Art

PASSING mention was made, in The Atlantic for September, of Mr. David Neal, several of whose paintings (among them the portrait of Mrs. John T. Raymond, shown at the Academy of Design, last spring) have now been for several weeks on exhibition at Messrs. Elliot & Co.’s new gallery in Boston. Mr. Neal is a native of Lowell, but has lived and painted for ten years past in Munich, and now presents himself before us in the character of a wellaccredited representative of Piloty. The quarter-length of Mrs. Raymond will undoubtedly commend itself to the popular eye more strongly than either of the others, and we believe it also to be the best of the pieces here. Attired in black silk, a broad, lace-edged ruff around her throat, the lady’s face — with its magnificent contours and fair coloring and massive crown of ochreblended hair — stands forth from the canvas in an extraordinary relief, though without excessive challenge to the eye. It is true, one might easily hold to the superiority of that method which shrinks somewhat more from this bold assertion of art’s mimetic faculty, and continually teases and pleasantly excites the imagination by holding back the object represented in a dim, delicious border-world of subdued tones. There is just the least suspicion of the figure-head method about this head of Mr. Neal’s; and a certain tendency to carve in paint, which we seem to trace in it, may without much injustice be laid to the artist’s earlier training as a wood-engraver. But when we have said thus much savoring of dissent (and we think it fair to give voice to the impression), we must proceed to yield Mr. Neal the amplest credit for his precise, strong drawing, his broad, easy modeling, the relation of tints throughout, and the skillful, calculated touch of those gems in the old Venetian setting, which clasps the silk just below the long opening of the dress from the neck. There is more than this in the portrait, however; there is life in it — a quality generated not merely by the excellent technical resources of the painter, but impossible without them. The Gentleman of the Sixteenth Century we do not so much care for. He does not seem necessarily to belong to the sixteenth century, except by his costume, and at no epoch

would his personality be a very impressive one, we think. Besides this, he is not especially to be congratulated as being a forcible piece of painting; and his mediæval body and legs might he improved by even modern drawing. Next comes the Head of a Burgomaster; and here, we have life again. All the little details are given : every furrow of the forehead, the reddening around the aged eye, the contractions and detractions of line face - muscles here and there, in dissenting passages which show where the individual tried to differ from his type and became only more typical all the while, the brassy gleam of light on the wrinkled, sloping forehead,—these things are rendered with the methodical, earnest care which it has ever been a delight to the German mind to bestow upon the timeworn surfaces of the human body. But as one contemplates this head, a startling suggestion of Duveneck asserts itself. Here is the Old Professor, from the Art Club, though in a much modified form, peering down from the wall in the guise of a burgomaster. That is stating it too generally ; of course, to the connoisseur, there is no difficulty in distinguishing the hands of the two painters. There is something more settled in Mr. Neal’s work, something a good deal drier and less inspiriting, we fear it must be said, than in the younger artist’s productions. But the differences are really only those natural to two distinct persons, both possessed of ability and both trying with all their skill to do the same thing; a thing preconceived and appointed by a leading mind, which has impressed itself on each. Therefore, in this Head of a Burgomaster we seem to come up suddenly against the limitations of the Munich school. Another similarity is noticeable. Mr. Duveneck has a very different finish for the faces of women (and young boys) from that which he employs for men ; so has Mr. Neal, and the kinds of finish strongly resemble each other. Turning to Mrs. Raymond’s portrait, we have a fine example of the Munich method for presenting the textures of fair feminine faces. This surface is smooth, hard, thick, with a finish like that of fine bisque. It is no wonder that with such an immovable “ enamel,” Mr. Neal should find it hard to give the roundness of the throat, despite his success in the larger modeling of the face ; and in fact the throat has somewhat the look of porcelain, and appears as if cut out flat according to a particular pattern, so as to he fitted into the dress opening.

Those who remember the day of the Düsseldorf school in New York will naturally expect for the Munich painters a period of influence in Boston more powerful even than that, now that they have made so brilliant an entrance. The greater part of what we can hope to accomplish for plastic art in this country, during a considerable time to come, will be effected through these imported influences; and to have a conflict of influences is accordingly an advantage. In this light, the rising of the Munich star on our horizon may be esteemed a fortunate event, as ushering in a power to hold French taste in check. But it is well to be aware of the limitations of this new force, in order to avoid being bound by them. In a school like that of Munich, with certain conditions given and certain aims proposed, you must work after prescriptions that seem to be somewhat too definite. This is not so much felt in the region of simple portraiture; but after the mode of depicting a single head is thoroughly settled upon and acquired, it remains to be seen what can next be done with design or conception of a subject. Here it is that the weakness of Munich appears, although it is probably the last point at which Munich itself would suspect a weakness. Kaulbach in design is radically false and artificial, and may be dismissed as such. The Sündfluth designs in Kaulbach’s Nachlass show the violent but desperate efforts of a strong mind, fettered by academic conventions, to escape into some sort of redeeming individuality. A certain individuality is indeed Secured ; but one that is penetrated and spoiled by pernicious traits. Piloty is radically sound, but is certainly very much limited by his realism. There is much grandeur in such results as his Death of Wallenstein, but any one who follows him to that height will probably paint history in just the same fashion, and will lack that rarest gift of painter and fictionist, improvisation of some sort. There is no surprise of resources with Piloty and his school; the resources may astonish and impress, but it is evident that they have been all counted, mustered, and distributed at the proper points for an effect, beforehand. It is not enough that he can draw his figures splendidly, and present human faces stamped and lined with character as definite as the plaster-cast will give. This accomplishment belongs to a secondary order of effect, and becomes wearisome after a certain length of time. We are not quarreling with Piloty, be it understood, but in a brief way trying to determine his precise magnitude.

But Mr. Neal has not followed his master altogether, in the larger effort of composition, if we may judge from his preliminary study for Watt studying the Power of Steam, a picture exhibited last year at the Royal Academy in London, and sold to Sir Benjamin Phillips. His conception is good, and the coloring is much in the old English vein of Mulready, Leslie, and Wilkie, though with a great deal more richness than those names would imply. The attitude of the musing boy —a delicate-visaged dreamer — is extremely well chosen; the large fireplace with utensils fastened above it, the kitten dozing on the rug, are well managed. From the door which the mother is opening comes a gleam of soft golden light, in the midst of which is seen a masculine figure eagerly devouring food at the supper-table. All this is very suggestively set forth, with that fresh air of discovery which gives to first studies their unfading charm. Mr. Neal, as we have said, seems to have found a coloring of his own in this picture, and there is something distinctive in the whole domestic rendering of the scene ; if he has only succeeded in transferring to the completed work something of the same air of unconscious but artistic story-telling which we observe here, he has, undoubtedly, made a great success. Meanwhile, we await with much interest a more ambitious subject on which he is now reported to be at work — Mary Stuart and Rizzio. The Chapel of the Kings is a very good, methodical architectural piece, with neither too finical a degree of detail nor too much poetic feeling in it. We have not seen the painter fully in the pieces now displayed, but in him we discern without difficulty a solid, serious nature of marked artistic bent, who has acquired technical qualities demanding very considerable respect.