Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/394

 ~— 372 THE BUILDING NEWS. May 10, 1872. others, illuminated by colour, have been added, especially the great one at the western end ; but why the necessity for these contri- butions ? Of all the church and clergy none suffered less, under the general spoliations of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., than the Bishop of London and the Chapter of S. Paul's. They lost, it is true, their endowed chantries, the magnificent oblations at their shrines, their vestments, plate, and so forth; yet their estates were left almost intact, because S. Paul’s had never borne a monastic character. The City of London refused to violate their lands. Queen Elizabeth herself granted them the Paddington Estate, then a waste, now a richly-rented quarter. Not a shilling of this revenue was touched; but when the rebuilding was resolved upon, the City of London and Westminster had to endure special taxes, and subscriptions were raised throughout the kingdom, including the appanage of the monarch who, for this national idea, gave up his “‘oreen wax forfeitures”—whatever they may have been—for a whole year; the bishops sacrificed their privilege of new gloves, and their consecration fees; the coal duty was diverted—and §S. Paul’s is not finished yet ! We have mentioned that Sir Christopher adopted 8. Peter's asa model. But he never, in all his long life-time, saw S. Peter's. Would he be Gothic? In that age Gothic meant barbarous. That question was speedily settled. Not so another to which we have referred as causing a public alarm sixty-nine years ago. It was a work of immense diffi- culty to lay the foundation. There were strata of brick-earth, loam, sand, freshwater shells, and gravel, before the London clay would be reached. done, and the architect looked down. from the Golden Gallery upon his own matchless masterpiece. Alterations afterwards took place ; the choir was enclosed ; the organ and organ gallery were placed upon the screen, though ultimately removed; there were con- troversies about covering the cupola with lead or with copper; the abominable iron fence, nothwithstanding a fervent protest from the architect, was adopted, and mars the elevation to his hour. Wren was not per- mitted to paint the interior as he desired, and, where Corregio would have been at home, there revelled a British brush, ‘ where sprawl the Saints of Verrio and Laguerre” in paintings architecturally framed in utter contradiction of the general architecture of the cathedral. So with the topmost balustrade. Wren abhorred the notion, yet it was constructed nevertheless. ‘‘ Ladies,” he said, ‘‘think nothing perfect without an edging.” It is with the intention of carry- ing out his proposals for the interior that the appeal we are now listening to is made. Besides the ‘temporary windows,” there is the cold and unadorned east end, for which he had designed a stately Baldachin; there are the naked walls—naked, where not loaded with sculpture unworthy of Highgate or Kensal Green—which he wished to em- blazon. Space infinite for fitting decoration might be found, were only such monuments as those masses of ridicule resembling the awful piece of rockwork dedicated to Sir Cloudesley Shovel in Westminster Abbey got rid of. Let us hope that when the fund is full enough, an effort will be made in this direction. Let us spare posterity the sight of General Hay dying amid a group of Fames and Valour standing ‘all naked in the open air;” the palms and sphynxes of Nelson ; the ship’s prow that sticks to the brave Captain Faulkner ; andthe emblematic Thames weleoming Lord Collingwood’s dead body. When a house has to be repaired, it is usual, fora beginning, to sweep out the rubbish. —_—___ The church of Bigbury, Devon, is now being re- stored, from the designs of Mr. John D. Sedding, of Bristol. The contract is taken by Mr. Pearse, of Modbury, and the works are to cost about £1,000. However, the task was j EXHIBITION. ENGLISH PICTURES. E propose, in examining the English pictures, to pursue the course which a visitor will be likely to follow naturally : that is to say, we shall commence by a glance at the one or two pictures which are very con- spicuous by position or startling prominence in the gallery, and then shall go round in the order of numbers, selecting those works to which attention ought to be directed. 3ecinning with the northern gallery, on the west or British side, we find the central positions (the places of honour) occupied by two characteristic artists, men who serve ex- cellently well to represent prominent charac- teristics of the English school, and who—while by their strong contrast,their works serve as a foil each to the other—may also fairly be taken as representatives of two entirely distinct lines of thought. Leighton and Frith, the former with a new composition, ‘Art applied to War,” the latter with his well-known ‘ Railway Station,” may well represent the classic and the domestic sides of English art. Our most influential painter, the one who first struck the key-note which our best- beloved artists have followed ever since, was Hogarth. ‘The most illustrious follower Hogarth has had was Wilkie, and his legiti- mate successor at the present moment is Frith. In the ‘Railway Station” (73) we have an epitome of English character painted with a force and a finish that cannot be too highly praised, though with a strange deficiency in some elements of the painter’s art. The pic- ture is well known. ‘The scene is the Great Western Railway Terminus ; a train is about to start; the platform is encumbered with acrowd, which, as we disentangle it, resolves itself into groups of people brought together solely by the business of starting, or seeing others start. <A brilliant wedding party first catches the eye, they are come to see the bride off ; and close to them is a forger ar- rested at the moment of making his escape by detectives, not unprovided with h&nd- cuffs. A prominent group represents a French visitor and his wife in dispute with the British cabman about a fare. Near them is a family scene. ‘The boys going to school, and their fond mamma parting from them tearfully. Not far off a recruit of the most unpromising description is preparing to enter the carriage ; his aged mother weeps to lose him; the recruiting sergeant goes off gaily, some of his victims sadly. Not far off a sailor parts from his wife and child, and nearer us bustles an old lady, frantic with anxiety about luggage. Porters, dogs, birds, inspectors, portmanteaus, and the endless etceteras of a railway departure are piled up in admirable confusion—but it is confusion : there is far more crowding than grouping. The same model has been painted again and again, and the same attitude and turn of the head is repeated from time to time; while too much of an air of sitting or standing to be painted pervades all the figures. The picture shows great mastery—far more cleverness than power, pathos, or humour; and if it surpasses Hogarth in technical dexterity, falls far short of him in strength, originality, and the highest class of truth to nature. Mr. Leighton’s ‘Art applied to War,” a cartoon for a picture to be painted at the South Kensington Museum, is as ideal and classic as the other is realistic and domestic. The study of the works of the great Italian masters has formed Leighton’s style in a far more complete and scholarly way than that of Fuseli, Blake, or Barry ; but he and these men may be classed together, and with them Poynter and Armitage, and perhaps Herbert and Cope, as having endeavoured to raise a school of heroic painting in this country, and having to no inconsiderable extent succeeded. In the composition before us the scene appears to be laidin an Italian city of the middle ages, but we must protest altogether against Mr. Leighton’s treatment of his archi- tecture. The greatest Italian of our day, he ought not to be above making his Italian- Gothie correct, or at least probable, when he introduces it; and we sincerely trust that in repainting this work for its permanent posi- tion, he will secure the services of an architect familiar with the style to design him the buildings among which his figures are to stand and move. Two great masses of men in picturesque Italian costume oceupy the middle distance ; those on the left are buckling on armour ; those on right are trying swords. In thejleft foreground a party of beautiful women are grouped, working trappings and housings for the warriors; they are balanced by a group of men on the right with cross-bows. Through an arch in the centre of the back- ground we see knights on horseback, banners, and the bustle of a mustering army, while from right and left others come flocking together. The figures are noble, sad, and pre-oecupied—little of the joy and nothing of the frenzy of battle—and the whole breathes the feeling of an epic poem rather than a drama—more of Spenser than Shakespeare. The best group is that of the men trying swords, clustered, as they are, round a noble figure, not quite free from defect in ‘the drawing of the lower limbs, but a grand conception nevertheless. This work is full of beauties, and as long as Englishmen’s tastes are largely formed by an education in classical literature and by foreign travel such pictures will always be welcome to the most refined and cultivated classes among them; but they will never be so loved and cared for as representations of character such as Mr. Frith’s great effort just described, or as the more tender and simple work of Faed, which hangs near it. This picture, “ Baith Father and Mither” (89), possesses some of the highest qualities that the domestic school of painting can produce ; there is just enough pathos to make us thoughtful without dis- tressing us, with truth to nature, artistic yet simple grouping, and a colouring such asis the especial merit of the best artists of the English school. A sturdy, rathér sad-looking man—much the same that Mr. Faed has often painted already—has paused in his work, and is with his big hands doing his best to fasten a button at the wrist of his little girl, while a charming group of three children, painted with much freshness, stand and wait for their sister. The incident is slight, but it is enough for a poet to hang a pathetic tale upon, and the scene is wonderfully carried out in all itsdetails without losing in breadth and effectiveness. (To be continued.) —ee NOTES ON EARTHWORK.—VI. Rees waggons are of various forms, ac- 4 cording to fancy, but the following sketch (Fig. 10) shows a useful form, A waggon made in this way has the body attached to the frame, which tilts up with it, the two hinder wheels, which are left on the rails, being kept in their place by coupling the axles together, and after the earth has been tipped out of the waggon the hinder pedestals fall down again upon the axle. The sides, one end, and the bottom of the body are made of elm 1}in, thick (the earth being confined at the other end by a moyable tail-board), bound together with iron straps at the angles, and with up- right straps at the sides and one end, all bolted through. The sole is the longitudinal piece at each side, of elm, 5in. by 5in. in the example here given, upon which the bottom boards rest, being laidcrosswise of the waggon. At each end of the body, and also in the middle, there is a crosspiece, also of elm, 6in. by 3in., bolted down to the soles. The under- soles are of memel fir, 12in. by 3in., between which, from side to side, are two distance pieces, each Yin. by 3in., and alongside of leach is a fin. bolt to keep the whole
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