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Leader (1850-1860), 5th July 1856, Edition 1 of 2, Page 644

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      Untitled Article

      minimum of labour arid a maximum of wages" means a very high , rate of SSSTLd a very low rate of labour- A * Catechism of Munc , by Gertrude Place ( Bosworth ) ; Physicians and Physic , by Dr . James G . S . mpson ( A . and C . Black ) ' , A Vindication ofthe Organ , by the Rev , A .. Cromar ( A ^ and C . Blac ^ -sensible and well-aVgued ; and Pictures of Nature Bound Malvern , by Edwin Lees ( Malvern : Lamb ) , may be left to find their way into the pirticular circles which they are designed to please , mform , or trouble . As £ literary fragment , Mr . C . Mitchell Charles ' s Alfien : his Life , Adventures , and Works ( Xttiapman and Hall ) , is worth the attention of the Italian scholar , and , generally , of readers of Italian literature . It is a pleasant * thoughtful essay , not graceful in style , or worth much as a criticism , but interesting as a sketch of biography . Meistter Karl ' s Sketch-Book , by C . Or . Leland ( frubner ) , is a fantastic amalgamation of prose and prosody , ot

      legends , jokes , impertinences , ranaom gossip , vx . un . vyt > , uauawwwuo , « vtations , amid which the reader may or may not find that which is good for his constitution . A second volume of The Annals of England : an Epitome of English History ( Parker ) , compiled from contemporary writers , the rolls of Parliament , and other public records , may be noticed , with a third series of the work entitled British Eloquence ( Griffin and Co . ) - This contains literary addresses by Mr . Layard , Mr . S . "Warren , the Duke of Argyll , and other popular lecturers . Sir Robert Peel has not been invited to contribute his epic of Sea-sickness . The United States : their Constitution and Power , by Charles Browne ( Kent and Co . ) , is a volume written for popularity , and likel y to attain it . It gives the right sort of information , iu the proper way , and at the proper time .

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      MADLLE . JOHANNA WAGNER . The climax of Madlle . Johanna Waonbb ' s reputation in England may be said to have been attained at the moment when a court of law condemned the celebrated prima donna of Berlin to silence in this metropolis , and when her high dramatic reputation , suspended between the two Opera houses , preserved all that enchantment which belongs to the distant , and all that splendour which is eagerly bestowed upon the unknown . We cannot say that the result of her actual appearance has been of a nature to satisfy expectation , or to justify the excitement and the litigation that signalized her conspicuous non-appearance some years ago . Apparently , the musical palate of a London audience is very differently formed from that of the Berlin public , who gave Madlle . Johanna Wagner her fame , and , without pretending at this morntfet to decide on the superior acuteness of either , we will content ourselves with frankly confessing our entire sympathy- with the taste of the London audience . The memorable and somewhat disrespectful letter of Wagnek pere , in which that gentleman expressed his belief that the English were no judges of music , and only good for money , finds a melancholy comment in the fact that the enthusiastic admirere of Jenny Lini > are tlic cold and astonished sufferers under Johanna Wagner .

      No one , it is true , would believe , from the tone of our most powerful organs of public criticism ( withono signal and important exception ) , that Madlle . Waonek had not created an extraordinary sensation in London . But it is not our fault that the criticism of almost all our contemporaries has degenerated into a dilution of vapid and unnecessary eulogy of all new singers , good , bad , or indifferent , who have found their way into the paradise of puffery . It is our humble but earnest duty to speak what we conceivo to bo the truth . Wo are , therefore , bound to record the fact that Madlle . Johanna Wagner has narrowly escaped a total fiasco in this country . Whether the effect would have been the reverse had she made her first appearance in German opera we arc not enabled to conjecture ; we think it would have been impossible to have selected a more

      unfavourable introduction thun / Capuletti ed I Montecchi . This feeble and trashy opera , with , its meagre and effeminate pasticcio of worn-out reminiscences of tunes strung on to the Billicst traveBty of a beautiful story , is as dull and worthless a performance as any audience can desire . The weakness of the opera is rendered monstrous by its Teutonic interpreters . Three Germans to sing Bellini 1 Madlle . Wagnek looks like Minjokva in her armour , with her tall and lithesome figure , and tlio graco and case of her bounding stops ; but the Incessant attitude-striking , after the manner not of sculpture , but of those prints of penny warriors bo dear to children ( Id . plain , ad . coloured ) , fatigues tho admiring , and diverts the doubtful critic . There has been bo much nonsense talked about the statuesque , that it is time to

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      EXHIBITION OE THE ROYAL ACADEMY . XHE LANDSCAPES . This creation in which we live has no aspect present to our senses which has not its influence over our life ; and it is through that manifold influence that we acknowledge a common life , even with the vegetable world , if not with the very elements that build the globe , or sway and change its unstable surface . The " powers of nature , " as we vaguely call them , are apparent to us , momently , in the effect which they produce on what we call" inanimate nature , " by which we mean nature with a life unlike our own . It is the business of the landscape painter to portray these effects ; he is successful in his portraiture if he is faithful in copying what he sees , but to see correctly is not always an easy task . He is powerful in proportion as , by the help of simple pigments and plain fidelity to nature , he makes us conscious of the greatest of natural powers through their pictorial " effects . "

      We have never stood among the hills looking upon the stream that flows from Llvaldwal in Carnarvonshire ; but whether it is an exact portrait of the scene or not , it is quite certain that the cabinet picture by A . W . Hunt presents rock , grass , green mountain , air , and running water ; and that the artist has so completely seized the effect produced by different texture , different position , altered shape , intervening air and glancing light , that within the space of the frame the pigments are entirely subdued , and the eye rests upon the rocky mountain side . The eye is cheated in its estimate of space and size exactly as it is in nature . On the grass lowland between the spectator and the mountain are sheep grazing ; and by the miniature size to which the animals are reduced you see the distance that you span ; and then the vast extent of the mountain expands upon the comprehension .

      Something of this effect of space is produced in Stanfieu >' s wreck in the open sea , " The Abandoned "—a nameless hulk drifting on the billows . Stanfikld has caught the varying' shapes into which tho water is tossed : you can see in one place the sullen roll of the swell ; in another you can almost hear the sharp clash where two waves meet and toss the summit perpendicularly upwards ; you seem to feel the sweep of wind that is driving the clouds in broken masses . But the artist—perhaps he now has a right to acknowledge the fatigue of lengthened years—has not been able so completely to subdue the pigment that its character is entirely lost . The touch of light upon the foam of the waves , especially where they are lost in the general glare of mist behind the hull , is too heavy . The texture of the medium usurps the place of natural effect ; the eye rests upon a solid dead white ; and , so far , the effect of the whole is marred .

      The difficulty with which the artist has to contend consists mainly in following these endless changes in the form , position , tints , and shades of nature . The Naturalist style has introduced a manner of endeavouring to give an individuality even in the innumerable groups of weeds and foliage . Redgrave took up this manner some years back , and pursued it with much promise , but he has not been able to develop the manner into a complete mnsterhood . He fails in two particulars . In the first place , there is a great deal too much of uniformity in the set of the leaves and the stalks of tho trees . In the picture entitled " Little Rod Ridingnood , " it will be observed that the stalks of the herbage on the ground are too parallel . The same tendency to parallelism is seen in the leaves of the apple-tree under which Newton is sitting in Mr . Hannah's clever picture , where the dull effect of an autumn is laudably attempted . The leaves which cluster round the branch to the right hand of tho trunk of the

      tree fall into positions somewhat after tlio manner of the pot-hooks and hangers of the young writer . Now tho leaves upon the stalk of an applo-trcc are arranged , not only laterally upon the branch , but in a spiral form , causing to tho view of tho spectator an endless variety in the set of the leaves , whose stalks constantly depart from a now circle ; and tho varying in size completes the changefulnoas of the spiral arrangement . In such foliage , though there is a principle of regularity , nothing resembling parallelism is possible . In Mr . Redgrave ' s . " little Red Ridinghood , " again , the whole of the green foliage on tho trees is upon a levej . tint , with comparatively little variation . We know that in a broad sense this levelncss of tint will suggest itself to the spectator ; but if he looks into the matter , he will find a diversity in the gradations which absolutely defy the measurement , almost defy conception by tho mind , while tho very eyes are looking .

      Both those errora may be corrected by that great teacher the photograph . This beautiful instrument is becoming gradually applied to increased uses , but we are especially delighted to seethe manner in which it is illustrating landscape . You may aee specimens in many places * the walker in the streets can scarcely miss then * in the windows of the printseUer . Beautiful examples may be seen any day in the window of Mr . Sfoonbb , the prSn ^ aeller at tho corner of

      Southampton-street , in the Strand . In that window , lately , there has been a photograph portrait of a piece of wall with a chesnut-tree hanging over it , and fern on the ground beneath . Here the artist who desires to note the endless variety , coupled with the regularity of vegetable life , can see it fixed for his tnore steady contemplation . In the same picture he will observe how the light of nature masses the light leaves together , here and there presenting the character of the individual forms , in other places merging the individual forms in broader heaps , and Again separating the different masses of the foliage by broad distinctions of tint—full light , deep shade , and half-tint between . . , _ One of the prettiest touches in Mr . Wallts ' s dead " Chatterton" is the distant landscape seen partly through the dull arid dirty glass and partly through the pureair of the open lattice , with a flower interposed between the spectator and the light . It is in the flower that Mr . Wauib ' s apprehension of nature ' s ' endless variety has failed . The leaves of the rose-tree are in too many instances presented parallel to the plane of the picture , as they might be in a hortus siccus .

      In nature the leaf is presented in so many directions , that to the eye the form is incessantly altered and disguised . But the mind , constantly turning to the mechanical and the typical form of what it " knows" on reflection , is as often dragged back to give the leaf in its diagram shape ; and the eye itself , which " sees , " can scarcely restrain the mind , and therefore the hand , from that me cbanical tendency to the inorganic in lieu of the organic . It is real mastery when the artist overcomes this tendency , and equals nature in its diversity . M 11 . 1 . AI 8 gives us the example , in his " Autumn Leaves , "—in which the effect of tlie autumn sunset grows upon us as we see it again : the dried leaves collected into masses have fallen into the same endless variety that they would show in nature—they display the same endless form , of tint , and of shade . tablished should

      It is not to be expected that artists of es manner entirely profit by the progress of schools that are rising up around them . The " Breakwater of Plymouth , " by F . R . LuE , has many excellences . In order to give that effect of space , in order to display the contrast between the vehement water outside and the calmer water within , it was necessary that the artist ' s mind should be able to conceive the motion of the winds and waters with their incessant change of shape and tint , even in the fixed things subject to their action , and he has in great part succeeded , but not entirely . The waters within , especially , are too regular , too much arranged diamond , fashion for the truth ; and the intractable white lead has not let him master it so completely as to imitate the driven foam of the broken wave . Withebjngton paints glens with peeps between the trunks of trees , and beneath the leaves , showing the distance beyond or the sky above ; he too has profited by the incessant movement of the day , but lie retains something of his set manner . Still " The Glen , Chudleigh , Devon , " is amongst his best works , in a school that draws its life from the very genius of Engrlish landscape . - _ .

      „ „ With all its power over contrasts of colouring , giving the effect of brilliancy , J . LiNNEXi . cannot conquer a tendency to arrange all his forms in crumbled style , as if the texture of the world were a kind of pastry ; while his tints have a metallic glare , as though he were compelled to work with pigments used in decorating tea-trays . His harvest sunset has a powerful effect , but the forms of the rutted road are all arranged like piecrust border , while road , and grass , and cloud , and water , and sky , glare like tinseL There is a far greater command of light in Millais ' s " Autumn Leaves ; " still more in Sidney Cooper ' s dark meadow Bcene with cattle , " After Sunset . " Cooper lives abroad , among the elements ; he does not study nature in

      cultivated gardens . He knows how the ever deviating surface of the earth defie 3 the level of the engineer , and by faithfully copying just what nature shows him , he sets before us a surface ever changing , but changing not too violentlyshadows that , dark and deep , are not black or impenetrable ; glows of sunset , rich and red , but not either blood-stained or metallic . By coming as close to this as his palette will let him , he cheats the eye and makes us see the very distance , —know the very air of the breezy meadow , the damp of the evening dew , —almost feel the atmosphere that makes the cattle hang their heads with willingness for sleep . There is the skill which rewards the true piety of the a rtist , and makes us recognize in his work something of the divine .

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  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), July 5, 1856, page 644, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2148/page/20/