Picture-Notes. — The Royal Academy. 357 



PICTUEE-NOTES.— THE KOYAL ACADEMY. 



The picture exhibition of the Royal Academy for the present 

 year is, on the whole, an interesting one ; and it would be easy 

 to make a pretty long list of artists whose works evince 

 considerable technical skill, and possess a fair amount of beauty 

 in colour or form. If, however, we pass by those pictures 

 which are simply pleasing, and take no account of many 

 preposterous and crotchety failures, we have left a good many 

 productions of artists whose labours command large prices, 

 whose reputation stands high, and who aim, more or less 

 successfully, at an elevated mark. Amongst these there are 

 some who deserve great praise, while others — and they com- 

 prehend several of the R. A/s — have fallen far below their own 

 fame. The deplorable want of English artists is mental culti- 

 vation and imaginative power. They rarely conceive their 

 subjects in a fine spirit, and, as a rule, their pictures lack 

 sentiment, dramatic vigour, and poetic treatment. The 

 present exhibition shows these defects very glaringly, and 

 chief amongst the defaulters are painters whose reputation has 

 long been made. 



Sir Edwin Landseer sins most grievously against all rational 

 principles of art in his big picture of the " Queen at Osborne in 

 1866." The sentiment intended to be conveyed by this piece is 

 that of the grief and loneliness of our sovereign in her widow- 

 hood. The queen is represented in a black riding-habit, on a 

 dark pony, held by a gilly who looks as if he had been 

 borrowed from the undertaker. A little dog, standing on his 

 hind legs, seems, from the colour of his coat, as if he had put 

 on mourning during a temporary sojourn up the kitchen 

 chimney ; the grass has the aspect of faded green baize, and a 

 grey, drizzling cloud gives a damp, half-mouldy aspect to the 

 scene. In his better moods Sir E. Landseer could not have 

 painted such a picture. It is not a grief as conceived by the 

 artist, but as it might be arranged for exhibition by the under- 

 taker. The gentlemen who "perform" funerals could also 

 u perform" this sort of woe, and hundreds of their profession 

 would thankfully supply the article by contract, according to 

 weight or measure, as might be agreed. A true artist — Sir 

 Edwin himself in his artistic moods — would have perceived 

 the morbid affectation and unnaturalness of the method of treat- 

 ment which he has adopted, and which is founded on the conceit, 

 that an air of general discomfort pervaded the universe because 

 an illustrious personage died. There is however no symptom of 

 that power which might command the sympathies of external 



