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354 yet in some respects is a little disappointing. We go there ex- pecting somehow to see eccentricities, and when we find only a collection of work similar in subject and treatment (except perhaps for more brilliancy of colour and an average of better drawing) to what our own artists generally give us, we feel at first as if there was a mistake somewhere ; but it is a feeling which soon passes away. One of the chief works displayed is a large ' Descent from the Cross,' by J. V. Kramer, well drawn, but, although intensely realistic in every ghastly detail, without any real originality of treatment. It is a picture which may be regarded with curiosity, but never with reverence. Much better is the same artist's * The Pharisee's Prayer ' (6), a fine study of a proud, ascetic, intellectual man of eastern type, with a sublime self-confidence in his upturned eyes ; very different in every way to the crafty, scheming ' Pharisee ' (lOI) of M. de Munkacsy. Mrs. J. E. Benham Hay exhibits a large decorative painting of a Florentine procession, but it is of no exceptional merit, the composition being somewhat poor, and without continuity. The best work in the collection is Josef Israels' 'Grandfather's Consolation' (53), a beautiful and pathetic rendering of a scene of French peasant life, executed with mar- vellous tenderness and skill, as is also another work of his, ' The Sempstress' (in). No. 83 (J. Weiser) is a clever painting of a priest in full robes, as is ' Musicians at Fault ' (67, A. Holmberg), although in the latter the merit of the chief figures is almost entirely obscured by an over-elaboration of detail of the accessories which would be scarcely permissible in a still-life study for a school examination. ' Interior of an Iron Foundry, Bavaria ' (107, F, Keller), is a clever and effective composition, as well as * Love and Music ' (78, R. Poetzelberger). The landscapes generally are not very good. Prof. K. Heffner sends a large collection, many of them being studies of English scenery. No. 21, 'A View near Norwich,' is good, but a little hard in colour, which is indeed the common fault. No. 34, being better in this respect, and the same painter's ' Studies in Rome,' although somewhat microscopical in detail, are clever. Among other artists worthy of notice, Meissonier has one small picture, ' Le Rieur' (64), and J. B. C. Corot, J. Bertrand, Aug. Bonheur, and C. F. Daubigny are also represented.

The Royal Hibernian Academy Exhibition. — The sixtieth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Hibernian Academy, which is now open in the Irish metropolis, is a remarkably good one, and of the 510 works which make up the collection only few are below the somewhat high average. So far as portraiture is concerned, however, the exhibition is not a strong one, but Mr. George Hare's strikingly beautiful ' Madam H ' would take a prominent place in any collection, so charming is the pose of the graceful figure, and so delicious is the quiet tone of the entire work. Miss Purser's study of Lord Castlereagh, the youthful son of the Lord- Lieutenant, ^laims attention too by reason of its special excellence, as does also Mr. Walter Osborne's portrait of Dr. Corlay. Mr. Osborne, however, is at his best in landscape, and here, as at the Art Club Exhibition, he has several charming studies of village life under the Downs, full of pathetic feeling and dehcately painted. An unusually large number of the Academicians have contributed remarkably good work this year, Mr. Colles Watkins having three noble landscapes, Mr. Alfred Grey several large works, in which Scotch cattle, powerfully painted, are prominent, and Miss Vincent Duffy, Mr. Bingham, Mr. Guinness, Mr. Edwin Hayes, and others, have sent landscapes and sea-pieces of more than usual merit. For some reason or other Scotland is not this year largely repre- sented. Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie and Mr. Johnston Inglis have, however, contributed some splendid work. In water-colour the collection is quite rich, and both in water-colour and in oils the lady artists do more than hold their own.

HE Roman first definitely made the arch the basis of his architecture, and thence learned to draw the all-important distinction in the structure of the building between the elements that fulfil an essential function of active resistance and the passive elements serving other ends (shelter, for instance, and covering), essential, it may be, to the usefulness of the building, but not to its mechanical construction. The arch and the vault are the most characteristic features of Roman architecture ; not the column. Both, it is true, were already known; it has been established beyond a doubt that both were employed in a rudimentary form in Egypt and Assyria, as well as in Greece itself; but they had not yet attained importance sufficient to influence in any way the system of construction practised. They remain but a tentative and halting extension of trabeate construction, the blocks not radiating arch-stones, but corbelled out in horizontal tables, so as to exert mere vertical pressure without lateral thrust. The Treasure-liouse or Tomb of Atreus at Mycenae is the best-known instance in archaic Greece of this numular system of vaulting. Its extreme form may be considered as reached in the monuments (necessarily small), where a single block serves to cover the entire building, as in the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates at Atliens, or, centm-ies later, in the famous tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna. This latter is a curious instance of ' reversion,' seeing that Byzantine art had by that time fully worked out the cupola, and is presumably due to a barbaric love of huge force and its display, the monolithic covering block being said to weigh 470 tons. But in India to this day the Hindu remains faithful to tlie 'mensular' vault in his dread of lateral thrust; 'The arch,' according to the Indian proverb, ' never sleeps.'

From the single arch to the barrel vault, and thence to the cupola, were easy steps ; the intersection of two barrel roofs of equal span gave the quadripartite intersecting vault. This further development was an enormous advance, embodying in reality the whole principle of concentrated thrusts, paving, therefore, the way to all ribbed vaulting, which it only remained for Gothic architecture to work out in all its thirteenth-century perfection.

The immediate cause of this great step forward is debateable. It is usual to speak of tlie size of the buildings required by the Romans as accounting sufficiently for their divergence from Greek models, but it would perhaps be juster to consider this quite as much effect as cause. The Colosseum would never have been undertaken by a people not yet emancipated from Greek traditions. Reasons of