Page:Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868 (IA gri 33125011175656).pdf/37

 1007. —Thomas Carlyle.—The strong, emphatic, penetrating style of Mr. Woolner, who searches under the surface of his sitter's face, and records on its surface what he has found beneath, gave him the best of rights to deal with such a magnificent head as Carlyle's—marked as that is by a most powerful dominating expression, with abundant points of subordinate detail and individuality. Mr. Woolner had, indeed, done a medallion of the great writer many years ago; now we get a bust worthily recording so memorable a man.

1027. —Relic from the Iliad (pedestal of the Bust of the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone).—Here are three subjects executed on a small scale, with a singular amount of original force. The third, Thetis consoling Achilles, does not appear to me, in composition and suggestion, so remarkable as the other two. Pallas and Achilles at the Trenches, where the hero shouts to the Greeks a superhuman cry, while Pallas overshadows him with her ægis, is a most vigorous and admirable composition; indeed, but for its small size, one would be minded to call it the finest thing Mr. Woolner has yet exhibited. Thetis praying to Zeus on behalf of Achilles is hardly second to it. The sea-goddess rises on tiptoe to stroke the beard of the omnipotent cloud-compeller; and no single touch perhaps could have given the amplitude and primitiveness of the Homeric Pantheon more keenly than this. It is not exactly naïveté, and still less exactly humour, but something happily between both.

1053. —Clytie; Marble Bust, unfinished.—This is an experiment in sculpture by our distinguished painter. I find it a very interesting one, and (pace the professional sculptors) a remarkable success. The head reverts over the right shoulder with a graceful and energetic turn; and these qualities, especially that of energy, are preserved in all points of view. The modelling of the bust and arms is pulpy and creased—more comparable in tendency to that of the Elgin Marbles than of later Greek sculpture. Indeed, I should surmise that the thoughts of Mr. Watts, as he worked, were mostly shared between Phidias and Michael Angelo. The spectator who finds some parts lumpy or rude should bear in