360 Art Subjects and their Treatment. 



the demand which the painter has to supply. The aristocracy 

 are, as we are informed, not in these days buyers of pictures 

 to anything like the extent of the merchants and manu- 

 facturers, whose splendid, fortunes form so conspicuous a 

 feature in our social system. This will help to account for the 

 decline of pictures on classical subjects, which the one-sided 

 education of the upper classes kept in vogue long after the 

 period of their natural death had arrived. This remark must 

 in nowise be understood as depreciating the grand merits of 

 classical literature ; but the poetic thoughts of modern times 

 seldom take the forms of dead mythology, and it is surprising 

 how little of the spirit of Greek or Roman history is communi- 

 cated to the recipients of what is called " classical education" 

 in old-fashioned schools. We are not surprised, therefore, 

 that classical subjects present no important feature on the 

 Royal Academy walls j and in examining what they do offer to 

 our contemplation, let us first consider what Biblical subjects 

 have done for our artists, and what the artists have done for 

 them in return. 



Looking through the catalogue, we find that Esau suggests 

 the subject of one picture ; (t Jesus Christ, with the Disciples, 

 on the way to Emmaus •" " The young Saviour observing the 

 Hypocrites ;" the miraculous restoration to life of the young 

 damsel, whose story is recorded in the fifth chapter of Mark ; 

 " Esther's Banquet ;" " Esther dressed in her royal apparel ;" 

 " The Devil Sowing Tares •" and " Elijah's Sacrifice •" a very 

 unsatisfactory David, and a pair of extraordinary angels, 

 forming the themes upon which, after divers fashions, other 

 artists have pictorially discoursed. The two most remarkable 

 of these pictures are by Millais, to whom belong " The Sowing 

 of the Tares," and " Esther in her Royal Robes.'" The treat- 

 ment of the first subject is a mixture of the literal and the 

 grotesquely allegorical. An ugly, unpleasant-looking old man 

 is engaged in scattering seeds on a curious looking soil, and 

 beneath a coarsely-executed and impossible sky, which lights 

 him up with a flowing dab of yellow paint, in strong contrast 

 with some clouds that look like the leaden pigment with 

 which house-painters often commence their work. The agri- 

 cultural process in which the sinister-looking old gentleman is 

 occupied appears to give satisfaction to a couple of snakes, whose 

 slimy presence is presumed to assist in the allegorical meaning of 

 the scene, and he is followed by a zoological curiosity, between 

 a dog and a hyena, with a shambling gait and phosphorescent 

 eyes. Some centuries ago, when the Father of Evil was popularly 

 recognized in the delineations of mediaeval legends, the parable 

 of the tares might have presented itself to common imagina- 

 tions in some such guise ; but who is there in these days who 



