1825.] 
spottiness in his colouring—of which we do 
not remember a single instance in those 
pictures, in the composition of which his 
genius has taken a freer scope. In point 
of colouring and pictorial execution, where 
their subjects leave them in equal freedom, 
these twoartists may be said to stand in equal 
competition ; but the very temperaments of 
their minds seem to dispose them to 
different susceptibilities, with respect to 
different phenomena of the elements. 
Glover is a devoted worshipper of the 
sunny ray. He drinks its beams, and 
saturates his imagination with them, till 
they come out again, untarnished and un~- 
dimmed, from his pencil, tobe spread, in 
all their warmth and reality, over woodland 
tops and the summits of aspiring moun- 
tains; or to break through the chasms of ra- 
vines and glens with a verisimilitude that 
defies the belief of mere imitation. Wit- 
ness, for example, No. 245, “ Borrowdale, 
Cumberland,”’ in this exhibition. It is 
not painting—that streak of light which 
breaks across the twilight gloom of the 
deep glen: it is a ray of actual sunshine, 
which penetrates through some chasm of 
the rocks to take a lingering farewell glance 
of the romantic sublimity and sequestration 
of the scene. The magic of the artist has 
eaught it as it gleamed, and fixed it im- 
moveably upon his canvass. No recurrence 
to the object dissolves the enchantment. 
Again and again, and again, and it is real 
sunshine still. The tints of Hofland are 
Jess brilliant, they bask less in the solar 
ray ;—perhaps, we might say, that his skies 
are somewhat less aerial; though the ob- 
servation most assuredly would. not apply 
to that fine poetic conception of an Italian 
atmosphere diffused over (No. 82) the 
“ View of Spoleto, on the Clitumnuo ; from 
a sketch by Captain Melville Grindley.” 
But if his colouring be somewhat more 
tempered and sombrous, the warmth of his 
atmosphere more mitigated, it is more pen- 
sive and composing. It exhilarates less; 
but it has more sentiment; and, in what 
may be called the pastoral feeling of land- 
scape, he is particularly happy. His 
eolours, however deep the shadow, never 
lose their transparency. His shade is the 
shade with which nature contrasts and 
mitigates her own splendours: it never 
becomes opacity. Glover sometimes (in 
his oils) offends in this respect, and gives us 
blackness instead of shadow: his fore- 
grounds have occasionally a hardness, where 
he labours for a strong relief; a solid 
inkiness, where nature would have given us 
an atmospheric obscurity. It seems as 
though this dim obscure —these darker 
shades of nature, were not congenial to the 
sunshine of his mind; and he worked upon 
them, when necessity compelled, by an effort 
which was therefore overstrained ; and his 
execution lost the grace of feeling, because 
it was effort. To Hofland, the sombrous 
Topic of the Month :—Fine Arts. 
339 
and the shadowy, are, perbaps, more con- 
genial ; and, therefore, his depth of colour- 
ing, and the strong reliefs of his fore- 
grounds are more natural. In another 
respect also, these artists exhibit what may 
be called a constitutional difference, which 
extends even to their subjects. The 
pictures of Glover (like those of Claude) 
exhibit almost invariably a reposing” 
cheerfulness. The sun-beams rest smil- 
ingly, as it were, upon his mountain tops, 
and all nature seems to enjoy a gay tran- 
quillity beneath his pencil. Hofland’s re- 
pose has a pensiveness about it—is more 
melancholy—but his genius is not averse 
to more strenuous emotion. It has nothing, 
indeed, of the daring and gloomy energy of 
Salvator; but, it can grapple with the ele- 
ments in their wild uproar, as well as re- 
cline among them in their quiescence ; and 
his “ Scarborough Castle,” assailed by 
“the deafening clamours of the angry 
surge” (No. 171), is perhaps the finest 
picture he ever painted. But even here, 
his pastoral genius does not forsake him ; 
and, the two boys, striving to drag the 
fragment of a wreck on shore, bespeak a 
mind more disposed to rustic than nautical 
association. ; 
We could pursue the parallel much fur- 
ther, and find abundant theme for more 
detailed criticism. But we must bring our 
article to a close, without even a word on 
well-meriting Linton, or even saying more 
upon the portraits by Haydon, than, that 
in despite of their gigantic proportions, ill 
accorded to the customary accommodations 
of our domestic architecture, and the con- 
sequent hyperbole of their effect, they have 
several of them merits (even independently 
of a fine tone Of colouring) which atone 
for the exaggeration, and that they please 
the more, the more frequently they are 
looked upon: though we confess that his 
Mayorship of Norwich almost induces us, 
at first sight, to recommend that Mr. Hay- 
don should be employed by the corporation 
of London to paint portraits of the Gog 
and Magog of their Guildhall. 
SOCIEDY OF PAINTERS IN WATER-COLOURS, 
In this department of the art, at least, 
the suffrage, even of foreigners, assigns to 
us unrivalled pre-eminence;,and there is 
certainly nothing in this collection to in- 
validate the distinction. ‘The society has 
lost, indeed, its brightest ornament—whose 
sunny tints now spread their illusions, prin- 
cipally, in more permanent, but not more 
natural pigments, over the walis of the 
more aspiring gallery. of Suffolk street. 
But the rapid improvement of others of the 
exhibitors, who, without imitating his style, 
seem. judiciously to emulate his excellence, 
still renders this a proud and delightful dis- 
play of varied talent. We have not time 
to enter into particulars, or do justice to 
2K 2 every 
