IF

F the reader has been living in London during the last half year, or if he has, as a visitor, been much in town, he will have observed the swarms of people brought from beyond the Channel by the crisis in their own beloved country, and in their beloved Paris, the centre of civilisation.' It may have been the same in the choicest society and most exclusive circles, but the street aspect of the invasion shows us what unbounded and promiscuous hospitality may bring to us-the dreadful old ladies selling L'International and La Situation, papers systematically mendacious; the more dreadful young ones who hold 'the crown of the causeway;' and the corresponding class of gentlemen who circulate in a less obtrusive manner, and who fill the cafés and theatres in the populous district they most frequent. The Comédie Française has had its season in the Strand; various musical entertainments of a semipublic kind have appeared; while at Cremorne a spectacle, with noise enough, great crackers and riflefiring, advertised as 'The Re-taking of Strasburg five years hence' (!), has been a favourite amusement of the exiles.

We do not mention any of these matters as Fine Arts-an expression which, in the sense we have to deal with it here, is limited to the formative arts, and in chief that of painting; but yet they have a connection with our subject, as the influx of foreign artists, including some of the greatest living painters of France, and the astounding number of works brought over, the various Exhibitions entirely devoted to French interests, and the conspicuous places cheerfully given in our own galleries to the productions of the men we used to see only on the walls of the Salon, form altogether the most novel and remarkable fea

Whether this is

ture of the year. likely to be for good or not is the question which seems most essential for us to solve, but which is exactly the most difficult of solution.

The second novelty distinguishing the present year from its predecessors-one of equal importance, and more easily estimated-is the completion of the vast quadrangle of buildings surrounding the Horticultural Gardens, and the opening of the First Annual International Exhibition, the last an accomplishment of such dimensions that we still hesitate to believe in the possibility of its repetition every twelve months. If any amount of energy, however, can sustain such a gigantic undertaking, that which has already done so much at South Kensington may be entrusted with the task; and the Commissioners of the great and so successful undertaking of 1851 have still the force to enlist the national energies. The effect of this gathering together of pictures from all the countries of Europe, along with the effect of the special French invasion, is clearly calculated to soften away our insular peculiarities, and to amalgamate our pictorial tastes with those of the Continent. Here again we find ourselves asking a question as to the advantage to be gained, as it appears the influence likely to be exercised is not the educational influence of great works removed from us by distance of time as well as difference of thought, but the professional and moral influences of contemporary nationalities, possibly not so good as our own. Other novelties we have had of a minor kind; but the best thing perhaps we can do is to give a narrative of the public Exhibitions and other matters as they occurred. We quite agree with the promoters of International Exhibitions as to their general beneficial influence;

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manufactures, machinery, everything indeed but painting, which we hold should be, like poetry, a growth from within, and wholly expressive of national feeling. Knowledge is Power,' a motto that the Useful Knowledge Society used to keep well before the public thirty years ago, might be the motto of these great gatherings; and in the technique of art we may reap some harvest; but, carrying out the principle of these Exhibitions, as it is intended in future to do, by dropping national divisions and showing works of all sorts exclusively by classes, must tend to destroy the distinctive character exhibited by different countries, if it have any influence upon them at all. Even in Ornament eclecticism is almost synonymous with want of purity in style, and in Fine Art an English affectation of French manner, for example, would be ruinous to the sentiment of the work; and an importation of the sentiment also to make it complete would be ruinous altogether. Already we have seen a Japanese infection of light, bright colours and no darks; and there is no doubt that Japan, in turn, will show the deadly result of an imitation of our more perfect understanding of nature and scientific power of representation. be kept in mind that, however rigid we are in certain home-keeping customs, in art-matters we humble to a degree. The reception of foreign pictures in London has always shown this; and after the French Gallery in the International had been left by the French themselves to be filled as best we could, and one collection after another had been opened for the benefit of the sufferers from the war, a society of refugee artists and dealers opened a 'First Annual Exhibition' in London on their own account, and this undertaking was received by our newspaper critics with the humblest admiration.

It must

are

Before the end of 1870 the 'German Gallery,' as it used to be called, in Bond Street was opened by the Society we have just spoken of; or rather by M. Ruel, the well-known connoisseur, in the name of a 'Society' which a number of leading Parisian artists then in London lent themselves to form. Many of the pictures shown were by deceased men, some long deceased, as Greuze and David; the 'Dead Marat' in his bath, by the latter, being one of the leading attractions; others later, as Ingres and Géricault, inferior productions of those painters. But besides, there were two large canvases by Henri Regnault, a name that had become at once a great celebrity by a picture in the last Salon, called Salomé la Danseuse.' One of the

two was a portrait of General Prim on horseback, with a background of a wild crowd of Spanish military— an equestrian portrait of the completest mastery. The other was a terrific subject, painted with unflinching and even obtrusive fidelity. The scene was on a flight of steps in the Alhambra, against which stood a gigantic Moor, wiping his sword on his crimson robe he is an executioner, and below him lies the trunk, rolling over in the last throes, and the separated head turns its dying eyes (as it would seem) to the face of the Moor, while the blood flashes and spurts against the marble steps. The figures were gigantic, the style masterly, or rather gladiatorial. After the manner of the French, there was no emotion expressed-no pity, mercy, or any other virtue. On the contrary, there was a hot delight in the extraordinary sensationalism of the subject, as if the next delight to cutting a man's head off was to paint it. It was a picture we were at once sure could not be painted by anyone but by a native of Paris, the centre of civilisation.' These pictures had just begun to attract the public when news came that the

artist was killed in the last sortie. He was only twenty-four, and had returned from Tangier to fight for his country.

At the same time-we speak of the opening of the year-two Exhibitions appeared for the charitable purpose of raising a fund for the assistance of sufferers in the war. Both French and German as well as English artists had been invited by a mixed Committee of Management to contribute towards the object proposed by gifts of pictures or drawings to be disposed of. This Exhibition opened in the Suffolk Street Society's Gallery, and remained there till the time approached when the members required to arrange for their own season, when the Exhibition in aid of France removed to Bond Street. The second we have mentioned was

at the Raphael Gallery, 7 Park Lane,' where 412 works of art by old foreign and English masters were opened to the public for the relief of the French in distress.' The results of this last we never heard, but we understand the first mentioned was successful in its meritorious object. Besides these for French assistance, there was one for the 'Relief of the Widows and Orphans of German Soldiers killed in the War. This was originated by the German Academic Society, and the New British Institution' Gallery in Old Bond Street was gratuitously lent for the purpose. Here a large number of works appeared, including eight or ten by the Crown Princess of Prussia and the Princess Louise, and two by Count Gleichen. This scheme is reported to have succeeded in raising a considerable sum. All these remained open several months; and when the usual French Gallery in Pall Mall began its annual display, which was this year called Contributions of Artists of the Continental Schools,' although it remained as hitherto exclusively

French and Belgian, there were no fewer than five (if we include that of Gustave Doré, six) Exhibitions open at once for the benefit of our neighbours or for the sale of their works; and the artists themselves then in London comprehended many of their leading men in art, Gérôme, Heilbuth, Robert Fleury, Daubigny, Yvon, Isabey, Saintin, Diaz, and others.

This eighteenth display of pictures in the French Gallery, Pall Mall, seemed to us scarcely as good as usual. There were many things, no doubt, that excited more or less very pleasant feelings, but almost exclusively by their executive merits. Among the landscapes, although these were not very numerous, were some very surprising realisations by Daubigny, J. B. Corot (who seems to turn off two or three distinct pictures daily), and others. But more important figure pictures of the best class were unusually deficient. Even the works that produced a sensation at the Salon just before the war began did not impress us with much respect. One of these was 'Gulliver fastened to the Ground and surrounded by the Army,' by G. J. Vibert, in which the great ability in depicting a serio-comic multiplicity of action among the Tartar-like Lilliputians does not interest for any length of time. Another was 'Indecision,' by Saintin, which retained the talismanic word 'Médaille' on the frame; but, while we admit the perfect workmanship and admirable realisation in so vacuous a subject -a young woman looking at the weather, apparently, by the edge of a

Venetian blind-our wonder is changed into perplexity to under stand how a man who paints so well can find nothing else to paint. There were the usual number of 'Eastern Girls' and tableaux de société; but on looking over the catalogue we cannot recall one single picture in which the motif

was good, generous, poetic, or even (speaking out of town) innocent. In saying so we do not include the Belgian: there were two sad subjects by Israels, and one or two by Willems -sweet and graceful, and little beside. So much for the demonstrations of or for our neighbours across the Channel.

To return to Christmas time: there were open as usual the Drawings and Sketches' by the Society of Painters in Water Colours, and by the Institute, and also the Winter Exhibition of Pictures in Oil, which deserves mention on account of several works of remarkable value, as for instance His Highness and his Excellency of the Republic of Florence,' by H. Wallis-two men lounging on a marble seat, one of them being Machiavelli; but above all we must mention 'Love and Death,' by G. F. Watts, an invention of the highest and purest lyrical passion. Death the inevitable was pressing in at the open doorway-Love, weak but immortal, struggling to stop him. This admirable emotional thought was expressed with singleness and complete art: Death muffled in dark garments, Love wan and white; the whole was negative in colour-black, gray, and reddish yellow. there was shortly added to these the Society of Female Artists, in Conduit Street, where a display of nearly five hundred works appeared. Altogether, however, this Exhibition does not seem to do the lady painters justice, or rather, we should say, the English lady painters do not seem to unite in this Society. If all the female exhibitors in London concentrated their abilities on these walls, we should have a different tale to tell.

Then

But all these numerous galleries -and they are, even independent of the foreign invasion, more numerous than ever-are of little importance compared to the great gathering of the 'Works of the Old

Masters, with those of Deceased Masters of the British School,' opened at Burlington House by the influence of the Royal Academy. It will be remembered that one of the objects of the British Institu tion, whose lease of life and of its old Boydell Gallery in Pall Mall expired two years ago, was to provide means of showing us the fine old pictures existing in the country. For a long series of years it did this; and now that the Boydell Gallery is razed from the face of the earth, the British Institution annulled, its keeper dead, and nothing known of its funded property or small collection of paintings and sculpture, the Academy took up the function of bringing before the public, from the private collections in the land, the works of the great masters of the art, Italian and Flemish. Last year saw the first of these gatherings, a collection of two hundred and thirtyfive examples, or, more properly speaking, of one hundred and sixtyone, the rest being by Leslie and Stanfield in a room by themselves, a room that has had the effect of stopping the amiable critics who were disposed to praise those two worthies as better than their successors. It was then said by the President that it would be impossible to provide another such splendid collection; but so rich is the country, that the demand for this year was answered by no fewer than four hundred and twenty-six pictures, the great majority of high intrinsic interest, and many of them of unspeakable value and importance. So large was the collection, that the visitor who had an insight into the value of particular works felt that the proper measure of study, and power of enjoyment, was impossible. The arrangement, too, was apparently fortuitous. English pictures of yesterday, wretched French things like those by Greuze, Dutch genre, and Italians of the great

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time, were all side by side. Added to this, the Academy is too polite to refuse a great collector's offered picture because it is not genuine, or to give any names in their catalogue but those of the proprietor's choosing so that the doubt of genuineness checks the spectator's enthusiasm, beneficially perhaps occasionally; but it is surely unnecessary to call a standard-bearer a burgomaster, as in the case of a picture by Rembrandt. Those by Greuze, let us mention parenthetically, were the dust that is a little gilt,' that drew together the millionaires at the Demidoff sale last year; one of the little prettinesses, the Young Girl with a Dog,' bringing three thousand five hundred and sixty guineas. Besides these, there were 'inestimable' Murillos, showing the canaille of Madrid grinning impudently at you, or a common-place model looking up with stupid black eyes, and long light-blue drapery, partially supported by an alarming number of real naked children, and backed by streams of yellow-an arrangement supposed to represent, without impropriety, the Immaculate Conception.' Claude Lorraines too, with conventional trees, and queer green mounds with the nine Muses seated thereon, were plentiful.

Abandoning these to the millionaires, we found mines of sterling art beyond price; and let us say at first, and once for all, that the English pictures held their places with indisputable power, especially the portraits by Reynolds and Gainsborough, the landscapes by Constable, Turner, and Crome-'Old Crome,' as he has somehow come

to be called. it is true, one hundred and twentynine were lent by Lord Dudley, and had been for the most part before the public when that nobleman showed his collection in the Egyptian Hall. Among the earlier Italian schools, Giotto, Filippo Lippi, Bellini, and Fra Angelico were seen to some advantage; but of all the men just preceding the great period, Botticelli was best represented, Mr. Maitland's 'Nativity' being again seen. Let us describe this picture, as it was, perhaps, the finest representative picture there. It is small, the figures being about the size artists of that time were accustomed to do in the long scenic decorations on marriage chests. In the centre is the Holy Family, under a kind of baldaquin of thatch, on which three angels sit, giving them music. Above them, and above the trees, is a glory of angels, four red, four white, and four of a dark bronze green, dancing in a circle, the space between being, like the entrance to heaven, all of gold. On the ground below, on one side are the shepherds, on the other the Magi, each lovely group being under the charge of an angel, and in the foreground men (saints or prophets) and angels embrace each other. By Bellini, one of the finest in the collection was 'The Virgin; the Child seated before her; surrounded by four Saints and the Donator,' one of the works left by Sir C. Eastlake. The surface was a little doctored, but very carefully. By Giorgione, whose works we so seldom see, even in Venice, there were several: 'La Richiesta,' Lord Ashburton's well

Of the old masters,