310 



FINE AETS. 



White, Homer, J. F. Weir, Tedder, Hays, 

 Ehninger, May, Hennessy, Elliott, Hicks, Baker, 

 and Stone. Among the noticeaHe works were 

 "The Gun Foundery," hy Weir; "Lear and 

 Cordelia, " by May ; ' ' Prison ers from th e Front, ' ' 

 by Homer; " Mount Blanc, "byGignoux; "Sun- 

 day Morning," by Eastman Johnson ; portraits 

 of Abraham Lincoln and Gulian 0. Verplanck, 

 by Huntington ; portraits of a lady and her 

 child, by William M. Hunt, of Newport, E. I. ; 

 " Flight of the Birds," by McEntee ; " Drifting," 

 by Hennessy; and " Gathering of the Herds," 

 by Hays. The exhibition was fully np to the 

 ordinary standard, but can hardly be said to 

 have shown an improvement upon former years, 

 a result inseparable from the practice, which is 

 becoming prevalent among artists, of withhold- 

 ing their best works from public view, and, in 

 some prominent cases, of not contributing at 

 all to the annual exhibitions of the academy. 

 With respect to pictures of genre, however, it 

 may be observed generally, that they are gradu- 

 ally encroaching upon the space so long mo- 

 nopolized by landscapes, and are likely soon to 

 become a recognized department of American 

 art. The Academy of Design now consists of 

 eighty members and seventy-eight associates, 

 besides nearly eight hundred members of the 

 fellowship grade established in 1863, and offers 

 excellent opportunities to those wishing to be- 

 come students of art. The antique school is 

 open day and evening during five days of the 

 week, and the life school three evenings of the 

 week. The former is accessible to all who have 

 mastered the rudimentary elements of diawing, 

 and are able to draw " from the round," and 

 the latter to those students who have proved 

 themselves qualified to profit by study from life. 

 The applications for admission to either school 

 are less than would be supposed,, in view of the 

 advantages offered, and during a great part of 

 the year the average attendance of students did 

 not exceed thirty a day. Early in March an 

 exhibition of etchings by the French Etching 

 Club, together with a number of oil paintings, 

 was opened under the auspices of Messrs. Cadart 

 and Laquet, of Paris. The etchings were of no 

 great merit, but the paintings represented a 

 school of French artists, comprising such men 

 as Corot, Eibot, Courbet, Dor6, Lambron, Dau- 

 bigny, and Nazon, comparatively unknown in 

 America, who to strong naturalism add an in- 

 dependent and even wilful and capricious spirit, 

 and are careless of mechanical execution, so 

 that their purpose is sufficiently indicated on 

 the canvas. The most remarkable work in the 

 collection was " The Mountebanks," by Dore, 

 a group of almost fascinating power, in spite 

 of its negative coloring, and the general repul- 

 siveness of the subject. It is one of the artist's 

 earliest productions, painted in his twentieth 

 year. The seventh annual exhibition of the 

 Artists' Fund Society was held at the Academy 

 of Design hi November and December, and was 

 one of the most interesting and instructive ever 

 opened in New York. It was specially strong 



in the department of water-color pictures, and 

 afforded to most of the visitors their first op- 

 portunity to see authenticated and character- 

 istic specimens by such noted English artists as 

 Turner, Pront, Cox, Nash, Eossetti, Copley 

 Fielding, Stanfield, Birket Foster, Eichardson, 

 and Absolon. Eossetti, whose works are rarely 

 seen in public, even in England, was represent- 

 ed by two pieces, "Dante meeting Beatrice," 

 and " Before the Battle," and Turner by a small 

 view of " Castle Hill iu Edinburgh, and Scott's 

 House." The collection also contained portraits 

 by some of the early American painters in this 

 department, as Trnmbull, Copley, Stuart, and 

 Sully, one of Allston's most celebrated works, 

 " Spalatro ; or, the Vision of the Bloody Hand," 

 and specimens by Cole and Professor S. F. B. 

 Morse. English painters in oils were repre- 

 sented by Gainsborough, Eastlake, Stanfield, 

 Linton, and Whistler, the last named a highly 

 original artist, of American extraction, whose 

 contribution, a " View on the Thames," though 

 less remarkable for power of color than some 

 of his more recent productions, was full of force, 

 and truth, and character. Among noticeable 

 works by contemporary American painters, 

 were portraits of Laboulaye and Gasparin, 

 painted by May for the Union League Club of 

 New York, " Columbus before the Council of 

 Salamanca," by Theodore Kaufmann, and 

 " American Slave Market," by T. S. Noble. 

 The fifth annual exhibition of French, English, 

 and Flemish paintings was opened in Decem- 

 ber. It comprised over a hundred original 

 works, none of which could be called poor, and 

 some of which were of great value and import- 

 ance. The Continental Schools were, on the 

 whole, the best represented, and the specimens 

 by Ger6me, Meissonier, E. Frere, Duverger, 

 Eosa Bonheur, Alma-Tadema, and other dis- 

 tinguished painters, were well selected and char- 

 acteristic of the schools from which they ema- 

 nated. The most striking picture in the collec- 

 tion was Ger6me's "King Candaules," familiar 

 to many by the fine steel engraving of it re- 

 cently published. The influence of exhibitions 

 of this kind in forming the public taste, as well 

 as in affording an incentive to American artists, 

 can hardly be over estimated. They lack, how- 

 ever, the element of permanence. Such a thing 

 as a large public gallery of works of art, cor- 

 responding in plan, if not in scale, with those 

 of the great European cities, to remain open 

 during the greater part of the year, has not yet 

 been established in New York. The nearest 

 approach to it is to be found in the museum 

 and gallery of art of the Historical Society, 

 which, besides the fine collection of Egyptian 

 antiquities, made by Dr. Abbott, and the 

 Lenox collection of Nineveh sculptures, con- 

 tains nearly five hundred pictures belonging 

 to the New York Gallery of Fine Arts, and 

 the Bryan Gallery of Christian Art, and some 

 fine sculptures. Among the modern pictures 

 are twelve by Cole, including his "Course of 

 Empire," works by Gilbert Stuart, Copley, Jar- 



