Page:Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868 (IA gri 33125011175656).pdf/25

 moreover, from that sort of nursery silliness which has infected some canvasses of late, and has even been aptly enshrined in a title reproducing the broken utterance of babes, Mr. Houghton knows that "ta-ta" or "tootsicums," whether written with the pen or rendered into the language of the brush, is a mild effort of art.

401. —Kate Leslie.—This artist is almost always attractive, and often most engagingly so: the present work may be cited in proof. But he is "painty" (as the profession terms it) in the generality of his work, and especially in his flesh-tints. Here the face has far too much of a tawny or ligneous hue; which is the more to be regretted as the work, on the whole, comes nearer than usual to ranking Mr. Leslie among colouriste.

402. —The Catapult.—Great knowledge, great power of combination, and much disciplined artistic capacity, have gone to the making of this picture. It has more effect, and is on the whole more pictorial, than the very striking work which Mr. Poynter exhibited last year—Israel in Egypt. Some people may refuse to take much interest in a scene in which the work of the artificer or mechanician plays so large a part; but, bating this objection (which to many will be no objection at all), it is difficult to award anything but praise to the picture. The event is the use of a catapult as an engine of war in the siege of Carthage: we see written on one of the beams "Delenda est Carthago, S.P.Q.R." The officer is supervising; archers are shooting; the monster hand of the catapult is about once more to launch a red-hot bolt against the doomed city: pots of blazing pitch are being hurled by the defenders at the assailants. The solidity and good balance of all parts of the subject, the agreeable tone of colour in flesh and otherwise, the sound drawing, unfaltering and unpretentious, command high respect.

410. —Oliver Cromwell's First Appearance in the Parliament.—To find this picture uninteresting would be difficult. Hampden is represented introducing his cousin to Cromwell; Pym, Elliot, Sir Robert Phillips, Strafford, and many other famous men, are present. The arrangement pleases