THE SYDNEY EXHIBITION.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1816, 16 December 1879, Page 3

THE SYDNEY EXHIBITION.

THE ART GALLERY. [FEOM THK "PRESS" COEBESPONDENT.j PriTate enterprise has stepped in and supplied what the Exhibition Commisßionerß, with all their staff and money at command, were apparently unable to provide in decent time—a catalogue to the pictures displayed in the art gallery now open at the Exhibition. Mr Reynolds, a print seller of George street, has prepared and issued a nicely got up and handy catalogue, with the help of which one can go through the gallery with reasonable understanding of the subjects of the various pictures. The collection as a whole is certainly the beat ever seen on this side of the equator, and is sufficiently extensive to fatigue the attention before one has properly looked at and into a third of it. Such, at least, has been my experience. I have had to make three visits to the gallery in order to make myself master of its contents, and now I shall have to go again several times to enjoy what I have made myself acquainted with Mastering the contents and leading features of a collection is not unaccompanied by gleams of keen pleasure, but the true enjoyment of art demands, I think, that the mind be tuned to impressionableness, and anything like bustle or going-at-it discharged from the sensorium. Let me pause here to remark that now, at length, I can unreservedly declare this Exhibition as a whole to be a thing of beauty, complete in all its parts, and with regard to its original aims a sterling success, despite the financial smash that it has involved. The grounds aro becoming beautiful, the attendance is sufficient just to nicely people the place, there is generally some pretty good music to be heard in the building, and everything is working smoothly so far as the arrangements for the public convenience are concerned. To be sure, there is plenty of squabbling going on among those in authority, but the general public is not incommoded thereby. The Foreign and Colonial Commissioners are on terms of more or less courteous odds with the local Commissioners, and are not at all reserved in characterising the latter as a set of antiquated old noodles and formalists. The latest row has been about the appointment of judges. The representatives of foreign countries, Great Britain, and the other colonies are, it appears, entitled to nominate a certain proportion of the judges—half of them, if I remember rightly. They met to consider the affair, and, being strangers here, concludod that in any nominations they might make mistakes, knowing so little about the residents available. Therefore they adopted a resolution suggesting that in the matter of nominating judges they would be glad to have the benefit ©f the local Commissioners' experience, and that the whole body should sit together. The local Commission has been wildly agitated respecting this proposition. They seem to suspect sedition, or revolution, or a new sort of tramway, or other unspeakable horrors to be lurking behind it, and their nerves have been greatly shaken. No judges havo yet been appointed, and exhibitors, delayed in feverish expectation, are getting irritable, and writing snappish letters to the "Herald's" waste basket, for the reverend editor of that journal being a Commissioner, the leading journal hus been a safe thing from the first for the Commissioners generally. The musical people have been enjoying a few rows also. The sapient Commissioners, while money was being squandered in every direction, felt the necessity to economise, and as might have been expected, made a greater of their economising than of their lavishness. Any fool can spend money, but it takes a man of some gumption to save it. A platform or stand for pianofortes, &c, was required in front of the orchestra —the most prominent position in tho whole exhibition. What Bhould our wiseacres do but allow a local piano Beller to erect the platform at his own cost, on tho understanding that he should provide the pianofortes to be used on it. Now of course the shrewd gentleman, who is descended from Abraham in a direct line, won't let any piano but his own be placed on his platform for love or money, or at least except upon his own terms. There are here representatives of, I daresay, thirty different makers of pianos, and there are also some good pianißtes, Mrs Summerhayes and Mdme. Duboin among the number. Now Stein way'a people engaged Mdme. Duboin to play upon the grand piano sent by that firm. There is the platform facing the

crowd assembled to hoar the performance. From the foot of that platform a muffled sound of pianoforte playing can be made out. But one can hear little and see nothing whatever of the player, who is on the same level as the audience. It is Madame Duboin, and at the steps leading to the platform are gathered Giorza, musical director, glaring, speechless, sulky, and powerless ; the proprietor of the platform, frantic, nasal and loud, talking to anyono that will listen about " my plitf jrm—not likely—not an advertising hoarding, _&c," and so or, and sending a reluctant young man to publicly seize upon and re~nove from the sight of mankind, sundry big boarois marked " Steinway," which have been placed in view upon tho sacred precincts ; Madame Summcrhaycs, Mons. Meilhau, a stout genial French musician, with a group of satellites and casuals oil, except G-iorz*, talking vehemently in polyglot, French prevailing, but English, Italian, and German coming in occasionally. However, to ome back to my theme, the art gallery. The space is apportioned, tho veatibulo to miscellaneous admixture of English and French paintings, the middle gallery—thero are three parallel galleries—to English, two chambers on the right to tho French, and a third to tho Belgians, and on the left a chamber to Austrian, and one to German paintings, and tho third to architectural and miscellaneous productions. The number of separate works of art comprises seven hundred paintings, principally in oils, and some two score pieces of Btatuary, and of course I make no attempt to do more than indicate the general merit of the collection and describe its most notable features and choicest gems. Taking first the English section there are some celebrated names among the artists, and tho work justifies their celebrity. The placo of honor by etiquette, although not by merit, belongs to Sir Frederick Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, whose easel has yielded to this exhibition a sufficiently striking work, " Samson and Delilah." The Hebrew|Hercules sits, apparently just realising his blindness, tho deceitful enslaver bending towards him as if to look at her work. His brown-ruddy skin contrasts with the snowy beauty of her tints. Hebrews gather round. His face is distorted with despair, and nothing else;'is suggested. A disappointing picture, despite faultless painting, entirely conventional, not a gleam of imaginative genius discoverable. A far better, though infinitely less pretentious picture, is that by Calderon,R.A. —"Joan of Arc." The visionary maiden sits on the hill side, with up-turned face lighted with the wildest sky-break, where through the misty confused morning clouds a strange unaccountable suffusion shines. lb is wonderfully wrought out. The sheen of brightness may be but tho sun struggling to penetrate the smoky heavens, or it may bo that the spiritual e'evation of the maiden enables her to see there the visible brightness of tho Most High. In such a sky, everything is possible, yet nothing is beyond tho bounds of nature.

" Gleaners" is tho title and form the subject of a very charming picture by H. R. Robinson —a homely scene. The sun has set, and while the sky is ruddy in the east, twilight has began to descend, and the mists of night to thicken tho air, while the gleaners, moving from the spectator, are scattered over the Btubbly field, as they "homeward wend their weary way." Most faithful to nature is this picture. If the faces be portraits—respecting which I have no information —a picture by C. Calthrop, " Meeting of Scotch Jacobites," would be interesting, as tho characters represented include Cameron of Lochiel—the best of all tho leaders in the '4s—the titular Duke of Perth, Lord Drummond, Lord George Murray, and Lord Lovat, with one or two others whoso nnmes I forget. Unluckily, even were they portraits, the most significant face in the group would bo wanting, as that old fox, Simon Frazer, Lord Lovat, has his back turned, as if he would not even disclose himself in a painting. The noblest landscape painting in tho wholo collection, according to my present impression, is " The Carsa of Gowrie," by E. Hayett, a prospect altogether lovely, and treated by a loving and able hand. Another beautiful thing is " All Among the Barley," by E. K. Fahey. The human interest is supplied by a couple who would equally serve to illus:rate " Coming through the Rye," so far as their attitudes are concerned. But the feature of the work is the barley field. I entirely agree with the remarks in the catalogue : —A most difficult and unpromising subject, triumphantly treated. Every stalk and ear of the growing grain, and every poppy, cornflower and weed seems to stand out from tho rest, and to have been painted as if it were an individual portrait. There is an awful attractiveness in "Lenore," by A. Elmore, R.A., the weirdest and most blood-chilling possible representation of the subject of Burger's wild ballad " Lenore," a poem which has exercised a curious attraction over every one who has read it, and has been at least four times translated into English, twice being by distinguished hands Walter Scott and Henry Longfellow. Anyone who may feel an interest in the theme will find the ballad under the title of " William and Helen " in Scott's Poetical Works. The picture represents the living bride clasped by and clasping the dead bridegroom, who has been revived but to punish her impious murmurs against the Almighty for his death, and who hurries her to the bridal bed, in the grave, on a jetty steed, while all dead things sweep after and around them. It is a tremendous picture, and wonderful exceedingly is the manner in which the artist has succeeded in preserving the distinction between the line of faces, all of which are necessarily pale. The living girl's face, pallid with mortal horror, the pale face of the living-dead lover, and then the fearful pallor and the livid tints of the " coffined guest" whom the bridegroom had summoned from the bier to join his career, of the murderer's body released from the gibbet at the same imperious command, and of " Mair of terrible and awful,

Which e'on to speak would be unlawful." The girl reclines in her lover's arms, with the head towards the speotator and the face foreshortened, and the upward straining of the eyeball, rolling in terror to see what eerie things follow and clutch at her, is fearfully effective, while the glassy glare imparted to the eyes of one stiff, erect, shrouded form, which sweepß after them above and behind, is inconceivably " creepy." Mr Armitage, E.A., has sent the only "nude " of any aggressiveness whioh appears in the British court, but I must say the conceit he has hit upon justifies him. It is the Galatea of Pygmalion. The painter, overwhelmed by the emotions which culminated in his prayer to the gods that his masterpiece might be embuei with life haß bowed his head on tho pedestal of his statue, while already his prayer is granted. The pose is still statuesque, and the feet are marble, but the eyes are radiant with intelligence, and the upper part of the body is roseate with the first pulsations of life. The same artist has another fine picture, full of ideality—the Mother of Moses. She stands, sheltered by the reeds, peering eagerly and anxiously through their friendly screen, with parted lips. Obviously she watches the discovery of her offspring by the daughter of Pharoah. The Semitic character of the face is admirably pourtrayed, and there is a suble the posture of the legs and feet which carries one back to the figures on ancient Egyptian sculptures. "Prom the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens " is the title of a picture by J. Archer. On the cold yellow Bands sits a sad group of young women looking out wißlfully over acold seething Bea. Tho ballad will be found in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ;" the veree which seems to have been especially in the artist's mind runs—- " And lang, lang, may the maidens sit, "With their goud kaima in their hair, A' waiting for their ain dear loves ! For them they'll see nae mair." A large canvas is devoted by R. Lehmann to the unhappy Ophelia. The passage treated is that commencing " There is a willow grows athwart a brook." Ophelia, buoyed up by her garments, floats erect on the bosom of the stream—represented as that "still water" which proverbially "runs deep." The grief-wasted distraught faco is treated with painful realism, and tho deadly glassy depth of the water wonderfully brought out. Sentimental young ladies would find something to admire in the work of another R A., Mr P. F. Poole, "A Wounded Knight." If this picture had been entitled "Home they brought her warrior dead," it would have explained itself. Mr H. Moore is the artist of a marine piece which struck mo as exceptionally happy in conception and execution. A rippled sea, overshadowed by lowering misty sky, through whioh to the right a sheen of cold glinting light finds its way and illuminates the surface of the water; the whole composition is one

pervading grey. A very realistic chilly picture. F. Dicey sends an idyllic sketch, "The Song of Solomon," a graceful and tender idealisation of love in the season when " the flowers Bppear in the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." It isin its reference to this picture that a peculiar feature of the catalogue first peeps out. Its collator appears to have been one of those worthy folks who feel it to be their duty to bo constant "in season and out of season." It is not only a catalogue but a religious guide and moral essay which he furnishes for the sixpence of the purchaser. He is obliging enough to inform tho reader that this picture is " an attempt to give literal expression and matotial form to what, in all probability, is a purely spiritual allegory." Thero soems no strong need for effort with regard to giving literal expression. The difficulty generally lies in getting away from it. " Lieutenant Cameron's Welcome Home," by O. W. Cope, R.A., is a genial, heartwarming picture, handled with perfect skill. Tho adventurous explorer of Central Africa approaches the old church at homo in a littlo pony phaeton, in which sit his mother and sisters. His arm is around tho fine old matron's form, around are tho villagers, the priest in his vestments awaits his coming, and behind is the ivied wall of the little country church. A touching, homely picture. Few pictures in this court attract more notice than K. Haswelle's (A.R.8.A.) " Non Angli sed Angeli." It is a large composition ; the subject is, though rather threadbare, popular, appealing, as it does, to that fatuous and inconsequential thing, national vanity. Even were the Britons of the times in question remarkable for their angelic beauty, the Briton of to-day belongs to a very different race, after the crossings with Danes, Normans, and Celts his ances o i hive undergone. The "Angli sed Angeli" are, however, all that could be desired. They are lovely children, blond and brown, and a shade of wistful melancholy gives interest to their features and situation. The Pope Gregory and other adult figures present no remarkable traits. "On the Road to LlanwrsV' by J. Bromby, is an extremely attractive and clever land and sea scape. The beholder stands on a gorsestudded htalh on the summit of a great elevation, right in front are the scarped faces of precipitous land fall, and beyond lies a rippling summer sea, into which he seems to look down from a tremendous height. The water is flecked with reflections of the fleecy clouds over head. Tho sapient compiler of the catalogue has apparently never been in the old country. The gorse, or, as the Scotch call it, whins, he terms " vividly colored lichens." He had better have stuck to his theology. Another remarkable picture is by J. Faed. I wonder which Faed this may be. There used to bo a Faed, R.A. The subject of the picture is historical, James IV. before the battle of Flodden. James appears to be in council, or at least informally so. An elderly peasant stands before him, apparently conveying some intelligence. Upon this man's face the king's glowing eye is intently fixed, ae. is also that of a monk seated beside the king. A noble and venerable figure, Sir James Lindsay of the Mount, I believe, clod in complete armour, save the head, stands eyeing across the apartment another grey haired man of rank, who presses his finger to his lips with a face full of meaning. The grouping is easy and natural, but the especial merit of the work lies in the heads. That of the gallant and unfornate James is magnificently in keeping with the character which history has allotted to him. A chivalrous daring, mingled with a shade of mysticism and melancholy, speak from every lineament. The friar beside him is quite as good; shrewd, kindly, yet firm and unscrupulous. The peasant's face, too, his sandy hair grizzled with grey, are admirably Scottish, and Lord Lindsay is nearly as good, save that the expression is hardly elevated enough to match the nobleness of the features. I have left till the last the loan pictures from the Royal collection. The originals of those wild works representing '• The Last Trump," "The Day of Judgment," and " The Plains of Paradise," are hung here, judiciously high. More heart breaking disappointments I never saw. These pictures have gained enormously in the engraving. As engravings they do appear well drawn. In the originals they are lurid, tremendous, and striking as to conception ae regards the two first, but splotchy and tawdry in handling and color, and as to the Plains of Paradise, it reminds one of a second-rate transformation scene at a pantomime—Bowers of Bliss, or the Fairies' Fancy-Land, or something of that kind. The climax of absurdity is found in the Judgment picture, wherein various individuals favored by tho painter, Martin, are demurely waiting to be caught up to heaven, in full bottomed wigs, duly powdered. The other paintings are "The Royal Family in 1857," a copy by Belli after the original by Winterhalter, a group in which dignity has been attempted, and stiffness accomplished; the Queen receiving the Sacrament after the Coronation Ceremony, including several interesting portraits, viz., the Queen, Lord Melbourne, the Duke of Wellington, Duchess of Kent (the Queen's mother), the beautiful Duchess of Sutherland, and the unfortunate Lady Flora Hastings, who later perished, a victim to the Queen's precipitate jealousy. Ladies would observe with interest in these pictures tho frightful sacrifices which women offer to fashion. Anything more hideously conceived than the arrangementof the Queen's hair, imitated of course by all the young women of that generation, can scarcely be imagined. The marriage of the Prince of Wales is another portrait work, and the best of the batch. It is by Frith, R.A.., and besides the numerous portraits it contains, it may bo looked into with pleasure by virtue of the marvellous fidelity and effect with which the textures of the robes and so forth have been brought out. There is a grand moire antique on a dame in the foreground which is quite miraculous. It may bring the interest nearer you when I mention tho author of the next painting, " The opening of the Vienna Exhibition of 1873," by N. Chevalier, also a portrait piece. Veracity compels me to confess that, compared with Frith'a work, this appears tame and insignificant. I have left myself no space to enter upon the water color paintings, but the paucity of my notes shows me that the interest is feebler in that department. The foreign courts—tho French especially—are replete with interest, however, and will be dealt with in a separate paper.