In The Delineation Of The Naked Human Figure, Etty Is
Allowed To Surpass All The English Living Artists, And His Manner Of
Painting Flesh Is Thought To Be Next To That Of Rubens.
His reputation for
these qualities has influenced his choice of subjects in a remarkable
manner.
The walls of the exhibition were covered writh Venuses and Eves,
Cupids and Psyches, and nymphs innocent of drapery, reclining on couches,
or admiring their own beauty reflected in clear fountains. I almost
thought myself in the midst of a collection made for the Grand Seignior.
The annual exhibition of the Royal Academy is now open. Its general
character is mediocrity, unrelieved by any works of extraordinary or
striking merit. There are some clever landscapes by the younger Danbys,
and one by the father, which is by no means among his happiest - a dark
picture, which in half a dozen years will be one mass of black paint.
Cooper, almost equal to Paul Potter as a cattle painter, contributes some
good pieces of that kind, and one of them, in which the cattle are from
his pencil, and the landscape from that of Lee, appeared to me the finest
thing in the collection. There is, however, a picture by Leslie, which his
friends insist is the best in the exhibition. It represents the chaplain
of the Duke leaving the table in a rage, after an harangue by Don Quixote
in praise of knight-errantry. The suppressed mirth of the Duke and
Duchess, the sly looks of the servants, the stormy anger of the
ecclesiastic, and the serene gravity of the knight, are well expressed;
but there is a stiffness in some of the figures which makes them look as
if copied from the wooden models in the artist's study, and a raw and
crude appearance in the handling, so that you are reminded of the brush
every time you look at the painting.
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