§ 3. As an example of perfect colour, and of the most refined handling ever perhaps exhibited in animal painting, the Butcher's Dog in the corner of Mr. Mulready's "Butt," No. 160, deserved a whole room of the Academy to himself. This, with the spaniel in the "Choosing the Wedding Gown," and the two dogs in the hay-field subject (Burchell and Sophia), displays perhaps the most wonderful, because the most dignified, finish in the expression of anatomy and covering-of muscle and hide at once, and assuredly the most perfect unity of drawing and colour, which the entire range of ancient and modern art can exhibit. Albert Durer is indeed the only rival who might be suggested; and, though greater far in imagination, and equal in draughtsmanship, Albert Durer was less true and less delicate in hue. In sculpturesque arrangement both masters show the same degree of feeling: any of these dogs of Mulready might be taken out of the canvas and cut in alabaster, or, perhaps better, struck upon a coin. Every lock and line of the hair has been grouped as it is on a Greek die; and if this not always without some loss of ease and of action, yet this very loss is ennobling, in a period when all is generally sacrificed to the great coxcombry of art, the affectation of ease. § 4. Yet Mr. Mulready himself is not always free from * I forget these dogs now: but if they showed their muscles under their hide, they had no business to, and I should greatly prefer, now, Punch's Skye terrier with the street boys disputing over him which end was his head, and which his tail. [1883.] 1 [Of Mulready's work on the technical side Ruskin always expressed a high opinion. In the first words of The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) Ruskin refers to him as "an artist whose works, perhaps, alone, in the present day, unite perfection of drawing with resplendence of colour. See also Modern Painters, vol. i., Vol. III. p. 598 in this edition. He threw away, however, says Ruskin, "a consummate method of execution" on "subjects either altogether uninteresting, or above his powers, or unfit for pictorial representation" (Pre-Raphaelitism, 1851, § 28). For criticisms of particular pictures in this sense, see Academy Notes, 1857, No. 138; 1858, No. 167. In The Eagle's Nest (§ 166), Ruskin condemns Mulready's life studies as vulgar. For another favourable reference to "Choosing the Wedding Dress" and "Burchell and Sophia," see Academy Notes, 1875, No. 265. The former picture, exhibited 1846, is now in the Victoria and Albert (South Kensington) Museum (Sheepshanks Collection); the latter was exhibited in 1847. Mulready was on friendly terms with Ruskin's father; see Epilogue, § 14, below, p. 357.] affectation of some kind; mannerism, at least, there is in his treatment of tree trunks. There is a ghastliness about his laboured anatomies of them, as well as a want of specific character. Why need they be always flayed?* The hide of a beech tree, or of a birch, or fir, is nearly as fair a thing as an animal's ; glossy as a dove's neck, barred with black like a zebra, or glowing in purple grey and velvet brown like furry cattle in sunset. Why not paint these as Mr. Mulready paints other things, as they are? that simplest, that deepest of all secrets, which gives such majesty to the ragged leaves about the edges of the pond in the "Gravel-pit" (No. 125), and imparts a strange interest to the grey ragged urchins disappearing behind the bank, that bank so low, so familiar, so sublime! What a contrast between the deep sentiment of that commonest of all common, homeliest of all homely, subjects, and the lost sentiment of Mr. Stanfield's1" Amalfi," the chief landscape of the year, full of exalted material, and mighty crags, and massy seas, grottoes, precipices and convents, fortress-towers and cloud-capped mountains, and all in vain, merely because that same simple secret has been despised; because nothing there is painted as it is! The picture was a most singular example of the scenic assemblage of contradictory theme which is characteristic of Picturesque, as opposed to Poetical, composition. The lines chosen from Rogers for a titular legend were * Very properly asked. Compare "Tale of a Tub," Section IX., which settled the question as early as 1704.2 But modern scientific artists wouldn't draw the prophet Isaiah, if they could help it, till they had got him sawn asunder. [1883.] 1 [For Clarkson Stanfield, see Vol. III. p. 226 n. Academy of 1848.] "Amalfi" was No. 217 in the 2 [The passage referred to is as follows: "In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of the mind than curiosity, so far preferable is that wisdom, which converses about the surface, to that pretended philosophy, which enters into the depth of things, and then comes gravely back with informations and discoveries that in the inside they are good for nothing. The two senses, to which all objects first address themselves, are the sight and the touch; these never examine further than the colour, the shape, the size, and whatever other qualities dwell, or are drawn by art upon the outward of bodies; and then comes reason officiously with tools for cutting, and opening, and mangling, and piercing, offering to demonstrate that they are not of the same consistence quite through."] full of summer, glowing with golden light, and toned with quiet melancholy: "To him who sails Under the shore, a few white villages, Scattered above, below, some in the clouds, Their ancient landmark, comes-long may it last! Though now he little thinks how large his debt, § 5. Prepared by these lines for a dream upon deep calm waters, under the shadow and scent of the close lemon leaves, the spectator found himself placed by the painter, wet through, in a noisy fishing boat, on a splashing sea, with just as much on his hands as he could manage, to keep her gunwale from being stove in against a black rock; and with a heavy grey squall to windward. (This squall, by-the-bye, was the very same which appeared in the picture of the Magra of 1847,' and so were the 1 [No. 74 in the Academy of 1847: "French troops (1796) fording the Magra; Sarzana and the Carrara Mountains in the distance." The following letter from Ruskin to the painter (contributed by his son, Mr. F. D. Stanfield) refers to the picture :— MY DEAR SIR,-Could you favour us with your company at dinner at half-past six on Thursday next-the third? I have had great pleasure--a very large portion of the sum-total received from the Exhibition-in looking quietly over the details of your Carrara picture-it is marvellously careful throughout-how carefully you have marked even the gleam of the bayonets when they come together as the regiment turns over the ridge of the hill. But I never saw an exhibition more execrably arranged. If the hangers had had a mustard-seed-full of sense-would they not have put two dark pictures on the right of yours-so as to join your dark sky and enclose your light. They have treated your howling storm like a naughty child, when its mother bids it look at the window and be quiet. They have served Turner worse, however; there is nothing in his picture but even colour, and they must needs put Maclise's rainbow side by side with it-which takes part-and a very awkward and conclusive part too in its best melody. To Harding's picture they have given its quietus too-but that, I suppose, they didn't care about. There are two fine things in the rooms-Mulready's couple. I hardly know which to admire most-the painting or drawing.-Ever, my dear sir, most truly yours, J. RUSKIN. The picture by Turner (No. 180) was "The Hero of a Hundred Fights," or "Tapping the Furnace;" now No. 551 in the National Gallery. Beside it was hung Maclise's "Noah's Sacrifice; the Bow is set in the Cloud (No. 178). Harding had two pictures hung: No. 489 ("Hastings, from under the East Cliffs") and No. 516 ("Lago Maggiore"). "Mulready's couple" was No. 134 ("Burchell and Sophia").] snowy mountains above; only the squall at Amalfi entered on the left, and at the Magra on the right.) Now the scenery of Amalfi1 is impressive alike in storm or calm, and the writer has seen the Mediterranean as majestic and as southern-looking in its rage as in its rest. But it is treating both the green water and woods unfairly to destroy their peace without expressing their power; and withdraw from them their sadness and their sun, without the substitution of any effect more terrific than that of a squall at the Nore. The snow on the distant mountains chilled what it could not elevate, and was untrue to the scene besides; there is no snow on the Monte St. Angelo in summer except what is kept for the Neapolitan confectioners. The great merit of the picture was its rockpainting; too good to have required the aid of the exaggeration of forms which satiated the eye throughout the composition. § 6. Mr. F. R. Pickersgill's "Contest of Beauty" (No. 515), and Mr. Uwins's "Vineyard Scene in the South of France," were, after Mr. Mulready's works, among the most interesting pieces of colour in the Exhibition. The former, very rich and sweet in its harmonies, and especially happy in its contrasts of light and dark armour; nor less in the fancy of the little Love who, losing his hold of the orange boughs, was falling ignominiously without having time to open his wings. The latter was a curious example of what I have described as abstraction 3 1 [Ruskin was at Amalfi in 1841. diary for that year : 2 The following is his note of the place in his (NAPLES, March 11).- Saw no more of Amalfi-than I sketched, but that was glorious. Far above all I ever hoped, when I first leaped off the mule-in the burning sun of the afternoon, with the light behind the mountains in the evening mist doubling their height. I never saw anything, in its way, at all comparable. Moonlight in the terrace before the inn very full of feeling--smooth sea, and white convent above, with the keen shadows of the rocks far above and sea dashing all bright in my ears-low, but impatiently and quick; I never heard waves follow each other so fast.] 2 [Frederick Richard Pickersgill (1820-1890) began to exhibit at the Academy in 1839. In 1847 he was elected A.R.A., and in 1857 R.A. He was Keeper, 1873-1887. For another favourable notice of his work, see Academy Notes, 1856, No. 17.] 3 [Thomas Uwins (1782-1857) after being for some years a member of the WaterColour Society, was elected A,R.A. in 1833, R.A. in 1838. From 1847 to 1855 he was Keeper of the National Gallery. The picture referred to above-No. 36: "The Vintage in the Claret Vineyards of the South of France on the banks of the Gironde" -was bought by Mr. Vernon, and passed with his collection to the National Gallery (No. 387): it is now transferred to the Dundee Gallery.] of colour.' Strictly true or possible it was not; a vintage is usually a dusty and dim-looking procedure; but there were poetry and feeling in Mr. Uwins's idealization of the sombre black of the veritable grape into a luscious ultra-marine purple, glowing among the green leaves like so much painted glass. The figures were bright and graceful in the extreme, and most happily grouped. Little else that could be called colour was to be seen upon the walls of the Exhibition with the exception of the smaller works of Mr. Etty. Of these, the single head, "Morning Prayer" (No. 25), and the "Still Life" (No. 73), deserved, allowing for their peculiar aim, the highest praise. The larger subjects, more especially the St. John, were wanting in the merits peculiar to the painter; and in other respects it is alike painful and useless to allude to them. A very important and valuable work of Mr. Harding' was placed, as usual, where its merits could be but ill seen, and where its chief fault, a feebleness of colour in the principal light on the distant hills, was apparent. It was one of the very few views of the year which were transcripts, nearly without exaggeration, of the features of the localities.† § 7. Among the less conspicuous landscapes, Mr. W. E. Dighton's "Hay-Meadow Corner" deserved especial notice; it was at once vigorous, fresh, faithful, and unpretending; the * Nonsense. I had never seen a vintage except in the Pays de Vaud, or Burgundy, when I had been impressed by the quantity of white dust on the branches close to the ground. It is a curious proof, to me, of the incalculable advance in the standard of painting since these notes were written, that I could find then no better pictures to praise in the whole Academy exhibition, than those here noticed. [1883.] † Šee general notice of Mr. Harding's work, in the Epilogue [§ 12, p. 353 below.] [1883.] 1 [See above, ch. iv. § 10, p. 301.] 2 [For Etty, see above, pp. 197, 303, and ef. Vol. III. p. 266 n.] 3 No. 404: "Him that crieth from the wilderness, Repent ye!"] [No. 494: "The high Alps as seen from between Como and Lecco: the town and lake of Como at their base. The snowy mountain in the centre is the Monte Rosa; to the left of it are the Mont St. Bernard and Mont Blanc; to the right are the Mont Simplon, and the Grimsel and the St. Gothard." The picture was perhaps painted from sketches made during Ruskin's drive with Harding from Como to Lecco in 1845.] 6 [No. 165 in the Academy of 1848.] |