TEE ROYAL ACADEMY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 142, 17 June 1899, Page 3 (Supplement)

TEE ROYAL ACADEMY.

AN AFTEBNOON AT THE PBIVATE ' VIEW. '

PICTURES OF THE YEAE

(From Our. Special, Correspondent.)

LONDON, May 5

, The private..view of the Academy of 1809 was much like its predecessors, if' anything more commonplace and Uninteresting'than usual. There was. ,of course, the usual display of pretty toilettes, remarkable for the fact that this season at all events each woman has the opportunity of displaying her own individuality in coiffure and dress, but, the number of distinguished people was much less than usual, it can no longer be said that everybody may be seen at the Brivate View. Rather there was a small sprinkling of Somebodies in a multitude of nobodies, the majority of spectators being aa niedjoere as the pictures. The men, strange to saY; had not, taken as a whole, that well-groomed, glossy appearance that one associates with the exquisites of Piccadilly. Their attire was heterogeneous and often even dowdy. I have seldom seen such a collection of ■• mediaeval top hats. Numerous artists had come to look at their friends looking at their pictures, and almost all subjects of the portraits had come-to see the counterfeit presentment of themselves. Almost at every turn you heard, 'I am looking for Guy's portrait,' or T saw the ■picture o.'jynU; dear,-in the uext room looking ■''sweetly pretty."' In the crowd which streamed in past the ever bowing attendants, in their gowns of crimson and claret, bishops, buyers and beauties were very noticeable. 1 fiave seldom seen so many 'bishops in their shovel hats' gathered together at any lay function. Tjtf& sitting of the Upper House of? Convocation had called them to London, and they were attracted by tlfe numerous portraits of themselves and their colleagues. 'J. Hereford,' the enthusiastic advocate of compulsory arbitration, I caught lurking in the neighbourhood of Hugh Riviere's portrait of himself hi purpft, while 'M. Loudon' scrutinised very closely the prize lighter-like features of the new Bishop of Calcutta, limhetd by Collier, and the sad expression of the Bishop of 'Gib.' -frith fhe rock in the background, wfrieh some irreverent onlooker suggested should be called 'Bishop and Diocese.'

EootJight favourites were not so mfieh to,the fore, as usual. The gay Lord.QYiex seemed to have sent the largest contingent. Mr and Mrs Plnerp were doing the pictures diligently* Miss.lrene Vanbrugb, quietly dre.ssed in. grey cloth with a tobacco br&wn cloak. and ruffle, and escorted dv Sir Frederick Bollock, seemed anxious to avoid attention, but Miss Mabel Terry Lewis, in a wonderful cape of ashen grey, with' many billowy ruchings, took up a prominent position in a doorway, whence she was heard to remark that a favourite picture was 'so very sweet.' These cliches of fashionable chatter predominate in the scraps of conversation that perpetually catch your ear as you wind cautiously in and out of the fashionably dressed groups, occasionally'provoking a Medusa-like glance from some lady upon whose train you have been unfortunate enough to tread.' Although Anthony Hope is there* the conversation is not the Witty word-play aud smart repartee of the Dolly Dialogues. But although in the afternoon the purple and fine linen—and purples and lilacs! were the dominant, colours in the-th rein g-—-are the attraction, in the' moi'nilig, the pictures are the thine: This year the pictures are mucti like- those of the year before and the year before that. The old pressman who has been year after year with, unfailing regularity could enter the gallery with his eyes shut and still give you a very good idea of the general character of the show, a queer mixture of Imperialism, mediaevalism and modern mediocrity. He would tell you that in the many canvases you would find the same smooth, self-complacent smugness and the same lack of imagination, romance or poetical feeling. He would prophesy the absence of dash and daring, and in their stead.the usual commonplace conventional conceptions and the usual dull domesticity. He would tell you that you would find on the walls a large number of portraits (varying from good to worse than indifferent) of men of no and women of much importance, and this year he would strike the nail fair on the head, for the number of presentation portraits of sleek nonentities, and red-faced, fat paunched local magnates is alarming. He would prophesy the re-ap-pearance of that hardy annual Perseus and Andromeda, and here it is by Arthur Nowell, Perseus thrusting a long spear down the gullet of a gigantic conger eel, wdiieh has entwined Andromeda, who seems to be deprecating her painful position, as if to say. 'I am -not with the coil that's made about me.' And she isn't.

Your old pressman would further bet his ■■: bottom dollar that there would'be enough fat woolly, wooden sheep by Cooper to fill the Smith field Meat Market,' and enough Highland cattle by Peter Graham to supply several oxen in teacups, and this year he would keep that bottom dollar. Furthejr, he would make a shrewd guess that there would be, by the said Peter Graham, a picture of spray-splashed rocks, hovered over by white gulls, and this time it is called a rising tide; and that Peter's compatriot, Colin Hunter, would have pictures redoleut of herrings and levies and^sky, and so he has, two of his "best—not so grey as usual. He would mak? bold to say that there would be lochs and trees by the MaeWhirter; the usually 'aw•f ally nice' girl by Marcus Stone; picturesque Quaker lasses skating as they have skated ever since Boughton first took brush in hand, a hunter in a red coat making love to a Diana Vernon type of girl, such as Waller wastes his sweetness on, the School for Saints, and several of them by Sant, old mills, green meadows and girls with mnKpails on rustic styles, by Waterloo, and green lanes, shady groves, cool pools and purling brooks, by. Davxl Murray, brown sandpits and heaths, by Leadei —ever in a brown study-, bucks in knee breeches .and dames in poke bonnets, always quaint and often amusing, by Dcndy Sadler, sheep being washed by the chalky cliffs of Surrey, by Aumonier-and he would be right every time. He would know by experience that he would see the same stereotyped types year in, year put. And when he opened his eyes he wouldn't be the least surprised to behold three gigantic pietuig, of the Jubilee celebration at St. ?aul s- °J Andrew Gow, John Charlton and D.Amato, of the twopence coloured order, eaqh more photographic and olographic than the last. And with a sigh of resignation hei would contemplate Gaton Woodville's Gordon

Memorial Service at Khartoum and ! Wollen's Lancers at Omdurman, and [Allan Stewart's Coach Stuck up by ; Matabeles, the tisual allowance of tha dulce et decorum est pro partia inori school, and admire Lady Butler's 'Advance of the Scots Guards, with Colours.' Satiated with these current types and bestowing a cursory glance and remark on the bountiful array of modern major-generals and daughters of Lady !<]., and sons of Y.L., Esq., the wearied critic passes by the 'Hotel Cecil' decoration style, of Henrietta Rae's Diana and Collisto and of Ernest Normand's Legend of Pandora, and baring disposed of the standing dishes, devotes his attention to the few pictures worth careful study.

The picture of the Academy will, I prophecy, be Byaru Shaw's Love the Conqueror. 'The little boy' love, in golden armour, is seated on a black horse, upon a little knoll overlooking what a girl spectator described as 'a delightful old city, with red roofs and putty walls' by the sea. Behind the conqueror stands a row of retainers iv scarlet, two of whom are blowing a fanfare on trumpets, whose respective banners bear the legends 'Lust' and 'Purity.' From the old city winds' up the hill a. procession of love's captives, of all ages and nations of history and fiction in the most extraordinary chronological and geographical confusion, bound in silken fetters and escorted by a band of mischievous, impish spirits, while at Love's foot lie dead and dying a motley collection of Love's victims. The picture has artisi tic merits, the colouring being as vivid as that of some old missal, while the execution has a good deal of Holbeinlike force, but the conception and grouping is crude, the figures sometimes wooden and the effect often garish. The picture, however, attracts the public, not as an artistic tour de force, but as an amorous cryptogram. Crowds linger round it, trying to mime the world's lovers iv this puzzle picture. Everyone can spot Sappho, Dante. Mary Queen of Scots, Shakbspeare, and, Lohengrin in the vanguard, Nelson, with only half his face painted axid the other _teilf not covered (as intended) by the ftafl. c, Henry Ylll., Fatstifff, Que<en Elizabeth, Paganini, Charles 11., Dean Swiit and Charles I.; but opinion differs largely as to the other captives. A fair-haired damsel, with a diaphanous pink rq,be, who heads the band, was variously taken for Helen of Troy, fair Rosamond and Mary Magdalene, an undoubted Cleopatra was afco fancied to be the Queen of Sheba and Eleanor of Aquitaine, while a gentleman ima long coat a-nd tight breeches was gPessed to be Beethoven, Goethe, hml Burns. One flippant observer'lvas not far from the truth .when he suggested, as a new title, 'Let 'Em All Come!'

Another picture that attracts a good deal of attention, and that has been purchased by the trustees of the Chantrey*Bequest*for £700, is W. Wyllie's Battle of the Nile. To the left a battered hulk looms under the darksky; to the right the English and French ships, pound each other, and the glare of the burniug French vessels lights up the gloom. .There is however a lack of human interest, and the light from the burning ships is too brown and not lurid enough.

Personally I fancy Herbert Draper's Ferdinand listening to 'Ariel,' a quiet composition full of refined feeling. Ferdinand resting on his cloak on one side of a bay, looks up wonderingly at the sound of the music 'in the air or the earth?' Perched on a rock above him is the sprite Ariel aud his attendants, while on the other side of the bay the white sand dunes gleam. This is one of the few poetical fantasies in the Academy.

Another is Minna Tayler's, of the ever-fleeing maiden described in the Saga of King Olaf, who is seen a forlorn figure in white gliding on between high thistles. In natural history studies the most striking are a clever bttle sketch of a jaguar attacking a macaw, by Arthur Warde, and Nettleship's gruesome 'Resistless,' a peacock strangled by a snake, whose blue, green, and golden scales harmonise with the sheen of the bird it is crushing. Abbey is always effective, but his mediaevalism, iTOs, and carmines show a tendency to become stereotyped. This year he has chosen 'Who i_ Sylvia?' and 'Oh, Mistress Mine, Where are you Roaming?' as his Shakespearian themes. Sylvia is a portly dame in red and ermine, coming "down stairs aecoinpaiiied by singers and players, alsd in Crimson, while 'Mistress Mine' is a- surprised lady in a long brown-gown with salmon sleeves and her long, fair plaits bound with purple ribbon, who has been wandering down the walled passage of a convent, when her hand is seized by a dark young monk ■in a scarlet robe and cloak, whose attendant plays slow music a few steps oft". 'Good'all's Boad to Mandalay' is a high coloured inartistic piece of work into which he has crammed the old Moulmeln Pagoda, the wind that's in the palm trees,, 'the bloomin' idol made of mud,' 'the Burmese girl a sittin',' and 'the British soldier in Khaki. F. D. Millett has taken lines from the same poem: If you've 'card the East a callln' You won't 'eed nothin' else. and gives us a dainty bit of work representing the much-travelled man surrounded by his Eastern curios busy writing, never heeding the buxom maid who has brought in his lunch. Of the portraits, which make the general appearance of the large rooms rather 'depressing, Sargent's bold colour schemes easily take first rank. Not only has this painter a knack of not flattering his sitters, but consciously or unconsciously of bringing out their weak points,in a way that is positively fascinating to the spectator and dangerous to the sitter. However, two of his subjects, Miss Octavia Hill and Miss Jane Evans, he has handled with a quiet restraint and an entire absence of the desire to produce a tour de force irrespective of the effect upon the sitter. The result has been two excellent likenesss. Of the legion of other portraits I prefer Orchardson's of the Earl of Crawford, a tall, gaunt, red-bearded Scotchman looking at a picture in a jewelled frame in Orchardson's usual gamboge colour; and Onslow Ford's portrait of his father in a bard Van Eyck style.

Australians will no doubt be interested to hear something of the work of their own representatives.,

Streeton has one small picture, a 'Sussex Landscape,' very badly skied. From what little one can see of it. it appears to be more finished and sombre than was his Sydney style, and to represent a hill cushioned with woods and crowned with a castle, below which a river winds to the wooded sunlit plains below, while Stags browse in the meadow's in the foreground.

Spence's 'The Toilers' is well hnng

among the small oil paintings, and is a quiet, effective group of a man, two cart-horses, and a dog on the top of a wind-swept ridge. His 'Sundown on the Kurrajong,' cattle being driven home in the twilight, has a more Australian flavour, and is close to a large harvest scene by Lionel Smythe, now an Associate, representing a farmer's funeral passing along the sea coast through his 'Last Harvest.'

Alfred East has signalised his recent election as Associate by four large landscapes, 'The Monk's Fool,' 'A Combe in the Cotswolds,' 'The Shepherds' Walk,' 'The Miller's Daughter,' all on the line and full of quiet simplicity and restraint. He has made a distinct, advance forward lately.

Mr 11. C. Fehr, who has been commissioned to execute a bust of Gladstone for Auckland, has a, large bronze figure of .lames Watt well placed in the Central Hall. The sculpture, by the way—as has generally been the case of late years —is far more distinguished by artistic feeling than the rest of the exhibition.

But take it all in all, the Academy show may be summed up in the.words, 'As you were.'