150. Ward—Royal Marriage, 1477.—The detestable humbug of a sham contemporary “MS.” is resorted to for the purpose of informing the reader of the Academy catalogue that this painting represents the marriage of the Duke of York, aged four, son of Edward IV., to Lady Anne Mowbray, aged three. A bishop of almost decrepit old age officiates, and Gloucester is naturally made a prominent witness. Mr. Ward’s style of painting, chiaroscuro, and handling, is universally known; it may be termed the overblown style, with about as much retirement and repose as a peony the hour before it falls to pieces. But this should not blind us to his solid merits of thought and invention, always exercised in a direction which tells with the public, and for the most part felicitously in other respects as well. The present picture is an instance. Besides any amount of fine dresses and demonstrative infancy, it boasts a power of association which must take hold of every spectator: the infant bridal, the gorgeous dawn of promise to the little sons of King Edward, and the crash of fate reserved for them within the cerebral convolutions of the future King Richard. We may afford, while we are about it, to recollect that this effective subject pertains by right of priority to Mr. Houghton, who designed it for a woodcut.
167. Frith—Sterne and the French Innkeeper’s Daughter.—The imperfectly Reverend Mr. Sterne is looking at the damsel as she knits a stocking, and pondering upon its neat adjustment to the shape of her leg. On general grounds much the same may be said of this picture as of No. 87: both are superior examples of the easy certainty with which Mr. Frith can strike the key he wants, just as loud as he wishes it, and no louder. Sterne (as Goldsmith and Reynolds before) appears to me anything but a good likeness: the young woman is more French in feature than in the ensemble of the face.
172. T. Faed—Worn Out.—This ranks with Mr. Faed’s best pictures: it is very skilful, and has more equality of painting than usual—somewhat less of obtruded knack and flourish. The various small accessories are well related to the main incident of the hard-working father who has fallen asleep while watching his invalid boy.
188. Poole—Custaunce sent adrift by the Constable of Alla, King of Northumberland.—This moonlight picture has rather the character of a manufacture; yet it is manufacture by a poetic eye and pictorial hand. There is some clever handling in the water of the foreground; and the entire absence of red from the picture—which relies for colour upon iridescent tints of grey-blue, green, yellow, and so on—is observable.
209. Houghton—H. Bassett, Esq., in his Laboratory.—A capital piece of peculiarity. Great pains and intelligence have gone to the depicting of the scientific plethora of the laboratory; and the sense of the shut-in, moderately-lit room, not lightly to be intruded upon, is vivid. Mr. Bassett is represented smoking a pipe. This may seem a trivial or purposeless incident. Yet it may have been introduced to indicate some enforced pause in his work while an experiment is maturing; and, if so, it is certainly not unsuggestive.
223. Orchardson—Mrs. Birket Foster.—This seems to me about the best work Mr. Orchardson has yet exhibited: it is a small full-length—more a subject than a mere portrait. The artist has a certain streaky or gauzy touch which amounts to mannerism: here the handling and colour have almost a soupçon of Gainsborough. The bright face, the quiet lighting of the dusky-boarded room, and the untumbled white muslin dress, make up a picture in which elegant and artist-like taste verges upon quaintness.
235. Elmore—Ishmael.—An accomplished study, perhaps (within its limits) unsurpassed by any work of its author.
236. G. D. Leslie—Home News.—An English lady in her remote Asiatic home is reading a letter from the old country. The half-hovering smile, and the long-drawn regard of the eye as though she were in contemplation back across the measureless ocean, are delicately caught; also the coolness of the matted interior, jealously excluding the sun itself, but not the sense of how it is blazing outside.
242. Millais—Stella.—A single figure, three-quarter length, and perhaps the very best Mr. Millais has done of its class. The name Stella naturally suggests Swift’s Stella; and Swift’s Stella holding a letter, with a countenance of subdued long-suffering, suggests her receipt of the letter from Vanessa inquiring whether she and Swift were in fact married. If this is the incident really intended, the sympathizing spectator may be startled at being reminded that Stella was at that time about forty years of age. But Mr. Millais is not the man to mind much whether he does or does not represent a particular incident, or whether or not any such representation is endurably correct. He has painted delightfully a very loveable woman, and that will probably suffice him and us. The tint of flesh in the arm appears hardly so pure as the rest of the colouring.
247. O’Neil—Before Waterloo.—This picture will certainly have critics of two sorts. One set, incurious of artistic subtleties, will batten upon such a purveying of British military heroism, gushing young creatures, and harrowing family partings. Another set will turn with æsthetic distaste from so much of ball-costume and regimentals, and such a cross between the leaden and the garish in colour. An intermediate set ought also to find a voice, and to aver that the scheme of arrangement in the picture is very ingenious, and successful in turning a serious difficulty—that the story is told with great emphasis and much well-considered variety of detail—and that, when one faces the picture with deliberation, one can hardly refuse it the praise of being interesting. If Mr. O’Neil could but get somebody else’s colour to exude through his brush, with texture and surface to correspond!