The Zoologist — ^June, 1873, 3567 



Zoology of the Royal Academy. By Edward Newman. 



My brief remarks on the zoological pictures exhibited by the 

 Royal Academy last year were received with so much kindness 

 and consideration, that I have been induced again to try my hand 

 at art criticism, eschewing, however, the peculiar phraseology of 

 the learned few who may be called "professors of the science," and 

 confining myself to the Johnsonian language I have been writing 

 from youth to old age. 



There are certainly this year a much larger proportion of 

 zoological pictures of high merit than I recollect in any previous 

 exhibition; and, whether it be a good or a bad sign I will not 

 presume to pronounce, I think that animal painting has now taken 

 the very highest position in English art. Acres of portraits, inte- 

 resting only to the painters and the painted, are still present, but 

 serve merely as a foil to those charming pictures which, with or 

 without the animals, must delight every one who has a taste for 

 country life. The self-imposed limit to my subject prevents my 

 noticing the works of the great masters of landscape, Linnell, 

 Vicat Cole and Birkett Foster, and I must confine myself to 

 paintings of which animals constitute the chief subject and the 

 chief ornament. 



Mr. Carter exhibits a very telling picture under the title of 

 Maternal Felicity (No. 26) ; it represents a fallow deer and her 

 fawn, drawn with unusual skill and exhibiting unusual knowledge : 

 the animals are posed with taste and judgment, and painted with 

 great care : there is nothing really objectionable in the title, but it 

 seems rather too sentimental. 



By a perversity of genius by no means uncommon, Mr. Hardy 

 gives us a picture of lions without a name, and Mr. Poole gives the 

 title, A Lion in the Path (No. 28), to a picture without a lion ; it is 

 a truly fine landscape, but I can find no excuse for the misnomer: 

 if the queer cripple under the shade of the oaks be intended for a 

 lion, I am unable to detect the likeness : not so Mr. Hardy's name- 

 less picture ; his conflicting brutes are most manifestly intended for 

 lions, and monstrous ones too, standing on their hind legs, as one 

 often sees dogs, but I think not lions, or any other members of the 

 cat family. Mr. Hardy's idea seems to be borrowed from Mr, 

 Ward's case at the Crystal Palace, called " The Struggle," in 

 which the veritable skins of a lion and a tiger are represented 



