THE ROYAL ACADEMY
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE PRIZE CARTOONS.
The late competition for Cartoons must cause some alteration in the next edition of Johnson's Dictionary; for what is meant by the word Cartoon will require considerable explanation, after the very extraordinary collection recently exhibited at Westminster. According to some of the artists, Cartoon signifies anything brought in a cart; for such is the only claim to be called a Cartoon that many of the specimens can pretend to. Chalking walls used formerly to be a very profitable employment; and we have often thought what could have become of the wall-chalkers since the blacking-makers ceased to have their Day—and Martin. These artists of a menial capacity (vide the Latin Dictionary for the meaning of mœnial) came out in considerable strength at the late exhibition of Cartoons, and they have chalked up a pretty long account against themselves on the walls of Westminster. That the exhibition was put an end to rather summarily at the beginning of autumn, we are not surprised; it is only astonishing that they were not made to "walk their chalks" at a much earlier period.
The Commissioners of the fine arts shot at a pigeon, and killed a crow. They wished to ascertain the state of the art of historical painting, and got a glorious collection of designs for burlesquing British history, showing at once the palmy state to which the art of caricature has risen in this country. Fauns have been satirized, and the British lion has been made in the mane a very humorous-looking animal. As to Magna Carta, never did it give rise to such tremendous liberties as the drawers of the Cartoons have taken with it. Shakspeare is fortunately immortal, or his fame could scarcely have escaped the violent hands that have been laid upon him. Macbeth and the Witches are so beautifully confused that it is difficult to say which is Macbeth and which the Witches. There is the murder of Duncan, with his two sons in the distance, looking on as calmly as if they were indeed very distant relatives. There is the Ghost of Cæsar appearing to Brutus; but the artist, not knowing how to treat light and shade, has caricatured the shade most miserably. Some have selected Shakspeare upon Mercy for illustration, but without having any mercy upon Shakspeare; and somebody has favoured us with Drake on the quarter-deck, Drake being distinguished by a pair of ducks,—a touch of humour we could not fail to appreciate. Most of the artists seemed to have laboured under an awful enlargement of the imagination, which set them off commencing their drawings upon an enormous scale, obliging them to moderate their conceptions before the completion of the picture. The fact that there was many a Cartoon which would have gone in, but that there was no getting it through the door, illustrates this malady among the artists. It may be considered as a species of Elephantiasis, inducing the idea that one's self and one's subject are much more vast than they are in reality. It would seem that some of the artists have misread the advertisement of the Commissioners of Fine Arts, and that for the word "decorate" some of them read "desecrate" the walls of Parliament.
The Iron Peer.
THE WATERING-PLACES OF ENGLAND.
Serene and fair is Battersea,
As it breasts the river's side;