They were sure that Mr. Wyke Bayliss, at any rate,
was free from the Whistlerian taint. Much was said
in the early autumn as to the fine show that was soon
to be opened at the familiar rooms in Suffolk Street :
how the mockers were to be confounded, and the arch-
blasphemer made to squirm in his ruthlessly sesthetic
abode in Chelsea ; and how the ' gentlemen of the
press ' were to be won over to unwavering allegiance.
And indeed it did seem as if such predictions would be
in great part fulfilled : for not only was it known that
the British Remnant was burning to distinguish itself,
but the rumour was industriously spread that some
2500 canvases, over and above those anticipated from
members, had been sent in — mainly an overflow from
the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours, which had un-
expectedly opened about a month earlier than usual.
Surely, it was reasonable to conclude, out of such
ai'tistic largesse many tit-bits would fall to the R.S.B.A.
But, alas, for all evidence to the contrary, the 2;)00
uninvited canvases might have gone elsewhere in their
disconsolate appeal. It was another artist in the
comedy of incongruity who invented the word ' chortle.'
Well, Mr. Whistler and his friends are now chortling.
The society in Sufl^olk. Street, if not so excruciatingly
British as of yore, is again in a moribund condition.
A general flabbiness is its characteristic. There is
nothing by any member that is really noteworthy, and
there is a great deal that bores one as much as a two-
hour Gaelic sermon would have bored a Greek
audience. Canvas after canvas, wall after wall, is
dreary with mediocrity — mediocrity of technique,
mediocrity of import, mediocrity of artistic emotion.
Here and there is an excellent drawing or a creditable
painting, but a few snow-showers don't make a winter.
There is an east-country proverb, that ' a lost chance
flies owre the sea' : by this time the chance which the
R.S.B.A. has lost must have flown numberless leagues —
or been drowned, poor thing. Seriously, the present ex-
hibition is — as it was understood it would be — a crucial
one. It was recognised that if, metaphorically speaking,
it came down heads, the ' chortling ' would be on the
part of the members ; but that if it came down tails, the
Whistlerian cackle would be loud and long. Well, it
is not the British artists who now chortle. The whole
affair has been regarded with interest by artists through-
out the country, for it was realised that one of the last
battles of artistic Torydom was about to be fought. If
the present exhibition had been generally hailed as an
unqualified success, thei'e can be no doubt that institu-
tions and societies throughout the country would have
taken the hint, and the third-rate men would have
everywhere had a new lease of prosperity. But it will
now be equally widely realised that both the critical
and the best public taste are against mediocrity, and
are in favour of invention, imagination, novelty, assured
and idiosyncratic excellence of technique, and, in a
word, of genius. This, moreover, even at the risk, or
rather with the certainty, of many eccentricities, and
perhaps some banalities. It is a welcome sign that
discomfiture has not awaited Mr. Whistler and the
numerous young and able men who withdrew with him
from the ' British artists ' ; and though the latter has
not yet gone back to the dreadful commonplaceness of
Pre-Whistlerian days, such ultimate result of the dis-
ruption is almost inevitable. It might have been
expected that the members of an Academy who could
hesitate between the election to R.A.-ship of Mr.
Burgess and Mr. Andrew Gow on the one part, and of
Mr. Hubert Herkomer and Mr. Burne-Jones on the
other, would have supported their confreres in Suffolk
Street ; but as a matter of fact they have been chary of
assistance. Two prominent members, however, have
lent a helping hand. Sir Frederick Leighton sends
five small pieces, 'A Study,' 'A Study for Daphnephoriri,'
and three 'Sketches from Rhodes.' All are dainty,
delicate, and refined ; but none has any claim to be
considered important. More noteworthy is the canvas
of 'Ganymede,' by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A. It is not,
unfortunately, a good example of that great but most
unequal artist. The values are not sympathetic, or are
too emphatic : the persistent flesh-browns have an
efl^ect of crudeness : and the draughtsmanship, particu-
larly in the hands, is obviously unsatisfactory. Among
the really praiseworthy contributions are Mr. Henry
Moore's ' Becalmed in the Alderney Race ' ; some
pleasant Channel and South Coast marine studies by
G. S. Walters ; C. S. Mottram's vigorous and realistic
' In the Wake of the Margate Boat ' ; Carl Haag's
' Coraan Reader ' ; James E. Grace's ' Evening Mists ' ;
Edwin Ellis's able and unconventional coast studies,
greatly improved in everj' way from previous work of
the kind ; and Mr. Sherwood Hunter's Ave Maria. It
is an outsider, however, who is far and away the most
notewoi'thy exhibitor at the present show, — the young
Dutch artist, M. Hubert Vos, whose portraiture is
imconventional without eccentricity, and impressive by
just means and methods. For the rest, in their com-
placent unattractiveness, one can but con over again
Edward Lear's admirable phrase, unless it be to sub-
stitute therefor another from the same source, and
bewail ' the serene and sickly suavity of the truly ' —'British.' ' W. S.
Birmingham Exhibition.— There are 84S pictures in the gallery, and one might pick 100 among them which would be good or fairly good, Bouguereau's * First Sorrow ' is the best piece of painting there ; the drawing and composition are excellent. The well-known Stanhope Forbes' ' The Village Philharmonic ' shines out across the large round room like the window of a village inn at night, and Burne - Jones' ' Danae ' needs no praise. The water-colours are singularly old fashioned ; but Mr. Crane is to the fore with his admirable contempt of nature, and Miss Clara Montalba's few drawings are stars among dun-coloured clouds. Still, in spite of the lack of true feeling, and the absence of modern technique both in oil and water-colour, this Exhiliition undoubtedly does good, and the society may produce in the end some good men, while even bad pictures are belter than none at all from one point of view, and that is when we regard them as evidences of desire to see truly and do good work if possible.
