THE ACADEMY AND NEW GALLERY EXHIBITIONS.

"WHAT Went ye out for to see?" is a question which might not inaptly be addressed to the crowds who throng, every recurring May, up the staircase at Burlington House. "Private view day," indeed, whether there or at the New Gallery, is almost admittedly a social function-an occasion for putting in an appearance, meeting friends, and (on the part of one half of the company) displaying and criticizing costumes; the latter point being emphasized at the Academy by the presence of fair reporters stationed at the entrance with note-books, to record the particulars of the most ravishing toilettes. As far as one can overhear, art criticism on the occasion seems to be summed up in the remark, bandied about year after year with complacent superiority-"Don't you think it is a very poor Academy?"

The glory of" private view" over, the New Gallery lapses into comparative seclusion-it is not one of the shows to which it is considered an absolute necessity that every properly-conducted Londoner should go; but the crowd at the Academy, during the first week or two, is as insistent as ever. What is the magnet which draws people? Not interest in Art; one has only to listen to the remarks on the pictures to be rid of any such optimistic illusion. To a certain extent it is habit, fashion, and the necessity of being posted up in a subject which is for the time the talk of every dinner table. But we need not be too pessimistic either; there is something more in it than that. What is at the bottom of it, with a large proportion of the spectators, is really an interest in Life, and consequently in pictured shows of life. That is not the kind of interest which artists wish the public to take in their works, but it is not to be altogether despised; it is a great deal better than indifference; and, moreover, it is the one fact which affords some kind of excuse for the position practically taken by the Royal Academy, and for the constitution of their exhibitions. The Royal Academy caters for the public; the public want pictures of concrete subjects, not abstract ideals in creative or decorative design; and hence it has come to pass that the Academy, in spite of its official title, is not really an "Academy of Arts," it is essentially an academy of painting and painters, the space devoted to painting at its exhibitions being out of all proportion to that devoted to any other form of artistic expression. To say that the public demand is an excuse for this is not to say that it is a defence; on the contrary, the position taken by the Academy is quite indefensible on any

ground but the merely commercial one. A national Academy of Arts has two main duties: first, to provide education in Art for those who show themselves to be worth educating, and to this part of its duties the Royal Academy pays every attention; secondly, to lead and promote, to instruct and strengthen, the public taste in Art; and this it does not do. It allows itself to be led by the public, it provides what the public are willing to pay their shillings for, viz., a large and miscellaneous collection of paintings, selected on no recognisable principle, and regarded by the public simply as one of the most attractive annual amusements which London affords.

As long as the Academical painters so immensely preponderate in numbers1 as they do at present, there seems little hope of a change in this respect. The majority naturally take the view suggested in an after-dinner song with which a well-known R.A. used to edify his friends, giving the conversation between "a young Academician and an old Academician" in the cab on the way to a Council meeting for electing a new member

Says the young Academician to the old Academician,

'Do you think they'll put us off with a sculptcher or a harchiteck?'
Says the old Academician, That be d- -d, that be d-d!'"

But until there is a change, it is impossible to regard the Academy exhibitions as really representative of Art, or as exercising any important effect on the artistic education of the public, who are thus encouraged to think that "Art" means "pictures," exactly the heresy which an Academy of Arts ought to be concerned in demolishing. There may be some reason for giving a larger space to painting than to other branches of Art, in the fact that painting, from its greater possible range of subjects, includes a greater variety of interests; but at present the discrepancy is out of all proportion.2 Sculpture is the best cared for of the other Arts, but the space for it is still very inadequate and the room not well lighted; architecture is represented by a collection of drawings and an occasional model in one of the smallest rooms; stained glass by small coloured drawings in the same room, whereas the glass itself ought to be exhibited in a corridor arranged specially for it, all idea of exhibiting or judging of

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(1) Taking R.A.'s and A.R.A.'s together, and omitting those on the "retired" list, the Academy is at present composed as follows: fifty-three painters, seven sculptors, and seven architects! One would imagine that architecture and sculpture were inferior Arts, instead of being, the one the central Art around which all others group, and the other the Art capable of the most idealized and abstract poetic expression through the medium of the human figure.

(2) Of course the remark does not only refer to the Academy; the disproportion is nearly as marked at the New Gallery; but then the New Gallery is only a private enterprise, not a national institution.

(3) A whole range of the new windows for Orleans cathedral are at this moment so exhibited at the Champ de Mars Salon, in a large gallery lighted through them.

stained glass by means of pigments laid on paper being utterly futile; and decorative art is only just recognised by the admission of an occasional casket or book-cover. The almost entire neglect of the class of artistic work which includes such things as jewellery, metal work, and ornament generally, is the more to be regretted, because in no civilized country is the taste in jewellery, gold work, and personal ornaments generally so bad as it is in England; it is almost impossible to get anything in a jeweller's shop which displays any artistic perception or any but the most commonplace and even vulgar taste; and the full recognition of this branch of Art by the Academy, the allotment of sufficient space for it, and the choice of the most worthy designs for exhibition would unquestionably have a great effect in improving public taste, and in emphasizing the fact that "Art" does not mean pictures, but the endeavour after what is beautiful in all the higher and more refined departments of human production. Architecture, again, is only allowed to be illustrated by a collection. of small drawings in a room out of the line of circulation and into which scarcely anyone goes. Architecture, in regard to exhibition, is on a different plane from sculpture and painting, as the actual work cannot be exhibited; but in France it is illustrated by large and complete drawings which really show the whole working out of a building; and much may be done with models, of which not nearly enough use is made, nor is the requisite space given for them at the Academy. If the large room at Burlington House were devoted to large models, drawings, and decorative details of architectural design, the public, which is at present as innocent of any taste or principle in architecture as it is in jewellery, would gradually begin to learn something about the subject, and to distinguish, by the help of the Academy, good architecture from bad. With this, and the present water-colour room given over to decorative work and bijouterie (the water-colours might very well find place in the present small but well-lighted architectural room), the Academy exhibition would really be that of an Academy "of Arts," which at present it is in little more than the name; and the general standard of the exhibitions would be very much raised by the omission of a certain proportion of mediocre and uninteresting pictures, of which there are always far too many on the walls.

Pictures, as it is, form the bulk of what is offered to us; and it is worth note that the picture which unquestionably stands out as the sensation of the year is one which is diametrically opposed to the most prominent preaching of the modern school of criticism. For we have had it fairly dinned into us of late years that we are to look at a picture not for what it shows us, not as an illustration of a subject, but purely as a matter of artistic element of line and colour. The lesson was one which the English public no doubt needed. They

are accustomed to regard a picture merely for what it shows them, and to like it or dislike it according as the subject interests them, or as they think it like or not like their own conception of the probable facts; and they will probably go on doing so to the end of the chapter, let the critics charm never so wisely: that way of thinking is inherent in the English mind; like the monks in Fra Filippo Lippi, they are most taken with verisimilitude of circumstance and action

"That's the very man!

Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!"

and so on. Yet on the other hand it must be owned that the modern critical theory has been pushed too far. It has been overlooked that one use of painting, and a highly intellectual use of the Art too, is to realise for us scenes and incidents in history or fiction more vividly than we have realised them before-more vividly perhaps than we can realise them apart from visual representation. "Historical painting," as it may be called (for whether the scene is taken from history or from fiction is all one as to the general principle), has fallen into some contempt among the new school of painters; complete scenes are seldom attempted, single characters are given which are after all but studies of costume and colour to which the name of a character is appended by way of a title, the personal expression of character being the last thing thought of. Yet surely to create a face and figure which realises to us a personality which we have only before vaguely conceived in our imagination, is a higher intellectual achievement than any mere study of colour; and Mr. Abbey pulls us sharply round to the recollection of this in his remarkable representation of the wooing of Lady Anne by Gloster in the second scene of Richard III.; a work which comes as a surprise to us after his series of sketches of Shakspeare characters in one of the American magazines, which were by no means very successful. In one detail he has, whether intentionally or not, departed from Shakspeare; the wrangle took place after the bier had been set down and the procession stopped by Gloster's imperious order; in the picture the group is in movement and Gloster walks at the lady's side, with better result, no doubt, for the animation of the scene. There is a quantity of archæological detail as to costume, &c., worth attention in itself, especially the sumptuous costume of Anne, stiff with heraldic embroidery, in which she seems to move with difficulty. But the point of the picture lies in the vivid realization of Gloster as presented to us by Shakspeare; his face is a most remarkable study of character and expression; as we look at it, the whole result of the scene becomes intelligible; ugly and uninviting as he is, he has the power to carry the situation; the woman, in spite of her vigorous

action and clenched fist, is already struggling in the toils. Mr. Abbey has set his mark on that scene for good, and divides the honours with Shakspeare. "Pretty to note," as Pepys might have said, "how the folk do question and cudgel their brains over it," a proof that the popular knowledge of Shakspeare is not so intimate as is commonly pretended.

Next to Mr. Abbey's picture, this Academy will be remembered as the year of portraits; not that there are more than usual, but there are a larger proportion of really fine ones. Portraits may be broadly classified under three types; sheer likenesses, good or bad as such; likenesses which interest us also for some special quality of style or execution; and portraits which aim specially at pictorial effectwhich are primarily pictures, only secondarily portraits. As to the latter, Mr. Collier has recently told us, in a magazine article, that he is "old fogey enough to consider that a portrait ought to resemble the person it is meant for," an antiquated but sound view, on which an amusing comment may be found in the National Portrait Gallery, where Mr. Lehmann's portrait of Browning, hard and uninteresting in style, but as like the original as possible, hangs over the halflength by Mr. Watts, a much more powerful piece of painting, but unfortunately not in the least like Browning. A similar criticism would partially apply to Mr. Watts's portrait of an eminent sculptor in the Academy; the head of Mr. Gilbert, translated into Mr. Watts's scheme of colour; the result is highly interesting as a picture, but scarcely successful as a portrait. In many portraits Mr. Watts has obviously aimed at conveying something more than the external presentment of the sitter; he has tried to paint his mind, so to speak, or to convey his own impression of his sitter's character; an interesting but rather dangerous experiment, from the portraiture point of view, though it may be combined with accurate likeness. Mr. Watts himself has done this splendidly in his portrait of Mill; and Sir J. Millais in those of Mr. Gladstone, Bright, and Lord Shaftesbury. Mr. Sargent's portrait of Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, is a masterly piece of simple, unaffected portraiture, interesting also from its breadth of style. For Mr. Sargent's portraits are mostly typical examples of our second class, i.e., likenesses which are interesting also from their artistic quality of style, as notably in his " Mrs. Ian Hamilton"; the broad and bold manner in which the effect is obtained interests us in itself, as an example of one method of conveying the impression of various textures in a manner quite apart from detailed imitation, besides the vivacity with which the expression of the countenance is given, though it may be admitted that "breadth " is carried to the verge of roughness and angularity, sometimes, in the treatment of arms and hands. Mr. Sargent's intimate knowledge of the effect of every touch is well illustrated in the accessories of his portrait