188
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
toward the shelter, and a mournful tone of approaching night harmonizes with the grief of the animal. The horses are drawn with great precision of line and knowledge of forms. The same may he said of another picture, The Service of Friendship —a finely-built gray mare, making acquaintance with the mother of a litter of pups in the corner of the stable. On a much smaller scale, and with little or no attempt at expression in the animals, are the horses of Max Gierymski, who exposed a number of cavalry groups, admirably drawn, artistically composed and painted. In these groups, the landscape is not the least interesting part, and this is also true of the small horse pictures of Professor Dietz. The latter are effective as landscapes, and are rich and fine in tone and color. Schreyer sent a few of his mediocre works, none of them giving a bint of the masterly power that is found in the Cossack Horses in a Slorm , in the Luxembourg Palace at Paris. Charles Verlat, who was represented by a portrait of the Queen of Holland in this department, and by two or three strongly painted, but overdrawn and dramatic pictures in the-Belgian section, was seen in his element in The Artist , a monkey, at work at an easel—a work full of the richest color and most skilful handling.
The Swiss painters are thoroughly German in their ideas, and this department differed only from the German one in the much smaller proportion of excellent works. This may be accounted for by the fact that Switzerland sent few or no pictures from the museums, but depended on her artists to represent the country in her full artistic strength. As there was no high standard of admission to the collection, the number of mediocre works was large, and consequently the aspect of the hall was not agreeable. The Swiss seem to be slower than their neighbors to give up their old, conventional ideas, and are, as a rule, much more inflexible adherents to the doctrines of the past. Very many of the best artists paint in Germany, and, from patriotic motives, exposed a 11 ' der the flag of their fatherland. Vautier added three pictures to the Swiss collection, one of which, The Village Funeralt is generally considered his best work. The story is told with more skill than feeling, and while, in its presence one sympathizes with the mourning friends, the impress is u°t