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immediately in the foreground, and something very black exactly behind it. The same thing happens perpetually with Mr. Robert's pictures-a white column is always coming out of a blue mist, or a white stone out of a green pool, or a white monument out of a brown recess -and the artifice is not always concealed with dexterity. This is unworthy of so skilful a composer, and it has destroyed the impressiveness as well as the colour of some of his finest works. It shows a poverty of conception, which appears to me to arise from a deficient habit of study. It will be remembered that of the sketches for this work, several times exhibited in London, every one was executed in the same manner and with about the same degree of completion: being all of them accurate records of the main architectural lines, the shapes of the shadows and the remnants of artificial colour, obtained, by means of the same greys, throughout, and of the same yellow (a singularly false and cold though convenient colour) touched upon the lights. As far as they went, nothing could be more valuable than these sketches, and the public, glancing rapidly at their general and graceful effects, could hardly form anything like an estimate of the endurance and determination which must have been necessary in such a climate to obtain records so patient, entire, and clear, of details so multitudinous as (especially) the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian temples-an endurance which perhaps only artists can estimate, and for which we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Roberts, most difficult to discharge."

Of Clarkson Stanfield, another architect of his own fortunes -to adopt a somewhat hacknied though expressive phraseour author observes :

"He is the leader of the English Realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable of his characteristics is the look of common sense and rationality which his compositions will always bear when opposed to any kind of affectation. He appears to think of no other artist. What he has learned has been from his own acquaintance with and affection for the steep hills and the deep sea; and his modes of treatment are alike removed from sketchiness or incompletion, and from exaggeration or effort. The somewhat over-prosaic tone of his subjects is rather a condescension to what he supposes to be public feeling than a sign of want of feeling in himself; for, in some of his sketches from nature or from fancy, I have seen powers and perceptions manifested of a far higher order than any that are traceable in his academy works-powers which I think him much to be blamed for checking. The portion of his pictures usually most defective in this respect is the sky, which is apt to be cold and uninventive, always well drawn, but with a kind of hesitation in the clouds whether it is to be fair or foul weather, they having neither the joyfulness of rest nor the majesty of storm. Their colour is apt also to verge on a morbid purple, as was eminently the case in the large picture of the wreck on the coast of Holland exhibited in 1844-a work in which both his powers and faults were prominently manifested, the picture being full of good painting, but wanting in its entire appeal. There was no feeling of wreck about it; and, but for the damage about her bowsprit,

it would have been impossible for a landsman to say whether the hull was meant for a wreck or a guardship. Nevertheless, it is always to be recollected that, in subjects of this kind, it is probable that much escapes us in consequence of our want of knowledge, and that to the eye of the seaman much may be of interest and value which to us appears cold. At all events, this healthy and rational regard of things is incomparably preferable to the dramatic absurdities which weaker artists commit in matters marine; and from copper-coloured sunsets on green waves sixty feet hich, with cauliflower breakers, and ninepin rocks-from drowning on planks, and starving on rafts, and lying naked on beaches-it is really refreshing to turn to a surge of Stanfield's true salt, serviceable, unsentimental sea. It would be well, however, if he could sometimes take a higher flight. The Castle of Ischia gave him a grand subject; and a little more invention in the sky, a little less muddiness in the rocks, and a little more savageness in the sea, would have made it an impressive picture; it just misses the sublime, yet is a fine work, and better engraved than usual by the Art Union."

We cannot but express our concurrence in the censure implied in the concluding sentence on the quality of the engravings put forth by the Art Union; surely its ample funds ought to rescue it from the reproach in future. But let us revert to a more pleasant theme, and quote the author's remarks on a most interesting fact in the history of Art:

"It is a fact more universally acknowledged than enforced or acted upon that all great painters, of whatever school, have been great only in their rendering of what they had seen and felt from early childhood; and that the greatest among them have been the most frank in acknowledging this their inability to treat anything successfully but that with which they had been familiar. The Madonna' of Raphael was born on the Urbino mountains, Ghirlandajo's is a Florentine, Bellini's a Venetian: there is not the slightest effort on the part of any one of these great men to paint her as a Jewess. It is not the place here to insist farther on a point so simple and so universally demonstrable. Expression, character, types of countenance, costume, colour, and accessories are with all great painters whatsoever those of their native land, and that frankly and entirely, without the slightest attempt at modification; and I assert fearlessly that it is impossible that it should ever be otherwise, and that no man ever painted or ever will paint well anything but what he has early and long seen, early and long felt, and early and long loved. How far it is possible for the mind of one nation or generation to be healthily modified and taught by the work of another I presume not to determine; but it depends upon whether the energy of the mind which receives the instruction be sufficient, while it takes out of what it feeds upon that which is universal and common to all nature, to resist all warping from national or temporary peculiarities. Nino Pisano got nothing but good, the modern French got nothing but evil, from the study of the antique; but Nino Pisano had a God and a character. All artists who have attempted to assume, or in their weakness have been affected by, the national peculiarities of other

times and countries, have instantly, whatever their original power, fallen to third-rate rank, or fallen altogether, and have invariably lost their birthright and blessing-lost their power over the human heart— lost all capability of teaching or benefiting others. Compare the hybrid classification of Wilson with the rich English purity of Gainsborough: compare the recent exhibition of middle-age cartoons for the Houses of Parliament with the works of Hogarth: compare the sickly modern German imitations of the great Italians with Albert Durer and Holbein compare the vile classicality of Canova and the modern Italians with Mino da Fiesole, Luca della Robbia, and Andrea del Verrocchio. The manner of Nicolo Poussin is said to be Greek—it may be so : this only I know, that it is heartless and profitless. The severity of the rule, however, extends not in full force to the nationality but only to the visibility of things; for it is very possible for an artist of powerful mind to throw himself well into the feeling of foreign nations of his own time-thus, John Lewis has been eminently successful in his seizing of Spanish character. Yet it may be doubted if the seizure be such as Spaniards themselves would acknowledge: it is probably of the habits of the people more than their hearts. Continued efforts of this kind, especially if their subjects be varied, assuredly end in failure. Lewis, who seemed so eminently penetrative in Spain, sent nothing from Italy but complexions and costumes, and I expect no good from his stay in Egypt. English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy, but for this there are collateral causes which it is not here the place to examine. Be this as it may, and whatever success may be attained in pictures of slight and unpretending aim-of genre, as they are called-in the rendering of foreign charactar, of this I am certain, that whatever is to be truly great and affecting must have on it the strong stamp of the native land: not a law this, but a necessity, from the intense hold on their country of the affections of all truly great men: all classicality, all middle-age patent reviving, is utterly vain and absurd. If we are now to do anything great, good, awful, religious, it must be got out of our own little island and out of this year 1846railroads and all: if a British painter, I say this in earnest seriousness, cannot make historical characters out of the British House of Peers, he cannot paint history; and, if he cannot make a 'Madonna' of a British girl of the nineteenth century, he cannot paint one at all."

There are few persons, who have had the privilege, which we ourselves owe to the courtesy of Mr. Turner, of visiting his gallery, who have not left it lamenting the circumstance alluded to in the following note :-

"One point, however, it is incumbent upon me to notice, being no question of art but of material. The reader will have observed that I strictly limited the perfection of Turner's works to the time of their first appearing on the walls of the Royal Academy. It bitterly grieves me to have to do this, but the fact is indeed so. No picture of Turner's is seen in perfection a month after it is painted. The Walhalla' cracked before it had been eight days in the academy rooms;

the vermilions frequently lose lustre long before the exhibition is over; and when all the colours begin to get hard a year or two after the picture is painted, a painful deadness and opacity comes over them, the whites especially becoming lifeless, and many of the warmer passages settling into a hard valueless brown, even if the paint remains perfectly firm, which is far from being always the case. I believe that in some measure these results are unavoidable, the colours being so peculiarly blended and mingled in Turner's present manner as almost to necessitate their irregular drying; but that they are not necessary to the extent in which they sometimes take place is proved by the comparative safety of some even of the more brilliant works. Thus the Old Temeraire' is nearly safe in colour, and quite firm; while the 'Juliet and her Nurse' is now the ghost of what it was; the Slaver' shows no cracks, though it is chilled in some of the darker passages; while the Walhalla and several of the recent Venices' cracked in the Royal Academy. It is true that the damage makes no further progress after the first year or two, and that even in its altered state the picture is always valuable and records its intention; but it is bitterly to be regretted that so great a painter should not leave a single work by which in succeeding ages he might be estimated. The fact of his using means so imperfect, together with that of his utter neglect of the pictures of his own gallery, are a phenomenon in human mind which appears to me utterly inexplicable, and both are without an excuse. If the effects he desires cannot be to their full extent produced except by these treacherous means, one picture only should be painted each year as an exhibition of immediate power, and the rest should be carried out, whatever the expense of labour and time, in safe materials, even at the risk of some deterioration of immediate effect."

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One of the most striking features of the works of our "Graduate" is the close and accurate study of nature exemplified in almost every chapter of this most original book. We regret that we cannot quote at length his remarks on "Water as painted by the Moderns:" the following extract, however, will serve to justify our position :—

"As respects the form of breakers on an even shore there is difficulty of no less formidable kind. There is in them an irreconcilable mixture of fury and formalism. Their hollow surface is marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-weir, and graduated by reflected and transmitted lights of the most wonderful intricacy, its curve being at the same time necessarily of mathematical purity and precision; yet at the top of this curve, when it nods over, there is a sudden laxity and giving way, the water swings and jumps along the ridge like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from part to part as it does through a serpent's body. Then the wind is at work on the extreme edge; and, instead of letting it fling itself off naturally, it supports it and drives it back, or scrapes it off and carries it bodily away: so that the spray at the top is in a continual transition between forms projected by their own weight, and forms blown and carried off with the weight overcome; then at last, when it has come down, who shall say what

shape that may be called, which shape has none of the great crash where it touches the beach.

"I think it is that last crash which is the great taskmaster. Nobody can do anything with it. I have seen Copley Fielding come very close to the jerk and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very successfully, and without any look of its having been in papers, down nearly to the beach; but the final fall has no thunder in it. Turner has tried hard for it once or twice, but it will not do. The moment is given in the Sidon' of the Bible Illustrations,' and more elaborately in a painting of 'Bamborough;' in both these cases there is little foam at the bottom, and the fallen breaker looks like a wall, yet grand always; and in the latter picture very beautifully assisted in expression by the tossing of a piece of cable, which some figures are dragging ashore, and which the breaker flings into the air as it falls. Perhaps the most successful rendering of the forms was in the Hero and Leander; but there the drawing was rendered easier by the powerful effect of light which disguised the foam."

And here, for the present, we take our leave of the "Oxford Graduate" pointing, however, with something like triumph to the third edition of his book as confirming our original prognostic of its success. The name of the author is still withheld-a proof that he is in no haste to appropriate the wreath his two volumes have won for him. Indeed, it is quite evident, from the tone and aim of the work, that the author is above the influence of selfish considerations. Many of our readers may, perhaps, differ from him in his estimate of Turner, as well as on other less prominent points on which he insists; but we think they cannot but appreciate the extraordinary powers of mind and genius which he has brought to his work, and the manly and fearless spirit with which, for the vindication of modern art, he has opposed himself to the prejudices of centuries.

Epitome Evangelica; being a Selection from the Greek Testament, consisting of Portions of the Four Gospels, chronologically and in part harmonically arranged, and forming a Connected Narrative of the Principal Events of the Life and Ministry of Christ, accompanied by a Clavis and Grammatical Notes. By the Rev. S. T. BLOOMFIELD, D.D., F.S.A. London: Longman and Co. 1846. 18mo. THE title-page of this neatly executed little volume so fully expresses its object, that we have only to announce that that object has been fully carried out by the learned and laborious author, whose previous labours on the New Testament have fitted him for undertaking this epitome of the Four Gospels. It is a cheap and useful acquisition to the school-room; the notes, though concise, are such as will really aid the juvenile student in understanding the meaning of the evangelists; while the Clavis will well supply the place of more expensive lexicons, and thus reduce the wear and tear and cost of school books.

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