a sort of haziness that seems to foreshadow the darkness which
later is to come over him. The picture does great credit to a very
rising artist, Mr F. Newenham, who also exhibits a painting at the
Portland Gallery, which we like quite as well as his Cromwell.
The subject, _The Princes in the Tower_, is not a very new one,
but there is imagination and novelty in its treatment. It is just
the same point of time that Delaroche has chosen in his painting
of this subject, but there is nothing like an imitation of the
great Frenchman. Here the younger child still sleeps, whilst the
elder, a princely-looking lad, roused by the noise at the door,
gazes anxiously, rather than fearfully, at the shadow cast upon the
wall by a hand bearing a lantern. The picture is suggestive and
interesting, and in an artistic point of view, also, it merits high
praise. In this Portland Gallery (which we may observe, by the way,
is most excellently constructed and lighted for the advantageous
exhibition of works of art) is a painting by Mr Claxton, _Marie
Antoinette with her Children, escaping by the Secret Door from her
apartment in Versailles, when the palace was attached by the mob_,
which we mention rather on account of the interest of the subject
than of its merits as a work of art, these being but of a negative
description. Marie Antoinette, dressed rather like a fashionable of
the year 1850, is accompanied by a terrified lady, who looks back
at the door, half-masked by smoke, through whose broken pannel the
bayonets of the rebels cross with those of the loyal grenadiers.
Another picture from French history, but selected from a much
remoter period, is that of _The Excommunication of Robert, King of
France, and his Queen Bertha_, (No. 159 in the Portland Gallery.)
which Mr Desanges has executed with some skill. The king, having
married his cousin in defiance of the Pope, but with the sanction of
three prelates of his kingdom, incurs the pontifical anathema, in
common with the prelates and royal family. In the picture, the fiat
has just been pronounced, and the extinction of their torches by the
officiating priests symbolically completes their mission.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account