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A Bad Exhibition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A BAD EXHIBITION, 1807
(by Samuel Sensitive, a.k.a. James Beresford. )

view an okay art exhibition

A BAD EXHIBITION! -- le voici: -- After having paid at the Door for your approaching Misery, worked your way up the circular stone ladder to the Great Room, and there, at length, recovered yourself from the breathless, weary, giddy state in which you entered -- you stand, for a few stupid moments, throwing about your eyes, in a vague, uneasy puzzle where to begin, and blinded at the outset by the dazzling assemblage of colours on all sides, --- colours which, at the first glance, you perceive to be one half red hot, and the other stone cold. --- All your attention, however, is soon imperiously demanded by one or two of those whole-length equestrian Gentlemen, far larger than life, who severally arrogate half a side of the room to themselves; each dismounted, hatless rider, with legs crossed, and arms folded, coolly lounging half-backward, against the shoulder of his rampant Charger --- the animal, however, so completely petrified by the painter as at once to relieve you from the anxiety you were ready to feel at the sight of a fellow creature in so perilous a predicament.--- Among these Colossal Likenesses, you are occasionally presented with a Statesman, idly standing up by his table of business, scattered over with such a formidable heap of his own Bills, Acts, Treaties, and other parliamentary, or diplomatic lumber, that we do not wonder he should turn away from it all as he does---(“I cannot bear to think on what I’ve done --- Look on’t again I dare not!”) --- and apply his hand, instead of his head, to this olio of documents, which, in truth, as we contemplate his painted physiognomy, may very easily be supposed too much for him.

You are next summoned to admire the Ladies --- likewise at full length; --- one of these, (and commonly a Nymph of Rank, too!) gaily tripping out in a hurricane, by herself, in thin fluttering muslins, without a cap, hat, or bonnet, by the side of a raging sea, where, if one may judge by the disposition of her limbs, and the archness of her countenance, she is practising an allemande to the music of the thunder-claps which are bursting over her in all directions --- yet without the slightest marks of concern in her looks, or apparent apprehensions of taking cold after dancing under such discouraging circumstances of dress and weather! -- With this Lady is forcibly contrasted another, not less remarkable, on her part, for the stiff and sullen composure with which she sits “forgetting herself to marble” under an huge tree, in a garden nearly as formal as its Mistress. But this is not the worst; --- hitherto we have, at least, seen the good folk in their natural costumes: --- now for a few privileged Countesses, or dashing Duchesses, who, burning for the palm of eccentricity, have resolved to astonish us in disguise: -- to escape the vulgar stigma of being instantly known by her picture, this daring Beauty, with honest vanity, blazes, a Goddess, in the clouds; --- while another courtly Charmer, hypocritically modest, coquettes under the tatters of a Gipsy! --- The next figure is that of a prim Miss of 12 or 13, staring straight out of the picture, with one hand grown to her side, and the other to the monstrous head of a Newfoundland dog, sitting up exactly as high as she stands; -- the Painter rejecting, with a noble disdain, so trite and cheap a beauty in his art, as that of grouping.

As to the sublime department of History, I leave it out --- as the Artists themselves are now obliged to do; their pencils being far too fully engrossed by the vanity of the Living to be at leisure for the glories of the Dead; and so you must content yourself with such an humble imitation of Historical Painting as you find displayed in the ---Family Pieces! In one of these, the worthy Originals, with equal attention to economy and benevolence, have caused I know not how many yards of canvass to be covered with paint by a young man in the country who “wants encouragement;” and who has, accordingly, bee encouraged to immortalize family-affection by representing the Papa standing up at one end of the picture, and Mamma at the other, the peace being kept between them, without the loss of an inch of space, by their endless progeny, whose heights and ages the Artist has most accurately registered by stringing them straight out, closely linked together in a descending series, like the reeds of Pan’s pipe --- which they farther resemble in the lank uprightness of their figures, and the bilious deadness of their complexions. --- the next of these Domestick Scenes reproaches the idleness so remarkable in the foregoing, by the great variety of employment which it exhibits with the additional advantage of allowing more elbow-room to the fancy of the Painter; who, in the first place, has contrived to record, in the mother of the family, a truly exemplary instance of nobility, combined with maternal tenderness; for she is seen, at the same point of time, engaged in nursing one child in her lap, rocking with her foot the cradle of another, hearing the task of a third, and eyeing the frolics of a fourth; and all this without seeming at all distracted from her needle, which she has just drawn out at the utmost stretch of her arm. The remaining children are all liberally supplied with such various occupations or amusements, as when followed at proper times and places, must be allowed to become their sexes and ages, but which we are not exactly prepared to see (as here) all going on at once in the same parlour. And yet, if the painter be supposed to have represented things faithfully, and exception must be made in favour of the young ladies of this extraordinary family, who can study their maps and globes, pore over their books, and even practice their musical lessons, without appearing once to know that those boisterous and unruly little Dogs, their brothers, are smacking their whips, beating their drums, scampering about the room with their waggons, &c. &c. --- the very Baby in the cradle, instead of being frightened out of its wits, as might reasonably be expected, only appearing to be lulled into a still sounder sleep by the riotous gambols going on: --- our first surprise at all this, the more narrowly the young gentlemen themselves; who, from the unbending stiffness in their limbs, and the stupid, motionless gravity of their countenances, are so far from impressing us with the idea of a set of noisy boys at play, that they have the exact appearance of having been suddenly arrested, all round, in the midst of their pranks, by the touch of Harlequin’s sword. But nothing in the whole scene before us so powerfully excites our astonishment and admiration, as the incorrigible phlegm of the Father; who (though with plenty of leisure on his hands,) neither takes a book --- pays the slightest attention to his wife --- overlooks the improvements of his girls --- enters into the sports of his boys --- is at all put out of his way by the racket they are making --- nor concerns himself about the feelings of his slumbering infant; --- but, stuck forward quite by himself, with his back to all the party, his lips glued to each other, and his bullet-eyes wide open, (though evidently seeing nothing,) simply sits impaled on his chair, like Rosicrusius’s statue!

From the above important personages in all the dignity of full dimensions, you now turn to others, less presumptuous, in half-length; whom you find fairly and honestly represented under the operation of sitting for their pictures, and all surrendering themselves up, with different degrees of resignation, and with various distortions of attitude, to their respective Executioners.--- For these, a very cursory examination suffices; --- when, in some fatal moment, as you are looking for better entertainment, an upward glance or your eye introduces you to those poor creatures, in reduced sizes, who are sent to Coventry at the top of the room, and strung along, by way of cornice, close under the ceiling; figures! --- but what language can adequately report them? --- their wooden features --- their mortified complexions --- their sneaking, disconsolate, condemned looks --- their quizzical head-dresses --- their paste-board draperies --- their brick-dust curtains, increasing by contrast, the chalkiness of their cheeks --- and that general and inveterate hardness of manner, which instantly chases away all idea of the elasticity of flesh, and the flexibility of cloth or linen: --- hard! --- adamant is pap to it! --- But this rage for portraits is by no means limited to the human race --- it has seized upon the Quadrupeds too; a few of whom afford us very plausible reasons for suspecting that they sat (I mean stood) without any consultation with their masters. Among these, for instance, you shall come to the mere elevations of a pair of Coach-horses, in harness, who shew all the symptoms of having slipped away from the carriage by mutual consent, and trotted off, just as they were, to the Artist’s door, making signs that they wished to be painted; --- for there they stand, side by side, in all their trappings, apropos to nothing, without a single Biped in sight to take charge of their heads, and exactly such a background to their portraits (a stable-door --- and nothing else!) as the Cattle themselves would have been likely to bespeak. But enough, and ten thousand times too much, of Portraits; though, in truth, the walls are wainscotted with them.

However, Fancy has also been allowed room to sport in; and the Artist, to do him justice, has made the most of it. --- In this walk of the Art, you shall be treated with some mawkish Allegory, representing (as you are kindly told) Innocence, Modesty, Benevolence, and other good qualities, tenderly embracing and crowning one another’s busts with chaplets and garlands, while they are lighted along (in broad day-light!) by sundry naked link-boys in the air, under the notion of Cupids and Genii.---Next comes a parcel of Months, or Hours, (in petticoats,) smiling, and dancing jigs round another emblem, in the shape of a good-humored-looking woman in green, whom we are to call Spring; --- I don’t find that they have yet got to changing the Minutes, Seconds, and other inferior parts of Clock-work, into little fluttering Urchins; --- but never fear!

Getting away from all this, you’ll have a Scene taken from the last volume of Mrs---------’s new novel of Ethelwinda, or some such thing; --- this, however, you cannot look at; --- and so, as you wander on, yawning away all your breath, your eyes, and thoughts, are suddenly, and peremptorily, fixed by an object which makes every other performance in the allegory-line seem absolutely somber and rational: -- it is --- it is --= what is it? --- why, it is ---

A specimen of the awful! --- a Piece equally stupendous in size and subject, and evidently put together with a resolute determination to drive the poor planet-struck spectator out of his senses. --- How can I hope, or attempt to describe that, the very quintessence of which is to be not even conceivable? --- were the Painter, with “his eye in a fine frenzy rolling,” and plunged out of all sight and reach, into a bottomless gulf of mystery, has set himself to conjure into presence Things which might be thought too wild, prodigious, and appalling, even for the grasp of imagination, collectively representing to us the semblance of having been furiously thrown off in the dark on the astonished canvass, from the disordered pallets of all the painters in the Universe, --- Things, which be it permitted to me, in language as sublimely indeterminate as are the form of my tremendous Original, to characterise as a sort of Maniac’s Vision, embodied into a rolling Chaos, turbulently brewed up out of the embattled rudiments of Smoke! Blood! Fire! Night! Whirlwind! Earth! and Water! --- all these, and a thousand other alarming ingredients without name, being magically worked round into a murky, burning vortex, or angry Halo upon Halo, of indistinct and preternatural agglomerations! --- a ruinous huddle of every thing spiritual and material --- real and conjectural --- within and without the precincts of possible Nature --- and of every mingling shape, shade, colour, quality, and consistence --- the whole congregated mass of discordances tumultuously wheeling, dashing, boiling, and thundering together, in one giddy Storm of . . . . . NOTHING! --- So much for the Landscape part of the piece; --- but as no landscape is complete without its Figures, we are next to observe that this lurid Whirl of miscellaneous Monstrosities --- this obscure and turbid fermentation of floundering Abortions, should seem to be inhabited by Beings --- or rather, ambiguous and reserved innuendoes of Beings --- fluctuating somewhere among the shadowy and unsettled nomenclatures of Incantation --- Demon --- Wizard --- Griffin --- Goblin ---Demogoggon, &c. &c a description (or non-description) of people who may, after all, be imagined to pass their time contentedly, and even comfortably, in a situation apparently so well provided with every accommodation adapted to their peculiar tastes, habits, and amusements! --- What, indeed, may be the particular business of these “questionable Shapes” upon the scene, on the present occasion, it is the farthest in the world from the scope of the Painter’s design, to insinuate (still less to let out) to us, through our Catalogues; --- but, upon the whole, it may be dimly surmised, that the compound of confusion, which we are lost in wondering at, may be obliquely borrowed (every thing being anxiously improved into still deeper difficulty by the address of the pencil) from some of the darkest pages that could be found in Dante, Milton, Ossian, Ariosto, &c. &c. and that, in this state, the result has been abandoned to the imaginations of the various spectators, to be warped and tortured by every one, in his own way, into any scheme --- or dissolution of a scheme --- whether moral, marvellous, mystical, mythological, or historical, with which the circumstances may happen at the moment to be thought less irreconcilable!

But let us hasten to repose the affrighted eye upon the Landscapes --- with their meagre subjects --- lying perspective --- timid handling --- frittered lights --- lumpy shadows --- indigo skies --- saffron sands --- forward back-grounds --- backward fore-grounds --- trees and meadows carefully coloured from an emerald --- and water of such an hue and surface, that, forgetting for a moment the Season represented, we look narrowly after the Skaiters!

Having suffered all this in the upper Storey --- with the addition of being squeezed and melted in a June mob, till you look, and feel, like a buttered Mummy --- you are glad to crawl down stairs; and the rather, as you will be thus far advanced on your progress out of the house. In descending, you turn, by a mechanical impulse, into the middle rooms, where you are to encounter wretchedness on a still lower scale. Here, without slackening your pace as you walk the round, you throw a hasty frown from side to side, with your under lip at your nose, and the corners of your mouth at your chin, upon more heads and shoulders, and these, too, in crayons --- affording striking examples of worse styles by the help of worse materials --- Then come various still-born efforts, in black-lead pencil, from the hands of academical Tyros --- tawdry portraits of tall exotic roots, and plants; however, with here and there, a flaring flower-piece; (these, however, with becoming modesty, generally skulk out of sight, about the window-panels;) --- and, to name no more, wan historical sketches, in water-colour, by young ladies, &c. &c. --- Some slight curiosity you feel to glance over the Miniatures, --- but who can ever make his way to these, except everybody but yourself?

At length, in the best (because the last) room on the Ground-floor, your delightful and instructive survey finishes with imaginary Elevations of Bridges that will never be built --- naked fronts of huge white Houses, that sicken every eye but those of the Architect and Owner --- and chuckle-headed busts, in plaster, of obscure, pudding-faced Moderns, who are nothing so little as heroic!

Your task is now over! --- but not the harassed, languid, and exhausted state of your mind and body, in which, with aching, smarting eye-balls, you have been loitering about for the last hour or two, long after the glimmering of satisfaction with which you had contemplated the two or three tolerable pieces, had been irrevocably extinguished.