May I:, U82.] 



• KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



5S1 



y- AN 1LLU,SX5^"''ED 



^" MAGMNEOF^IENCE . , 



PLAINLt yfORDED -EXACTrf DESCRIEED J 



LONDON: FRIDAY, MAY li', 1882. 



Contests of No. 28. 



rjioa 

 Rtionoo at the Horal Academy .. oSl 



OldMaT^lay 582 



Crystals. By William Jago, F.C.S., 



A«soo. Inst. Clioin, i^ 



Tie Ci.ract {Ilhi,ti-ot,ii) oSl 



I'opulation of tlie Karlb. By tUe 



Kditor oSI 



.Nii;ht» with a Tbrco-InchTolescope. 



By "K.Ii.A.S." (tlUutnitcd) 5« 



I'hotographv for Amateurs. By A. 



Brotl.ors.F.R.A.S. Part Vf. ... .Vi.^ 

 The Coming Tran«it of V.-niis. Bv 



R. A. Proctor (Illvttraltit) .i-ii 



Rkvibws : **A Ride Across the 



Channel." 6SS 



Flowers in May 68S 



The Weather Report 893 



COBRESPONDENCB ; Screw - Driver 

 Tubes — Conservation of Solar 



Energy— Consumption 693.5»1 



Answers'to Correspondents SO'l 



Our Matbematical Column : The 



Laws of Probabihty 09.-, 



Our Chess Column 6!)7 



Our \\Tii8t Column MS 



SCIENCE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 



IN art exhibitions, such as those at Burlington House, in 

 the Grosvonor (lallery, and the lik<', there are always 

 i/iany paintings so hideous in subject or in treatment, that 

 it may be questioned whether the pain they cause to the 

 artistic eye does not go far to counterbalance the pleasure 

 which tlic better works are calculated to produce. This is 

 tlie case e\en in great national collections, where only 

 the linest works are supposed to be gathered together. 

 There is not a room in the Louvre where there are not 

 paintings and sculptures absolutely painful to contemplate, 

 and annoying even when we try, so far as possible, not 

 to see them. But in annual exhiljitions of the works of 

 a great number of living artists, the liideous paintings and 

 sculptures sometimes preponderate to such an extent 

 that a visit to such collections is an actual punishment. 

 Last year, for instance, there were so many bad paintings, 

 and some of them so vei-y bad, so many ill-cho.sen subjects, 

 and some of them so very faithfully (and therefore disgust- 

 ingly*) rendered, that the many beautiful works of art 

 which were exhibited were quite insufficient to counteract 

 tlie painful impression produced by the others, and one 

 found oneself wondering whether the worst of the rejected 

 pictures coulil have been \ery much worse than some which 

 were exhibited. 



This year the general impression produced by the pictures 

 and sculptures at the Royal Academy is far pleasanter. 

 There are several very bad works, and a few which are 

 positively execrable ; btit they do not destroy the pleasur- 

 able ert<;ct produced by a general survey, nor are thev so 

 obtrusive as to disturb the artistic mind by their mere 

 presence, during the careful study of the better works. 



In these columns, however, we do not intend to con- 

 sider chiefly the artistic beauty of the various works 

 exhibited at the Royal Academy. Our purpose rather 

 is to note where artists have either failed from want of 

 scientific knowledge, or have availed themselves of such 

 knowledge (or of the close observation of nature whicli is 

 the basis of scientific knowledge), to produce effects, the 



* The " Fishmonger's Stall," in 1879 was an " awful example." 



truth and beauty of which are at once recognised, even by 

 those who do not understand the secret of the artist's 

 succes.s. 



It may be urged at the outsit, and is, indeed, often 

 urged by artists tliemselves, that they represent what 

 they see, and tliat it is not for otliers to question tlii' 

 scientific accuracy of this or that portion of a painting 

 or sculpture, when they have not before them the land 

 scape or model from whicli the artist worked. The 

 truth, however, rather is that the artist endca\ours 

 more or less successfully, according to his skill, to repre- 

 sent what he sees. Even where what he is attempting 

 to represent is unchanging, he often fails in his attempt 

 to represent it correctly. But in many cases, the artist 

 is obliged by tlie very nature of his work to represent 

 not what he sees, but what he has seen — some attitude 

 or expression necessarily fleeting, some aspect of nature 

 necessarily lasting for too short a time to be reproduced 

 save from memory. From a want of knowledge, or from 

 failure to make suUiciently careful observations, the artist 

 may overlook some essential characteristics of what he 

 wishes to represent, lie may combine incongruous ele- 

 ments in the delineation of facial or bodily expressions, 

 he may represent a natural feature true enough in itself, 

 in combination with another equally true in itself, whicli 

 could not possibly be seen at one and the same time as 

 the other. Ho may not, to use ^Macaulay's illustration, 

 "mix August and January in one landscape"; but the 

 same sort of reasoning may apply to his less glaring in- 

 congruities which ]\racaulay applied in the other case, and 

 Horace, earlier in the pas.sago which every schoolboy (as 

 ilacaulay would say) knows Ijy heart. " Would it be a 

 sufficient defence of such a picture to say that every part 

 was exquisitely coloured, that the green hedges, the apple- 

 trees loaded with fruit, the waggons reeling under the 

 yellow sheaves, and the sun-burned reapers wiping their 

 foreheads were very fine, and that the ice and the boys 

 sliding were also very fine 1 " It is no better defence to 

 say of Mr. Pettie's picture of ^Monmouth before James II. 

 (30, Room I.), that from the knee downwards Mon 

 mouth's left leg is well drawn, while the rest of the body 

 is, perhaps, placed as it might be if a man with bound- 

 arms tried to wriggle along the floor, when it is absolutely 

 impossible that, with the body so placed, the lower part of 

 the left leg could be seen as it is, unless it had been twisted 

 round Ijy main force through some forty-five degrees round 

 the axis of the limb, to the dislocation of bones and the 

 rending of muscles. To take another example from another 

 department of painting : — The blue sea is charmingly repre- 

 sented in Mr. Brett's picture, " The Grey of the Morning " 

 (.■)0(3, Room v.). We have seen the sea as blue as that, 

 and though it is not quite so level as the sea usually 

 is (Mr. Brett's seas seldom are), the eflect considered 

 in itself is very pleasant. Again, tlie lower cumulus clouds, 

 showing through the grey mist, are well presented, and in 

 effective contrast with the "lily white clouds," which havi^ 

 "got up early and peeped over the wall.' But neither Mr. 

 Brett nor any one else has ever, except, perhaps, in a drean;, 

 seen that rich blue sea in the grey of the morning. These 

 two characteristic features of his chief painting this 

 year are charmingly represented, and in two different pic- 

 tures would have been admirable, but in one and the same 

 painting they are not admirable at all. 



In figure painting, as in sculpture, anatomy is the science 

 which has first to V)e considered in estimating the truth- 

 fulness of the artist's work. Every sculptor must thoroughly 

 study anatomy, not the an.atomy of the body at rest only, 

 but of the body in motion: and every painter of the 

 human figure should do so, for the eye alone cannot be 



