“The Exhibition Season”

247 The exhibition term has closed, and it may Le said with results in a great measure satisfactory, when it in remembered that the extraordinary occasion of last season must have absorbed largely of the means usually appropriated to the purchase of works of Art. The prosperity of the prófession of Art in more tremulously susceptible of disturbance from remote causes than the well-being of any other vocation. Pahiters have as little to do with a general election as any class of men, but nevertheless a large section of them has been injuriously affected by the late dissolution of parliament ; Lu short their profession in the first to suffer from the slightsst social excitement, and the last to acknowledge a re-establishment. But yet with the usual amount of grumbling against public preferences, it in admitted that a very great proportion of the best works are sold. Not to speak of commissioned pictures, those which are first disposed of are generally productions of artists of a certain reputation. It in often a long time before patrons are taught to understand and relish meritorious originalities; these therefore having appended to them an unknown name, are overlooked until the expression of painters themselves begins to be heard in their favour. Such works at the end of the season most frequently become temporarily the property of dealers ; this in the channel through which they come into the market. The eclat of possessing a picture by this or that celebrity operates injuriously towards the rising members of the profession ; such works may be purchased with real enthusiasm, but in a majority of cases their true merits could not be signalised by their possessors, who see only the name written on the canvas. But merit in never without patronage, it were only to be wished that purchasers of works of Art could at once discriminate and pronounce for themselves without waiting to learn that the productions of men of promise were really “safe investments.” The number of works of Art exhibited during the season forms a total of 4756, as the contents of professional exhibitions. The catalogue of the old masters at the British Institution, numbers 151, and that of the Amateur Society, 292. The number of works of Art exhibited for sale in incredible until we come to the indisputable figures, and during the last ten years the yearly increase has been at a large ratio, but the increase has served only to multiply rejections, because our older institutions have never contemplated increase. It has beeu said that the number of rejections by the Academy was nearly equal to the number that was hung. Where space in limited there must be a large remainder of unexhibited works, but many of the rejected pictures aro so much superior to others that are hung, that it in difficult to estimate the scale whereby judgment in rendered. Setting aside all question of prices for uncommissioned pictures as resulting from ulterior agreement, the value of the worka exhibited in the Royal Academy this year, at the low average of 40l. each, yields a result of 50,680l. The British Institution exhibited 544 works, which, at as average of 30l, each, gives 16,320l. And the Society of British Artists exhibited 670 productions, the registered value of which might be 19,000l. The value of the exhibition of the National Institution may be set down at 11,500l.; that of the Old Water Colour Society at 8000l. ; and that of the New Society at 7000l. To these may be added 7000l. for the exhibition of sketches at the Old Water Colour Cfallery, and the result in 128,000l. as the presumed value of works of Art professionally exhibited this season. Of this large sum it may be thought that but an inconsiderable per ccutage in immediately realisable ; it in true that a great proportion of works returns to the hands of the artists, but not less true in it that every picture of a certain degreo of excellence in sure to be sold, and even the inferior and ordinary classes of works are disposed of at adjust equivalent. The annals of the Old Water Colour Society afford example of unparalleled success in exhibition ; it frequently occurs that their sales leave, at the end of the season, but a small proportion of their catalogue to return to the artists, and this remnant is, perhaps, immediately transferred to the portfolios of dealers. We have seen every work of Art that has been hung in the London exhibitions during the last fourteen years—a period memorable in the Art-history of our school, and which has produced worka that must ever bo remembered by the most xmimpressionable intelligence. These beautiful creations fiit by us from year to year in increasing numbers, and, though not forgotten, are very rarely seen again. They are distributed, and even some of the most valuable serve to enhance small private collections of modern British Art, formed by persons who are gratified rather by the possession of such works than by the reputation of dilettante collectorsliip. The absurd and ignorant craving for works by the old masters has wrought its own cure—having been fittingly supplied by the admirable forgeries of Koine, Naples, Bologna, Florence, the Quartier des Art.i in Paris, and the Quartier des Arts (that is, Wardour-street) in London : and with those who thus purchase a vulgar and a spurious distinction, there can be no sympathy, when they shall become convinced of the real value of their possessions. A new class of Art-patrous has of late years arisen; those who, seeking investments in pictures, suffer, as to their commercial hearts, transmutation into ardent lovers of the beautiful. But to revert to the exhibitions,—we find that 170 of the works in the lloyal Academy are by members and associates of that body ; the number 248is small, but we should be sorry to be compelled to estimate works of Art only numerically, were there not causes why we do not see moro of the labours of those whose works it in always agreeable to contemplate. That there in a bygone school in the Academy cannot be doubted. Every year affords us examples of the rapid declension of certain men who are but students of Art, standing in opposition to others who are yet disciples of nature. In allusion to the latter, the now’ aged Cornelius beautifully says, that “the mind of the oldest painter in yet fresh, as long as he listens to the dictates of nature.” Evidences of effort are on the side of the younger members of the body, but from some others the bloom and odour of freshness have departed; and yet these believe that they are still rising ; they do rise in one sense,—it in in the manner of those who are “shelved.” The “outsiders” have this year had a greater share of the line and its adjacent spaces than we ever remember to have seen accorded to them ; this in a contingency effected by the works in the Houses of Parliament. Tho quality of the figure compositions in immeasurably superior to the landscape pictures ; indeed, of late years, the school has been retrograding in landscape, and in sculpture the catalogue in miserably deficient. Among us, busts and monumental compositions are the sculptor’s staff of life; this in sufficiently shown this year. The great attraction to the sculpture cellar was its agreeable coolness ; there were texts and even sermons in some of the monumental stone and plaster, but the poets had no corner there ; even jaunty rhyme had been a relief. We are unwilling to signalise the so-called “pre-Raffaellito” element farther than to say, that w’hen its professors thoroughly understand what they aspire to, their works—without the crude asperities which render them repulsive to all save a section of the speculative public—will receive ample praise for the merits by which they may be characterised. In the pretensions of this section of the profession there in nothing new ; they essay to naturalise among us the feeling which was called “vor-Kafïaeïisch ” by the studeutsof the clay forty years ago; by all of whom it has been abandoned, save by Overbeck, and by him practised only in a modified form. The architects have formed an exhibition of their own ; this has given more space, but the architectural room in not considered a Wal-halla, by no means a Temple of Fame, but a hall of torture, not less to be deprecated than the Octagou. The exhibition without contained very many admirable productions, and of the majority of the Acadcmy we may say, in the manner of Sir Hoger de Coverley, that their productions, when we see tbem, would be the better of a little more enterprise.