10. Leys—La Famille Pallavicini de Gênes réclamant le droit de Bourgeoisie des Bourgmestres et Echevins de la Ville d’Anvers, 1542.—When our Royal Academy is honoured by a contribution from one of the first magnates of European art, it becomes us to accept his work in a spirit of gratitude, with much desire to study, and very little to cavil. It is by way of study that I venture to note some of the leading characteristics of that mediæval style which has made Baron Leys famous throughout the civilized world. 1st. He identifies himself with the period he paints—not only in a general way, as a good scholar might do, but especially in respect of its concerted outer demonstrations, and its social aspects, and this with all the more zest when a spice of patriotism is involved. 2nd. Working from this solid basis of mediævalism, he is never afraid of individualizing his personages to the very uttermost: they are actual men and women whom he might—and for anything I know does—pick up in the streets of modern Belgium. An extreme instance appears in the present picture, in the furthest right-hand figure, whose portrait-like aspect is unmistakeable. This, however, being an obviously modern head, differs from the generality—which, with their personal actuality, are somehow projected back, by the imagination and skill of the painter, into the mediæval period, and thus come to be even more like what one conceives of the sixteenth than what one knows of the nineteenth century. Hence an air of startling realism: the personages are as real as if they were painted in coats and trowsers; and the mediævalism is as real as any modern man can make it. The very uncouthness and hard-featuredness of the figures is a powerful element in this realism: it looks as if the painter had seen them actually there, and depicted them as in duty bound—had he been selecting, one would expect more of positive beauty or semi-idealism. 3rd. Baron Leys paints with a remarkable mixture of force and slightness, detail and unfinish. He gives an extraordinary number of items, and with singular strength of definition, yet with little that can, on close inspection, be called elaboration. Everything is done so as to solicit the eye at a little distance, and up to a certain point to satisfy, never to satiate it. The style of execution has even a good deal that might be termed rough and ready; and (what is of great importance) it is quite unlike any handiwork of the Middle Ages themselves. Moreover, the painter (in the present phase of his style) very seldom gives any mere accidents of light and shade—direct or flickering sunshine, contrasts of natural and artificial light, or the like. It may seem fanciful to say that this also subserves the historical impression; and yet I think it does so powerfully—the scenes and the actors in them tell upon the mind, through the eye, as having passed out of the momentary into the permanent—out of the region of chance and change into that dim lumour and remote subsistency of the past. Having said thus much, by way of study, of Baron Leys’s pictures in general, I shall not endeavour to analyse the particular work before us. It is a replica of one of his frescoes in the Townhall of Antwerp, and illustrates the value which distinguished foreigners were wont to set upon the right of citizenship in that great commercial and privileged city. It is to be regarded as an important and excellent specimen of the master, though some others might deserve the preference in point of executive completeness.
17. Linnell, Sen.—English Woodlands.—A very characteristic and fine example of the painter’s style: one might use it as a text-book wherefrom to develope his specialties in the English school of landscape.
30. Watts—Landscape, Evening.—A small work, but conspicuous by its broad, strong colour, very warm and mellow: it has power both of hand and of sentiment. The sky is especially luminous.
44. Hemy—Tête de Flandre, near Antwerp.—There is a great deal of space in this picture: and the tone of green-grey colour is finely felt and solidly sustained. A sense of the ripple in the estuary is given by a curious sort of sleight of hand—an actual ridging or rucking in the surface of the paint.
52. Cope—The Life’s Story.—This is the subject of Othello relating his adventures to Brabantio and Desdemona. The lady hangs upon the words of the Moor with a demonstrative interest that fully justified his inference that she must be in love with him. The picture cannot, I think, be counted among Mr. Cope’s successes.
64. Grant—The Duke of Cambridge at the Battle of the Alma, leading the Guards up the Hill in support of the Light Division.—The weak point of this picture is the isolated figure of the Duke himself, which has more the character of a likeness by a portrait-painter than of a leading agent in the event. The Guards in the foreground are happily treated; with sufficient individuality in the several figures, not made singly over-prominent. The general execution is not unlike that of Sir Edwin Landseer; which is as much as to say that it has uncommon ability.
70. Millais—Rosalind and Celia.—A picture full of sunny light and masterly celerity of execution. The faces have great sentiment, and ample charm of beauty: the confiding self-subordinating character of Celia speaks in the lines of her mouth. Touchstone is older than one would infer from the drama. It is a pity that Mr. Millais did not set himself to reflect what Rosalind would probably have done with her hair and costume in order to sustain the disguise of a young man. The upper portion of the dress is absurdly feminine, and hardly recedes even from the nineteenth century. On the stage one pardons the paraded sex of the actress—it is partly unavoidable, and partly a device of her profession: but in a picture one fairly expects a greater conformity to the common sense of the situation. Mr. Millais, however, never will pay any attention to his costume. With all the signal merits of the execution, the texture is not free from woolliness.
87. Frith—Before dinner at Boswell’s Lodgings in Bond Street, 1769: present, Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Murphy, Bickerstaff, Davies, and Boswell.—We have heard only too often about Goldsmith’s “bloom-coloured coat.” This is the scene of its exhibition before Boswell’s guests. The picture may be termed a self-respecting one: the humours of the personages and the incident are indicated without being made to stare one out of countenance. Per contra, it must be said that strength is deficient throughout: common weakish mouths prevail in this distinguished company. Goldsmith and Reynolds are indifferent likenesses; and Johnson’s clothes fit almost as accurately as Goldsmith’s.
123. Edwin Landseer—Rent-Day in the Wilderness.—“After the defeat of the Stuart army in 1715, at Sheriff Muir, Colonel Donald Murchison, to whom the Earl of Seaforth confided his confiscated estates in Ross-shire, defended them for ten years, and regularly transmitted the rents to his attainted and exiled chief.” The picture shows the rent being thus collected under difficulties. A bearded clansman, attended by his daughter, is in the act of paying; a friar kneels close beside Colonel Murchison; and a number of other Highlanders have assembled for the occasion. This large and crowded picture has a peculiar look, in consequence of the stealthy and crouching action of most of the figures: they are keeping close amid the brushwood on one side of Loch Affric, while some of the Government soldiers are patrolling the opposite bank. The work has thus—besides the generic merits which any large painting by Sir Edwin Landseer is sure to possess—plenty that is both peculiar and interesting, not unmingled with a certain impression of discomfort.
138. Herbert—The Valley of Moses in the Desert of Sinai.—This picture (as Mr. Herbert is stated never to have been in the East) is somewhat noticeable in point of eclectic, and at the same time diluted, study. The light and tone are agreeable, and free from that hardness which besets many Eastern pictures; but, on observing the comparative faintness of the shadows upon the blazing sands, one sees at once that the avoidance of hardness has involved some sacrifice of truth.