Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/290

248 and luminous seem those water-meadows, stretching away and away into tile distance!

And now, turning from all this strength and sweet- ness, and passing into Galleries iv. and v., what is our first impression of the selection from the works of the lately dead painter, who painted so much, and, in the opinion of many, so finely ? It may be that it is an unfair test to look first upon those pictures, and then, immediately afterwards, on these ; but there they hang, and the juxtaposition is, in our opinion, an unfortunate one — for the pictures in the fourth and fifth rooms. That there are here some excellent portraits, and one or two fine and dramatic subject- pictures, is as undeniable a fact as it would he a fallacy to rank Frank Holl among the greater painters of this century. Undoubtedly, the best portraits are those of Earl Spencer and Lord Dufferin, and these are indeed admirable, although in both — as in all Frank Holl's work — the colour is disagreeable, being hot and grimy at the same time. One doubts almost if he ever sfiir colour. Could such a thing have existed in so clever a craftsman as a species of, comparatively speaking, colour-blindness ? Another interesting and strongly-painted head is that of the painter himself at the age of eighteen; the portrait of Sir George Trevelyan, too, is happily conceived, and painted with less of the undue emphasis, almost amounting to grotesquerie, observable in so many of the others. This latter characteristic is more particu- larly evident in the melodramatic portrait of the Duke of Cleveland, and in the portraits of Captain Alexander Mitchell, Lord Overstone, and Sir Rupert Kettle, which last is extremely coarse in technique. It is as though the painter had set himself to work to force and exaggerate the natural, and possibly the most salient, expression of his sitter, and, in so doing, had lost all sense of balance and due projjortion, as well as all refinement and subtlety, so essential to success- ful portraiture. Of the portraits of the Duke of Cambridge, the Prince of Wales, and Mr. John Bright it seems unnecessary to speak, as, although they scarcely appear to be favourable examples of Mr. Hull's art, in all likelihood they fulfil quite satisfactorily the mission for which they were in- tended. The two companion pictures of children, one of a little girl holding a sword across her knees, the other of a very similar little girl, seated on a tiger- skin, and holding a violin, are cleverly painted, the tenderness of sentiment contrasting strangely, though, with the grimness of colour. ' Ordered to the Front ' and ' Returned from the Wars,' are perhaps the pleasantest pictures in the room, being cleaner in colour, and instinct with a more real and unforced vitality. They severally represent a regiment of High- landers leaving some seaport town, taking farewell of weeping sweethearts and wives ; and their joyous return and welcome. Far less agreeable are two earlier works — ' The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away," and ' Leaving Home." It was with the former of these pictures that the jiainter gained the Royal Academy Travelling Studentship in 1868. Of the latter, a railway station scene, with the customary plump and melancholy widow, so much afl^ected by Holl, conspicuously figuring therein, one would have surely said,seeing it elsewhere and unsigned, 'Aut Frith aut Diabolus ' ; though a picture even more likely to call forth such comment is ' The Ordeal,' representing the interior of a studio, where a simpering lady, in a lilac dress, reclines in an arm-chair, and a gentleman (surely painted from Mr. J. L. Toole ?) examines a pic- ture on the easel. The low-toned genre-pictures, such as ' Hush,' and ' Hushed,' suggest inevitably the coloured photograph, although low tones do not necessarily involve absence of fine quality in colour, as Israels, and others, have shown. Of the ' Pawnbroker's Shop,' wherein a young woman jiledges her wedding-ring, and the burial scenes, we can only remark that, being meretricious in sentiment and metallic of execution, they seem to be entirely unworthy of the painter of ' Newgate : Committed for Trial,' and ' Gone.' For of these two pictures it would be difficult to speak too highly ; sentiment, drawing, composition — all are fine and impressive. The first shows the interior of the prison, where prisoners, caged like wild beasts, behind a close grating, speak with their wives and children who come to visit them from the outer world. The whole thing is pathetic in the extreme, and the figures of the women, especially of the woman who sways despairingly towards the grating, are dignified and sculpturesque. ' Gone,' shows a tattered, but sad and impressive, group of women, one holding an infant in her arms ; they stand on the platform of a large railway station, watching a departing train. And looking on these pictures one cannot but wonder why, with such power for true pathos, such feeling for fine forms and stately beauty, and for subtly suggested tragedy, the painter has left us so few examples of his highest level of expression } It may have been that he was carried away by the tide-wave of popularity, and the bent towards more practical matters, and so had no time for such things, which serve now to show us what might have been.

Of the exquisite collection of Turner's in the water-colour room, we have too scant space to speak, though much might be said. The Rhine-sketches, however, seem even more interesting than the larger drawings. The Lurleyberg (-i?), a mysterious, late afternoon study; the Rheinfels (48), with a pale, misty sunset, ' The Castles of the Two Brothers,' an example of golden light and colour, with notes of blue water, very fine in composition ; ' The Back of Ehrenbreitstein,' a splendidly romantic confusion of colossal rock and fortress ; and the Drachenfels, impressive in its solemn grandeur, are among the most beautiful where all is good.

Graham R. Tomson.