Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Critical Notices Of The Literature Of The Last Three Months,
of warmth and depth Avhich speaks of thinness , poverty , and starvation . It is even discernible in tho water colours , although the unavoidable ruggedness of the latter mode of painting secures it in a great degree from the strictures which in our ignorance we may perhaps be passing upon what the taste and knowledge of more competent judges deem perfection . We defy a man to feel warm in the Royal Academy , for instance , so long as there are HuntsStansfieldsMaclisesCoopersor even
Landmany , , , , seers , about him . And yet these may be , and no doubt are , the first painters of which England can boast , and , in good truth , she has every reason to be proud of them . Ansdell and Roberts are , it is true , of sonie-Avhat warmer blood , though inferior perhaps as mere artists ; and Turner was , in spite of his many eccentricities , a valuable guide in what we persist in calling the right direction . We cannot , however , but praise the increase of poetic feeling in the conception and treatment of subjects .
Every year most satisfactorily proves , beyond a doubt , that the artist is again asserting for his art its independence , and is again endeavouring to remove it from the region of the mechanical into that of the imaginative and the intellectual . Painting is indeed the handmaiden to thought . It should lead to it , adorn , and suggest it . Mere faultless drawing is not painting in the sense iu which Turner , Maclise , or Hunt view it . Fidelity in them yields to spiritualitand we trace elaborateleven in the
suby , y , serviency of details and of minor incidents , the one leading idea and single purpose Avhich give to their pictures an aspect and attribute so eminently poetic and spiritual . In their hands horrors lose all loathsomeness , misery is no longer squalid , or jollity sensual . To enumerate all the pictures in the several exhibitions which are worthy of praise would be an endless task . Many of them are deserving of actual study , and by far the greater
majority evidence an onward movement towards a true and correct appreciation of the first great principles of art , which if persisted in will achieve for England an equal if not a greater triumph than that which we trust her arms are destined to reap in the defence of right against the wrong sought to be effected by the aid of unscrupulous might . The opening of the Crystal Palace is an event in the history of art and science which it would ill become us to pass over in silence ; and although we cannot hope to describe the inauguration of this trulwonderful and
y altogether unprecedented enterprise , or the ceremony of its devotion by royalty itself to the work of making men wiser and better , we can give our readers a faint although necessarily a very imperfect view of the beauty and majesty of this glittering monument of the genius of man . From every hill in the neighbourhood of London the Sydenham Palace is distinctly visible , and its complication of curved lines , AA rought-iron work , and delicate tracery , form a fitting introduction to the interior . The nave
is flanked by painted iron columns , round Avhich the most beautiful and rare among climbing plants are clinging , and in front of them statuary and sculpture , from every part of Europe , present at a glance the most striking cozip-d ' osil that we have ever witnessed . It is , in fact , the marriage of Nature and Art . Immediately under the central transept is our old friend the crystal fountain . Every here and there are staircases of majestic proportions leading to the front gallerywhich entirel
, goes y round the nave and all the transepts . Beneath this are the several courts ; on the one side those dedicated to the representation of cosmopolitan architecture , and on the other , scarcely less beautiful , are arranged those in which the different productions and wares of different places are collected . As yet , but few of the counters in the galleries are furnished . From tho first gallery the visitor ascends to the higher one , until ho reaches
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Critical Notices Of The Literature Of The Last Three Months,
of warmth and depth Avhich speaks of thinness , poverty , and starvation . It is even discernible in tho water colours , although the unavoidable ruggedness of the latter mode of painting secures it in a great degree from the strictures which in our ignorance we may perhaps be passing upon what the taste and knowledge of more competent judges deem perfection . We defy a man to feel warm in the Royal Academy , for instance , so long as there are HuntsStansfieldsMaclisesCoopersor even
Landmany , , , , seers , about him . And yet these may be , and no doubt are , the first painters of which England can boast , and , in good truth , she has every reason to be proud of them . Ansdell and Roberts are , it is true , of sonie-Avhat warmer blood , though inferior perhaps as mere artists ; and Turner was , in spite of his many eccentricities , a valuable guide in what we persist in calling the right direction . We cannot , however , but praise the increase of poetic feeling in the conception and treatment of subjects .
Every year most satisfactorily proves , beyond a doubt , that the artist is again asserting for his art its independence , and is again endeavouring to remove it from the region of the mechanical into that of the imaginative and the intellectual . Painting is indeed the handmaiden to thought . It should lead to it , adorn , and suggest it . Mere faultless drawing is not painting in the sense iu which Turner , Maclise , or Hunt view it . Fidelity in them yields to spiritualitand we trace elaborateleven in the
suby , y , serviency of details and of minor incidents , the one leading idea and single purpose Avhich give to their pictures an aspect and attribute so eminently poetic and spiritual . In their hands horrors lose all loathsomeness , misery is no longer squalid , or jollity sensual . To enumerate all the pictures in the several exhibitions which are worthy of praise would be an endless task . Many of them are deserving of actual study , and by far the greater
majority evidence an onward movement towards a true and correct appreciation of the first great principles of art , which if persisted in will achieve for England an equal if not a greater triumph than that which we trust her arms are destined to reap in the defence of right against the wrong sought to be effected by the aid of unscrupulous might . The opening of the Crystal Palace is an event in the history of art and science which it would ill become us to pass over in silence ; and although we cannot hope to describe the inauguration of this trulwonderful and
y altogether unprecedented enterprise , or the ceremony of its devotion by royalty itself to the work of making men wiser and better , we can give our readers a faint although necessarily a very imperfect view of the beauty and majesty of this glittering monument of the genius of man . From every hill in the neighbourhood of London the Sydenham Palace is distinctly visible , and its complication of curved lines , AA rought-iron work , and delicate tracery , form a fitting introduction to the interior . The nave
is flanked by painted iron columns , round Avhich the most beautiful and rare among climbing plants are clinging , and in front of them statuary and sculpture , from every part of Europe , present at a glance the most striking cozip-d ' osil that we have ever witnessed . It is , in fact , the marriage of Nature and Art . Immediately under the central transept is our old friend the crystal fountain . Every here and there are staircases of majestic proportions leading to the front gallerywhich entirel
, goes y round the nave and all the transepts . Beneath this are the several courts ; on the one side those dedicated to the representation of cosmopolitan architecture , and on the other , scarcely less beautiful , are arranged those in which the different productions and wares of different places are collected . As yet , but few of the counters in the galleries are furnished . From tho first gallery the visitor ascends to the higher one , until ho reaches