1828.] 



Fine Arts' Exhibitions. 



647 



Was heard of harp and organ ; and whomov'd 



Their stops and chords was seen. 



From the tents, behold 



A bevy of fair women, richly gay 



In gems and wanton dress. To th' harp they 



sang 



Soft amorous ditties, and in dance came on. 

 And now of love they treat, tillth' evening star, 



Love's harbinger, appeared. 



They light the nuptial torch, and bid invoke 

 Hymen. 



The picture exhibits a great deal of ability, 

 but the composition is enfeebled by its level 

 outline ; the whole range of figures, and 

 they are numerous, are nearly in a rank. 

 The pyramidal principle, or any other which 

 gives variety, by breaking the flatness of the 

 outline, has been neglected ; and the work 

 is, on the whole, tame. Yet the individual 

 figures are anything but tame. The artist 

 has not found his females guilty of any- 

 thing like reserve, and though actual gross- 

 ness is avoided, the wri things and twinings 

 of those handsome half nudes in the arms o f 

 their athletic admirers, are as close to the 

 unpardonable limits as anything that has 

 lately appealed to the public eye. But, in 

 the opinion of connoisseurs, this fault is pro- 

 bably less than Mr. Etty'ssins in colouring. 

 Whether from a hasty study of the old 

 masters, he ha dipt his pencil in their dense 

 hues, without discovering their secret of 

 lighting them up, or from some change in his 

 personal perceptions, all his later pictures have 

 a heaviness of colouring, that, while it shows 

 the artist's labour, shows his want of eye for 

 nature. His ambition seems to be bounded 

 by making .his figures look as like the 

 painting on china as possible. They have 

 the labour of enamel, the hue, and almost 

 the glaze. His idea of the human face 

 divine too, appears modelled on gypsey 

 beauty, and we now see neither Venus nor 

 Grace from his pencil that does not instantly 

 remind us of Norwood. Another error is 

 his excessive exposure of the female figure ; 

 his two Venuses at the Institution scorn to 

 hide any of their charms, though their sullen 

 colours and corpulent shapes are tolerable 

 antidotes. It is difficult to comprehend how 

 this clever artist could have fallen into such 

 blunders. The natural colour of the hu- 

 man exterior is light, lively, and glowing: 

 he flings away his living model, and covers 

 his picture with a composition of dough. 

 The natural form of youth Is slight, elastic, 

 and easy : he overloads it with absolute 

 obesity ; and without going further into de- 

 tail, he may be perfectly assured that the 

 brown visage of the gipsey gives but a 

 dingy image of the roses and lilies that, from 

 time immemorial, have made the charm of 

 British beauty. And all this is the more 

 singular, as, a few years since, Mr. Etty 

 was distinguished for the grace and delicacy 

 of his figures, the brilliancy of his colouring, 

 and the fine conceptions of loveliness, dis- 

 played in so many of his pictures of nymphs, 



sylphs, and those other " Gay creatures of 

 the element 



That in the colours of the rainbow live, 

 And play i' the plighted clouds." 

 He has but to shake off his trammels, be 

 himself, and popular again. 



Esther approaching Ahasuerus, by Jones, 

 is a daring attempt of a very ingenious artist 

 to adopt the style of the greatest master of 

 chiaroscuro that the world ever saw. The 

 picture is painted on the model of Rem- 

 brandt, and it contains a great deal of beauty ; 

 few groupes can display more lovliness than 

 the young Jewess and her hand-maidens. 

 But Rembrandt's secret has not been yet 

 found out. We have none of that extra- 

 ordinary and creative power by which Rem- 

 brandt's figures grow out of the darkness, 

 and seem to be born under the eye : that 

 undefined outline, which gradually settles 

 into distinctness ; nor that delicious depth 

 of colour, which has been so often called 

 magical, and which evolves from a single 

 obscure tint a thousand, like the light of 

 gems first exposed to the sun. 



One of the most original and singular 

 performances of the exhibition is by Danby. 

 The " Opening of the Sixth Seal/' an at- 

 tempt to realize to the eye one of the mag- 

 nificent and mysterious visions of the Apo- 

 calypse ; the general fall of nations in 

 " The Great Day of Wrath." The design 

 is taken from the words : " And I beheld, 

 when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, 

 there was a great earthquake, and the sun 

 became black as sackcloth, and the moon 

 became as blood, and the stars of heaven 

 fell to the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth 

 her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a 

 mighty wind, and the heavens departed as 

 a scroll," &c. 



This scene is evidently beyond the pen- 

 cil, from its stupendous nature, its succes- 

 sion of catastrophes, and the indistinct 

 conception which must be formed of so 

 terrible and new a combination of ruin. 

 But the artist has exhibited great force of 

 conception, and a facility and power of. 

 pencil altogether beyond any of his former 

 efforts. The foreground is .filled \ v ith the 

 human sufferers in this general undoing of 

 man and nations ; every attitude of terror, 

 and expression of woe and calamity are 

 prominent ; the convulsion of the elements, 

 the sinking of islands, the breaking up of 

 continents, next meet the eye ; above them 

 are the changes of the heavens, the falling 

 stars, the sickening and blasted sun and 

 moon. The work has excited great admi- 

 ration among the crowds who throng to 

 the exhibition : yet it is, perhaps, less capable 

 of being felt there, amid the glare of sur- 

 rounding pictures, and even the human 

 concourse, than it will be when once in 

 some chamber dedicated to itself ; and when, 

 with silence for his only companion, the 

 spectator may fathom the depths of the 

 artist's thought and power. But a design 



