Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/669

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In England. 639 important influence on English painting of the present day, both by his pictures and writings on art. His oil- paintings, which are not numerous, are characterized by delicate grace of execution, feeling for spiritual beauty, and effective simplicity of grouping. Christ Lamenting over Jerusalem, in the National Gallery, is considered his masterpiece ; other examples are — Greek Fugitives in the hands of Banditti ; Hagar and Ishmael, and several inci- dents from Italian life. He was for many years President of the Royal Academy, and also Director of the National Gallery, of which for a few years he had been keeper. Daniel Maclise (1811 — 1870), an Irishman by birth, was a man of considerable original genius, with great power of design and feeling for colour. He produced numerous important works in oil-colours, of which the Play scene in Hamlet, in the National Gallery; Sabrina releasing the Lady from the Enchanted Chair, the Banquet Scene in Macbeth, the Ordeal by Touch, and Robin Hood and Richard Camr de Lion, were among the principal. The latter years of Maclise's life were occupied in execut- ing mural pictures (they cannot be called fresco pictures in the strict sense of the word) for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, — of which the Meeting of Wellington and Blucher and the Death of Nelson were the chief. The cartoon for the former is in the possession of the Royal Academy. Maclise's manner underwent a great change after the commencement of the pre-Raphaelite movement, and an almost painful attention to detail encumbered his later works. The Eve of S. Agnes, one of his latest exhibited easel pictures, may be referred to as a typical example of his power and his high finish. Edward Matthew Ward (1816—1879), one of the few