Letter XX.Works of Art.London,June18, 1845.I have now been in London a fortnight. Of course you will not expect me to give you what you will find in the guide-books and the "Pictures of London."The town is yet talking of a statue of a Greek slave, by our countryman Powers, which was to be seen a few days since at a print-shop in Pall Mall. I went to look at it. The statue represents a Greek girl exposed naked for sale in the slave-market. Her hands are fettered, the drapery of her nation lies at her feet, and she is shrinking from the public gaze. I looked at it with surprise and delight; I was dazzled with the soft fullness of the outlines, the grace of the attitude, the noble, yet sad expression of the countenance, and the exquisite perfection of the workmanship. I could not help acknowledging a certain literal truth in the expression of Byron, concerning a beautiful statue, that it"——fillsThe air around with beauty."It has fixed the reputation of Powers, and made his fortune. The possessor of the statue, a Mr. Grant, has refused to dispose of it, except to a public institution. The value which is set upon it, may be inferred from this circumstance, that one of the richest noblemen in England told the person who had charge of the statue, that if Mr. Grant would accept two thousand pounds sterling for it, he should be glad to send him a check for the amount. Some whispers of criticism have been uttered, but they appear to have been drowned and silenced in the general voice of involuntary admiration. I hear that since the exhibition of the statue, orders have been sent to Powers from England, for works of sculpture which will keep him employed for years to come.The exhibition of paintings by the Royal Academy is now open. I see nothing in it to astonish one who has visited the exhibitions of our Academy of the Arts of Design in New York, except that some of the worst pictures were hung in the most conspicuous places. This is the case with four or five pictures by Turner—a great artist, and a man of genius, but who paints very strangely of late years. To my unlearned eyes, they were mere blotches of white paint, with streaks of yellow and red, and without any intelligible design. To use a phrase very common in England, they are the most extraordinary pictures I ever saw. Haydon also has spoiled several yards of good canvas with a most hideous picture of Uriel and Satan, and to this is assigned one of the very best places in the collection. There is more uniformity of style and coloring than with us; more appearance of an attempt to conform to a certain general model, so that of course there are fewer unpleasant contrasts of manner: but this is no advantage, inasmuch as it prevents the artist from seeking to attain excellence in the way for which he is best fitted. The number of paintings is far greater than in our exhibitions; but the proportion of good ones is really far smaller. There are some extremely clever things by Webster, who appears to be a favorite with the public; some fine miniatures by Thorburn, a young Scotch artist who has suddenly become eminent, and several beautiful landscapes by Stanfield, an artist of high promise. We observed in the catalogue, the names of three or four of our American artists; but on looking for their works, we found them all hung so high as to be out of sight, except one, and that was in what is called the condemned room, where only a glimmer of light enters, and where the hanging committee are in the practice of thrusting any such pictures as they can not help exhibiting, but wish to keep in the dark.My English friends apologize for the wretchedness of the collection, its rows of indifferent portraits and its multitude of feeble imitations in historical and landscape painting, by saying that the more eminent artists are preparing themselves to paint the walls and ceilings of the new Houses of Parliament in fresco. The pinnacles and turrets of that vast and magnificent structure, built of a cream-colored stone, and florid with Gothic tracery, copied from the ancient chapel of St. Stephen, the greater part of which was not long ago destroyed by fire, are rising from day to day above the city roofs. We walked through its broad and long passages and looked into its unfinished halls, swarming with stone-cutters and masons, and thought that if half of them were to be painted in fresco, the best artists of England have the work of years before them.With the exhibition of drawings in water-colors, which is a separate affair from the paintings in oil, I was much better pleased. The late improvement in this branch of art, is, I believe, entirely due to English artists. They have given to their drawings of this class a richness, a force of effect, a depth of shadow and strength of light, and a truth of representation which astonishes those who are accustomed only to the meagreness and tenuity of the old manner. I have hardly seen any landscapes which exceeded, in the perfectness of the illusion, one or two which I saw in the collection I visited, and I could hardly persuade myself that a flower-piece on which I looked, representing a bunch of hollyhocks, was not the real thing after all, so crisp were the leaves, so juicy the stalks, and with such skillful relief was flower heaped upon flower and leaf upon leaf.
I have now been in London a fortnight. Of course you will not expect me to give you what you will find in the guide-books and the "Pictures of London."
The town is yet talking of a statue of a Greek slave, by our countryman Powers, which was to be seen a few days since at a print-shop in Pall Mall. I went to look at it. The statue represents a Greek girl exposed naked for sale in the slave-market. Her hands are fettered, the drapery of her nation lies at her feet, and she is shrinking from the public gaze. I looked at it with surprise and delight; I was dazzled with the soft fullness of the outlines, the grace of the attitude, the noble, yet sad expression of the countenance, and the exquisite perfection of the workmanship. I could not help acknowledging a certain literal truth in the expression of Byron, concerning a beautiful statue, that it
"——fillsThe air around with beauty."
"——fillsThe air around with beauty."
It has fixed the reputation of Powers, and made his fortune. The possessor of the statue, a Mr. Grant, has refused to dispose of it, except to a public institution. The value which is set upon it, may be inferred from this circumstance, that one of the richest noblemen in England told the person who had charge of the statue, that if Mr. Grant would accept two thousand pounds sterling for it, he should be glad to send him a check for the amount. Some whispers of criticism have been uttered, but they appear to have been drowned and silenced in the general voice of involuntary admiration. I hear that since the exhibition of the statue, orders have been sent to Powers from England, for works of sculpture which will keep him employed for years to come.
The exhibition of paintings by the Royal Academy is now open. I see nothing in it to astonish one who has visited the exhibitions of our Academy of the Arts of Design in New York, except that some of the worst pictures were hung in the most conspicuous places. This is the case with four or five pictures by Turner—a great artist, and a man of genius, but who paints very strangely of late years. To my unlearned eyes, they were mere blotches of white paint, with streaks of yellow and red, and without any intelligible design. To use a phrase very common in England, they are the most extraordinary pictures I ever saw. Haydon also has spoiled several yards of good canvas with a most hideous picture of Uriel and Satan, and to this is assigned one of the very best places in the collection. There is more uniformity of style and coloring than with us; more appearance of an attempt to conform to a certain general model, so that of course there are fewer unpleasant contrasts of manner: but this is no advantage, inasmuch as it prevents the artist from seeking to attain excellence in the way for which he is best fitted. The number of paintings is far greater than in our exhibitions; but the proportion of good ones is really far smaller. There are some extremely clever things by Webster, who appears to be a favorite with the public; some fine miniatures by Thorburn, a young Scotch artist who has suddenly become eminent, and several beautiful landscapes by Stanfield, an artist of high promise. We observed in the catalogue, the names of three or four of our American artists; but on looking for their works, we found them all hung so high as to be out of sight, except one, and that was in what is called the condemned room, where only a glimmer of light enters, and where the hanging committee are in the practice of thrusting any such pictures as they can not help exhibiting, but wish to keep in the dark.
My English friends apologize for the wretchedness of the collection, its rows of indifferent portraits and its multitude of feeble imitations in historical and landscape painting, by saying that the more eminent artists are preparing themselves to paint the walls and ceilings of the new Houses of Parliament in fresco. The pinnacles and turrets of that vast and magnificent structure, built of a cream-colored stone, and florid with Gothic tracery, copied from the ancient chapel of St. Stephen, the greater part of which was not long ago destroyed by fire, are rising from day to day above the city roofs. We walked through its broad and long passages and looked into its unfinished halls, swarming with stone-cutters and masons, and thought that if half of them were to be painted in fresco, the best artists of England have the work of years before them.
With the exhibition of drawings in water-colors, which is a separate affair from the paintings in oil, I was much better pleased. The late improvement in this branch of art, is, I believe, entirely due to English artists. They have given to their drawings of this class a richness, a force of effect, a depth of shadow and strength of light, and a truth of representation which astonishes those who are accustomed only to the meagreness and tenuity of the old manner. I have hardly seen any landscapes which exceeded, in the perfectness of the illusion, one or two which I saw in the collection I visited, and I could hardly persuade myself that a flower-piece on which I looked, representing a bunch of hollyhocks, was not the real thing after all, so crisp were the leaves, so juicy the stalks, and with such skillful relief was flower heaped upon flower and leaf upon leaf.