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The Art Student  Volume 1   Issue: 5  October 1886  Page: 98
 
 Notes
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Sibree, Mary (Hall, Marie) [1839-1887. UK. Illustrator/Painter]
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To our right, just above the road, stood the hotel, surrounded by trees, and looking over the loch. As we drove into the courtyard, the sunshine was lying on everything — the warm, mellow sunshine of late July; leaving deep, cool shadows under porch and verandah, and lighting up the masses of pink and yellow honeysuckle which grew round two sides of the courtyard, hiding the walls with a wealth of twining stem and leaves and flowers. It was like being set down in a corner of an old-fashioned garden, to come upon them growing so freely and fragrantly. The sun shone through them, giving new glow and depth to their colour, and touching with fresh transparency their petals where they opened wide and curled over. It lay on the slender tubes of half-opened flowers, the redness of buds, and the blue-greyness of the under side of leaves blown back by the wind. The evening stood out by reason of its perfect quietness. We rested, and forgot the rush and hurry and noise of the journey, and that we were tired. We lingered in the courtyard, and went clown to the shores of the loch, and sat on the low wall of a little bridge, at the side of the road, watching the changing colour of the sunset. The sky became clear yellow, the water looked like liquid gold, and between them lay the half circle of blue hills; some rushes, in the foreground, looked black against the gleam of the water, and there was no sound except that of the ripples breaking on the stones. Before we went in, the sky had deepened into scarlet at the horizon, and paled again to the clear faint colours of an opal. The last thing we saw was the water shining between the dark branches of the trees outside our windows. Next morning, when we started at six o'clock, every thing was covered with a thick white mist, which hid the loch and the hills, and weighed down the honeysuckle's with big drops of dew. But that was not my last glimpse of them, for when I came back, two months later, they were still blooming.


NOTES

A VENGEANCE OF JEANNE OF CASTILLE" — In one of the rooms where the autumn collection of pictures is exhibited, the spectator's eye is attracted to, and riveted upon, a canvas remarkable for the horror of its subject: a woman, naked, is held down upon the bed from which she has been dragged; the disordered clothes, her garments scattered about the floor, the carpet kicked up into a heap, show that she has struggled; but in vain, for her captors now hold her stretched between them: two human furies, with starved cruel faces, grip her arms drawn straight up and strained close to her head — the wrists have been tied together so that the fingers stick out stiff and bloodless: the face — how shall one describe it? Now silently shrieking with horror — distorted — almost without reason! A woman — an attendant, perhaps — throws her whole strength into her hands pressed down upon the middle of the body, her fingers kneaded into the flesh; and a loathsome creature, hot from the struggle, holds the feet which she has managed to cord together, and looks up with triumph like that of a dog to one who has so far escaped attention — a woman in blood-red garments, seated waiting with scissors in hand
The Art Student  Volume 1   Issue: 5  October 1886  Page: 99
 
 Notes
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until her victim shall be ready for her purpose. By her side stands another attendant — disgust and pity are mingled in her face.

The ghastly horror of this picture gives the artist no claim to rank among those who paint beauty for beauty's sake. Clever it is, well composed and well painted; but there is no beauty. The praise that might be bestowed upon the execution is kept back and unspoken by the disgust which the subject excites. The Classic School disowns well-grouped and admirably painted horrors.

But if the artist has not painted a beautiful picture, why has he conceived such a terrible scene, and worked it out with such hideous realism? Does he wish to show us the effects of an evil passion in a human being, and its inevitable consequences? That is a tenable position for the painter of what is unpleasing to take up: he had to do it to make plain some truth, to deter from wickedness by vividly placing the sin and its consequences before the spectator. If this was the artist's purpose, has he fulfilled it? In perfect word-painting or picture-painting, it is necessary that the attention of the hearer or spectator should not be drawn away from the central point of the story or picture, and fixed by any other incident. In representing such passions as Revenge and Jealousy, it is difficult not to lose oneself in portraying the sufferings and agonies of those upon whom the passion is wreaked; but the more this is done, the less forcibly and accurately is the effect of the passion on the subject of it shown — the more our emotions are stirred by the victim, the greater the difficulty in confronting the spectator with the evil passion itself. Anger shows itself in the distorted face of the angry man, not in the victim about to be felled by his outstretched arm. The blackness of the passion is lost sight of before the overwhelming and fearful disgust which creeps through our veins.

The victim has our whole attention — the woman with deadly revenge in her soul and the darkly concentrated face is of secondary importance; we do not realise her passion and the wickedness of it — we only realise the victim and the sickening torture that awaits her. The artist has failed in his undertaking, or, if he has succeeded, it is the success of the Pall Mall Gazette, where the fact that the author had a sufficiently true motive was forgotten in the mass of revolting detail.

He never meant to succeed — it was not his aim to paint a noble truth or to inspire a noble ambition. To paint horrors as vividly as his skilful hand and fertile imagination would allow — that was his purpose! He presents to us an imagination wallowing in morbid details, He makes us think of French painters who paint the Temptation of St. Anthony, merely to gratify their desire to paint a beautiful woman. He shows us women-harpies who live by cruelty, whose fingers are clawed in their cruelty, whose faces are inhuman. One redeeming touch there may be, but of that we are not certain. We loathe them all. The painter has not seized the instant when a moral might be taught from so brutal a revenge; but he has drawn out arid perpetuated the moment of final suspense and agony with a diabolical enthusiasm — gloating on the foul scene as he works each loathsome detail with a skill maddening in its perfection.

A more perfect way of representing Revenge, or the Jealousy which inspires Revenge, may be learnt from Mr. Watts's picture of "Mammon". The artist takes the evidences of a gross passion which he sees more or less developed in everyone, and welds the whole into a human form, — the type of Mammon for all time; and under his feet places his victims. Horrible, but not unwholesome. We are before the work of one greater than ourselves; but before the "Vengeance" we feel that, given the skill, we could do better. .

It may be said that an artist is justified in portraying an historical scene. Granted; but is it not degrading Art for a painter to devote his skill to revealing human frailty in all its nakedness? — to drag out from obscure history the blackest of mortal crimes, and exhibit them in
The Art Student  Volume 1   Issue: 5  October 1886  Page: 100
 
 Notes
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full daylight stripped of every redeeming feature? We had better keep them hidden, unless we have very strong reasons for such revelations. They can be of no interest or use to us. Let them remain in histories, where, surrounded with evidence, we shall be better able to judge them; not hang in glaring colours on our public walls.

THE BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY — An admirable collection of water-colours, by Mr. Walter Langley, is now on view in the Museum and Art Gallery. To present students of the Birmingham School of Art, this exhibition of Mr. Langley's works must be of especial interest, as it was there that he gained his Art instruction. In 1881 he was elected an Associate of the Society of Artists, and obtaining a commission for a year's work, he relinquished his partnership in a business which had never been congenial to him, and proceeded to Cornwall, where he found material to work upon thoroughly in sympathy with his artistic feeling. On the completion of this commission, he exhibited a picture at the Dudley Gallery, illustrating the line,

"Time moveth not, our being 'tis that moves."

This, being the first important work exhibited by him in London, created some little sensation. Upon the merits of this picture, Mr. Langley was, immediately after its exhibition, elected a Member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-colours. On the opening of the new galleries of this Society, he exhibited his picture entitled —

"For men must work, and women must weep,
Tho' storms be sudden and waters deep,
And the harbour bar be moaning."

In the Spring of 1884, "Among the Missing" — Mr. Langley's most important work — was exhibited at the Royal Institute, and secured for the artist a place among the foremost of our figure painters. In the same year he was elected a Member of the Birmingham Royal Society of Artists. He is also a member, and one of the originators of the Birmingham Art Circle.

The works now being exhibited show Mr. Langley at his very best, and also evidence how thoroughly he is master of the medium which he employs. We doubt if the artist will ever excel his picture, "Among the Missing", which we hope may find a permanent home in the Museum and Art Gallery.

Mr. J. C. Robinson, Surveyor of Her Majesty's Pictures, has lent a very fine and unique collection of carved stone capitals, which are arranged by the Venetian well-heads. These pilaster capitals of carved Istrian stone are part of a series which formerly ornamented the cortile of the Castello Di Mondolfo, near Fano, Italy, erected by Ferderigo, Duke of Urbino. The capitals are probably the work of Francesca Di Giorgio, a Siena sculptor (born 1439; died 1502), who executed the very elaborate decorations within the palace. The capitals, seventeen in number, are all different in design, and cannot fail to be of interest to the architectural student, to whose notice we commend this exhibit.

Mr. Robinson has also lent a very beautiful silver-gilt vase, with vine handles, which is placed in the centre of the Italian Gallery. It is from the hand of John Flaxman, and shows the classical spirit which he infused into English Art. Amongst other new acquisitions may be mentioned the large and fine bronze statue of "Buddha", and the black marble idol, with its richly-carved columns, which have been safely removed from Aston Hall to a securer and permanent resting-place in the Museum.

We wish to call attention to the new three-penny catalogue of the industrial objects in the Museum, which Mr. Whitworth Wallis has just issued. The handbook contains a vast amount of most useful information to students and artisans. Interesting notices of all the collections are given, together with descriptions of the principal objects.