364 



FINE ARTS. 1885. (LONDON: ROYAL ACADEMY.) 



places being filled by copies by the Dutch art- 

 ist Van Wijngaerdt. They are portraits ofNic- 

 olaas van Beresteyn, of his sister, of Eme- 

 rance van Beresteyn, a child, and of his brother 

 surrounded by his wife and family. The Em- 

 erance, the only good example of the master 

 among the four, was acquired by the Baroness 

 Wilhelm de Rothschild, of Frankfort, for 100,- 

 000 guilders (about $35,000). The other three 

 were purchased for the Louvre for 50,000 

 guilders ; and, as the pictures are in very bad 

 condition, the sale has caused much comment. 



A museum, to be in some respects like the 

 London South Kensington Museum, is pro- 

 jected in Paris, to be built on the Quai d'Orsay. 

 The committee expected to raise 14,000,000 

 francs by a lottery, but the net result is only 

 6,000,000 francs. Of this, 3,500,000 francs is 

 appropriated to the building. 



The sale of the works of the late Bas- 

 tien-Lepage, May 11, produced 212,000 francs. 

 Among them, " The Beggar " brought 21,000, 

 " The Potato-Gatherers " 29,100, and the " An- 

 nunciation to the Shepherds " (2d Grand Prix 

 de Rome, 1875), 23,800 francs. At the Comte 

 de la Berandiere sale, Paris (May), Boucher's 

 " Toilet of Venus " brought 133,000 francs. 

 Greuze's "Jupiter and Danae" was sold in 

 Paris, June 2, for 30,000 francs. An exhibition 

 of the works of Eugene Delacroix was held in 

 Paris to raise funds to erect a monument to 

 him. 



London : Royal Academy. The Royal Academy 

 is composed (1885) of 73 members, divided as 

 follows: Painters, 58; sculptors, 7 ; architects, 

 5 ; engravers, 3. The painters are thus classi- 

 fied : Genre, 41 ; portrait, 5 ; landscape, 9 ; ani- 

 mal, 3. 



The one hundred and seventeenth annual 

 exhibition contained 2,134 works, which shows 

 a perceptible gain in number if not in quality, 

 the exhibition of 1884 having consisted of 1,856 

 pictures, that of 1883 of 1,693, that of 1882 

 of 1,696, and that of 1881 of 1,571. The gain 

 may be partly accounted for by the fact that 

 three new rooms have been added, devoted to 

 water-colors, black and white, and architectu- 

 ral designs. 



Of the oil-pictures, W. Q. Orchardson's " Sa- 

 lon of Madame Recamier " occupies a promi- 

 nent place. The hostess, seated at the right 

 upon a sofa, is the center of a group whose 

 attention is directed to her, including Canova 

 apparently the chief talker Cuvier, Fouche, 

 Delille, and Metternich, while at the other end 

 of the salon a second group, including Lucien 

 Bonaparte, Talleyrand, Brillat - Savarin, and 

 Sieyes are gathered around Madame de Stael. 

 Millais's "Ruling Passion," at first named by 

 him ^' The Ornithologist," represents an old 

 man, in cap and spectacles, a portrait of Mr. 

 T. 0. Barlow, the engraver, reclining on a 

 couch, wrapped in blankets, descanting to an 

 audience of eager children on the beauties of a 

 gorgeous bird held in his weak hands. Almost 

 as charming is the same painter's " Orphans," 



the nearly full-length figure of a little girl 

 holding in her apron a young rabbit. It has 

 been purchased for the art gallery of Sydney, 

 Australia. 



Alma-Tadema's " Reading from Homer " is 

 even more realistic than his earlier works. 

 Seated upon a marble bench on the terrace of 

 a temple, beyond which the sky and the blue 

 Mediterranean are visible, the reader, crowned 

 with bay and partly clad in rose-color, is ex- 

 plaining to an audience of four the argument 

 of the poem he is about to read from the papy- 

 rus lying in his lap. His listeners consist of a 

 young girl with yellow daffodils in her hand, a 

 man in a blue chiton by her side, with one 

 hand in hers, the other on a lyre, another 

 stretched at her feet on a goat-skin, and a 

 fourth standing in the shadow of the portico. 

 A mass of flowers lying upon the bench give a 

 strong accent of red to the picture. 



Edward J. Poynter's " Diadumene," a near- 

 ly life-size nude figure, standing in bright 

 light on the step leading to a bath, is an en- 

 larged version, with altered details, of an earlier 

 picture. She is binding a fillet of golden silk 

 about her chestnut-colored tresses, in the same 

 attitude as the famous statue of the Diadu- 

 inenos of Plycleitus, from which she derives 

 her name. The sumptuously painted mosaic 

 columns, marble moldings, and other decora- 

 tions of the apartment behind her, which is 

 open to the sea on one side, make a fitting 

 background to her almost sculpturesque figure. 



John Collier's " Circe " is a nude study, 

 showing the enchantress seated on the grass in 

 a wood with her back to the spectator and her 

 arm around a tiger lying beside her, while 

 another lies crouched at her feet, and a third 

 is in the distance. 



P. H. Calderon's " Andromeda " exhibits her 

 draped below the waist, standing against a 

 cliff", to which she is chained by both hands, 

 with a thick mass of dark hair behind her 

 white body blown by the same wind which 

 dashes the spray against the rocks. 



" After the Arena," by Edward Armitage, is a 

 large and ambitious picture, more than twelve 

 feet high, representing a scene in the Roman 

 catacombs, where the corpse of a youth slain 

 in the arena is being lowered through an open- 

 ing in the arch above to the care of the vic- 

 tim's friends. 



John Pettie's "Challenged" is a dramatic 

 picture showing a young gentleman who, 

 roused from his bed after a night's excess, has 

 slipped on a blue satin dressing-gown and 

 white satin breeches to receive a challenge 

 from a visitor who is departing through the 

 open doorway. 



William F. Yeames's " Prisoners of War " 

 represents two young English midshipmen, in 

 Napoleon's time, in charge of a grim sentin 

 seated on some casks on the quay of a French 

 port, exposed to the good-natured comments 

 of a crowd of fishermen, their wives and 

 daughters. 



