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opinions , not your ' s . If I only echoed your thought , why should you invest sixpence in my lucubrations P And yet people often say to me , " I don't agree with you . " Apres ? I don't always agree with myself ! For instance , did I not last week tell you that
ROSE CHEEI had fallen off , was not the same actress , had . lost her charm , had broken her spell , had caused me to distribute my arsenic to an amatory , declamatory cat , whose only crime was that he was an " artist , " and would sing in my garden ? I told you so ; I now retract . What I then said requires modification , Rose is thinner , older , not so pretty , not so ingenuous ; but see her in Tin Ckangement de Main , and then say whether she is not charming , fascinating ! The Empress of Russia does not call for ingenuous naivete—she is not white muslin innocence at eighteen ; on the contrary , she must rather Seem the innocent serpent , But be the dagger under it .
( Is thai the precise quotation ?) She must be keen , calm , self-possessed , yet curious , loving , womanly , —and such was Rose ! This very pleasant and amusing piece ( known to the Adelphi public as " The Lioness of the North "—et quelle lionne !) I saw her play some years ago , but on Monday last she was as captivating in it as ever , and I felt remorse at having hinted she was not firmly fixed on her throne of admiration . Vivian .
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THE QUAKTETT ASSOCIATION . The Second Concert of the Quartett Association was even more successful , and far more interesting than the first . It is impossible , in hearing Sainton , Piatti , Hill , and Cooper , not to be struck with the advantage of that intimate and constant brotherhood in art which lends to each performance a certain accent of entire and perfect unity . But my loadstar on this occasion , I may here ( as I sit alone with my lanrp ) confess without blushing , was Wilhelmine Clauss , that gentle and inspired g irl , whose fair , spiritual , and " ever harmless" looks ( like Shelley ' s sensitive plant in delicatest human shape)—whose fresh , open , guileless brow , on which the fine and sad insouciance of the true artist nature is mirrored like an
April sun—had taken me , heart , soul , and senses , captive ., when I beheld and listened to her at the first meeting of the Musical Union . Ah ! when she tosses back with an impatience wayward , yet serene , those caressing curls from her little angel's head , and after one quick upturned glance that seems to wait for the divine afflatus , bends tranquil , and possessed to touch the first note of some enchanting strain—you are her slave and worshipper then and evermore . She will haunt you like a memory . Such childlike , simple-natured innocence of feature in repose , such rapt intensity , almost of suffering , when abandoned to her art , I do not remember to have seen . Many critics more scientific and more calm , will tell you how classical the refinement , how irreproachable the j > urity , how finished the method , how brilliant and decided the accent of her style . But , beyond the extreme tranquillity and most subtle and tender grace , I would especially mention one quality which struck me especially in her
rendering of that Nocturne by Chopin . It is ( for I know no other name ) what the Italians would call , in speaking of the Plastic Arts , morbidezza . And this morbidezza does not forbid the airy freshness of that ever sparkling fountain—Youth ! I must not forget to mention how well Cooper led the Grand Quartett in a minor of Beethoven : in the Adagio of thanksgiving , and in the Recitativo , he surprised the audience into a murmur of delight . To speak of the other executants were quite superfluous . But let me say that I was unfortunately too late ^ to hear Mr . Macfarren ' s new Quartett in g minor , composed expressly for this society : and that my regret was increased by the reports I gathered from many in the room on the merits of this work of one of our most deservedly esteemed and most truly scientific musicians . I am glad to hear that the Quartett Association promises one entirely original work at each of their meetings : thus ministering to the progress of art while they cultivate the taste of the audience . Le chat-moakt .
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ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION" . ( Second Notice . ) Til 15 PKiE-EAPHAELITE BBBTHltEN . The key-problem of tho present exhibition undoubtedly is the Prco-Baphaelite question . If one wero'to seek tho life that there is in the painting , it might be found in that young and indiscreet school . Art needs no written canons ; criticism docs . Art can follow on its growth by the instinctive reasoning of successive artists ; but criticism , which defines the end and judges of tho means , must justify its grounds by defining its canons . $ till art possesses its canons , worked out in tho works of masters : and criticism only extracts tho canons from those works .
Imagination , indood , cannot bo critical , or olso it loses its impulse and becomes mechanical : criticism is retrospective , and disciplines tho mind for future labours , which accord with tho critical canon , not by taking thought , but by tho habit of thinking or perceiving according to a rocognised law ; and ovon whoro tho artist has not acted on a conscious critical law verbally uttered , like tho memoranda of Da Vinci , ho has acted on tho lex non scripta established in tho successes of tho masters boforohim . It is by this accumulation of skill , that art , too vast for one man to conquer , was acquired by a glorious succession of painters , and ono " stylo " grow out of another . sub
Stylo is an approved method of sotting forth certain objects or jects ; it degenerates into manner when the purpose of tho artist is , not to design a subject , and to do so after a given stylo , but to design a picture as a pretext for displaying the stylo . To adopt tho stylo of a great artist Booms to the lessor one a short cut to greatness ; but tho style of a giant becomes tho gratuitously afl'octod mannor of a dwarf . Indignation at modern mannerism seoms to have moved tho Pruo-Rophaelites : tracing tho mannor to Raphael , they thought to eliminate tho peccant clement by discarding his stylo . Recognising tho earnestness of the early painters , their endeavour to express groat intent being rondorod more apparent by the ditnuulty , tho Prto-Raphaolitos folt a sympathy with that honest
earnestness . Giotto , trying io he Raphael , they preferred to Raphael b cause in Raphael they saw the author of the degenerate artifices % modern design ; they discarded the accumulated wisdom of Giotto worthy successors , and aiming at the style of that Raphael before hist time , they struck out a mannerburlesquing his style , or that of inferio men . They painted , and they were laughed at ; they painted again , ob stinately , and were not laughed at so much ; for the stronger men amone them had advanced a little frojii their position . They paint still ; the laughter is dying away jjapd ^ tfthers are catching the manner . But the manner is growing into ia ~ style ; the Prse-Raphaelite Brethren have more modestly and informedly studied nature , and in her working out for themselves the canons , they find there what they might have found in till
works of Raphael and Titian , It is a slow and painful process , their selfdevelopment—needlessly slow and painful , and withal not so -wise as if they had a little more faith—an independent , self-relying faith , but still a faith , in the line of geniuses that have preceded them . However , they have got a warrant from If ature , and they are employing it well . ' In the works of their principal , John Millais , we find the matter of remarks which our space only permits us to indicate with brevity . His pictures are three—a portrait of Mrs . Coventry K . Patmore , the Death of Ophelia , and the Huguenot rejecting the badge of safety which his Catholic betrothed is urging upon him . In these pictures we discern t he traces of the old dogmatic denial of the faith heavy upon the young genius ; but he is escaping from it , and his success is as easy to identify with the anti-doffmatic portion of his work as the young bird from the
egg whence it is struggling . The idea of the Prse-Baphaelites is , to be " natural , " " real ; " not mannered . Real , without qualifications ; not real , though subject to the conditions of the medium in which they work ; but real , absolutely ; and the portrait before us we take to be meant as a real portrait . "We deny its reality . We have not the pleasure of knowing the original , but we deny on the external evidence : we venture to say that Mrs . Coventry K . Patmore does not convey the impression cdnveyed ^ by the portrait . If she does for a moment—which we are not in a position to deny , though it would be no very hazardous venture- ^ -look like that , it is but for a moment , and at the same time the life of voice , the sense of the observationsthe change of posture , keep alive the impression which w true of
, Mrs . Coventry 3 L Patmore . The painter can't paint the voice ; his pigments are not equal to the sense ; nis figure willnot alter its posture : it was the more incumbent on him , therefore , not to pillory his friend in a constrained attitude , which painfully calls for change ; not to transfix her in the only look of which she may be infelicitously capable . Suppose the portrait were like ? Why , then , so much the worse—more shame to him . There are a hundred other aspects in which you may catch Mrs . Patmore—as when she turns round to you , with a remark on the beauty of the scene ; or when she smiles approval of the best of children—which are infinitely more characteristic , infinitely more real , as conveying in the dumb eififfv the sr > eakiner likeness of that amiable and esteemed lady .
The portrait was painted under the nightmare of Prse-Raphaelism : John Millais himself feels a bashful mistrust of it—at least we assume that he must ; and so we will say no more about it . He is struggling to freedom in the Death of Ophelia . It is , indeed , somewhat distracting at first , to be p laced in front of all that lush prodigality of Spring . There is a twig , and there is another twig ; and there is a bough ; and there is water , deep , still , treacherous , below ; there is soft , silvery moss ; there is a tree trunk above , gnarled and twisted , and thrusting itself at you ; there are rushes , lank , fresh , and very green ; and there is ( by a fine sentiment of contrast ) a robnron the tree , piping his little anthem of full-throated joy , and muslin floating in the water , black and gloomy , as muslin in weeping peril of that sort but arubt
does look : it is all admirable for truth , power , attection , me insists upon it too much ; and when he plants you , as it were , successively , before each particular twig , and enters into a natural-historical article upon it , as an intelligent schoolmaster might in teaching his pupils on tho objective system , you do feel rather distracted and rather weary , nnd wish that you might come to the point . At last you do , and you turn grave and sad . Those two helpless hands , richly fleshed , but gentle as love and helpless as infancy—they are the hands of a woman , living , warm with life , but in some helpless plight . You see it in her face-it u Oniinlin .. n . fnir . linrmlnHS woman : a WOmanlv woman , full 01 life & ml
affectionableness ( if Johnson will forgivo us the word ) , with no cunning intellect to follow Hamlet ' s transcendental procrastinations—now crazea by dreams , and incapable of her own living senses—singing her death song , and floating down , gently and idly , to her " muddy death . " It is Ophelia , literally and wholly , as Shakespeare paints'her . Why distract us so lonu from that sweet singlo idcaP Why detain us with a curious pedantry c » eye and hand , over every loaf and stalk P You do not do it in nature ,: tnt centred idea , directly bright to tho mind , renders surrounding ob J T obscurer and remoter . The painter establishes tho same relation W ™ help of chiaroscuro , a device learned from nature . ^ But , says Raphaelitisrathere was no chiaroscuro before Raphael ' s time .
, It is beginning to appear , however , even to tho PraxRap haelite , whcnJi j condescends to the reign of Charles IX . of Franco ; for we nwwlg to see its benign shadow dawning in tho picture of the'Huguenot . J are leaves , and stalks too , and bricks moreover ; but either there ifl no ntuch of them , or the gentler shadows moderate the intensity ot tuo " ' » and attune tho whole to a broader harmony . There is , indeed , tua tu i brilliant volvotcloak , not less deep or brilliant than in nature \ W ^* P V y it scarcely detracts from tho matter in hand . And tlje matter m Jiana i » of the sweetest girl's faces you ever gazed upon . It is a beautitm « tri ^ in every way , subject , composition treatment all to ™*™ " * * ™ nro i inner hhuuiuouu
iriouung to tno Bringing onn me *«~ j i mist ' standing opposite each other , and close togother , breast to urcw »» only lovers can bo . Tho girl has boon tying tho white kerchiel roum i ^ lover ' s loft arm . His arms are round her ; ono hand , quite round noil and over hor shoulder , is gontly , and with a tender romonstronoo , w a away the kerchief j tho other hand caresses tho buck of Jior neau ,
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474 T H " E '^^ it ^ E ^ ' : ;" ., / - .,.. .: ' : / , f /; - ; - ' - : £ ^*^ 3 ^ o ^; :
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 15, 1852, page 474, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1935/page/22/
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