Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 | Page 3

careful academical studies of
groups with all the conventions duly observed: this class of pictures
musters strong, and connoisseurs, without so much remarking their
imperfections, carefully note their promise.
A month after the opening of the British Institution, three galleries
become patent on the same morning: the Old Water Colour, in
Pall-Mall East, the New Water Colour, in Pall-Mall West, and a still
more recently founded society, called, somewhat pompously, the
National Institution of Fine Arts. These are mainly composed of

dissenters from the other associations--gentlemen who conceive that
they have been ill-treated by Hanging Committees, and a large class of
juvenile but promising artists, who resort to the less crowded
institutions in the hope of there meeting with better places for their
works than in the older and more established bodies. The two
water-colour galleries are both highly favoured exhibitions, and present
works of an importance quite equal to those of the Academy itself.
Water-colour painting is indeed a national branch of art in England.
Neither French, Germans, nor Italians, can presume for a moment to
cope with us in the matter of aquarelles. They have no notion of the
power of the medium, of the strong and rich effects it is capable of
producing, and the transparency of the tints which a great water-colour
artist can lay on. Nearly twenty years ago, there was but one
water-colour society; but increasing numbers, and the usual artistic
feuds, produced a partly natural, partly hostile, separation. The ladies
and gentlemen who withdrew were mainly figure painters; those who
stayed were mainly landscape artists; and thus it happens, that while in
the new society you are principally attracted by historic and genre
groups and, scenes, in the old you are fascinated by landscape and city
pictures of the very highest order of art. The painters, too, you observe,
are very industrious. The fact is, they can work more quickly in water
than in oil. Copley Fielding will perhaps exhibit a score of landscapes,
blazing with summer sunshine; David Cox, half as many--stern and
rugged in tone and style; George Tripp will have painted his fresh river
and meadow scenes by the dozen; and the two brothers Callum will
each have poured in old Gothic streets and squares, and ships in calm
and storm, which catch your eye scores of times upon the walls. As in
the other society, many of the finest 'bits' contributed by the
water-colourists are not much above miniature size. The screens on
which these gems are hung attract fully as much as the walls with their
more ambitious freight; and Jenkin's rustic lasses, and Topham's Irish
groups, and Alfred Fripp's dark-eyed Italian monks and Campagna
peasants, are as much gazed at as Richardson's sunny landscapes or
Bentley's breezy seas.
Five minutes' walk takes us to the new society. No lack of landscape
here; but it is inferior to that in the rival institution, and its attractions

are eclipsed by ambitious pictures of historic or fictitious interest; the
scene almost always laid in the picturesque streets or rooms of a
mediæval city, and the groups marvels of display in the matter of the
painting of armour, arms, and the gorgeous velvets, minivers, and
brocades of feudal grande tenue. See Mr Edward Corbould. He is sure
to be as picturesque and chivalrous as possible. There is the very ring
of the rough old times in his caracoling processions of ladies and
knights, or his fierce scenes of hand-to-hand fight, with battered armour,
and flashing weapons, and wounded men drooping from their steeds.
Or he paints softer scenes--passages of silken dalliance and love; ladies'
bowers and courtly revels in alcoved gardens. Mr Haghe is equally
mediæval, but more sternly and gloomily so. He delights in sombre, old
Flemish rooms, with dim lights streaming through narrow Gothic
windows, upon huge chimney-pieces and panellings, incrusted with
antique figures, carved in the black heart of oak--knights, and squires,
and priests of old. Then he peoples these shadowy chambers with
crowds of stern burghers, or grave ecclesiastics, or soldiers 'armed
complete in mail;' and so forms striking pieces of gloomy
picturesqueness. Figure-paintings of a lighter calibre also abound.
There is Mr John Absolon, who is in great request for painting figures
in panoramic pictures; Mr Lee, whose graceful rural maidens are not to
be surpassed: Mr Warren, whose heart is ever in the East; and Mr Mole,
who loves the shielings of the Highland hills. Landscape, though on the
whole subordinate to genre pictures, is very respectably represented;
and the lady-artists usually make a good show on the screens,
particularly in the way of graceful single figures, and the prettinesses of
flower and fruit painting.
We can merely mention the Society of British Artists and the National
Institution of Fine Art. Both are mainly composed of the