364 Art Subjects and their Treatment. 



whom he lias to leave behind, and her countenance is full of 

 sternly- suppressed emotion of the bitterest kind. The scene 

 is on the coast of Kent, the chalk cliffs stretch along the 

 shore, and they are painted neither according to nature, nor 

 after the pre-Raphaelite style of exaggerating detail. The 

 grass is little like grass, the chalk little like chalk ; but there 

 is power in the figures and faces, so that with little of the 

 beauty that ought to belong to a work of art to attract the 

 eye, the visitor to the gallery is, nevertheless, a captive for the 

 time, and what the artist has painted remains fixed upon the 

 memory, even to the oyster-shell in the corner, that indicates 

 the last Eoman meal. 



Next to historical subjects, biographical ones are most 

 naturally considered, and the foremost of the few pictures 

 belonging to this class is " The Early Career of Murillo," by 

 J. Phillip, R.A. In the youthful days of the great Spanish 

 artist, poverty compelled him to paint hasty pictures for sale 

 at the weekly fair, " held in a broad street branching from 

 the northern end of the old Alameda. This venerable mar- 

 ket presents every Thursday an aspect which has changed 

 but little since the days of Murillo. Fruit, vegetables, and 

 coarse pottery, old clothes, old iron, still cover the ground as 

 they did two centuries ago, when the unknown youth stood 

 among gipsies, muleteers, and mendicant friars, selling for a 

 few reals those productions of his early pencil for which royal 

 collectors are ever ready to contend." No one can say that 

 this is not a good subject for a picture. It stands out picto- 

 rially in the extract from Stirling's Annals of Spanish Painters, 

 which we have given from the Academy catalogue. Human 

 sympathy strongly attaches itself to the early struggles of the 

 world's great men ; and Mr. Phillip shows us, in the fine face 

 and proud aspiration of the young artist, a promise of future 

 fame, which seems also to impress itself on the rough pictu- 

 resque critics who are laying down the law, as they contemplate 

 a little piece which Murillo offers for sale. The grouping and 

 accessories of this fine work are eminently picturesque ; but 

 there is a want of harmony amongst the various hues and 

 shades of reds and greens in the middle and on the left of the 

 work, which it would be well to correct. 



Comparatively few pictures have been suggested by the 

 writings of our poets, either ancient or modern. There is, of 

 course, an Elaine, and there are two Mariana's from Tenny- 

 son's well-known lay. Southey's Battle of Blenheim, with 

 its refrain, " 'Twas a glorious victory," suggests another work. 

 Lord Derby's Homer has caused Mr. Leighton to give us a 

 Helen, whom we cannot fancy the Greeks would have been. so 

 unwise as to seek to regain through many a bitter fight and a 



