With Readers and Correspondents [pp. 562-569]

I887.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 565
"Hers at-Law," by Eugene Buland, is an amusing picture. Some one hag
evidently died, and the next of kin have gathered round the safe where the papers
are kept. The faces are strongly painted and are good types of the small bourgeoisie, their several expressions, of anxiety, of grief, greed, and indifference,
well portrayed.
Mr. Bridgeman's "On the Terraces, Algiers," is a very white scheme, in which
an Arab Juliet leans over the parapet of a flat-roofed house to converse with an
Eastern Romeo, whose swarthy head alone is visible. Mr. Dannat has an extremely uninteresting portrait, and Mr. Ralph Clarkson a canvas too big for his
story; his work is good and solid, however. There is also a very lovely landscape
by Mr. James Barnsby, and an interior by Mr. McEwen called "Courtship in
Holland." Do these unfortunate young Dutch people never evade their chaperons, we wonder? or are they condemned to perpetual conversation "ca trozs "?
Malice says that Duez is fond of novelty and wishes to show how many styles
he can master! Certainly his " Evening" is a striking contrast to his very red lady
last year. He gives us life-sized cows in an almost life-sized field, with a proportionate amount of sky and sea; the two latter are beautifully painted, full of a
wonderfully hushed repose, but the landscape and the animals are neither pleasing nor true. Opposite this is the picture which " they say" is to have the medal
of honor; it is by Cormon, and represents the triumphant entry of the victors of
Salamine. To my mind Mr. George Hitchcock's "Cultivation of Tulips" is far
more interesting; the Dutch lady walking in her garden full of prim squares of
flowers is quaint and has much human interest.
Painting, under any circumstances, is difficult, and with a refractory model it
must be ten times more so. I met Mr. William Henry Howe not far from his picture, and when I complimented himr on it (it is one of the finest cattle-pieces in
the Exhibition) he told me he had had a terrible time with "the old white lady
in the foreground"; she would not pose, but persistently lay down and rolled
every time she was brought out. I may remark that " the old white lady" is a
very fine life sized cow. However great his difficulties, Mr. Howe has triumphantly overcome them and produced a lastingly fine picture, interesting not only for
the animals but for the landscape; the moon, just rising behind a low hill, floods
the whole scene with a soft light.
Several of the great French masters were at the vernissage, and I listened
eagerly for any crumbs of wisdom that might fall from their lips; but, as a rule,
they were extremely cautious. I did hear one very big man indeed remark that
Charles Stanley Reinhart's "Drowned Sailor "was " rudemert bien fait," which
may be translated " stunningly well done "-a sentiment universally endorsed.
I have called the picture " A Drowned Sailor" simply because its official title,
"Un';ave," is rather impossible in' English. " A Castaway," the nearest one
can get to it, suggests rafts and a desert island, whereas the sea has flung this
poor fellow upon the beach of a Normandy fishing-village. The strongest bit of
painting in the picture is the head of the man who kneels beside the unfortunate
stranger, his hand to his breast as he has raised it to make the sign of the cross,
while his lips move in prayer for the unknown dead. Mr. Reinhart witnessed an
almost precisely similar episode on the coast near Trbport one morning after a
terrible storm, in which eight boats went to pieces between there and Dieppe.
One is almost inclined to connect this artist's two pictures. His second, the solitary figure of an old woman looking out to sea, might be the mother of the
drowned man, and her face have acquired that strained, weary expression scanning
the horizon for "those who will never come back to the town."