. We have a word to say with respect to Sir Joshua's pictures of children. That he fully admired Correggio, we cannot doubt—his children have all human sweetness, tenderness, and affection; but it was the archness of children that mostly delighted our painter—their play, their frolic, their fun. In this, though in the main successful, he was apt to border upon the caricature; we often observe a cat-like expression. "The Strawberry Girl" has perhaps the most intense, and at the same time human look. It is deeply sentient or deeply feeling. The "Cardinal Beaufort" disappoints; so large a space of canvass uncouthly filled up, rather injures the intended expression in the cardinal. Has the demon been painted out, or has that part of the picture changed, and become obscure? But we will not notice particular pictures; having thus spoken so much of the general effect, we should only have to repeat what we have already said.
The Middle Room is a collection of old masters of many schools, and valuable indeed are most of these works of art. There is a small landscape by Rembrandt, "A Road leading to a Village with a Mill," wonderfully fine. It is the perfect poetry of colour. The manner and colouring give a sentiment to this most simple subject. It is a village church, with trees around it. This is the subject—the church and trees—all else belongs to that—we see dimly through the leafage—we read, through the gloom and the glimmer, the village histories. The repose of the dead—the piety of the living—all that is necessary for the village home, is introduced—but not conspicuously—and nothing more; here is a house, a farm-house, and a mill—a village stream, over which, but barely seen, is a wooden bridge—the clouds are closing round, and such clouds as "drop fatness," making the shelter the greater—a figure or two in the road. There is great simplicity in the chiaroscuros, and the paint is of the most brilliant gem-like richness, into which you look, for it is not flimsy and thin, but substance transparent—so that it lets in your imagination into the very depth of its mystery. No painter ever understood the poetry of colour as did Rembrandt. He made that his subject, whatever were the forms and figures. We have made notes of every picture, but have no room, and must be content with selecting a very few. Here are two fine sea-pieces by Vandervelde and Backhuysen. We notice them together for their unlikeness to each other. In the latter, "A Breeze, with the Prince of Orange's Yacht," there is a fine free fling of the waves, but lacking the precision of Vandervelde. There are two vessels, of nearly equal magnitude, and not together so as to make one. We are at a loss, therefore, which to look at. It is an offence in composition, and one which is never made by Vandervelde—often by Backhuysen; and not unfrequently are his vessels too large or too small for the skies and water. "The Breeze, with Man-of-War," by Vandervelde, is, in its composition, perfect. It is the Man-of-War; there is nothing to compete with it—the gallant vessel cares not for the winds or waves—she commands them. It is wondrously painted, and as fresh as from the easel. Here are three pictures by Paul Potter—the larger one, "Landscape, with Cattle and Figures," how unlike the others! "Cattle in a Storm," is a large picture in little. The wind blows, and the bull roars. It is very fine, and quite luminous. The other, "Landscape, with Horses and Figures," looks, at first view, not quite as it should; but, on examining it, there are parts most exquisitely beautiful—the white horse coming out of the stable is perfect, and, like the Daguerreotype portraits, the more you look with a good magnifying-glass, the more truth you see. There is no picture in this room that excites so much attention as the "View of Dort from the River."—Cuyp. It is certainly very splendid. It is a sunny effect; the town is low—some warm trees just across the river, near which, half-way in the stream, is a barge, the edges gilded by the sun—further off is a large vessel, whose sides are illuminated—above all is a thunder-cloud, very effectively painted. The picture has been divided, and rejoined, and is very well done. It would perhaps be better if it were cut off a little beyond the large vessel, as the opposite sides are not quite in harmony, one part being cold, the other extremely warm. There is a companion by Cuyp, which has been engraved for Forster's work, "A River Scene—Fishing under the Ice." It is very fine: if not quite so luminous as the former, it is in better tone altogether. We must move on to—
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.