Art

A SLIGHT accession to the regular and somewhat conservative and unvaried array of pictures in the gallery of the Athenaeum has of late brought into fresh notice the eminent name of Coplev, with which we perhaps do not commonly concern ourselves enough. The addition consists of one small and three large paintings, executed at different periods, but all fruits of the artist’s English life, which, of course, was by far the most important part of his career, and loaned to the Athenaeum by their present owner, C. Amnrv, Esq. As it chances, they differ considerably from each other in point of treatment, and we shall therefore remark upon them in their historical order. The first is the preliminary painting for the Youth Rescued from a Shark, which now hangs in the Christ’s Hospital School, in London. The incident which it commemorates occurred to Watson, afterward Lord Mayor of London, who while a “ seaboy ” (as Cunningham phrases it), was attacked in the harbor of Havana by a shark, and lost one of his feet before his companions could draw him into their boat. Copley, the catalogue tells us, made the voyage to England with Watson in 1776, and was attracted by the anecdote of this adventure, as furnishing subject-matter for a picture. It is mentioned as the first attempt of the painter in the historic style, and must have been one of his first ventures in London. There is a certain harmoniousness in the coloring, despite its paleness and aridity; and the figures are wrought out with more or less success. But, on the whole, it is characterized by a groping, though by no means impotent, uncertainty. Nine or ten men are clustered into an eager group, in a boat which, judged by its proportion to their size, is very much too large to be moved by the single pair of oars with which it is provided. In the water -immediately in front, the wounded boy lies on his back, drawn rapidly in the direction of a very greedv, but also somewhat improbablelooking, shark, who has his mouth wide open in unmistakable readiness for the youngster. We confess to a want of knowledge in the matter of shark-anatomy, as well as in that of the physical aspect of these monsters; but we nevertheless cannot help feeling that Copley must have drawn this crude prodigy from some private reservoir of his own imagination. Of the water surrounding the boat and filling the harbor of Havana, we can speak with certainty as being wholly inadequate, and indicative of lack of study on the painter’s part. Even in his rudest sketch, the master of sea and sky cannot so depart from the abiding laws of form in wave and cloud as Copley does here. But among the figures in the boat, the two in white shirts who lean over, endeavoring to grasp the hurt swimmer, and he who stands at the bow, in the act of delivering a death-blow to the gaping shark, are refreshingly vigorous. They tell upon the eye more strongly, perhaps, for the very contrast which subsists between their brisk though unripe strength and the feebleness of the surroundings. We do not know how far Copley improved upon this first draft in tire finished work; but the general conception is good, and might develop well were it not for the unmistakable defect in the artist’s notions of sky and water. The truth is, Copley was ■’ not strong in “ history,” nor even in accessory landscape. His most important undertakings in the way of historical painting, namely, his Death of Lord Chatham, and the Arrest of the Five Members of the Commons, derived a large part of their importance from the fact that they contained accurate portraits of all the chief personages of the House, at the epoch when the events commemorated in those works occurred. But the whole interest of such a collection of portraits, under pretext of some particular event, is literary, rather than pictorial ; and, moreover, in the representation of a great occurrence, where some special action demands notice, concentration of attention must be more difficult, when so many separate claims are put forward by the effigies of distinguished minor actors. It is for this reason that a work of portraiture pure and simple, from the hands of Copley —such as the picture of his own family, which we next come to — is more valuable to us than either of the historical paintings we have mentioned ; for even their elaborate portraiture could not carry them through, and, as Leslie said, there were “ too many figures to let ” in them. In this Family Picture we have Mrs. Copley and her children, with her father, Mr. Clarke,— the consignee of that precious tea from which tire first brew of rebellion was extracted, by mixture with salt-water,—and Copley himself in thebackground, leaning against a pillar, and looking a little sad and cynical. A somewhat flimsy landscape is seen through a wide aperture at the back ; but the complexion of Mrs. Copley, seated against this ground, on a crimson sofa, and attired in a lustrous blue silk, is marvellously clear and perfect. The children, too, are rendered with a happy charm that is irresistible. The father’s heart must have been most fully given to this work, for the little people burst upon us with a dewy freshness of countenance and a sturdy, tumultuous joyousness of expression such as painters seldom succeed in investing their children with. The flesh-tints are all laid on with the greatest care, evidently, and with a corresponding result in beauty of appearance. If Copley was exceptionally laborious in his mode of work, he was rewarded for his pains by great and exceptional triumph in the rendering of color in the human face. Here are faces which he moulded into mimic being nearly a hundred years ago, and they bloom before us still with all the pure perfection of enamel, enhanced by a softness, and an aspect of actual physical porous structure, which it would be difficult to surpass by the exhibition of any modern portraiture. There is, however, a “spottiness” in the picture as a whole (owing to the lack of a side-light, which should balance the strong illumination of the faces from the front, as it at present exists), which gives to the fleshportions something of the appearance of being about to fly forth from their less forcibly executed surroundings. We fancy something of the same effect is seen in the Red Cross Knight, on another wall, in which the painter’s son, Lord Lvndhurst, and two of his daughters appear at a more mature age. It is rather singular that the artist should not have learned, by this time, to redress this preponderance of the fleshtints. In all probability, lie bestowed too small a degree of care upon draperies and so on, to ensure the equilibrium between these and the more brilliant flesh, after the lapse of years. In Saul reproving Samuel, which is the third of Mr. Amory’s pictures, we find, to be sure, a great advance in the historical styie upon the Youth’s Rescue. But this is chiefly in the manifestation of academic discipline, which had now been at work some twenty years upon Copley. We do not like the blue mail of the warrior, holding the blue-white horse bn the right, nor the red drapery of Saul, the red banner above him, and the rosy cloud behind, in the centre ; followed by a deep black cloud on the left, and Samuel in dark dove-color and blue, with a yellow scarf. But the drawing is good and vigorous. In those days, if a man made an unsuccessful picture, he was at least at considerable pains to do so. Lady Jane Grey refusing the Crown, painted in 1S09, is skilful and dignified, slightly cold, and in one or two points stiff, but really a fine achievement. Perseverance and determined industry, applied to a genius not naturally inclined to this kind of painting, led Copley to this eminence.