1828.] 



[ 645 ] 

 FINE ARTS' EXHIBITIONS. 



The Somerset-House Exhibition is one o 

 the prominent lions of the merry month of 

 May ; and this year it is perhaps as well 

 worth the trouble of a lion-hunter as for 

 any time these half-dozen years. The prin- 

 cipal academicians have distinguished them- 

 selves by some fine performances. Portraits, 

 of course, take a prominent place, but those 

 portraits have an air of history ; and the 

 spirit of the British pencil, in this pecu- 

 liarly national province, is rapidly refining 

 and elevating itself into the higher style of 

 the great Italian schools. There are a dozen 

 full-lengths in the present Exhibition, any 

 one of which would be valuable, even with- 

 out a reference to the original ; they are at 

 once history, without being confined to the 

 limits of story in attitude or costume ; and 

 portrait, ennobled by that kind of indefinite 

 ' generalization which makes them represen- 

 tatives of majesty and beauty, to an age 

 when the individual resemblance shall be 

 unknown. 



It may be almost enough to, say, for the 

 interest of the Exhibition, that Lawrence 

 has eight pictures. The first one that 

 strikes the eye, immediately on entering 

 the great room, is a whole-length of the 

 Marchioness of Londonderry not the old 

 lady whose honest original name of Amelia 

 Ann is transformed, at sixty, into the play- 

 ful innocence of Emily, but the young and 

 handsome daughter of the Vane. This 

 picture is a clief-tfceume. The Marchioness, 

 magnificently habited, is leading her young 

 heir from a garden up the steps of her man- 

 sion. The attitude, colouring, and general 

 composition, are in the most showy style of 

 the master. 



Countess Gower and her Infant Daughter 

 is another and still finer performance of the 

 president. The Countess, handsome and 

 young, is sitting, with the child playing on 

 her knee. The dress, the attitude, and the 

 whole air of the figures, are fashion and 

 grace combined ; and the infant is peculiarly 

 beautiful. Yet, however advantageous to 

 the artist may be the present custom of 

 presenting infants half naked or whole 

 naked, very odd results must follow in the 

 course of a few years. The artist paints a 

 child, and displays its limbs in all direc- 

 tions, without any reserve beyond the driest 

 decorums of art. The picture may not 

 change, but the infant must ; and in the 

 course of a few years, the grown girl will 

 have the opportunity of indulging herself, 

 and the world besides, with surveying the 

 unveiled beauties in canvas, which once 

 developed themselves to the artist's eye 

 without let or hindrance. In the present 

 picture, the child is so merely a child, that 

 though the exposure of the figure is con- 

 siderable, it may be passed over as fancy. 

 But we have, every day, staring us in the 

 face, in every printshop, young Lady Fane, 



naked from shoulder to flank ; and the 

 print from Chantrey's Lady Jane Russell, 

 displaying to the admiring earth her lady- 

 ship, in the most scanty of possible chemises, 

 and naked above the knee. All this may 

 be very venial for the present, as it will, 

 undoubtedly, be very amusing for the future. 

 But time will bring its changes ; and it 

 would be a contemplation worthy of the 

 maternal ladyships who toss their pretty 

 infants into those pictorial positions, to 

 imagine the effect, when the bel enfant, 

 turned into the sylph of sixteen, or the 

 syren of six-and-twenty, or the queen of 

 hearts and diamonds, of six-and-thirty and 

 thenceforth, comes flying, or floating, or 

 sailing along her gallery, to be plunged 

 into the middle of a knot of her own foot- 

 men, or a coterie of guests, descanting on 

 the early developments of her form. She 

 must be an extraordinary Lady Georgina 

 indeed, who would feel happy on the occa- 

 sion ; and even the pleasure of being an 

 object of attention in all stages of her 

 existence, would, we think, in but few 

 instances, compensate the awkwardness of 

 the affair. The truth is, that the propensity 

 of all artists to expose the human form is 

 rapidly prevailing in our portraits, and 

 ought to be checked by fashion, the only 

 check by which it can be restrained. The 

 whole question deserves a larger discussion 

 than we can now find time to give. But if 

 the natural delicacies and decorums of 

 society are incompatible with the display of 

 genius in the arts, there should be no hesi- 

 tation in our choice. We can live without 

 pictures and statues. But without those 

 decorums and delicacies, life would sink 

 into worthlessness and impurity, of all 

 kinds. The idea of their incompatibility is 

 a vulgar error. Our artists, brought up in 

 veneration for every thing Greek, have 

 adopted the fantastic idea, that nothing can 

 be worthy of their pencils but nudity. 



Yet the distinction between the ancient 

 artist and the modern is, that in Greece, 

 from the nature of the climate, and customs 

 of the people, nudity was not indelicacy to 

 any repulsive degree. In England, from 

 the nature of our customs and modes of 

 thinking, it is indelicacy to a very repulsive 

 degree. And it should be the business of 

 art, to reconcile the grace and beauty of 

 nature, with the grace and beauty of our 

 moral feeling. But to limit pictorial beauty 

 to the undraped form, is to forget that na- 

 ture, by clothing the forms of the whole 

 inferior animal world, and by making 

 clothing necessary for the human form, in 

 every climate but those which she seems to 

 have given over to barbarism for ever, 

 points out sources of effect, in form and 

 colour, extremely various and beautiful, 

 though totally distinct from those of the 

 undraped figure. It should be further re- 



