Page:Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868 (IA gri 33125011175656).pdf/15

 the estuary is given by a curious sort of sleight of hand—an actual ridging or rucking in the surface of the paint.

52. —The Life's Story.—This is the subject of Othello relating his adventures to Brabantio and Desdemona. The lady hangs upon the words of the Moor with a demonstrative interest that fully justified his inference that she must be in love with him. The picture cannot, I think, be counted among Mr. Cope's successes.

64. —The Duke of Cambridge at the Battle of the Alma, leading the Guards up the Hill in support of the Light Division.—The weak point of this picture is the isolated figure of the Duke himself, which has more the character of a likeness by a portrait-painter than of a leading agent in the event. The Guards in the foreground are happily treated; with sufficient individuality in the several figures, not made singly over-prominent, The general execution is not unlike that of Sir Edwin Landseer; which is as much as to say that it has uncommon ability.

70. —Rosalind and Celia—A picture full of sunny light and masterly celerity of execution. The faces have great sentiment, and ample charm of beauty: the confiding self-subordinating character of Celia speaks in the lines of her mouth. Touchstone is older than one would infer from the drama. It is a pity that Mr. Millais did not set himself to reflect what Rosalind would probably have done with her hair and costume in order to sustain the disguise of a young man. The upper portion of the dress is absurdly feminine, and hardly recedes even from the nineteenth century. On the stage one pardons the paraded sex of the actress—it is partly unavoidable, and partly a device of her profession: but in a picture one fairly expects a greater conformity to the common sense of the situation. Mr. Millais, however, never will pay any attention to his costume. With all the signal merits of the execution, the texture is not free from woolliness.

87. —Before dinner at Boswell's Lodgings in Bond Street, 1769: present, Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Murphy, Bickerstaff, Davies, and Boswell—We have heard only too often about Goldsmith's "bloom-coloured coat."