Mr Solomon Hart's _Kitchen Interior at Mayfield_ will not do after
Webster. This, however, is one of the least important of his six
pictures, which comprise two other interiors, two heads, and a
Jewish festival. This last is perhaps the best picture he has
painted. The MSS. of the Pentateuch are being carried round the
synagogue at Leghorn, amidst chanting of hymns. There is a strong
devotional character in many of the faces; and, as a work of art,
the picture is more than respectable. The interest of the subject is
a question of taste. For us, we confess, it possesses very little
attraction; and the Jewish physiognomy, so strongly marked as it
is in all the occupants of the synagogue, is, to our thinking,
incompatible with beauty. We do not much admire either _A Virtuoso
or Arnolfo di Lapo_. The latter is the best of the two: the former,
carefully painted, is merely an ordinary-looking Jew.
What can we say of Mr Turner? Perhaps we had better content
ourselves with mentioning that he has four pictures in the
Exhibition, all in his latest manner, all illustrative of that
far-famed, but, unfortunately, unpublished poem, _The Fallacies of
Hope_, and all proving the fallacy of the hope we annually cherish
that he will abjure his eccentricities, and revert to the style
which justly gained him his high reputation. It were absurd of us
to attempt to criticise his present productions, for to us they are
unintelligible; and, judging from the extremely puzzled looks we see
fixed upon them, we suspect that not many of those who pause for
their examination are more successful than ourselves in deciphering
their meaning, and in appreciating the beauties which a few stanch
adherents pretend to discover in those strange compounds of red,
white, and yellow. What if Mr Turner were to seek his inspirations
elsewhere than in the aforesaid MS.? Can it be that the poet's
halting verse influences the painter's vagaries? From the specimens
afforded us, we are not inclined to think highly of _The Fallacies_
_of Hope_. Take the following, _exempli gratiâ_:--
"Beneath the morning mist
Mercury waited to tell him of his neglected fleet."
And this--
"Fallacious Hope beneath the moon's pale crescent shone,
Dido listened to Troy being lost and won."
Enough of such poetry, and enough, as far as we are concerned, of a
great painter's unfortunate aberrations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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