Georgian Books, The Athenaeum

The Athenaeum is in Georgian Books.

Georgian Books, The Athenaeum 1864

FINE ARTS The Royal Academy

14th May 1864. Mr. R. S. Stanhope (age 35) may be styled the youngest in the list of artists who establish themselves this: year. His Rispa (No. 33) is a very expressive and poetical representation of the well known theme of the daughter of Aiah watching the bodies of her sons and those of the sons of Michal, the daughter of Saul. The face of the woman is admirably conceived. Penelope (476), by the same, — wife of Ulysses at her loom, — has much execellent colour in its flesh; the treatment of the draperies, although rather thin, is original and careful. The face of the woman in blue does Mr. Stanhope great credit [?] in painting and conception. In these pictures the artist has been eminently successful with the backgrounds, not alone in the vigorous colour they exhibit, but in the pathetic and apt expressiveness which fits them to the subjects.

14th May 1864. Mr. V. Prinsep’s (age 26) contributions mark a great advance in his powers of design, and, what his former pictures mostly lacked, increased care in drawing, greater clearness and cleanness of bandling and colour, and progress in perception of what properly makes a picture. The last is one of the rarest gifts to a young painter, and often the latest he obtains by practice and thought. To all who give attention to this subject in a broad or philosophical manner, it is wonderful to find how few are the painters who perccive that it is not everything that is fit for the exercise of Art. At least half the pictures in every Exhibition evince no thought on the part of their producers for this matter, and—such is. the painful conclusion we cannot avoid—afford direct proof that their painters have not the primary qualification of an artist. All true artists are born with perception of this kind—some have it as their chief source of power, none have it thrust upon them—although scores get reputations on the strength of mere tricks, which the critic knows to be disdained by legions of unknown but self-respecting wen. Some achieve power of perception, as Mr. V. Prinsep soems to be doing; his Berenice — a mighty woman — is eminently pictorial in subject, and not less so in treatment. It might bave been less unrefined in form of drawing without being less strong than it is My Lady Betty (455), a courtly woman wearing a dress of white, gold-embroidered brocade, and! holding a fan before her as she walks, is inferior in subject to the last, but surpasses it in pictorial power displayed. It is very solid and good in execution. Benedick and Beatrice. (560) has perhaps. more subject, in the ordinary sense of the word, which implies something the ordinary spectator finds tangible, but it is Iess valuable as a picture than ‘My Lady Betty,’ and has parts that are very badly drawn,

Georgian Books, The Athenaeum 1869

Georgian Books, The Athenaeum 1869 May

Georgian Books, The Athenaeum 1869 May 08

SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER COLOURS.

We continue our account of the current exhibition by this Society. We will commence by considering Mr. J. Holland's pathetically named Study of Roses in my Garden at Blackheath, 1839 (No. 279). The blooms of thirty summers ago were gathered and stand imperishably in a bottle of water to form a picture that is as broad as it is delicate, beautiful in colour and perfect in texture; this is one of the most exquisite paintings here. Genova, looking South-East (126), by the same, is a delicious dream of colour, but a little loose in handling.

[8th May 1869] We may next turn to the works of Mr. Boyce (age 42). First of these is, On the Skirts of Smithfield, looking West, Midsummer, 1867 (117), a strange, but very original subject, being a picture of the rubbishheaps of the place while under transformation, and the backs of miserable houses of red brick of the deepest hues, and shabby, tumble-down hoardings of wood blanched in the sun; a temporary wreck of the old in course of changing for the new. Huge lying posters in red, green, white and yellow, each coarser and falser than its neighbour, overlook the dust-heaps of two centuries. Calmly in the glare of smoky summer sunlight rises the dingy stone church tower of Wren's building, — a pathetic picture for those who can read, and for artists who can enjoy, its exquisite tones and admirable atmospheric grading; a puzzle for those who judge by the common tests of opinion. For the comfort of several of the latter who strongly resented the introduction of two gambolling cats in a similar picture by this painter — as if London cats were not frequent in the wastes of the City — we add, that there are no cats to puzzle them here.

[8th May 1869] Bridewell Precincts at Nightfall in 1867 (224), in its general appearance, recalls the last, by the same; but its effect is totally different. On the scurfy waste site of an old place of misery, surrounded by quaint houses that were built tall and close together, the light thickens on the mounds, on the dismal herbage of a few months' growth, most in the trench-like street, least of all where the spire of St. Bride's Church rises in warm tints above the steep red roofs. This study is almost magical in its grave and fine colour, solidity, and in drawing of details nearly perfect.

[8th May 1869] At Arissaig, Coast of Invernesshire (238), is a beautiful study of mountain scenery, with an admirable mid-distance. We think Mr. Boyce would do well to suppress the cottage which uncouthly stands by the side of the road here, and to study more variety in skies: his low-toned skies are becoming tiresome by repetition, and are not invariably perfectly studied from Nature. Other and scarcely inferior pictures by this artist may be grouped here: these are Dorchester, Oxon (262), a landscape which is solemn in its simplicity of composition and broad, bright colour.

Pensosa d'altrui (280), a study of a girl's head, with a very nicely-rendered expression of thoughtfulness, deals much in manifold tints of blue. Delicate in character and modelling as this is, the face is not solid enough, nor irreproachable in drawing; the latter defect is observable also in the lap of the sitter; the background is obtrusive.

Georgian Books, The Athenaeum 1890

                    Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm (age 56), Bart., R.A.
                
                    The painfully sudden death, on the 12th inst. [12th December 1890] of this accomplished Court sculptor and Academician removes one of the most able and fortunate of his class, and leaves to be completed by his brother artists a considerable body of commissions in various stages. One of those large and important works of which an unusual share fell to the lot of Sir Edgar, the effigy of the late German Emperor, was finished but a few days ago, and will, by Her Majesty's desire, shortly be set up at Windsor. The deceased had, as it was remarked in "Artists at Home," produced more public statues than any artist of this country, from Flaxman to Foley. This was true six years ago, when the statement was printed, and it is true to the present time. As the sculptor himself revised the memoir, we cannot do better than borrow its data. He was born at Vienna, July 6th, 1834, of Hungarian parents, and was educated there. His father, Herr Daniel Boehm, the Director of the Imperial Mint, was a man of distinction in art, and formed a numerous collection of examples of the finest kinds of sculpture, amid which the son had ample opportunities for studying the antique. His works, however, prove that he followed other and less severe models. With his father he travelled in Italy, and in the Renaissance statuary of that country found those types of design which, in a by no means exacting form, he adopted, adding to them much telling picturesqueness, and avoiding certain difficulties over which it is the glory of men of higher ambition to triumph.
                
                    From 1848 to 1851 the young Boehm studied in this country, largely in the Elgin Room and elsewhere at the British Museum. It was manifestly to his advantage that he did so, for it enabled him to impart style to his least serious designs. From 1851 he was in Italy; later he was in Paris, where he worked with some éclat; and about this period we find him in Vienna again, where, in 1836, he won the First Imperial Prize, his earliest important distinction. In 1862 he settled in London, and in 1865 became naturalized. His first appearance at the Academy was with a terra-cotta "Bust of a Gentleman," in 1862. Little had, at that time, been done in terra-cotta, a material which lends itself to work like Boehm's, that is more spirited than scholarly. The novelty of the material, apart from the intrinsic merit of the portrait, attracted attention to it. In 1863 he sent to Trafalgar Square the very clever statuettes of "Mr. and Mrs. Millais." He soon became the fashion, and next year exhibited at the same place not fewer than six examples, including a capital statuette of Thackeray, a spirited small bronze equestrian "Miss Edwards," and "Johnny Armstrong," a racehorse. A marble bust of Viscount Stratford de Redelitfe and a group of Mr. W. Russell and his horse came forth in 1865. Then followed the "Duke of Beaufort"; "Countess of Cardigan"; "H.M. the Queen," a terracotta statuette; the "Marquis of Lansdowne," for Westminster Abbey; a colossal equestrian group of the Prince of Wales, for Bombay; another, of "Lord Napier of Magdala," for Calcutta; "Thomas Carlyle." in bronze, for Chelsea, a capital instance of Boehm's best work; as well as portraits, of various materials and sizes, of the Queen, Lord Rosebery, Lord John Russell, Mr. Ruskin, Sir F. Burton, Mr. Gladstone, Prof. Huxley, and Sir J. E. Millais; Sir Francis Drake, for Tavistock; the late Archbishop of Canterbury, for his cathedral; Lord Derby, Lord Wolseley; Lord Shaftesbury; and a host of private commissions. Of public statues, of which the deceased seemed to have secured a monopoly, the list is too long for transcribing. The most ambitions of them, but not the best, are "The Duke of Kent," "The Queen," "The King of the Belgians," "Princess Alice and her Daughters," "Prince Leopold," "Dean Wellesley," and "The Prince Imperial," all for Windsor or Frogmore. The last, a very poor specimen, was the subject of a hot debate, which ended in its not finding a place at Westminster, as proposed. Boehm exceuted "Bunyan," for Bedford; "The Duchess of Bedford," for Woburn Abbey: a most unfortunate "Sir John Burgoyne," for Waterloo Place; "Lord Lawrence," for the same locality, which the sculptor, being dissatisfied with his first effort, very wisely replaced with a second and somewhat better statue; "Sir W. Gregory," for Colombo; "W. Tyndale," for the Northern Embankment; "Darwin," for the Natural History Museum; "Sir Ashley Eden," for Calcutta; and "Lord Beaconsfield," "Viscount Stratford de Redeliffe," and "Dean Stanley," all three for the Abbey. The last is one of Boehm's most effective works, He was by no means fortunate in the group of the Duke of Wellington and his soldiers which now fronts Apsley House. As a design it illustrates the author's weaknesses,
                
                    Boehm was elected an Associate of the Academy in January, 1878, an Academician two years later, a member of the Academy of Florence in 1875, and of that of Rome in 1880; in 1878 he received a Scecond Class Medal at Paris; at Vienna, in 1882, a gold medal, He was Sculptor in Ordinary to the Queen. He lectured on sculpture at the Royal Academy. It is understood that he was hampered in designing as well as in executing the dies for that new coinage which will not commend him to posterity, and it is said that the baronetey which was bestowed upon him in 1889 did not console Boehm for this conspicuous failure. The personal qualities of the artist made him a favourite in every circle, and justified the warm regard of many distinguished patrons; combined with fashionable indifference to the higher technique and the nobler elements of design, they fully accounted for Sir Edgar's great professional success. The Queen desires he should be buried in St. Pauls.

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