Art

THE lady who has translated for us the chaptcis from Charles Blanc’s interesting and useful book has put all of us under obligation, and the publishers have pleasantly done their part with excellent paper, and large, clear type. It strikes us as a singularity, the leaving out the author’s first name on the title-page, and calling him simply Blanc. Charles Blanc, although a distinguished name in a certain literary and artistic circle, is not a distinguished man, and in America may be said to be heard of for the first time by this translation, so that on both accounts — as introducing him to a new circle, and as giving him his proper distinction, — it would, we think, have been better to print his full name on the title-page, or at least so much of his frill name as he himself commonly uses. Nor would a few words of information about her author have come amiss from the translator, if only to indicate to those who first hear of him through her labors his position in the world of letters, and the character of his performances. He has indeed been so useful and industrious a writer that he deserves we should know something about him. Auguste-Alexandre-PhilippeCharles Blanc is the elder brother of Louis Blanc, the well-known historian and statesman. He was horn November 15, 1813, at Castres, a small town in southwestern France. His father was inspector-general of finance in Spain, under Joseph Bonaparte (and Louis Blanc was bom in Madrid) ; the mother, if we may judge by her family name of Pozzo di Borgo, was an Italian. Charles was at first an engraver, and he has never completely abandoned his early employment, — it is not long since a very delicate etching from his needle was published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, — but his brother having, in 1838, established a journal, and, soon after, the first having been given np, a second, Charles contributed to these some notices of the annual exhibitions of works or art — the Salon — and also a number of critical articles. Since that time he has given himself almost exclusively to his pen. At first, his work consisted of articles published in various journals, in which his fine qualities as a critic and a writer made him so favorably known, that after the Revolution of 1848 he was appointed Director of Fine Arts, a place which he held with great profit to France until the usurpation of Louis Napoleon, when he was removed to make room for that curious piece of incompetence, the Count of Nieuwerkerke.

In 1845 he published the first volume — all that has ever appeared—of a History of French Painters of the Nineteenth Century. In 1853 The Painters of FêtesGalantes introduced his readers to Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher, three men whose pictures, in spite of criticism, the French will always delight in. In 1853 he issued the first edition of his work of Rembrandt, of much value for the completeness of the account it gives of Rembrandt’s works, especially of his engravings. The new edition, however, now in course of publication, is much to be preferred, since not only is the text considerably enlarged and brought up to our later knowledge of the artist, but the number of copies of his engravings is also greatly increased. Beside numerous woodcuts, it contains many of Flameng’s etchings after the originals by Rembrandt, and copies in fac simile, by the process of heliogravure, of all the most celebrated plates. This work on Rembrandt is, perhaps, of all his literary performance that by which Charles Blanc sets most store, but he has made a more popular name as the principal contributor to that valuable work, The History of the Painters of all the Schools (Histoire des Peintres de toutes les Écoles), begun by M. Armengaud in 1849, and completed in 1859, a treasury of information, enriched with excellent wood engravings of all the principal pictures in the world. Although it bears Charles Blanc’s name, he was largely assisted in his task by the best writers, such as Delaborde, Mantz, and Silvestre, and the work owes much of its value to the fact that both the text and the engravings were executed by those who were most at home in the different subjects and styles. But Charles Blanc’s learning and enthusiasm gave color and unity to the whole. The Grammar of the Arts of Design, a part of which has been so well translated by Mrs. Daggett, was originally written for the Gazette des Beaux Arts, where the first chapters appeared in the number for April, 1860. The installments did not appear regularly in successive numbers of the Gazette, and it was not until 1867 that the work was published in a separate volume. The original work covers a much wider field than is indicated by Mrs. Doggett’s publication, and it is to be hoped that she will complete her task so well begun by the translation of the chapters on architecture and sculpture.

In the Grammar of Painting and Engraving will be found a vigorous attempt at furnishing what has too long been needed, namely, “a lucid résumé of all accepted ideas touching the arts of design.” Being at dinner, one day, with the dignitaries of a large French town, M. Blanc was obliged to protest against the principle assumed by all the other gentlemen present, that in matters of art there is no disputing tastes ; but his protests were without result. One of the disputants was modest enough to ask him frankly if there were no book in which he could find the true principles of art briefly and clearly set forth; and M. Blanc, reflecting that there was nothing to be recommended as meeting this demand, determined to remedy the difficulty by writing a book himself. This grammar is the result; and if it be true, as he tells us, that “the France of the nineteenth century-presents the incredible anomaly of an intellectual nation professing to adore art, but knowing not its principles, its language, its literature, its history, its veritable dignity,” it follows that the volume should play a still more important part in this country than it can have had to play in France. The plan of the work is simple. Starting with the fundamental statement that “ painting is the art of expressing all the conceptions of the soul, by means of all the realities of nature; represented upon a smooth surface by their forms and colors,” the author proceeds to unfold a series of seventeen maxims, each one of which is made the heading of a separate chapter, the series being designed to embody in general terms all that need be known by the layreader about the arts of design. In the course of these chapters, there is a simple elucidation of perspective, and a discussion of the various modes of painting, fresco, wax, distemper, pastelle, enamel, and aquarelles. They are followed by an interesting and simple treatise, arranged in the same forms, on engraving and lithography. Besides this easily-followed mode of development, it has the advantage of containing a great number of valuable suggestions and allusions, and is provided with a series of well-chosen illustrations.

M. Blanc begins very properly by saying that painting, in order to represent nature, borrows nature’s language of light, color, and form. “ Color .... is the peculiar characteristic of the lower forms of nature, while the drawing becomes the medium of expression more and more dominant the higher we rise in the scale of being.” To his ensuing assumption, however, that painting can sometimes dispense with color, “ if, for example, the inorganic nature and the landscape are insignificant or useless in the scene represented,” we cannot allow ourselves to stand committed. It is a conventional notion, based on the old opinion of his contemporaries which so troubled William Blake, that drawing and painting may be regarded almost as distinct arts; an opinion now thoroughly exploded. M. Blanc then sets forth very clearly how painting is not by any means literal imitation, which is the function of the stereoscopic photograph or of illuminated transparencies made to appear as natural objects. But we wish that he had explained, for the benefit of the general reader, in what different sense he uses the word imitation at a subsequent stage of his inquiry, where he employs it as denoting a performance necessary to every student. This word is a cause of serious misunderstandings, not only to the popular mind but to critics, for the reason that it is only lately that people have tried to understand the word itself and its relation to the functions of art. The qualityof imaginative interpretation is apt to, and ought to, insinuate itself into the earliest efforts of the genuine artist And M. Blanc clearly recognizes the character of artistic interpretation, so far as is necessary to measure by its predominance over simple record of fact the relative importance of different achievements in art. In regard to interpretation, however, it strikes us that he has made one slip, when he describes the painter’s interpretation of a group of “ two porcelain cups, a coffeepot, a sugar-bowl, and a glass of water,” as being the suggestion of “ the master and mistress .... not far off,” of “ two beings closely united ” who are about to sit down at this table. On the contrary, that is our interpretation of the painter’s idea; and it is our idea of association. The only interpretation which the painter could have to do with in this case would be the interpretation of line, form, light-and-shade, color; for there is a sensitive rendering possible of even such slight objects, which is more than mere accuracy of representation, and which we must distinguish as interpretation. There are cases, of course, in which the painter might add to this interpretation of the sensuous kind an interpretation of some distinct idea or poetic intuition ; but this case is not one of them.

The subject of fiction in painting which he touches upon would furnish matter for an interesting essay; but, to our disappointment, he dismisses it with a brief, vague, and unsatisfactory paragraph. We have some doubts whether in any case he could have treated it with much penetration, judging from his peculiarly French manner of describing art in general as “a beautiful fiction that gives us the mirage of truth, upon condition that our soul shall be the accomplice of the falsehood.” There is a wanton delight in giving a quasi-sinful aspect to something perfectly pure and sinless. There is no falsehood in the business. The highest art is but a higher order of truth-telling, of the same nature radically as the simplest transcription of fact; but the definition of fiction would be found in explaining by what steps the artist must pass from this transcription of fact to that higher order of truth-telling. When the imagination begins to work, it modifies existing fact, or else creates new fact of an ideal kind which is still permeated by the essence of law, such as we discover it to be in known fact. Of composition M. Blanc has little to tell us; and this sentence — “The Greeks called composition the drama of the painter .... without which the composition would be the whole painting ” — can only be accounted for by the supposition of some oversight on the translator’s part. We do not think his theory, that sublimity may be gained “ by the invention of the painter rather than by the appliances peculiar to his art,” a very happy one. It does not stand the test of the examples he himself adduces. The first is Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus, in which the effect distinguished by him under the name sublimity is directly a result of the appliances peculiar to the painter’s art, being an effect of fantastic light. The second example is a landscape by Nicholas Poussin, in which the interest he praises is purely literary. The theory seems to come to the same thing as saying that nothing fine could ever come into existence except through the operation of the painter’s mind and hand upon his materials ; clearly not a very important statement.

We must allude, in passing, to the rather alarming programme which M. Blanc sketches for the student of painting. He convinces himself that “ to be acquainted with forms before drawing them is a necessary condition for the beginner.” He would therefore open on the student with anatomy, geometry, and perspective, before setting him at the flat copy ; and should the pupil be inclined to become a great painter he is to take up the study of architecture, in addition, for the “fixing of picturesque ideas in stable lines,” etc. Now this is beginning with theory instead of practice, an order opposed to all rational views of education, and all recent reforms in education of every sort. This weight of erudition would paralyze the hand, the eye, and the imagination of the would-be painter. We are not in a position, in this country, to complain that our painters more often fail from over-knowledge than through ignorance ; but it is certain that the greatest danger in the training of a generation of artists is that of stiffening them out of all flexibility with strong academic starch. By all means, let them know everything connected with their art ; but do not forget to preserve the balance between acquisition of abstract knowledge and the gaining, of manual and ocular skill. The analytic tendency is strongest, in our day : it must be balanced by a tender fostering of spontaneity, of the creative element. Set the young student at natural objects before he has drawn too long from the flat; give him stones, leaves, twigs, berries, and birds to copy. This sort of discipline M. Blanc entirely overlooks. Indeed, he has a contempt for small things, and expresses the opinion that rocks and even clouds have no proportion, and cannot therefore be subject to treatment under the highest style. “ How .... discover the form of that which is without form ? ” he asks (p. 207) in regard to these objects; apparently having no conception of the rigorous but infinitely varied laws that govern their forms by strictest proportionment, and with results of the highest and most satisfactory beauty — a beauty akin to that of the human form itself.

We take these exceptions to M. Blanc’s opinions, not at all because we wish to discourage the public front reading them. On the contrary, we believe that we need all the instruction that such teachers, so learned, enthusiastic, and yet so humane and moderate, can give us, and we hope to see their books more widely known and read by our young Americans.

— The appearance of a new compilation by Mrs. Clement, whose Handbook of Legendary and Mythological Art, published three years ago, has already reached an eighth edition, is sure to be heartily welcomed. It is a noticeable fact that works relating to the fine arts are now disputing popularity with those that deal with scientific and historical matters, whereas, only a few years ago almost all fine art publications were intended for the rich, or for persons specially interested in the subject And such works are still all the time appearing, and are only to be had by paying prices that would perhaps not seem so large if only an occasional demand were made upon the purse; but even a very rich man may shrink from the necessity of having all tho costly fine art publications that issne from French houses alone, to say nothing of those produced in England and Germany, though these countries are far behind France both in the number of fine art books brought out yearly, and in the excellence of their manufacture. But, beside these expensive publications, what a host of useful and beautiful books have been published of late years that are within the reach of people of moderate means! For much of this popularizing of fine art we have to thank photography and the arts of reproduction related to it, heliotypy, heliogravure, and the like ; after all the fears to the contrary, ohotography has really acted as a stimulus to art study. The cheapness of its products has made it possible for us to study and compare works widely separated and difficult of access, with a facility all unknown a little while ago, — and it has brought the art of the world into new relations with criticism. Works that have long keen shut up from general observation and study, and which the world has long been obliged to see reflected “ as in a glass darkly ” by the minds of conceited, enthusiastic, cynical, or idolatrous people, suddenly find themselves in an unexpected manner standing in the full light of the public square, and subjected to the fire of a thousand eyes. Their photographs are in the windows of every print-shop in Christendom, and even flow into myriads of private houses in sizes adapted to the means of all lovers of beautiful things, front the largest folio, to the sociable visiting-card, that enables a man to carry his beloved picture or statue next his heart in his wallet.

Much of what is put before us, however, needs comment, explanation, illustration; and it is a real service that is rendered us by the student, when he puts into accessible shape what he has learned of the lives of artists, of the history of their works, and the history of the subjects they painted or carved. One of the most useful of the writers who have attempted to interest English-speaking people in the subject of Art — Mrs. Jameson — holds an honest place in the world’s esteem. Her hooks — Sacred and Legendary Art, Legends of the Monastic Orders, Legends of the Madonna — are of permanent value, and will never be wholly outworn. Mrs. Jameson sometimes makes mistakes in statement, and is now and then too meagre, but, on the whole, it would be hard to better her books, and we are too comfortable with them to dwell on their deficiencies. Their size and price, however, have prevented their having as wide a circulation as could be wished for them, and Mrs, Clement has cleverly compressed into one small volume a great deal of the sort of information which makes Mrs. Jameson’s books so valuable, and has added a great deal that she has laboriously gleaned from kindred sources. If we seem to connect Mrs. Clement’s book with Mrs. Jameson’s works in thus alluding to it, it is not that we intend any comparison, for Mrs. Clement’s is an entirely independent book, and original in its plan. It is an extremely useful book, accurate and full, and supplying a want that is proved to have been felt, by the call for so many editions. Her new work is also useful, and the task she has set herself in it generally well performed. It is a portable dictionary of painters, sculptors, architects, and engravers, and their works, and it is singular that there should not be in any language any book on the same subject so extensive in its range and at the same time so compact. It is really a handbook, being a small octavo of 628 pages exclusive of the indexes, and it is marked by the same accuracy and completeness as the author’s companion volume. We think Mrs. Clement should have somewhere explicitly stated that her book does not include the Dames of living artists; in general all the names are present that the scope of the work demands. If we have any fault to find with the execution of this dictionary it is not the occasional want of proportion ; seven pages to Canova, and only six to Raphael (exclusive of the list of engravings after his pictures are not well proportioned ; and considering what Leslie was and what Read and Leutze were, it is not pleasant to find the notices of the two inferior artists more important than that of the painter who is one of the very few of whom America may be justly proud. Defects like these are inevitable in any such undertaking, and excusable too, if we choose to say that we are not sorry to have so much of A, only we would be glad of a little more about B. An objection is that in too many instances Mrs. Clement shows a respect for certain German writers which we think they hardly deserve, and that she is too willing to repeat the old worn-out stories of the older artists, most of them apocryphal, and many of them clearly disproved, which have done duty in every biographical collection from Vasari down. A book of this sort published to-day ought to give only what is now absolutely settled, or the latest word, whatever it may be, and if any one wishes to read the fables he might be warned that the author had tried hard to leave them all out, and that he must seek them in the older books. However, we do not mean to leave these excellent publications in a fault-finding mood. In by far the greater number of instances, Mrs. Clement’s information is fresh and accurate and her authorities are the latest.

— Histoire de l’Art de la Verrerie dans l’Antiquité. Par Achille Deville (Paris: Morel, 1873), is a publication quite worthy of the house that has given to the world more and more valuable books on subjects connected with tlie fine arts than any other with which we are acquainted. As one looks over even so many of their publications as are ranged on the shelves of Mr. Levy, their agent in this country (F. W. Christern, 77 University Place, New York), he must wonder at the capital invested in these splendid books no less than at the learning and the mechanical skill they represent. The present volume is, like so many of its companions, not merely a handsome book printed with the fine black ink that seems known in the European printinghouses and nowhere else, on strong, white paper, with 112 illustrations in the best style of chromo-lithography, but it contains a text of singular value, giving us in something short of a hundred pages a clear account of the history of glass from the most ancient times down to the fall of the Roman empire. The illustrations are drawn from the most recent discoveries, as well as from the more famous of those that have been longer known, and the artist has been very faithful in his copies. The work comes at the very time we need it, now that we have in our own country, in the Di Cesnola Collection in the New York Metropolitan Museum, one of the most complete and remarkaide collections of ancient glass in the world.

— J. Bourgoin — the author of Les Arts Arabes, a work just completed, which gives an ampler notion than has been previously attainable, of the inventive fancy and the deep science of the Arabs — has published Théorie de l'Ornement, A. Levy, Paris, 1873, a work we desire to recommend to those of our teachers who are interested in mastering the arts of decorative design in order to impart their principles to pupils. This seems to us a more useful, because more scientific and philosophic work than Owen Jones’ Grammar of Ornament, although superficially it is not so attractive, owing to the absence of color. But color cannot be taught nor even well suggested by chromo-lithography, at least in the present condition of that art, and therefore we lose nothing by the plates of the present volume being in outline. These plates are exquisitely engraved and are very delightful to study, though the young reader needs to be reminded that no beautiful design — no more these than all the others that man has produced— was ever worked out by thinking, but only by feeling. Works like these serve a good purpose in demonstrating how the artist who has lived with nature, observing her and studying her, will be proud to be in the method of his work no less than in its spirit, one with her. But because we can bring the frets and ribbons and guilloches and sprigs on a Greek vase, or the patterns on a Zealander’s war-club, or the designs on the dress of a Japanese daimio or fishwoman into a geometrical demonstration, we must beware of thinking that the designer of the ornament necessarily knew anything of geometry or of any art of design. At its best, good design is the product of pure instinct, and the reason why we cannot produce it in these days nor even copy perfectly the old, is because we know too much.

— B. Westermann & Co., New York, send us the first number of a work which will be interesting to antiquaries: Antiquity’s Suédaises arrangées et déevites par Oscar Montelius dessinées par C. F. Lindberg, Stockholm. 1873. The first part contains 261 wood-cuts of stone and bronze implements, weapons, ornaments, and utensils, executed in a singularly clear, bold fashion, as veritable as photography, but more intelligible and artistic. From the same publisher we have also received the concluding number of Dr. Lübke’s Geschichte der Deutschen Renaissance, one division of a popular work on the Renaissance Architecture and Ornament, of which the other divisions — that on the French Renaissance, also by Dr. Lübke, and that on the Renaissance in Italy, by Jacob Burckhardt — are also published in separate volumes. Dr. Lübke is a voluminous and superficial author, but his books are not without merit, and at any rate they give us a great many fresh and well-executed pictures of the subjects he treats of. This History of the Renaissance Architecture in Germany is in one stout volume of handy size, containing nearly a thousand pages, and illustrated with 261 excellent wood-cuts.

— Lübke’s Introduction to the Study of Church Art and Architecture, Vorschule zum Stadium der Kirchlichen Kunst, has reached a sixth edition, and comes to us enlarged and improved through Westermann from the enterprising house of G. A Seemann, Leipzig, which is doing a great deal to popularize the study of art in Germany. Last year, we are sorry to say, saw the close of the publication of the Jahrhücher für Kunstwissenschaft, which has been issued for seven years by this house, but which came to an end with the publication of the first and second parts of the seventh year in August, 1873, in consequence of the sudden death of Dr. Albert von Zahn, its very learned and able editor. Students of art will find it difficult to do without some such medium of intercourse with their fellowstudents, and we suppose an effort will be made to continue the publication, though Von Zahn’s loss cannot be supplied in a day.

— Alfred Woltmann has published a second edition of his work, Holbein und seine Zeit, which originally appeared in 1866-68. The new edition contains all the old matter, with a full discussion of the disputed questions relating to the great artist, more especially as to the authenticity of the Dresden picture of the Meyer family. Herr Woltmann is clear for the Darmstadt picture as the original, and in this opinion we believe he now has all the principal critics and connoisseurs with him.

— An exception to the usual holiday-principle of keeping back everything not to be digested with entire ease by the popular taste, seemed to have been made in the exhibition of some English water-colors at Messrs. Doll and Richards’s rooms, last month. The exception was more apparent, however, than real; nor was there anything in the exhibition fairly illustrative of the modern English school of water-colorists. Under the influence of those pre-Raphaelites who believe in correct drawing and strong, harmonious coloring, a school has come into existence which is really a school of tempera-painters, using body color and the white of egg, or other medium, and thus giving to water-color a richness and consistency equal to that of oil, while preserving its own greater natural purity and softness. There are one or two feeble imitations of this among the pictures we are noticing, but nothing, as we have said at all fairly illustrative of it. At first sight, the array seems a harmless one enough, hut we find things in it which are not altogether so; as, for instance, the illustration to Childe Harold, by J. B. Pyne. There is some crude feeling for color in the man who put together those yellow trees in the background, with that white tower on the hill, and the white moon on the right, all emerging from a bluish twilight; but the sketch is utterly devoid of drawing, or of any distinction of values, and the dauby willow in the foreground is really injurious to one’s sense of common rectitude. J. C. Reed is represented by several landscapes, one of which is a broad meadow by the Thames, over which a copious but pale light has been poured from the background; while some regulation oxen approach the water in the centre, and a useful punt floats in the left corner. Mr. Reed exhibits a fair amount of manual dexterity ; and a view in Argyllshire is perilaps the best that is shown of him. A brawling stream flashes into white foam over the purplish rocks in its bed, and hills rise behind it, clothed at the base with soft mossy green, but passing into purple and blue before they meet the clouds lingering along the tops. These clouds break away at the left, letting a fresh, cool light shine out. There is an agreeable sensation of cool and bracing mountain-air to be had from the contemplation of the sketch; but we must not expect from it any sort of artistic revelation, and hardly a faithful transcription. The utter lack of appreciation for the character of stone, apparent in the rocks might recall Ruskin’s scornful phrase, that “ Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the stone under his foot has for carelessness nothing in it but a stumbling.” Mr. J, B. Smith, in like manner, lays himself under strong suspicion of having drawn upon his knowledge of meal-bag contours for the forms of the rocks in his two mountain-scenes. He achieves, to be sure, a certain harmony of coloring, through his combination of brownish-purple heathery hills and light greens and gold-tints in the foliage. But it is impossible to procure vitality of any sort by mere combinations, especially if wholly unsupported by drawing. And it is curious that even the coloring in such cases, though nursed into a quasi-harmoniousness, is very apt to be lifeless and enervating. Another example of this is to be found in two little sketches, pendants, by J. C. Rowbotham, — one of which depicts Rouen, with rose-smitten spires in the background, a bridge of three or four arches across the river, with smoke from a steamer behind it; a sloop on the left strand, and trees ; and on the right rich golden-brown trees hanging like a heavy tapestry upon the bank, and reflected in the water. Here we have in perfection what Mr. Smith was trying hard, but with only partial success, to attain. It is all very soft and sweet, and just what would be called by admiring ladies who did not care to think twice about the matter, “lovely.” But the critic naturally asks himself whether a success of this kind is at all worth the attaining. There has been a considerable expense of labor in this instance, to reach much the same result as that which would be possible to a superior chromo-lithograph. There has also been more or less exertion of intellect., to make something which will excite no exercise of intellect in the observer.

The Landing of Cæsar, by Mr. Smith, is a masquerade, the object of which it is difficult to discern. It curiously suggests the mock-dramatic, style employed by the ingenious illustrator of the Comic History of England ; but, on looking closer at it, something of deadly earnestness makes itself felt, and enforces the ludicrous conviction that it is an attempt at history-painting. The author of it casts off all responsibility as to organizing his composition, and has so thoroughly abandoned himself to the idea of multitude and bellicose confusion, that it is pretty nearly impossible to reproduce the situation in words. The most prominent feature, however, is a group of two or three vessels on the right, the material of which is so ill-defined that it might pass readily either for birch bark or earthenware. These ships are filled with Romans. On the deck of one of them several warriors are indulging in horrible contortions, though for what purpose it is not easy to determine. On the deck of the other, and facing the spectator, stands a rather squat individual, bearing some resemblance to the first Napoleon, and also to the accepted effigies of Julius Cæsar, who displays a tendency to engage in similar contortions, at the same time gazing out upon us in such a melancholy manner that we involuntarily expect to see him plunge into the water below, with a double summersault. In the foreground, meanwhile, a severe tussle is in progress; the most striking incident of which is the complete destruction of a Briton by the javelin of somebody on C&3230;sar’s vessel. The Briton is so completely thrown off hri balance by the blow, that he has dropped backward in the water, where he had been standing; and nothing is to be seen of him except a disordered head and a pair of legs ; while the lance, sticking upright at about his middle and causing a great splash of water, excites in us an unpleasantly acute appreciation of the Briton’s sensations at the moment. It certainly requires imagination to crush up a man in this loose way, as if he were an egg-shell. And there is also imagination in the production of ancient Britons in such numbers as to confuse our minds by a doubt whether it is not some extraordinary fungus which we see clinging to the rocks and shore on the left, rather than savage warriors.

Besides these horrors of antique war, there are some very execrable and ignorant memoranda of the Crimea, which have absolutely no artistic value, and in all probability no value from a military point of view — if we may judge by the doubtful veracity of the scene called “ A Warm Situation,” where two men lie under the side of a rock on a hill-side, with twenty or thirty bombshells bursting all round them. But there are pleasanter things for him to look at than these ; and among the best are two small pictures by H. Sutton Palmer, one a landscape in Dartmoor (we believe), in a cool lavender strain ; and a bit of a bazar in Cairo,— two old men with a becoming allowance of beard, squatted on mats in a court-like inclosure, in front of some luxuriously-colored fabrics supplemented by brown shadows in the corner and under the arcades. I here are also two or three architectural interiors, by J. Nash, in which the effect of carving and so on is well enough given, although the sketches themselves are thin and mechanical, barely getting within the line which separates painting from architectural designing. Then, too, there is a small group by Smirke, B. A., one of the valiant Academicians who made such brave but futile endeavors to illustrate Shakespeare satisfactorily in outline. This is called The Dance, and represents a pair of slender virgins in loose, old-fashioned gowns, with some youths in perfect-fitting coats, who are playing piano and flute, and flinging about gracefully under a queer old candelabrum shaped like a wash-bowl, with the candles stuck around the brim. It strikes us, first of all, as being eminently proper and respectable ; it could not possibly have an injurious effect upon the young. But then it is doubtful also whether it would have any effect worth recording upon anybody. The drawing is neat, the color pale and thin, and hardly deserving of mention. There have been too many men in the annals of British art who knew color no better than Smirke. They penciled away pretty skillfully, though without much character in their drawing, and then clapped on the colors here and there as they might have done upon a print. We understand, when we look at productions like this, how the phrase “ drawing in water-color ” came in vogue. It is no more than a drawing delicately tinted. The instinctive feeling and thinking in color, the simultaneous and harmonious conception of form and color and situation-, — these belong to a trait of only recent development in the English water-colorists. It is, however, one of the most prominent traits, at, present, and one which ought to be thoroughly represented in any group of water-colors from England.

In Sanctioned at Last, J, M. Wright goes boldly on in the footsteps of Smirke. A sallow individual with an unsuccessfully bitter expression is lying on a hod, grasping the hand of a young woman who stands at the bedside, with a young man presumably her lover. The lover turns away from the spectacle of the sanction, with what we suppose to be a pathetic wrinkle in his fawncolored trousers. A couple of cloaks, too, one brown and the other purple, have kindly consented to occupy the only two chairs visible in the apartment, thus throwing a delicate guise of melodrama over the incident. How many sins of weak idea have not these drooping cloaks covered, in the history of art! It is fortunate that they are no longer fashionable.

The only really interesting piece in the collection is a colored drawing by John Leach, — “ Private Theatricals,” — a drawing in the style of the vast number formerly engraved in the London Punch, and familiar to all who know Leach’s Sketches of Life and Character. Whether this particular drawing was reproduced among those included in the series, we are unable to say, without reference. It represents a dusky drawing room (with a screen at the farther end), where a company of amateur actors are assembled in partial readiness for their performance. A chandelier trimmed with evergreens depends from the ceiling, but it is not lighted ; and a wash of pale purple has been spread over the entire drawing, to give the impression of a dimly-lighted apartment. The figures that need it, however, are allowed to bask in an abundant illumination of a yellowish tendency, so that in the general gloom they gradually come to look like glow-worms or little elfin creatures hopping about in the twilight. The coloring, it may be said shortly, is not at all a success. Leach took up the whim of coloring late in life, and probably had no gift for it. But there is much enjoyment in the skillful physiognomical indication. There is the great Falstaff of a fellow dancing up to a queen or princess, in the centre, to offer her some refreshment; the pompous butler, slightly amused, serving coffee; the two persons in the right-hand corner, who are all ready, and afraid to stir for fear of discomposing their tout ensemble ; the gaunt young man declaiming from a book, and another trying to get into the proper tragedy-mood ; all depicted with the greatest economy of line. Yet there is nothing careless in the strokes ; for the sketchiness of a man like Leach requires enduring patience and careful thought. With no more than two or three slight touches he will give to the bare outline a complete and vigorous expression; and this cannot be done carelessly. Perhaps there is nothing more than an ingenious manner about it; but we do not want more in caricature. There is plenty of matter in this drawing for any one who wants to learn how to blend delicate caricature with clear and concise statement of realities, in such a way that we shall hardly know when the artist is feigning, and when not. That is the real art of caricature with the pencil; and when exaggeration gets the upper hand too far, as with Pellegrini of the London Vanity Fair, and with our own Nast, it must be added, caricature is apt to give place, on very short notice, to simple buffoonery.

As for color, there is not a single piece of vigorous, manly color in all this collection.