ART & ARCHITECTURE: The Art - Great Britain
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The Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts which had in charge the British Art exhibit for Chicago was SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, the president of the Royal Academy, and it was very largely through his efforts that the collection sent, we are assured, may be accepted as "a thoroughly satisfactory representation of British art," including several of "the best examples of English women painters' work." The space allotted to Great Britain in the Art Gallery at Jackson Park is 20,000 square feet, and to Canada, 2800.

It is seventeen years since the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, and yet at Chicago, as there, the President of the Royal Academy still worthily represents the official head of British art. In all this interval no very formidable rival has appeared to contest his pre-eminence. Notwithstanding certain tendencies in his technique towards smoothness, thinness and prettiness of color and a certain inexactness, there are not very many better painters than he in the tight little isle; of the few that rival him in breadth and dignity of conception and imaginative power there are none that cover quite so wide a field, with so sure a mastery of the subject when at his best, and there are not many more accomplished masters of design. It is not enough to be merely a good painter in one line or specialty to be a worthy official head of the Academy, and, as is well-known, Sir Frederick's abilities are by no means confined to those of his art. His motto has been the Greek one, it is said - "nothing too much." At the Paris Exposition of 1889 his "Andromache Captive," one of his largest easel pictures, was challenged from the other end of the gallery by Mr. Burnes-Jones' "King Cophetua," and undoubtedly suffered from the comparison, but while the P. R. A. has seldom been so unsympathetically academical as in this long composition, the "Cophetua" comes very nigh to being its maker's masterpiece.

At Chicago, Sir Frederick is much better represented. Among his classical themse are three of his most important, the great "Hercules Wrestling with Death for Alcestis," first exhibited in 1871 and the property of Sir Bernhard Samuelson, M. P.; the "Perseus and Andromeda," from the Royal [9] Academy of 1891, and the "GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES," from that of 1892, owned by G. McCulloch, Esq. The Thessalian myth which Euripides elaborates in his drama of Alkestis has furnished the modern painter also with a might theme. Apollo, according to the old legends, was banished to earth and condemned to serve a mortal for one year as a punishment for having killed the Cyclops with whose forged thunderbolts Jupiter had slain his son Aesculapius, the latter having restored the deat to life and thus interfered with the whole scheme of the universe. According to the Delphia tradition, it was for killing the Python and Apollo was thus punished. To Admetos, King of Pherae, in Thessaly, the deposed divinity accordingly presented himself as a herdsman, and served this mortal master so well that he not only made all his ewes and she-goats drop twins, but also enabled him to wind the hand of Alkestis, daughter of Pelias, by going wooing in a chariot drawn by a lion and a wild boar - according to her father's hard conditions, and even obtained for Admetos, from the Fates, [10] the boon of having his death deferred, when his hour came, provided some one would volunteer to take his place. And it was his faithful wife who thus volunteered, when the fatal hour arrived, and died in his stead. But Heracles, happening to pass by on one of his expeditions, demanded hospitality at the palace door, not knowing of this event, and made such a noise, cheering and singing, over his supper that one of the old servants, disobeying orders, ventured to apprise him of the mourning in the household. Whereupon the hero, furious with himself, checked his libations, threw aside his wreath, followed the funeral procession to the open grave, and when Death came to claim his own threw himself upon him. It is this tremendous scene that the painter has undertaken to represent. The most moving feature of the composition is, however, scarcely the struggle which takes place at the foot of the queen's bier, but the central group in which one of Admetos' daughters hangs around her father's neck in an agony of terror and the old king, withered and hoary, stares over her white shoulders at the fight. This damsel's pretty head and back and arms, and her father's head, are among the best of Sir Frederick's conceptions; the wrestlers in the corner are fine, without being quite convincing, the queen is almost too rigid, and the group of attendants at the left is by no means so horror-stricken as they should be before this combat, the like of which had never before been seen, even in Hellas. The distant deep blue sea behind the figures furnishes and admirable background for the scene, in sentiment and color, completing the theme as a musician would do.

The same eternal summer of Fable pervades two of the three other canvases which here represent the P. R. A., the "GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES" and "Perseu and Andromeda," - the taint of the dragon that cannot be banished from any Eden, and fable, or any life, visible, however, in both of them. As to the difficult composition in the latter painting opinions vary; the effect of the scene is certainly somewhat diminished by the air of calculation in it and the inherent improbability of the fire-breathing beast's action. If he intended to circle slowly and appreciatively around his victim, before striking, like a cat or a serpent, he has not enough solid ground on which to execute the manoeuvre, it will be perceived; [11] but perhaps this was his intention, and in its midst his attention is suddenly called to the arrow that falls from the blue above and pierces his scaly back. In the much serener scene of the "Hesperides" something of the same unreasonableness of design is felt in the coiling of the dragon Ladon around the graceful maids at the foot of the tree - although the painter, who is also sculptor, had carefully modeled this group before he set out to paint it, as is his custom with all his more important works. This picture offers certain other peculiarities of the President's talent, his method of painting en bloc, as it were, the carrying of the local cover over the entire figure or drapery unaffected by change of light, reflections from surrounding objects, or anything else. This is particularly manifest in the robes of these three damsels. Nevertheless, these detractions admitted, the great circular canvas remains one of the most distinguished contributions in the Art Gallery, very luminous and rich in color, serene, harmonious, a veritable window opened into that more beautiful land of Faery. The contrast in freshness of tone between this work and the "Alcestis" is [12] quite noticeable, the latter seems to have faded and darkened. The fourth of these canvases, the portrait of Captain Burton, the explorer, "lean and rugged and brown," exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1876, is always reckoned as one of Sir Frederick's masterpieces.

In the sculpture department, outside the picture galleries' doors, he is represented by the same two bronzes that he sent to Paris in 1889, the learned, almost classic, statue of the "Sluggard" twisting his body, as he yawns, on his immovable legs, and the amusing little figure of the very thin and undeveloped young girl looking backward over her shoulders at the frog behind her heels.

MR. GEORGE F. WATTS, R. A., still remains a painter with two missions, to one of which he was truly called and to the other, probably, self-elected. Long ago Mr. Palgrave set down in advance for him the probable judgment of history, something to the effect that "all the world will prefer his work in which he displays his refinement, grace and fancy, to his attempts in the terribile via of life-size allegories." Nevertheless, it is in the latter road that the painter still persists, scorning, we are informed, like Mr. Burne-Jones, to paint either for exhibitions or "up to exhibition pitch," and the latest form of his creed, as defined by one of his admirers, is worthy of consideration as a contribution to the characterization of one of the only two national schools of modern art, according to M. Fernand Cormon, quoted elsewhere. "Fine painting" is something "which Mr. Watts has long since rejected in favor of one more compatible with the painted exposition of human thought." Why indifferent painting should be better for this exposition, is not stated, nor why that sincere brush-work which Mr. Watts puts into his portrait studies should not be suitable for other expressions of human thought. "The artistic creed of Mr. Watts is well known; he would exalt painting, and sculpture too, from a glorified handicraft or art to the most elevated medium of intellectual and emotional expression, of aesthetic and ethical exposition - would place it, in fact, on a level between the other highest arts, with poetry on this side, and music on that . . . Could the artist's ambitions be realized, he would elect, we believe, that the great series of his symbolical works might be judged far away from the noisy arena of the Royal academy - say, in the room of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum - with the mind attunded by the readying of the first two books of `Paradise Lost,' and by hearkening to Beethoven's `Moonlight Sonata.' What place has such a man in the competition for applause by choice of subject or excellence of technique? He has been described as a visionary; and so in a sense he is. His vision is the glorification of his art's mission; his practice, the sounding of the human mind and heart, and his aim, the representation to the eye of human passion and even of metaphysical reflections." Mr. Watts [13] modestly compares his own work with the Book of Job, and ingenuously admits that he no more expects a popular approval for his metaphysical painting than he would for that piece of literature if issued by a modern publisher! It is but just to admit that this admirer, quoted above, finds the work of Mr. Alma-Tadema and Mr. Poynter in "pleasing" contrast to the other. The well-known "LOVE AND LIFE," shown in this county at the exhibition of his works some years ago and at the Paris Exposition of 1889, may be seen in the initial of this chapter - protecting Love, strong and merciful, the flowers springing up in his footsteps, leads the naked and trembling soul up the rocky steeps of this mortal world - another version of the allegory presented in "Love and Death," in which little Cupid strives in vain to bar the entrance of the household to the King of Terrors.

All things being paintable, more or less, the field covered by the artists of the British school includes, naturally, many restorations of the life of antiquity, in which the explorers find somewhat more solid footing than in the uncertain land of allegory, the latter being a dubious region where all lights go out but those of genius. In the plates inserted in the text of this chapter will be found four selected from the varying points of view which this pictorial archaeology takes on. MR. GEORGE L. BULLEID's "CUSTODIAN," found among the water colors, is simply the cheerful domestic, the sort of thing that Mr. Alma-Tadema would do if his hand were not so heavy. Nothing can be more natural and pleasing than the figure of this little Roman maid, gone sound asleep in her chair - as was to have been expected - quite [14] without consideration for the importance of her office. MR. J. R. WEGUELIN, in his "MAIDENS' RACE," has been also more concerned for the general quality and style of his painting than for any considerations of learning or mortality. He has found an excellent subject in that commendable Hellenic custom which looked toward providing healthful mothers for the future State, and has mad a good composition - his tender virgins, somewhat too much alike, waiting impatiently in a fluttering row the signal that is to send them down the long course like arrows. This picture is from the collection of the Earl of Eldon. MSSRS. HERBERT SCHMALZ and VAL C. PRINSEP are much more serious and didactic in intent - the former, indeed, has certain very serious opinions concerning the duty of the "Christian painter," which he expounds, from time to time, in public and private. His large canvas, "FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH: CHRISTIAN AD LEONES!" first exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1888, is one of those dramatic scenes of Christian martyrdom in Roman times which the painters will probably continue to paint indefinitely - the Impressionists, possibly not, but the realists and the mystics of the Society of Rose Croix, certainly. In the somewhat unnecessary nudity of his victims Mr. Schmalz seems to have borrowed a suggestion from the French school; or he may have intended to demonstrate the extremity of the sacrifice. Mr. Prinsep, A. R. A., is more hortative and much less pictorial; his canvas requires a literary explanation which is, that this Christian slave, in his holy zeal, has thrown down and broken one of the most valuable idols of this Roman household of the time of Diocletian, and is accordingly put in chains and brought before his mistress preparatory to being appropriately flayed. Seizing this opportunity he proceeds to expound, with more or less effect upon his hearers, excepting only the Vicarius, the slave-driver, whose anticipatory attitude is the best in the composition. This picture, exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1892, is quite a departure from the painter's usual walks.

After the President's name the most popularly-distinguished probably is that of MR. LAURENS ALMA-TADEMA, R. A., and a reproduction of one of his latest and most appreciated works is accordingly [15] placed on page eight, the "READING FROM HOMER," owned by Mr. Marquand of New York, and exhibited among the loans from private American collections. The want of imagination with which this painter has often been reproached, says one of his biographers, "vexes him ... He is a Hedonist and depicts life from that stand-point. This necessarily entails upon him certain limitations both of vision, action, and comprehension. It is perhaps his Dutch origin that deprives him of certain subtleties of feeling. His pictures rarely rouse our deepest, highest emotions." This being granted, we can readily understand the placidity with which these auditors receive this passage from the Iliad or the Odyssey without supposing that the painter meant us to infer that it was, for instance, the catalogue of the ships that the reader was reading. It may be some winged words setting forth Hector's bravery, or Helen's beauty, or Ulysses' peril - but the painter does not wish to disturb the arrangement of his composition. The painting of the flesh in this picture is considered to be the best that Mr. Alma-Tadema has done, and the luminousness and general harmony of the color such as to constitute it one of his greatest technical successes. Near the centre of the composition of the white marble and the blue sea a bunch of flowers lies on the bench besides the girl's tambourine, and this serves to give, in a measure, the key-note to the higher and more lustrous tones of the painting. The reader's garment is pale rose colored and he has bay in his hair, as the maiden has daffodils in her's, and the standing figure at the left, flowers in his. The musician in the centre, who holds the girl's hand, wears a blue robe, and the huntsman or peasant, stretched at length in the foreground and apparently the most interested listener, a goat-skin coat. In the painting of his sunny, white marble the artist has achieved one of his peculiar technical triumphs.

Of the painters of Scriptural scenes - not so numerous as they once were - MR. FRANK W. W. TOPHAM brings a distinct note of individuality to his work, and is therefore worthy of commemoration. His "NAAMAN'S WIFE," from the Royal Academy exhibition of 1888, sets the old story before us in a new [16] light, the despair, of which the history makes no note, of the spouse of the "great man with his master, and honorable," and the Oriental impassiveness of the little maid, out of the land of Israel, moved nevertheless by these tears to volunteer her naive counsel - "Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy." On the wall behind the weeping wife of the captain of the King of Syria the painter has put an Assyrian bas-relief of the combat of the evil genii - which is probably exact enough archaeology. Of the homely and domestic art that treats of nearer things, and which forms so large a portion of the popular art of all nations, only three or four examples can be given in these pages - the pleasantly old-fashioned "HIDE AND SEEK," played by the little English girls among the tombstones, by JOHN CALLICOTT HORSLEY, R. A.; the healthful, barefooted fisher girls of MR. JOHN PARKER, of London, with their heavy load of cockles, and T. C. GOTCH's little maid posing in mock sovereignty with "CROWN AND SCEPTRE." Mr. Horsley explains that his scene is laid in a Kentish church-yard, in many of which numerous seventeenth century tombs are still to be found " in various conditions of picturesque decay, and among which the village children spend much of their play time. Bright young life seen literally hiding in the tomb formed a striking contrast, which suggested a subject for pictorial record." The "COCKLE GATHERERS" is a picture that might have been painted by clever young artist of any nation, so much is it in the modern way, the bit of every day outdoor life without any theme, rendered conscientiously and with just enough arrangement to keep within some sort of pictorial law. The difficult action of the lifting figures is very well given, and the alert old mariner with his pipe is also a good study.

Even the most condensed popular summary of British art should include that peculiar pleasant, sentimentally-decorative phase of it best rendered by MR. MARCUS STONE, R. A., and of which three excellent examples may be found in the Art Gallery. Of these the "GAMBLER'S WIFE" is [17] best known, and is evidently considered by the artist himself as one of his best, it having also represented him at the Paris exposition of 1889. It is from the collection of George McCulloch, Esq., of which we have already seen one or two of the treasures. The little story here is told with great discretion and intelligence, the two parts of the composition hang together very well and each makes a composition in itself, the two parts of the composition hang together very well and each makes a composition in itself, as will be seen by our vignettes. Of course, the gallant young squire at the card table is squandering his paternal estates, and his pretty wife, in the fine big red hat, in the foreground is concerned about it. And, to emphasize the point, the little son and heir who is thus being pillaged appears, innocent and unconscious, at the pleasant ancestral entrance. A great deal of fair painting and ingenious design is brought by the artist to the working out of this ingenious essay - the group around the card table is especially neat in its way of conveying information as to how the game is going.

For landscape and cattle pieces we will take GEORGE S. ELGOOD's water color study of the quaint old garden which he calls "SUNFLOWERS," and RICHARD BEAVIS' large painting of "A STAMPEDE IN THE HIGHLANDS," the latter showing good, robust brush work and good color study in the varying tones of the shaggy hides of the bulls. Mr. Elgood's garden is one of a pair which he sends, both full of rest and quiet and sweet smells.

The British sculpture, which includes some fifty-five pieces, is mostly arranged in the large Court, outside the picture galleries in company with that of other nations, but a few of the smaller bronzes are tucked away in corners among the paintings inside. Sir Frederick Leighton's contribution, as already stated, consists of his bronze statue of the "Sluggard" and his statuette in the same metal of the young girl and the frog. The number of portraits busts and figures is very considerable, E. Onslow Ford, for instance, sending five, Albert Bruce Joy, three, the late Thomas Woolner, R. A., five, etc. Mr. Ford's works are a seated, life-size, figure in bronze of Henry Irving, a marble bust of Mr. Gladstone, and a bronze statuette of his magnum opus, the monument to General Gordon, erected at Chatham by the Corps of Royal Engineers. In this small copy the justness of the criticism bestowed upon the larger work is not so strongly felt - that both man an animal are overloaded with ornament and that, moreover, it is singularly inappropriate to present this sincere and brave soldier, a contemner of luxury and pride, in all this ostentation. Mr. Thornycroft's statue of the same hero, placed in Trafalgar Square, is certainly very much more in character. In this, Gordon stands in a simple and meditative attitude, his Bible under his elbow and his chin on his hand, wearing the patrol [18] jacket of an English staff-officer, but without belts, sword or any of the trappings of war, with only his famous little rattan cane under his arm. It is this single, thoughtful figure, looking down from its high pedestal, which, it is said, meets Mr. Gladstone's remorseful gaze whenever he passes after nightfall; and, indeed, presented in this guise, the defender of Khartoum is much more living and moving than is Mr. Ford's bedizened Anglo-Egyptian official. The true conception for a monumental effigy of this last of the heroes would have been a faithful and sincere rendering of that "single brave man riding southward on a dromedary," on whom hung the fate of the English power in the Soudan.

In all the talk of the revival of sculpture as an art in England, and in all the more or less complacent reviews of this department in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy, the name of Mr. Ford is most constantly mentioned and his work described at greatest length, yet it is to be noticed that the essayists - with some injudiciously enthusiastic exceptions - find themselves obliged to temper their commendations with many reservations. As he is the most prominent of the new men upon whom the fate of this renaissance depends, so he is also one of the most typical in his technical conceptions and methods, - in his work, and in a lesser degree in that of most of the others, Thornycroft himself, Albert Gilbert, H. A. Pegram, T. Brock, etc., and even Harry Bates, may be seen that sort of awkwardness, that striving to break the fetters of the commonplace and not knowing how, that stumbling over your own insufficient artistic equipment, which might be said broadly to be the main, leading characteristic of all British art. Some of the painters have distinctly gotten through with this stage of development and, having broken through their trammels, have, in many instances, risen into very serene heights of distinguished art execution, but in very nearly all the more important work of the sculptors these limitations are obvious. In Mr. Ford's statue of Gordon they are evident, and still more so in his recent famous monument to Shelley, presented by Lady Shelley to University College, Oxford, and a sketch of which is to be erected on the sea-shore at Viareggio. This has been accepted by some of his admirers as "simple, sensuous, passionate, - all that Milton asked of a poet, and in this representation of a poet we have had seized for us the very entirety, the very heart of that abstraction out of which, in some sort, we have made and fashioned our idea." It might be said, en passant, that some of the qualities of English art work might be attributed to just such "art criticism" as this. In point of fact, the "poet," in this case, lies perfectly nude and very realistically modeled, his mouth open and the death agony on his brow, just as he was washed up on the sea-shore of the gulf of Spezzia, on a thin shelf supported by a very heavy and ornate base, garnished with a mourning Muse, two winged, conventionalized lions and gnarled tree branches of bronze bearing golden fruit. It would seem that a very brief course in any school of design would have enlightened the artist to the fact that neither in proportion nor in style, was this pedestal in any accord with the naked corpse which it upholds. And yet this has been characterized, by a second, revered, critic as "that magnificent memorial . . . which has received a national consecration by its acceptance by the oldest [19] college of the oldest English university," and by a third as "extraordinary" in its technical merit, and as representing "the high-water mark of Anglo-classic sculpture."

The "Shelley" was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892, and the "gordon" was given the place of honor at that of 1890. The marble bust of Mr. Gladstone has been the property of the City Liberal Club of London since 1884; and the seated "Henry Irving as Hamlet" is a bronze reproduction of the marble shown at Burlington House in 1885. These latter two are much more naturally conceived and rendered; the distinguished actor sits in his Florentine chair in a characteristic attitude.

By an omission which is to be regretted, Mr. Alfred Gilbert, who divides with Mr. Ford the honors of the leadership of the younger and more aggressive of the two groups into which the school of contemporary British sculpture is divided, is not represented at Chicago. This group, to quote a reliable historian, "obtains some of its chief effects through the treatment of sculpture from a pictorial standpoint; and, starting from the Florence of the Quattrocento, derives at the same time much of its technique from the teaching and example of the modern naturalistic schools of France." On the other hand, the more conservative group, "headed by Mr. Hamo Thornycroft and Mr. Harry Bates, adheres in the main, though without slavish imitation or conscious restriction, to classical model." Two of Mr. Gilvert's most characteristic works, his largest and his smallest, may be mentioned as among the most striking demonstrations of the modern movement in art which he represent, - his gilt-bronze monumental statue of the Queen, erected at Winchester, and his centre-piece of goldsmiths' and silversmiths' work presented to Her Majesty by her United Forces on the occasion of her Jubilee. In the former, the Queen, "boldly represented in her ripe maturity, appears majestically enthroned on a magnificent architecturally-designed chair, of which the general lines are manifestly Gothic, though the beautiful statuettes which adorn it are in the Italian style of the sixteenth century, and the fanciful details are all the artist's own. Her Majesty, crowned with the royal circlet, holds in the right hand the sceptre, in the left, a globe surmounted by a beautiful, if somewhat unorthodox, Greek Victory; suspended over the sovereign's head is a Tudor crown, which, by its perilous resemblance to a lamp, somewhat detracts from the dignity of the ensemble. Loosely wrapped around the imposing figure, and overlapping the throne in all directions, are the royal robes, designed with great breadth and freedom, and with a picturesque rather than a sculptural exaggeration of fold."

No such courageous agglomeration of styles and details is to be found in the more logical work of Mr. Thornycroft, - the third in descent of a line of sculptors, and an older man. His "austere and noble art," as it has been called, is represented here by four works, one of which, the "Teucer," is the most famous and, perhaps, the most characteristic. It was to this "quasi-archaic" statue that the sculptor owed his first reputation. It was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1882, and was purchased under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest. The peculiarities of the attitude, which are such that the archer neither stands nor takes aim after the manner of other bowmen, will strike every [20] beholder, but, as one critic suggests, the work "may probably be accepted as a protest against attitude. The sculptor has evidently determined that, whatever his statue may be, it shall not be like the statues of other people . . . But if we set aside any question as to the precise felicitousness of this form of protest against conventionality and attitude, we have a powerful and harmonious study of the erect figure, still but not in repose, and tense without movement. It is said that Mr. Millais, who loves to exercise his capacity for admiration, and who knows how to give a measure of praise which is shaken together and pressed down and running over, has declared that if this statue had only had the luck to be broken into fragments two thousand years ago, the nations would now be quarreling for those fragments. To this it may be objected that Mr. Millais, to judge by his own work, is not much in sympathy with antique art, and is by no means the best judge in the world of modeling, whether in the flat or the round. Still, it is unquestionable that in its entire state the `Teucer,' though not a subject of European contention, is undoubtedly a work of which the young school of English sculpture may be proud. Its severity and simplicity are a timely rebuke to much contemporary triviality, and its studied originality is easily pardoned."

The hero thus immortalized by the modern sculptor was that half-brother of the Telamonian Ajax, the best bowman of the Greeks, who from behind the protection of his brother's shield scattered death among the Trojans so that even great Agamemnon applauded, till the angry Apollo, weary of turning aside these shafts from Hector's breast, broke the archer's power by an unseen stroke. In addition to this work, Mr. Thornycroft is represented at Chicago by another bronze statue, his "Mower," first exhibited in 1884, "reminiscent of Millet," and two statuettes in the same metal, "Putting the Stone," and a model for his equestrian statue of Edward I., intended for one of the four main blocks completing Blackfriars Bridge on either side. In the latter, the conception is simple and monumental, but the figure of the king, following the example of certain baser forms of French decorative sculpture, is much too small-headed. Mr. Harry Bates, the second leader of this pseudo-classic modern school, sends two of the classic reliefs of the kind with which he first won his reputation, the "Endymion," from the Royal Academy of 1892, and the triptych of marble panels, "Story of Psyche," first exhibited at the New Gallery in 1890. Neither of these, however, is as good as his "Homer;" a certain lack of right [21] sculptural feeling is shown in the arbitrary manner in which the graceful group of Selene and Endymion is joined to the heads and necks of the plunging winged horses. More of this variability of temperament may be seen in the two works sent by Mr. Conrad Dressler, a big, commonplace medallion of the first stage of life according to the melancholy Jacques and a very handsome, distinguished bronze bust of a sort of Sir Joshua Reynolds "Bacchante," curiously original and interesting.

Mr. Watts, the painter, is represented in this outside gallery by another version, this time in bronze, of that twisted, tormented bust of Clytie, with which he has more than once sought to supersede the well-known antique, serene if somewhat insipid, version. Much more successful is the "CAPRICE" of GEORGE FRAMPTON of London, a life-size, bronze nude figure of a dancing girl, standing on tiptoe in her slippers and balancing in her hands sprays of the teazle plant. Of his three other works, the best is the half-length marble figure of a "Singing Girl." The "Caprice" was first shown at the Royal Academy of 1891, and was voted by the critics to be "something French." At the same exhibition appeared also another work shown here, a "Morpheus," by John W. Goscombe, of which one of these commentators said, quite justly: - "A certain meanness of proportion, a certain infelicity in the choice of the model, militate against the complete success of Mr. Goscombe's marble statue, `Morpheus,' which excels, nevertheless, in certain rare qualities peculiar to Greek rather than to modern art. The whole of the undraped figure, not less than the half-hidden face, expresses, with a harmonious consensus of the component elements, this main motive of drowsiness, and does so with a reticence and a rhythmical balance evidently derived from classical example." That this sculptor is not wholly classic is shown by his second contribution, a carefully studied and excellently rendered head of a very old woman. Another of these worthy realistic studies is that of a "Ruffian," bronze bust by Miss E. M. Moore of London. Mr. Henry Holiday, on the contrary, is mildly classic, his full-length, recumbent figure of a sleeping girl being founded upon the famous "Ariadne" of the Vatican. Mr. Horace Montford sends a very indifferent, "Birth of Venus," and a better bronze statuette, "Threatened Reprisals," of an old subject, [22] a bacchante proposing to clip Cupid's wings. Among the nude figures not already mentioned may be cited Roland Rhodes' bronze statuette of an "Egyptian Harpist;" among other good work, Mr. John M. Swan's little bronzes of certain felidae, and among the pretentious and unworthy, Mr. George Tinworth's uncatalogued big, terra-cotta Scriptural reliefs, which the London critics unkindly dispose of as "humorous."

To return to the painters - who have nine hundred and thirty exhibits to the fifty-three of the sculptors - we find that Mr. Alma-Tadema, in addition to his work in the American loan section already noticed, has sent three important compositions in oil and one in watercolors. Of these, two, the "Audience and Agrippa's" and the "Sculpture Gallery," are well known; the "Dedication to Bacchus" and the watercolor, "Calling the Worshippers," are more recent, their respective numbers, as carefully set down by the painter, for the benefit of posterity, being, clxi, cxxv, ccxciv, and cccxiii. In the "Dedication to Bacchus," the head of the wind-god's procession debouches on the platform of his temple and is solemnly met by the priests and attendants, arranged and costumed with great ingenuity, learning and discretion, - no one forgetting for a moment that they are to appear before a London audience, and that therefore any of those little enthusiasms which Livy narrates and which the consuls finally exterminated, are not to appear. The painter's wife and daughter are also exhibitors, the former with three paintings and the latter with a watercolor of the drawing room in her father's house, and a portrait in oil. Mrs. Tadema's contributions are pleasant domestic scenes, - two or three young girls playing "Battledore and Shuttlecock," exhibited at the New Gallery, in 1890, and rather thin and cold in technique; two children dreaming before the fire, and a very small maid; "Always Welcome," comfortably installed on the side of the invalid's bed. The two latter are much better in painting qualities, and the last is charming. Another of the great names of English art is that of Sir John Millais, but it may be doubted whether the old admirers of the painter of the "Huguenot Lovers" and [23] the "Northwest Passage, " do not find rather cause to grieve than to rejoice in his demonstration at Chicago, important though it is. In England it is said that the progress of years has somewhat affected the baronet's art, but it may more charitably be thought that a certain frostiness has settled on his judgment. Otherwise there could have been selected from among even his modern work something better, something less strictly popular and commercial, than most of these canvases, four of which are for sale. In none of these is there anything of that subtle and intelligent combining of figures with their landscape to make an artistic unity which the English painters do rather better than any others, and which no one does better than Sir John when at his best. As in his "Vale of Rest," now in the Tate Collection, and first exhibited in 1859, or the "Blow, Blow, thou Winter Wind," of the Royal Academy of 1892.

It is rather discouraging to discover that one of the most goody-goody of these popular pictures - after the famous "Bubbles" owned by a famous soap-maker - is lent by the President of the R. A. This is a very nice young woman "Shelling Peas." And there is the "Last Rose of Summer," and "Sweet Emma Morland," and an "Ornithologist," in the bosom of his family, very much of the same kind. Much better is the landscape, "Halcyon Weather," from the Royal Academy of 1892, - though it has been objected to this work that the painter has borrowed from two different seasons to get his Saint-Martin's summer. Almost equally well intrenched in the popular favor is Mr. Poynter, R. A., - his great picture of "Israel in Egypt" being still a hallowed tradition in the household of the British Bible-reading art connoisseur, and the painter's high reputation not to be impaired by the carpings of the latter-day critics who couple him with Sir Frederick Leighton as an "avowed emulator of classic ideality," but find them both too cold and deliberate in artistic termperament, and too feebly inspired from within, to leave any very shining mark on the art of their day. Mr. Poynter is not represented at Chicago by any of his great quasi-historical compositions, his most important work being another version of that "Diadumene" first seen at the Royal Academy of 1885. In the original, the bather, poised on the marble steps of her bath and twining around her head that diadema, or white fillet, from which she gets her name, was nude. In the present picture, dated 1893, she is lightly draped, and in both, the size of life. The good painting of the marble and some of the other accessories is remarkable in this canvas, as it was in the original, - especially of the marble steps both above and below the water. Mr. Poynter is further represented by a flower piece and by two of his genre subjects of late years, half-length studies of classic maids sitting by a sea wall or on a terrace, and also by a pretty watercolor garden scene.

[24] - Mr. J. W. Waterhouse, A. R. A., is a painter of antique themes of a very different quality. With one or two exceptions, he is the youngest of the Associates, and he was elected on the merits of extensive choice of themes - as from the strictly Alma-Tadema of "Mariamne" or the "Emperor Honorius" to such bits of pure imagination as the "Sleep and Death" of the R. A. of 1874 - but he shows at one time French influences, is at another purely original, or catholic, and lately, in two pictures at least, seems to manifest a tendency towards Mr. Burne-Jones which is to be deprecated. It is said that he, himself, would choose to be represented to posterity rather by this latest manifestation, the "Danae" of 1892 for example, than by any other. At the Chicago Exposition, however, as at that of Paris in 1889, his exhibit is confined to the "Mariamne," first shown at the Royal Academy of 1887, and this choice, on the whole, is probably to be regretted, valuable as this work is. The painting of the marble stairway in the foreground and of the marble and metal lion is quite admirable, but otherwise the picture scarcely shows Mr. Waterhouse at his best. It is Josephus who gives us the story of this unhappy queen of Herod the Great, delivered by him to death at the treacherous instigation of his sister and mother, Salome and Alexandra, jealous of her and irritated by her taunts as to their meanness of birth. So "she went to her death with an unshaken firmness of mind, and without changing the color of her face, and thereby evidently discovered the nobility of her descent to the spectators, even in the last moment of her life. Thus died Mariamne." The painter shows her slowly descending the steps of the praetorium, draped in white and chained with gold, casting a proud but reproachful look at her cowering husband and his shamefaced mother beside him.

Another painter with an extensive range was the late JOHN PETTIE, R. A., - almost any, not too imaginative, figure subject being within his appreciation, from grave historical incidents to humorous genre, or even sporting incidents. His important work, "The Traitor," first seen at Burlington House in 1889, appears in all the official catalogues of the Chicago Exposition, but was not present. In its stead is shown a much simpler and stronger work, one, indeed, that in its sombre and most unsparing presentation of a tragic and ignoble incident reveals unsuspected qualities of imaginative force in the artist. "MONMOUTH PLEADING FOR HIS LIFE BEFORE JAMES II." is founded only too closely upon historical truth. When brought before the king, after the collapse of his brief rebellion, "Remember, Sire, that I am the son of your brother," he cried, throwing himself at the feet of the monarch," it is your own blood that you shed in shedding mine." "Your crime is too great," coldly replied James. The wretched duke, his hands pinioned behind him, stoops so low before the king that his long wig coils on the floor; in his profile, red with weeping, may be seen the extremity of his abasement. The interview takes place in a bare and otherwise solitary apartment; it would certainly be unnecessary to relate the story any more clearly. Mr. Pettie's second picture, `BONNY PRINCE CHARLIE," reproduced for our [25] pages in an etching, is more characteristic, and much more cheerful and commonplace, in its rendering of the graces of the young Pretender. Mr. P. H. Calderon, still of the Academy, an artist whom the London critics alternately laud and abuse, is represented by only one canvas, a two-figure piece, the "Farewell," so soberly and discreetly painted that one is included to wonder somewhat at the inequality of work that can occasionally bring forth such ironical philippics as this: - "Not much less meritorious are the several exhibits of Mr. Calderon. Last year, as we all remember with pain, Mr. Calderon fell from the ranks of righteousness, and imitated the foreign painter Bouguereau. This year he is himself again. The delusion has passed, and he comes to us bearing gifts of the old incomparable strain. His Andromeda is of the finest kid; the rocks to which she is attached are of the rarest pasteboard; the seas that rage at her feet are of the richest and crudest ultramarine, the purest and paintiest flake white. In `Morning,' he has realized for us a Genius of Strawberry Ice - the first, the only one, in painting. In `The River,' he is radiant with English sentiment, a system and epitome of the great traditions of our Royal Academy of arts. After these flights, as of the Theban eagle, the `sweetmeat statuary' of Mr. Edwin Long, his delicious `confectionary in paint,' might well be found wanting in excitement and in savor."

But good painters are to be found even in the Academy, and some of them have come to Chicago. The late Frank Holl was one of the most successful, as he was one of the most national in his traits - even to the extent of importing the determined woe of his earlier compositions into his later portraits of prosperous sitters, the funereal gloom of "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," for instance, into the portrait of Sir Archibald Cumbleson, Bart. At least, this charge has been brought against him. His five portraits at Chicago were all good examples of his generally sincere, conscientious work, with no special charm or originality of brush-work or of insight, but with the air of looking like the sitter. In the long stretches of these galleries the spots made by the portraits are not very numerous, and these works nearly always strike the spectator as important examples - which is much more than can always be said of the presentation of sitters in painting exhibitions. Professor Herkomer, for example, sends his picture of the handsome, frowning Miss Katherine Grant, painted in 1885 and shown at the Paris Exposition, but he also sends, under the title of "Entranced - `In some diviner mood of self-oblivion solitude,'" another portrait of a lady that is even more of a complete misfit than the choice of subject foreordained it to be. His third contribution, or rather his first in importance, is the famous "Last Muster," the work which established his reputation when first shown at the Royal Academy in 1875, in his twenty-sixth year. The applause with which it was received was re-echoed in Paris at the International Exposition three years later when it received a medal of honor. This picture is in the collection of Mr. W. Cuthbert Quilter, M. P.

Mr. Orchardson, R. A., sends only a portrait group of a mother and child, though his reputation - which is much greater in Great Britain than elsewhere - has been founded almost exclusively on his [26] figure subjects, - something between genre and historical. He has lately abandoned in a measure that too great fondness for yellows and for a sort of treacly sweetness of color which so long distinguished his works, but it is still somewhat difficult for the un-British to join in the great laudation maintained in the Queen's dominions. "An artist to the tips of his fingers - a great artist," says Mr. Spielmann in 1890, - "he is a marvelous colorist; his brush-work is facile, original, and unfailing in effect." Of his three pictures in the Tate Collection, the same critic avers that "they display a level of excellence that posterity will assuredly contemplate with patriotic pride." "He has indeed such exquisite grace," says a biographer, "not of line merely, but of execution, that his brush," etc., etc. These are great qualities; and Mr. Orchardson was promptly taken to the bosom of the Royal Academy. The general excellence of Mr. Watts' portraits have already been alluded to, and his two in these galleries - of Robert Browning and of Walter Crane - are among the serious examples of British art represented. Though it can scarcely be said that the likeness in the latter case is striking. Mr. Watts is justly counted among the leaders in that revival of the art of portraiture in England which has taken place within the last twenty years, and which it is believed will be more permanent in its results than the corresponding advance in any other division of pictorial art. Millais, Herkomer, Holl and Ouless are all thought to have aided in this uplifting, and the latter, also of the Academy, and represented at Chicago by two portraits, has been said, in his best work to excel Mr. Holl as much in earnestness and grasp of character as the latter is his superior in breadth and general effectiveness of execution. And, while still in the pursuit of this branch of knowledge, the visitor may glance at the excellent portrait of a gentleman by Mr. Lockhart, of the Royal Scottish Academy, and at those of a number of pretty maids and young ladies by Messrs. Hacker, Perugini, Wirgman and Wortley, of no Academy at all.

[27] - The R. A., as we have said, with all its faults, recognizes merit sometimes. Here is one of its very latest accessions, MR. JOHN MACWHIRTER, elected from an Associate to a full Academician in this very summer of 1893, and represented at Chicago by three examples, the best of which, a study of the fishing village of CORRIE, ISLE OF ARRAN, is reproduced for these pages. A reproduction is also given of the graphic and somewhat pathetic version of OLIVER TWIST walking to London, by JAMES SANT, R. A., the shepherd's dog bounding unnoticed by the absorbed boy, and the shepherd himself disappearing in the mist of the roadside. The "Louis XI." of MR. SEYMOUR LUCAS, A. R. A., from the Academy exhibition of 1890, has the air of being inspired by a very well rendered scene in Mr. Irving's presentation of this amiable monarch. Here, however, the incident takes place in a peasant's cottage, the king, rather more sumptuous than usual but wearing his famous cap with its string of leaden saints, sits on a wooden stool in the chimney place and beams grimly at the little girl who seeks refuge from him at her mother's side. The father, busy in the fireplace, grins, and the baby at table looks on askance. The king's character is cleverly rendered, but not forcibly.

MRS. SEYMOUR LUCAS is also an historical painter, and our etching reproduced her presentation of the baby HENRY VI. proclaimed "By the Grace of God, Kynge of England, of France, and Lord of Irelnad," in his ninth month, and who had lost them all at his death in his fiftieth year, "having in intellect scarcely advanced from his cradle all his days, though both amiable and pious." During his nominal reign the English won their last great victory in France, that of Verneuil in 1424; burned Joan of Arc; were expelled from France; say Jack Cade in possession of London, and the outbreak of the War of the Roses. Mrs. Lucas portrays the infant monarch holding his bilboquet, dressed in white and ermine, and surrounded by the crimson drapings of his sovereignty.

Among the other paintings which are concerned with historical themes - but rather from the point of view of the people than from that of the sovereigns - and reproduced by etching for this publication, may be found MISS JESSIE MACGREGOR's young mother, in an orange-red gown, cowering over the cradle of her babe in the "REIGN OF TERROR," from the Royal Academy of 1891, MR. FRANK BRANGWYN's gray "CONVICT SHIP," from that of the following year, and MR. JOSEPH NASH's fine illustration of some of the manners and customs of the eighteenth century, "A WINTER MORNING." The last named is a watercolor, as is also CHARLES GREEN's speaking representation of the first meeting of the immortal "PICKWICK CLUB," - a convocation much more real to many readers than most of the historical ones. CARL SCHLOESSER, who is a London painter, despite his name, paints once more the story, so popular on the other side of the channel, of MOLIERE reading to his old servant his "La Foret," to judge of its probably effect upon an audience. Also among the full-page plates may be found the naval painter, OVEREND's, spirited revival of the old-time maritime glories of England, "`VICTORY! THE PRIZE CREW TAKING POSSESSION," of some ruined French or Spanish three-decker; MR. FREDERICK HALL's amusing "RESULT OF HIGH LIVING," on the part of a pampered spaniel, first shown at the Royal Academy in 1892; the soberly and truthfully painted study of "THE FERRY" of some little [28] seaport town, by WALTER OSBORNE, of Dublin, and G. GOODWIN KILBOURNE's "GOOD ACCOMMODATION FOR MAN AND BEAST."

Certain of the more important figure painters, leaders of movements and provokers of contention, are not represented in these galleries, large as they are, or not adequately represented, but one of the most important of the last generation, "one of the very last of the line of historical painters in England," who adopted "archaism," to quote his own words, as a man yields to fate, Mr. Ford Madox Brown, the master of Rossetti, has two examples, the famous "Romeo and Juliet," thin and flat and given to reds, and a small copy of his "Wicliff on Trial," designed for the Manchester Town Hall. Of the more promising of the younger painters certain typical examples have been selected for reproduction in these pages, - MR. JAMES CHARLES' sleepy old cottager "LEFT IN CHARGE" of the baby; MR. ARTHUR HOPKINS' almost too pretty "SPRING-TIME, THE ONLY PRETTY RING-TIME;" the figure from G. P. JACOMB-HOOD'S life-size, admirably-painted "SUMMER" bather; and that of MRS KATE PERUGINI's "TOMBOY." The "Wicliff" was shown at the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in 1890, and the "Tomboy" at the New Gallery in 1892. The list of English painters of landscapes and marines is honorably led off by the name of Mr. Henry Moore, just promoted this summer of 1893 from his Associateship to a full Academician, and one of the most distinguished painters of the sea of any school. After him come several others, John Brett, David Murray, B. W. Leader and Colin Hunter, all A. R. A.'s - not to mention H. W. B. Davis and Peter Graham, Academicians, - all of them represented in these galleries.