An ‘Average' Academy

The Speaker, 30 April 1892, pages 528-529, 1,651 words

The question that seemed to interest everyone most on Wednesday morning was whether the Academy was or was not an average Academy. I confess that the curiosity of the critics on this point surprised me. I never feel any curiosity about averages. The exception is sometimes sublime, but the average is always remorselessly dull and disagreeable. If we could suppress, obliterate, and deliver ourselves for ever of the average! If there were no average in art, in poetry, in fiction, in plays, in man, in woman, above all, in Academicians! – where alas, all is average. But if everything in life were exceptional I suppose we should have no opportunity of studying the stream of tendency. A fair stream, no doubt – in places, but somewhat muddied after flowing through the brains of forty Academicians. So we will avoid the stream of tendency, trying, by a less solemn route, to arrive at some conclusion regarding this year's exhibition.

Last year's exhibition contained two or three masterpieces – Mr. Orchardson's portrait of a man in yellow clothes and Mr. Sargent's portrait of a Spanish dancer – therefore last year's exhibition was extraordinary. But this year's exhibition contains nothing that can be compared with those beautiful portraits; so I suppose this Academy is an average Academy. In the first room I noticed at once a small picture of two mowers at work in a very flowery meadow. The sky is deep and lowering – a sultry summer sky, a little unpleasant in colour, but true; at the end of the meadow the tall trees gleam as if thunder were in the air. This is a picture by Mr. Clausen. I do not often like his work, but this picture seems to me to be the best thing he has done. The handling is woolly and unpleasant, but handling can be overlooked when a canvas exhales a deep sensation of life. The two men are well in the atmosphere, and their movement is admirably expressed. I should have said their movements, for the men mow differently – one man is older than the other. The difficulty of the trousers has been overcome by generalisation – the garment is not a portrait, copied patch by patch. The picture has depth – in a word, it is a picture. On the opposite wall I saw a sea-piece by Mr. Henry Moore. There is light upon the water, and the movement of the clouds, that the wind winnows, has been seized, but the clouds are hard and disagreeable. In the same room there is a picture by Mr. G. Leslie, R.A., "The Rose Queen." This picture seems to me to be admirably suited to please the stupidest and most uneducated part of the population. Opposite hangs a picture by Mr. Waterhouse, a "Circe poisoning the sea." I suppose I must admit that it is well drawn and well painted, but it bores me dreadfully. In the next room there are two pictures by Sir Frederic Leighton, P.R.A. I have never denied either talent or learning to Sir Frederic, but he seems utterly unable to distinguish between what is good and what is bad in his own work; and this is all the more unfortunate as I know few painters whose work is so unequal. In these two pictures he seems to me to have gone lower than he ever went before, and "The Garden of the Hesperides," in the next room, is one of his best pictures. Before leaving the second room I remarked a picture of a game of tennis which reminded me of a beautiful picture by Mr. Lavery, exhibited some five or six years ago in the Academy. I have never forgotten the first tennis picture; I wish the second were as good.

In Room 3 there is a large picture by Mr. Watts. It is unkind to look at it twice, and, remembering what the painter has done, it would be unpardonable to write one word of disparagement or ridicule. Not very far away I noticed a fine landscape by Mr. Alfred Parsons. It seems to me to be by far the best work this painter has done, and it certainly is one of the best, if not the best, landscape in the Academy. The brook that flows through the orchard is perfectly drawn, and the blossoms on the apple-trees are equally well drawn, and in their masses. No one draws a bunch of flowers or grasses like Mr. Parsons; where he often fails is in the values, but here I have no fault to find.

The place of honour has been given to the President's "Garden of the Hesperides." The striking merit of the picture is in the arabesque, which is charming and original. The maidens are not dancing, but sitting round their tree. On the right there is olive gown, in the middle the usual strawberry-cream drapery, on the left a purple drapery. The brown water in the foreground balances the white sky, and the white birds in it – diminutive swans – are most happy. The faces of the women are charming in colour, and were it not for the strawberry-cream garment in the middle of the picture, I would feel inclined to say that this picture is as good as anything Sir Frederic has done. A little further on we find a landscape by Sir J.E. Millais, R.A. Sir John had great talent; he sold it to the highest bidder, and now he has none to sell. Many a talent perishes on the scaffolding of a great house. Another picture in Room 3 is Mr. Orchardson's picture of Napoleon dictating the account of his campaigns. It is surprising that a man of such great talent as Mr. Orchardson should waste time narrating anecdotes when he might be painting portraits. Two small figures and a small table in a large canvas, a great simplicity in the surroundings, and all the points of character insisted upon with the view to awakening the spectator's curiosity, and the whole conceived and executed in that pale yellow tint which seems to be the habitual colour of Mr. Orchardson's mind. When I turned from this picture my eye was caught by a picture by Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A. I should not be surprised to learn one day that this R.A. had invented a method of painting by machinery. For one set of years, it is true, the rejected lover goes out on the right: for another set of years he goes out on the left; but he wears the same costume, and stands looking back in the same attitude; in the lovers themselves, and in the garden, I have never been able to discover any change. Mr. Stone's palette knows neither change nor modification, and that is a pity; for it is not more entertaining than a cheap wall-paper. Distributed through this and the adjoining rooms there are quite a number of portraits by Mr. Herkomer and Mr. Fildes. As one walks they flit by like shop-windows, but if one stops they stare like shop-windows – like empty shop-windows.

Room 4 is remarkable for Mr. Stanhope Forbes' large picture of "Forging the Anchor." No doubt the painter has realised certain effects of firelight: the difficulties that he set himself to solve were immense, and I suppose that it is meritorious not to shirk but to plod steadily through difficulties; and it is quite obvious that Mr. Stanhope Forbes has plodded. He has worked as hard as any one of his smiths, but the picture is without charm, without interest, and as heavy as the anchor that is being forged.

Mr. Swan exhibits a couple of leopards drinking. The animals fill nearly the entire canvas, the corners being filled in with some casual vegetation. The group is effective, and the eye is glad to rest on it, but not for long: it does not compare with the leopards he exhibited last year. A little further on there is another picture by Mr. Swan, a lion and his family out hunting at early morning. The sky is all yellow, and the tawny animals are very still. The picture is good, but Mr. Swan has done better. Still further on, in another room, there is a picture by Mr. Albert Moore. It is very beautiful, but somehow the usual stress and enchantment of his work does not seem to be here. I dare say that the picture loses in its present surroundings. The two greens are very beautiful, or, to be more exact, the repetition of the same green on both sides of the picture is very harmonious. Wandering on, I noticed "The Annunciation," by Mr. Arthur Hacker. This is just one of those modern pictures which inspire in the critic a desire to run to Mr. Frith, to Mr. Faed, to Mr. Sidney Cooper; to the very worst of our dear "old masters," for never did they perpetrate such badness; such barren nonsense was unknown in their day.

Wandering on I met with more landscapes and more portraits, and then the Academy seemed to me like a great library in which there was nothing but shilling shockers. Last year there was in one of these rooms a beautiful portrait by Mr. Sargent of a lady in a shot-silk dress. Everyone spoke of the Spanish dancer, but to my mind the lady in the shot-silk dress is one of Mr. Sargent's best portraits. Be this as it may, it is quite certain that there is nothing in these last rooms this year like the lady in the shot-silk dress; and I would commend to the attention of the Academicians the necessity of a couple of good pictures in Rooms X. and XI. One wants a good curtain speech in a picture exhibition as much as in a theatre. G.M.