History of English art since 1851 page 5

The next few years of the Academy Exhibitions proved that the future of painting was no longer in the hands of those well-known Academicians who had reigned supreme there for so long, but with the young Associates who were winning their way in spite of all obstacles into fame and success.

It rarely happens that the greatest painter of the age is also the most popular one; yet this is the case with Millais, and it has been, perhaps, both the resiilt and the cause of his deterioration from his early perfection. He began, like most of the Pre-Raphaelites, with high moral and religious efforts in painting, but soon struck out his own path, evidently finding the mystical and symbolic tendency of this early phase of the school uncongenial to him. The " Return of the Dove " was one of his last efforts at moralising. His marvellous gift of imitation seems first to have led him astray. That which he could do with unequalled perfection and ease, he began to do carelessly, and without regard to truth; and finding that his exquisite painting of detail and texture won him unbounded applause, he forsook the higher branches of art for drawing-room paraphernalia and dressed up children. Perhaps his two most perfect paintings were those exhibited in 1856, "Peace Concluded" and "Autumn Leaves." All the straining after finish in former pictures seemed to have found its perfection in the wonderful execution of these two pictures; the latter being chiefly remarkable for its exquisite painting of twilight glow behind the hills. In 1857 a fatal change had passed over his pictures of a " Dream of the Past " and " Sir Ysumbras; " the latter yet so beautiful in conception as to fascinate in spite of its wilful departure from the laws of truth. An old knight, riding home on his war-horse in the summer twilight, the dust of work and strife on his golden armour, has taken the woodman's boy and girl and is carrying them with him across the ford, the girl looking up trustingly in his face. The purple hills marked clear against the cold sky of the solemn summer twilight; the autumn trees shedding their crimson leaves on the green river-bank; the thought of the picture carrying one on in its dim suggestiveness beyond the beautiful incident into the land of more beautiful symbolism: all these things throw around the picture an inexpressible charm in spite of its bad drawing and careless painting.

Of all the modern school of English painters, Holman Hunt is the only one who has been in any sense a religious painter, or who might have laid the foundations of a school of religious art, expressing the devotional feelings and convictions of the age. He it was, perhaps who, beyond the other young Pre-Raphaelite leaders, gave strength and depth to the movement, and insisted most strongly on the principle that their paintings should always mean something - express some idea. Pursuing through all obstacles in early life his aim to be a painter, at the age of sixteen he began his self-education, and appeared first before the public in 1849, in his " Rienzi " and " Claudio and Isabella." His " Hireling Shepherd," exhibited in 1852, was perhaps the first which attracted much attention, or was thought to show signs of great power. Then came the "Light of the World" - that picture which above all modern religious pictures has so taken possession of the hearts of English people in this generation - stigmatised at the time by a shallow Review, which claimed to represent popular opinion, as the "principal symbol of the Pre-Raphaelites," serving chiefly " to show the rapid decline of a heresy." " The Awakening Conscience," with its deep pathos and noble moral teaching, exhibited in the same year, needed Mr. Ruskin's championship in the Times, to explain its meaning, and silence the ignorant criticism which was showered on it. A girl has been singing with her seducer in the beautifully furnished rooms to which he has enticed her. Some words of the song she sings - " Oft in the stilly night " - have gone home to her with a sudden agonised remembrance of the days of her innocence, and her eyes are filling with tears and her sweet face quivering with remorse, while her lover, unconscious and careless, strikes the chords on his instrument. On the gilded tapestry behind, the birds feed on the budding corn; over the fireplace hangs the picture of the woman taken in adultery; beyond in the garden the bright flowers contrast their fairness with human sin and sorrow. Was ever a tale more perfectly told to an unheeding generation? By the time the "Finding of the Saviour in the Temple " was exhibited, Holman Hunt had won his way to the sympathies of his age. It has been criticised on religious grounds, because the figure of the Saviour was, in its conception, a departure from mediaeval tradition, and because it only formed one of a large group, all painted with equal care, and attracting equal attention. We have no sympathy with either of these objections; for to the last it may be said that it was an historical and not a symbolic representation, and therefore called for care and accuracy in all the accompanying personages and accessories; and we must think that few, first looking at the picture, could fail to be at once and principally fascinated by the noble and beautiful face of the Divine Child, with the far-off look in His deep blue eyes as He first reminded His mother of His "Father's business." As regards the type of face, we are not aware that there is any authentic tradition as to our Lord's features - each school of painting having had, we believe, its own type; the only verbal tradition on the subject which has come down being precisely the one which, before Mr. Hunt revived it, had been well-nigh unknown - viz., that our Lord's hair was golden-auburn, and His eyes blue. It was in doubt, and difficulty, and poverty, that he painted this noble picture, unknowing whether in this, their last opportunity, the English nation would acknowledge his genius in the work of the five best years of his manhood, or whether he should be driven to seek his livelihood in a far-off country.

The "Scape-Goat" had all the defects of a well-nigh impossible subject; yet it was a wonderful picture, and no other man could have painted it. A goat, wearing the scarlet fillet, on the shores of the doomed land sinks down weary and despairing. Attracted perhaps by the false glitter of the Dead Sea waters, he has come, parched and thirsty, to sink in its salt crust and die as the sun goes down behind the purple mountains of Abarim. Painted with unequal skill, ridiculed and misunderstood, and wondered at as only the picture of a dying goat, that picture lit up the Academy walls of 1856 with its colour, and made them solemn with its intensity of thought. We can hardly measure, we cannot value enough, the strength of soul of the man - perhaps no other country but England could have produced him - who could thus spend his weary days amidst the discomforts and dangers of an Eastern wilderness, alone in the awful solitude of Sodom and Gomorrah, to produce this solemn picture; who could also brave the bitter cold of an English winter night to produce the " Light of the World," and the burning heat of a meridian sun to paint the " Hireling Shepherd."

Mr. Hunt's "Shadow of Death," which he was four years in painting, was exhibited in 1874. It represents Christ in His earthly home - " the carpenter's shop " - at Nazareth, just coming from His day's toil; and the arms, outstretched in weariness, cast the shadow of a cross upon the opposite wall. It is painted with Mr. Hunt's well- known power and mastery of even the minutest detail.

Few artists have identified themselves so exclusively with sacred subjects as M. Gustave Doré, who, though a foreigner by birth, has exhibited so many pictures in this country that ho calls for some mention in this chapter. One of his chief works, " Christ leaving the Praetorium," would alone entitle him to rank among the greatest modern painters; and his " Dream of Pilate's Wife " is painted as he only can paint such subjects. His versatility of genius and rapidity of execution are wonderful, and have enabled him to devote considerable attention to the illustration of books, as well as to painting.

Mr. Watts is a man who was born to paint great subjects on a grand scale, and it is his misfortune to have been compelled, by the conditions of his age and country, to paint easel pictures, instead of leaving his memorial behind him on frescoed walls. But whether on wall or canvas, in finished painting or dreamy sketch, all he does is marked by the same depth and beauty of thought, and bears the impress of his great genius. One of his first well-known works was the " Red Cross Knight and the Dragon," in the Palace of Westminster, now faded, we fear, beyond hope of recovery. One of his finest works is the " School of Legislation," occupying an end of the wall of Lincoln's Inn Hall. The idea of the arrangement is borrowed from Raphael's " School of Athens." Religion, Mercy, and Justice stand in the midst; around them, assembled on steps, all the great law-givers of the world, each in the costume of his race and age. It is sad to think that in a few years more this fine picture will also decay from the wall. The use of fresco was a new thing in England then; the effects of climate and other numerous conditions on which fresco depends were unknown or matters of experiment; and the result is, that nearly all the works on a large scale, done by the artists of this generation, are doomed to destruction. At St. James-the- Less, Westminster, he has painted a " Christ in Glory; " and various private houses contain specimens of his wall- painting. He has also done some powerful pieces of sculpture, of which the "Dying Clytie," exhibited in the Academy in 1868, and now in the Kensington Museum, is one of the best known. We have indeed, as a nation, much to thank him for; much also to learn from him ere he passes away.

He and Mr. Armitage might have been the two great fresco painters of the age had circumstances been favourable. Perhaps they dreamed of it when as young and unknown men they won their prizes for the Westminster painting. The latter has executed many wall paintings - " The Thames," and the "Death of Marmion," in the Upper Waiting Hall at Westminster; " St. Francis before Innocent III.," and other figures, in St. John's Roman Catholic Church at Islington; a memorial painting to Crabb Robinson, in University Hall - one of his most successful works, and in which he used a different medium, composed of wax and turpentine, so that it may be hoped that this fine picture may be saved from the general ruin of London wall paintings. He is best, however, with his oil-paintings; and the "Battle of Inkerman," the " Heavy Cavalry Charge at Balaklava," and many historical and religious pictures exhibited in the Academy for the last twenty years have been among its greatest ornaments. We must add, however, that we think he entirely fails in religious representations, from the fact that he simply paints the historical scene without attempting to convey any spiritual meaning whatever.

Space does not permit us to go through the long list of well-known names in the English schools of art; or even to notice the different groups and coteries into which the artists of our age have been divided, from want of fixed and acknowledged principles. Calderon, Leslie, Yeames, Marks, and others, have formed a school of their own, popularly termed the " St. John's Wood School," from their place of residence. They are men of no very high aspirations, but are painters, for the most part, of sweet home sentiment, and fresh bright humour and healthy wit. They have also done much for domestic art, and their painted furniture has been both successful and beautiful. A cabinet designed by Mr. Marks, with grotesque decorations, was exhibited in the Exhibition of 1862, and afterwards bought by the Department of Science and Art. Simeon Solomon and Albert Moore are painters of a more delicate and refined kind of beauty. The latter has exhibited, year after year, many lovely " symphonies of colour "in his "Apricots," "Peaches," "Lilies," "Azaleas," and others. Delicate sculpturesque figures in semi-transparent garments move among soft, blossom- tog trees. His pictures are expressive of beauty, pure and simple, of a certain kind, and are like soothing cadences and flowing rhythms.

Mr. Solomon might, perhaps, have aspired to something more definite than pretty sentiment and the charm which surrounds graceful figures and pleasant combinations of form and colour. He began by painting scenes from the history of his own race; and might, by his national sympathies combined with his real power of expression, have occupied a more definite place in art than he attained by falling back upon Pagan allegorical compositions of vague purpose. His " Roman Gladiatorial Show" was the first and only important work which he exhibited at the Academy. His water-colour pictures exhibited in the Dudley Gallery have been his more interesting works, illustrating as they did the ritual and religion of his own and Christian Churches of the East, and bringing out his power of combining beautiful colours and painting splendid effects. Mr. Burne Jones is, perhaps, less appreciated by the general public than any of our remarkable painters; partly, perhaps, from the reason that he only exhibits at the water-colour exhibition. One of the few among our artists whose fortune it has been to have had a liberal education, he began his career as an artist just at the close of the first conflict of Pre-Raphaelitism; his first pictures being touched by that love of Christian tradition which inspired the early efforts of most of the rising school, chiefly, perhaps, because of its association with the mediaeval life of Italy and of all her early painters. Then he passed into the phase of Christian chivalry; then into mythical and allegorical representations, mingling classical fable and middle-age romance; "Cupid and Psyche," "Spring and Autumn," "Circe," the " Chant d'Amour; " transforming everything he touched into pure and noble poetry.

Mr. Poynter has all the popularity of a man who paints historical subjects carefully and thoroughly, making his pictures delightful and instructive by the knowledge he brings to bear upon his subject. His first brilliant success in the Academy, " Israel in Egypt," and its successor, the " Catapult," are well known to most of our readers.

Mr. Frith needs little notice here. The cause of his popularity is in the subjects he chooses, and in his skill in portraying scenes of English life from all ranks. He will not find much sympathy with those who believe that the follies and sins of English life are unfit subjects to immortalise; but his pictures are truly painted and often pleasant to look at.