GLASGOW INSTITUTE OF THE FINE ARTS— ANNUAL EXHIBITION.
THE first glimpse of the upper entrance-hall, although blocked by a large screen upon which the poorer architectural designs are placed in front, is sufficient to show that the collection of sculpture, which was so important a feature of the recent Glasgow Exhibition, has already commenced to produce Hs in- fluence. Instead of the monotonous file of portrait- busts which the visitor of Scottish galleries is so accus- tomed to hasten past, he is arrested by what, although a small, is really also an effective sculpture gallery. Nor is it due to the work of foreign exhibitors, although Barye's two grisly tigers, unluckily placed like a pair of mantel-ornaments, may at first attract his eye ; that group of ' Mother's Care ' (982), which recalls the dignified largeness and simplicity of Dubois, is the work of Mr. Massey Rhind ; that head of Sappho, forcible and dignified, despite the unpleasant jerk of the truncated arm, is the work of Mr. M'Gilliway : so too that well-handled and strongly-characterised ' Mendicant ' is his own, and not Rodin's. Again, Mr. Kellock Brown's large and well-modelled group of ' Thalia, the Muse of Comedy,' might well find archi- tectural recognition and place in one of our theatres, and his decorative panel of 'Commerce' in an Exchange. In no previous exhibition have there been so many signs of a possible local school of living sculptm-e ; let us hope that continued supply may soon succeed in arousing proportional demand. Returning to the strangers, from whom in the past year we have been learning so much, we have in the first place to welcome Mr. Hamo Thornycroft's noble panel from the Gordon Memorial, but also to notice Mr. Onslow Ford's heads and figure, so full of simpli- city and character. Other groups arrest ns ; pretty fancies, like Miss Brown's ' Cupid,' catch the eye ; but we must pass to the pictures. How shall we form an idea of these ; with the cata- logue separately, as the fashion is, or by schools and influences ? Would that we could have the latter separated out — in one room, say rather row of galleries, the conventional Royal Academicians and their innu- merable following, and in another, those who swear by the schools of Paris ! Could we not give our most impressive individualities each his wall, and group around him, whether it please him or no, those whom he has most strongly influenced, the younger painters, whom intentionally or unconsciously, perman- ently or for the time being, he has caused to paint with his brushes, or see with his eyes.' Nothing is better for a man than to pass under some such high influence and discipline, and nothing is more needful for the fair criticism of him than to re- cognise and define what these have been. Thus we may welcome in the young painter at a certain stage the frankest reflection of his master's influence, and not only condone Mr. Henry Shields' sea-piece so frankly after Henry Moore, or recognise the real utility, for instance, to Mr. Terris (758), of the effec- tive water-colour methods of Arthur Melville, but even approve the good sense of both. We must even ascribe a high value to the pictures of Mr. Austen Brown, since these not only closely and frankly follow Millet in choice of subject, in drawing and brush-work, but show that the disciple has truly grasped his master's lofty outlook upon nature, his deep humanity as well. Of such men there is little fear of permanent imita- tion ; they will soon get beyond the discipular attitude, and see something of their own to say. Nor can the young painter in whom no such dominant influence is ever very apparent be often credited with any more real originality — too commonly his work is a mere blur of impressions, and may be analysed into the confused and fragmentary reflection of less developed masters, if not merely of the stream of common-place around him, shown in a mirror smaller and less true. Nor is choice of subject unimportant, as some would have us believe. Mr. Goodall's vast acreage (216) of livid purplish slime, on which only two or three miserable gulls are quarrel- ling and scraping, his rotting hulk and ragged ash- basket floating down a leaden stream of tidal sewage, may be granted as even uglier in pictorial than they can be made in verbal description ; but this dubious advantage does not repay the expenditure of so much paint and pains ; nor is the artist to be congratulated upon reflecting two bad French influences instead of one good one. But in this exhibition it is not, of course, the foreign influences, good or bad, that are prevalent, but the time-honoured Royal Academy one. Let us first borrow a brief description from its historian of the future — ' Its huge walls were decorated from sky to foot with gilded parallelograms, jammed together into an intricate, yet monotonous, confusion. In this could slowly be made out along the line a long row of pictures by the Royal Academicians, as the privileged members of this body (really, of course, the last survivor of the old monopolist craft-guilds) were called. Upon such line space as they were themselves unable to fill, but, of com-se, chiefly in the less favourable situations, hung the pictures of those whom they saw fit to admit as guests. And since few men care for guests with whom they cannot sympathise, and still fewer can sympathise with younger xnen who do not agree with them, a mono- tonous imitation of the Academicians became forcibly established. This state of things, as is always the case throughout history, naturally became also dominant in the provinces, and even persisted there long after it was becoming discredited in the metropolis. Hence an average Victorian Exhibition — say, for instance, that of Glasgow in 1889 — would contain, besides conventional landscapes and portraits, a nowadays incredible number of subjects like the following :
