248. Sir C. Lindsay—The Earl Somers.—It is only fair to cite this picture, by an amateur and a Baronet, as one of the best portraits on the walls. The steadiness of the figure on his feet, without compromise and without bravado, is alone a considerable merit. A spectator may be struck by the great number of sitters who elect to be painted in shooting costume, or in some other dress and with other accessories of sport. “Manly exercises” will of course account for most of this; and knickerbockers and black velvet have their share of influence.
260. Legros—The Refectory.—The eye finds repose and satisfaction in this broadly and firmly painted picture, free from the last suspicion of ad captandum appeal. Three monks and a tabby cat have assembled to make a meal off a mackerel—the board laid with a perfectly clean white cloth. The monks are all men of dignified and thoughtful presence: two of them still pause over a book of orisons or meditations before they begin the refection. It might not be unfair to say that there is a good deal of space to let in the large-sized canvas: but one need not exactly quarrel with that. The painter, a man now of reputation equally confirmed and well deserved both in his own country and in ours, knows perfectly well what he is about; we may safely accept his point of view, and find in the result that, if he has not done precisely what we might have bespoken, there is nevertheless a definite value to be got out of his method of treatment, not to be slighted because a different method would have given some other and countervailing value. If anybody wishes to learn (among graver things) what amount of executive short-hand suffices for making a cat tabby, Mr. Legros’s picture will inform him.
268. R. Butler—The Lost Path.—This artist’s name is unfamiliar to me. His little picture of children astray in a copse has great merit of naïve expression, rendered as well by action as by countenance.
273. Storey—The Shy Pupil.—The painter has here attained to a high point of force in simplicity of work. The subject is a budding girl learning to dance in her father’s presence. With nothing that can be called elaboration, the execution would, for purity of lighting and directness of hand, bear comparison with many a choice Dutch picture. If we went to Mr. Legros for a tabby cat, we may consult Mr. Storey for a small dog peering through a door; a few twirls of the brush have, by a species of legerdemain, produced a surprising amount of characteristic form. This work, with much effect of solidity, is nevertheless amenable to my opening remarks as to sketchiness: but, in so simple and semi-humorous a subject, that need hardly be objected to.
283. Dickinson—George Peabody, Esq.—A very honest good piece of work, and a most unmistakeable likeness, to be remembered among the portraits of the year much to Mr. Dickinson’s credit.
288. Cope—The Disciples at Emmaus.—Mr. Cope’s method of art unites remarkable defining power with a certain thinness of the primary material; it reminds one of good woodcarving—strong and accurate modelling bestowed upon a substance which, after the utmost has been done for it, retains an aboriginal crudity. In the present picture, the artist has planned out all forcibly and distinctly—he has left nothing vague to his own mind or the spectator’s eye. Yet no corresponding impression of reality is produced; the work wants imaginative reality, and therefore its other elements of reality do not tell as they were intended to do. To attenuate the form of the risen Christ, and to make his drapery transparent to the evening light, is not the way to remove him from the regions of fleshliness.
302. Horsley—Rent-day at Haddon Hall.—Considerably the best picture Mr. Horsley has exhibited of late, or perhaps at any time. A very moderate proportion of adult good sense may have sufficed to discriminate it from his staple commodity.
311. G. Richmond—Mrs. Brereton.—While Mr. Richmond can put into a face so much feminine candour and amiability as we see in this likeness, no one need be surprised at his eminent standing among portrait painters. To look at the face seems to be like making Mrs. Brereton’s acquaintance—or like wishing to make it.
316. Calderon—The Young Lord Hamlet.—Yorick is on all-fours on the pleasance of the Danish palace, with little Hamlet riding on his back; Queen Gertrude and some of her ladies looking on; and an infant, presumably Ophelia, not yet “taking notice.” This is strictly a sketch; no doubt a very able one, and only to be done by a man of long training and solid acquirement in art. Not only is the thing full of sparkling animal spirits as a whole, but each point, when one attends to it, is pertinent and telling: except indeed the face of the lady who holds Ophelia, and who exhibits a smile as hard as her teeth. This is not the only time that Mr. Calderon has made considerable play with teeth, and not, I think, successfully; nothing is more difficult to manage in a picture.
323. Watts—The wife of Pygmalion, a Translation from the Greek.—This is one of the few works of poetic elevation in the gallery: it is beautiful with a noble beauty, which one hardly knows whether rather to call womanly or impassive. It rests midway between coldness and warmth, without being lukewarm. It should be added that the merit is not exclusively Mr. Watts’s, the head being truly “a translation from the Greek,” i.e., adapted from the fine antique bust pointed out not long ago for admiration among the Arundel Marbles in Oxford.