'THE WOOD NYMPH' AND 'SILENCE.'
E. BuKNE Jones, A.R.A. Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
THESE two typical works of kindred yet con- trasted idealists may be not inappropriately looked at, as their originals are now exhibited, together. For most people Burnc Jones is probably here seen at his best ; there is little of that high straining after symbolic interest, and none of that meditative pain which mark his more ambitious efforts ; what we have in this is above all things a skilful decorative design in which the results of long and thouglitful studentship in figure, drapery, and foliage are gathered up without any marked effort to transcend theni. Hence, although far less bold in conception and rich in colour than his adja- cent ' Sea Nymph,' this picture will be for most people all the more pleasing. Not only is the colour in the painter's gentlest and most familiar chord, but the harmonies and contrasts of line and sliadow and texture, in the ' Sea Nynijjh ' so sharp and startling, are here simple and unforced. The luxuriant ever- green foliage crowding over the square panel edge, like serried lance-sheaves over a wall ; the misty grass below ; the lithe well-poised figure swinging lightly with the wind, its own free yet well-gathered lines almost leafy in their simple sweep and curva- ture ; again, the breadth and simplicity of the lights and shadows of the flesh and drapery, contrasted with the separate keenness of the individual leaves — all these and other resources of the designer are wrought into an effective and harmonious whole. Drawbacks may be freely granted, which the need of conventionalising cannot be permitted wholly to condone. The leaf-drawing becomes weak and some- what monotonous upon the right, and the exclu- sion of foreshortening gives excessive flatness. The tree thus becomes pressed, as it were, and the figure laid upon, not embowered within it ; while, despite the beauty of the drapery, its undisturbed perfec- tion of orderliness befits rather a princess upon her dais than a wood-nymph wild. Now, although the Philistines are comfortably assured that science has been wholly trimmed of her wings, and safely bound to the wheel of lower industries, she is in reality swiftly bearing us to- wards a new world of higher art. For the fairy tales, however we may grudge to believe it, are all absolutely true — not idle fancies, those long-for- gotten dreams, but prefigured generalisations all. Hence the botanists, whom everybody, whether Philistine or painter, still fancies mere academic Dryasdusts jargoning over mummy weeds, have this many a year been wandering down the world's forest glades no less deeply than the painter or even poet. So to them the Dryads are no more mere fainting echoes of Hellenic song, but have been seen anew — a multitude of living presences whose happy sun-fed sleep fills the leaves, and whose dreamy awakening it is that shapes and stirs the flowers.
So it will be for later painters to see the Dryad fully in the open wood, and draw her with bolder and freer hand, with more exuberant colour ; to show us Flora rising from that changing foam of blossom which covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. In those days our Wood Nymph may seem but a dim shadow wrought by an early master ; yet it is much to have dreamed of her, more to have imaged her, in these dull days at all.
But enough of what in another mood must seem mere ' vapid vegetable loves,' for the Rossetti drawing deals with ideals of altogether higher order, albeit less completely expressed. Technical inferiority is, of course, clearly marked alike in the drapery and the figure — witness such obvious points as the mis-modelled shoulder, or the crude drawing of the hands. The imperfect primary education in accurate presentment of reality, the unattained mastery of technical resource, which so long retarded Rossetti's general influence, and still render him useless or hindersome to so many professed painters, are manifest here at a glance. Yet although truth be great, and skill precious, there is another road to art, and it is this man's historic merit to have re-opened it. Since the revival of learning the artist has been everywhere trained to begin with the discerning intellect and its uncompromising delineation of fact, next at best encouraged to presentment of this with due regard to aesthetic harmony. These given us, he seeks little more ; the faintest spark of feeling or fancy will suffice, and so painter and critic are usually content. But Rossetti began from the opposite side ; for him, as for a child, a drawing was neither primarily the recording of a fact nor the designing of something pretty, but the notation of imagination — a wholly different matter. Thereafter, of course, came as much technical grasp as solitary labour could win ; but the deficiency of this mattered far less than to the orthodox painter.
