Page:Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868 (IA gri 33125011175656).pdf/17

 aged four, son of Edward IV., to Lady Anne Mowbray, aged three, A bishop of almost decrepit old age officiates, and Gloucester is naturally made a prominent witness. Mr. Ward's style of painting, chiaroscuro, and handling, is universally known; it may be termed the overblown style, with about as much retirement and repose as a peony the hour before it falls to pieces. But this should not blind us to his solid merits of thought and invention, always exercised in a direction which tells with the public, and for the most part felicitously in other respects as well. The present picture is an instance. Besides any amount of fine dresses and demonstrative infancy, it boasts a power of association which must take hold of every spectator: the infant bridal, the gorgeous dawn of promise to the little sons of King Edward, and the crash of fate reserved for them within the cerebral convolutions of the future King Richard. We may afford, while we are about it, to recollect that this effective subject pertains by right of priority to Mr. Houghton, who designed it for a woodcut.

167. —Sterne and the French Innkeeper's Daughter.—The imperfectly Reverend Mr. Sterne is looking at the damsel as she knits a stocking, and pondering upon its neat adjustment to the shape of her leg. On general grounds much the same may be said of this picture as of No. 87: both are superior examples of the easy certainty with which Mr. Frith can strike the key he wants, just as loud as he wishes it, and no louder. Sterne (as Goldsmith and Reynolds before) appears to me anything but a good likeness: the young woman is more French in feature than in the ensemble of the face.

172. —Worn Out.—This ranks with Mr. Faed's best pictures: it is very skilful, and has more equality of painting than usual—somewhat less of obtruded knack and flourish. The various small accessories are well related to the main incident of the hard-working father who has fallen asleep while watching his invalid boy.

188. —Custaunce sent adrift by the Constable of Alla, King of Northumberland.—This moonlight picture has rather the character of a manufacture; yet it is manufacture by a poetic eye and pictorial hand. There is some clever handling