The Fine Arts.
Paul Delaroche's picture of Marie Antoinette is to be engraved on a large scale. Delaroche has represented the unfortunate Autrichienne descending the stairs from the terrible tribunal which pronounced her death-sentence. She is attired in black, with a white scarf round her shoulders. A singular but striking effect, which the painter has rendered with habitual felicity, is the altered color of her hair, which is said to have turned white. The artist has shown the alteration, by a few stray auburn locks, blanched at the root. In the background is represented the mob which greeted with execrations the "widow Capet" on the morning of the 15th October, 1793.
The Print of the London Art-Union for the current year is from one of Mr. Frith's pictures, An English Merry-making in the Olden Time, engraved by Holt, so carefully as to bring out every detail and shade of character in the original with the greatest fidelity and spirit. The merry-making consists mainly in the performance, beneath some noble trees, of the old country-dance of Sir Roger de Coverley, by a party of rustics. A couple of lovers are seated in the foreground, and close by them is a group of merry damsels hauling a jolly old farmer to the dance, while the dame encourages their attack.
A few friends of the poet Motherwell, of Glasgow, have just erected a beautiful monument to him in that city. It is the work of Mr. Fillans, a friend of the deceased, and is in the form of a small Gothic temple, consisting of a quadrangular pediment of solid masonry, supporting a light dome on four pillars; the dome being decorated with carvings of shields and fleurs de lis. In the space between the pillars is a sarcophagus, on which is placed a termini bust of the poet.
The German Painter Winterhalter, whose pencil is mainly dedicated to courtly chronicles and countenances, has just completed another of his numerous royal family groups. It represents the Duke of Wellington in the act of offering an affectionate souvenir to his little godson Prince Arthur, on the occasion of his first birth-day anniversary.
The Count de Thun, a distinguished Austrian painter, and M. Ruben, director of the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts in Prague, have been commissioned by the Austrian government to examine into the several organizations of the schools of the arts of design in England, France, and Germany, with a view to propose such ameliorations as the examination may suggest in the various schools of Austria.