Mr. Armitage's "Juno," standing in
mid-air, with the moon in the neighbourhood, is also an example to
youth, and very unlike the way such things are generally done now.
Mr. Burne-Jones (who does not exhibit) never did anything like
this. Poor Haydon, with whom I have smoked many a pipe, would have
acknowledged that Mr. Goodall's "David's Promise to Bathsheba" and
"By the Sea of Galilee" prove that his aspirations are nearly
fulfilled. These are extremely large pictures, yet well hung. The
figure of Abishag is a little too much in the French taste for an
old-fashioned painter. Ars longa, nuda veritas! I hope (and so
will the Liberal readers of the "Newcome Independent") that it is
by an accident the catalogue reads--"The Traitor." "Earl Spencer,
K.G." "The Moonlighters." (Nos. 220, 221, 225.) Some Tory WAG
among the Hanging Committee may have taken this juxtaposition for
wit: our readers will adopt a different view.
There is a fine dog in Mr. Briton Riviere's "Requiescat," but how
did the relations of the dead knight in plate armour acquire the
embroidery, at least three centuries later, on which he is laid to
his last repose? This destroys the illusion, but does not diminish
the pathos in the attitude of the faithful hound. Mr. Long's large
picture appears to exhibit an Oriental girl being tried by a jury
of matrons--at least, not having my Diodorus Scriblerus by me, I
can arrive at no other conclusion.
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