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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
the artist, and this vital element may be, and should be cultivated.
This brief discussion of the English system of drawing was not induced by the study of the paintings shown in the Exposition, for the display was far from being a representative one, but from a series of academic drawings exposed in connection with the engravings and etchings. Among the latter were a number of masterly ones by Whistler, who,— an American, as every one probably knows,—is one of the strongest figures in the English school, if indeed he can be said, with his prominent originality, to rank there.
Among the English paintings exposed there were many old friends, familiar to every one by photographs and engravings, and the simple mention of these will recall their remarkable qualities. The English pictures, as a whole, are marked by a surpassing delicacy of sentiment, and the stories are told with a great deal of poetry. An execution at pace with the artistic sentiments and power of expression—qualities by no means rare among English artists—would add to the impressibility of their works. The faults of their execution lie not in the ability to finish, but in the lack of freedom and spontaneity, and labored and feminine treatment is often seen in the illustration of a most bold and masculine idea. Thomas Faed’s Last of the Clan, and his God's Acre, were both shown, and the sight of them awakens ever new interest. I 11 the former, a shaggy old Scotchman, mounted on a Highland pony scarcely more rough and more scraggy than himsell, and surrounded by a crowd of genuine natives, their faces full of warm sympathy and anxious attention, stands on the pier to salute departing friends, so far as one can gather from the somewhat uncertain situation. There is a touch of nature about every figure, and so much individuality and unpretending character, that it is always new and ever attractive. The two little children in the latter picture, standing on the brink of a newly made grave, is quite as delicately expressed, mid both are painted without pretence, but with extraordinary skill. Full of communicative humor is the face of the rough Irishman in The China Merchant, by Erskine Nicol, and the face of the daughter, as she chaffs with a customer, while her father displays the crockery, is a direct transcript from