BIRMINGHAM SOCIETY OF ARTS. 101 



cloud, create such wondrously brilliant and often startling effects. 

 This transition from " grave to gay," we also find in Lawrence, 

 though in a different line of art ; he having begun by an imitation 

 of Rembrandt and the old masters, and eventually become a painter 

 of colours as they are. 



28. Impudence. — G. Wallis. " Black it stood as night." — We 

 cannot admire the fashion of thus victimising lines of our great 

 poets, however wittily the double entendre may be made out — and 

 here there is nothing to palliate the offence ; the line being taken 

 in vain into the service of a chimney-sweep astride upon a turnstile, 

 through which a gaily-attired damsel is desirous of passing. 



30. Going to Market. — /. Stark. A very simple, natural, and, 

 consequently, pleasing composition. A Peasant Girl and Donkey 

 laden for market, coming over a moor ; and so faithfully represent- 

 ing real life, that we may imagine we have met with the very group 

 in some of our wanderings. 



35. Near Beddgelcrt, North Wales. — T. Cresrvick. A superb 

 amphitheatre of mountains, girt with clouds, and half curtained by 

 a light mist, through which the vale and stream below gleam softly 

 out, form the distance and mid-ground of this beautiful picture. 

 The wild heath from which the view is gained, and the figures in 

 the foreground, forming a fine, though, perhaps, too sudden, con- 

 trast to the extreme delicacy and silvery softness of the far-off scene; 

 which gives us one of the most beautiful, though most transient, 

 expressions of these grand features on nature's ever-glorious face, — 



" Soaring, snow-clad, through their native sky, 

 In the wild pomp of mountain majesty !" 



39. Smithy at Whitnash, near Leamington. — H. Wyatt. It is a 

 strange folly and weakness of our nature that we cannot be content 

 with doing one thing well, but must attempt others, as it would 

 seem for the express purpose of being foils to ourselves. Why does 

 Henry Wyatt perpetrate tiled smithies, and ducks by a pond, but to 

 shew us he is not always the great and graceful painter we are wont 

 to find him ? 



43. The refractory Model. — W. Kidd. Excellent, most excellent, 

 is this humourous little picture \ An artist at his easel is painting 

 the portrait of a Donkey, who is held in the middle of a not over 

 large studio ; and, from the progress made, we may suppose has hi- 

 therto conducted himself with becoming decorum. But a sudden 

 fit of friskiness seems to have seized him, and, plunging out, he is 

 making w^ar upon plaster Apollo's and Venus's without mercy ; 

 while the unhappy painter flings up his arms in an agony of horror, 

 and the landlady peers in at the door to discover the cause of dis- 

 turbance. The figures and accessories are as well painted as they 

 are cleverly designed. 



47. Magdalen. — H, Wyatt. Yevy exquisitely painted : the flesh 

 particularly clear and beautiful, and the head fine and gracefully 

 turned. 



