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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
forest, and hillside or plain, and has little sympathy with the grand in nature’s architecture, or with her most striking moods. He paints trees w T ith all their richness and multiplicity of tones, and lovingly details the texture of the trunks and the graceful contours of the limbs. His perspective of line and of tone is as faultless as his execution of the tree- trunks, and he gives us nature as she is, appealing only through her simplest charms. The two landscapes by Van Luppen scarcely kept up this artist’s reputation. His strength is found in the solidly painted distances and in a keener sense of the picturesque than Lamoriniere has. Grandly broad and superbly rich in color, a marine of Clays always fixes the attention. It is generally a clump of the bright colored Dutch boats and their harlequin sails, all reflected with the glories of the sky in myriads of ripples, or a choppy sea, a breezy sky and a fishing boat, tossing about on the waves. Grasping the grandest elements of the scene, the artist represents it with a rare vigor and a strong, suggestive touch that reminds one of some noble adjective of Homer, expressing a world of beauty in a few syllables and characterizing with bold lines. Clays exposed four of his finest efforts and they found no rivals.
The Ducal Palace at Brussels contributed the large landscape with cattle, by Robbe, as the most shining example of this artist’s superior powers. The skill with which he has treated both elements of this picture, rank him among the foremost of animal and landscape painters,—a broad expanse of meadow, with a herd of cattle feeding, or drinking in the pools, a grand sky full of piled up clouds and all in full sunlight; this, rendered with’a master’s hand. A touch of color, like an echo of Troyon vigorously and boldly placed, is a bull fighting wfith dogs. M. F. H. De Haas exposed some firmly drawn and solidly painted cattle, also a pair of donkeys on 'the beach at Scheveningen, very strong in color and well m the open air. With Joseph Stevens, who sent a market of dogs, a picturesque scene, the list is complete.
It is with reverence that I approach the masterpieces of Joseph Israels of the Hague, which in my estimation rise supreme above anything in the Dutch or Belgian departments, and find no parallels in the w T hole Exposition. Israels m-