There is a small picture of Diana bathing, by this gentleman, which we think equally admirable for the character and drawing. The knowledge of the human figure in this pleasing composition might be opposed with advantage to the utter ignorance of it in some Musidora sketches, in which the limbs seem to have been kneaded in paste, and are thrown together like a bundle of drapery.
Of Mr. Hilton’s picture of Mary Magdalen anointing the feet of our Saviour, we have little more to say, than that the figures are much larger than life, and that, we understand, it has been purchased by the Institution for 500 guineas.
Mr. West’s picture of Lot and his Family is one of those highly finished specimens of metallurgy which too often proceed from the President’s hardware manufactory. As to the subject, we conceive it has been often enough treated in a country famed for ‘pure religion breathing household laws.’ We do not mean to lay it down as a rule, that the sublimity of the execution may not redeem the deformity of the subject of a composition, as there is a great and acknowledged difference between Shakspeare and the Newgate Calendar; but this of Mr. West’s is a mere furniture picture, and offers no palliation from the genius displayed by the artist. Having touched unawares on this very delicate subject of the ethics of painting, we shall just notice, that the picture of ‘Venus weeping over the dead body of Adonis,’ seems to have been painted tout expres, for the purpose of being bought up by some member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Mr. Turner’s grand landscape of Apullius and Apullia has one recommendation, which must always enhance the value of this most able artist’s productions, that the composition is taken verbatim from Lord Egremont’s picture of ‘Jacob and Laban.’ The beautiful arrangement is Claude’s; the powerful execution is his own. From this specimen of parody, and from his never-enough-to-be-admired picture of ‘Mercury and Herse,’ we could almost wish that this gentleman would always work in the trammels of Claude or N. Poussin. All the taste and all the imagination being borrowed, his powers of eye, hand, and memory, are equal to any thing. In general, his pictures are a waste of morbid strength. They give pleasure only by the excess of power triumphing over the barrenness of the subject. The artist delights to go back to the first chaos of the world, or to that state when the waters were merely separated from the dry land, and no creeping thing nor herb bearing fruit was seen upon the face of the land. The figures in the present picture are execrable. Claude’s are flimsy enough; but these are impudent and obtrusive vulgarity. The utter want of a capacity to draw a distinct outline with the force, the depth, the fulness, and precision of this artist’s eye for colour, is truly astonishing. There is only one part of the colouring of Mr. Turner’s landscape which did not please us: it is the blue of the water nearest the foreground, immediately after the dark brown shadow of the trees.
The picture of the Favourite Lamb, by Collins, has exquisite feeling. The groupe of children surrounding the little victim, and arresting him in his progress to the butcher’s cart, has a degree of natural pathos and touching simplicity, which we have never seen surpassed in any picture of the kind. It may easily draw tears from eyes, at all used to the melting mood.
THE STAGE.
| The Morning Chronicle] | [February 24, 1814. |
The manner in which Shakespeare’s plays have been generally altered, or rather mangled, by modern mechanists, is in our opinion a disgrace to the English Stage. The patch-work Richard which is acted under the sanction of his name, is a striking example of this remark. The play itself is undoubtedly one of the finest effusions of Shakespeare’s genius. It is as truly Shakespearian—that is, it has as much of the author’s mind, of passion, character, and interest, with as little alloy of the peculiarities of the age, or extraneous matter, as almost any other of his productions. Wherever Shakespeare relied upon himself, and did not appeal to the taste of his audience, he outstripped all competition, and this he did as often as he had a motive in his subject to do so; he had none in his vanity, or in the affectation of conforming to certain critical rules. The winds blow as they list; and the golden tide of passion no sooner rises in his breast, than it swells and bears down every thing in its mighty course.
The ground-work of the character of Richard,—that mixture of intellectual vigour with moral depravity, in which Shakespeare delighted to shew his strength,—gave full scope as well as temptation to the exertion of his genius. The character of his hero is almost everywhere predominant, and marks its lurid track throughout. The original play is, however, too long for representation, and there are some few scenes which might be better spared than preserved and by omitting which, it would remain a complete whole. The only rule, indeed, for altering Shakespeare, is to retrench certain passages which may be considered either as superfluous or obsolete, but not to add or transpose any thing. The arrangement and developement of the story, and the mutual contrast and combination of the dramatis personæ, are in general as finely managed as the developement of the characters or the expression of the passions.
This rule has not been adhered to in the present instance. Some of the most important and striking passages in the principal character have been omitted, to make room for tedious and misplaced extracts from other plays; the only intention of which seems to have been, to make the character of Richard as odious and disgusting as possible. A bugbear seems to have been always necessary to the English nation, and—give them but this to vent their spleen upon—they will, either in matters of taste or opinion, ‘as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are.’ It is apparently for no other purpose than to make Gloucester stab King Henry on the stage, that the fine abrupt introduction of this character in the opening of the play is lost in the tedious whining morality of the uxorious King (taken from another play);—we say tedious, because it interrupts the business of the scene, and loses its beauty and effect by having no intelligible connection with the previous character of the mild and well-meaning monarch. The passages which Mr. Wroughton has to recite are in themselves exquisitely pathetic, but they have nothing to do with the world that Richard has to ‘bustle in.’ In the same spirit of vulgar caricature is the scene between Richard and Lady Anne (when his wife)—interpolated, merely to gratify this favourite propensity to disgust and loathing. With the same perverse consistency, Richard, after his last fatal struggle, is raised up by some Galvanic process, to utter the imprecation, without any motive but pure malignity, which is so finely put into the mouth of Northumberland on hearing of Percy’s death. We hope that Mr. Kean, when he acts Macbeth, will die as Shakespeare makes him, and not with four lines of canting penitence (a common-place against ambition) in his mouth. To make room for these needless additions and interpolations, many of the most striking passages in the real play have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance of the prompt-book critics. We do not mean to insist merely on passages which are fine as poetry and to the reader, such as Clarence’s dream, &c. but those which are important to the developement of the character, and peculiarly adapted for stage effect. We give the following as instances among many others.