“The British Institution”

689 At the opening of cash successive season the taste for small pictures manifests itself with increased distinctness. Not only in this exhibition, but in every other, small pictures grow in number year by year ; and the fact has a particular significance, as indicating not only the direction of public taste, but in an eminent degree the status of those by whom the taste is cultivated. Large pictures are suitable only for large rooms, in which small ones are either lost, or look entirely dispropor-lioned to the spaccs in which they hang. With some exceptions, the patricians of our land have ceascd to patrcuize Art ; they have inherited their collections of ancient masters, and the “rawness” of modern works does not harmonize with old pictures. It is, therefore, for small rooms that these small compositions are painted ; and inasmuch as the very limitation of their abiding places brings them near the eye, they must be worked out with a minute and curious finish. And in their wide distribution these small works are found in localities wherein a taste for Tine Art would not be suspected to exist. On the walls of the British Institution we look in vain for even one example of the so-called “high Art,’” the boast of poor Haydon, and the lament of the ghosts of contemporary critics. All is now what Fuseli used to call negative art—it is genre passim. We have been accustomed to feel assured that there was ever a reserve of high Art force for special occasions. When it was necessary to decorate the New Houses of Parliament the men were not. wanting, but time has shown us that the best of them had yet to educate themselves up to their work. It is certain that we cannot soar impromptu either into history or immortal verse. When Haydon could refrain from speaking of himself there was more truth in his severity of language, in reference to what he called historical art, than in all that Stewart Newton said in contemptuous derogation of the necessity of a certain qualification to paint “high Art.” A man accustomed to paint small pictures paints a large picture in a small way. It may be thought that pre-Raffaellite Art has promoted the high finish of small pictures; it may have done so, to a certain extent, but much more has minute manipulation been insisted on by the uneducated eye, which appreciates finish more immediately than sentiment or effect. In small rooms small canvases are at once precipitated on the eye, which is flattered by prettiness and easy narrative. The painting of the present day is the liglit reading of the art, and light reading has ever been the most popular form both of art and literature. With the exception, then, of history and poetry, we find in the six hundred and forty-nine works in the present exhibition an ingenious variety, embracing examples of a wide cycle of legitimate subject-matter. Of figure and head painting there are some illustrious instances; in landscape there are masterly essays; some of the marine and animal pictures are unexeepl ionable ; and the grotesque abounds; but we miss from accustomed places the works of men who have been associated with the institution time out of mind. We sec no picture by any member of the Academy ; of the associates there are but two or three w hose names occur in the catalogue, and their works are of a subordinate character. Ycry recently, Roberts, Stanfield, Creswick, F. Goodall, and other notabilities in honours, have enriched these walls with works which were qualified to be accounted among their best ; and of a large class of distinguished men unconnected with the Academy—Sant, Faed, Le Jeune, &c., are “conspicuous” by their absence. Of the many effects of the supposed transition state of the Academy, this is perhaps one. At this moment more strenuous exertions are put forth for the distinction of the assoeiateship than have ever been made since the institution of the Academy, and this reserve of strength has impoverished the walls of the British Institution. There are, however, among the small pictures, to which allusion has been made, certain remarkable essays that shall be signalized in the course of the following observations.690