while through the branches of a tall olive tree, unseen by the Virgin's
tear-dimmed eyes, is descending the angel Gabriel with his joyful and
terrible message, not painted as Angelico loved to do, in the varied
splendour of peacock-like wings and garments of gold and crimson, but
somewhat sombre in colour, set with all the fine grace of nobly-fashioned
drapery and exquisitely ordered design. In presence of what may be
called the mediaeval spirit may be discerned both the idea and the
technique of the work, and even still more so in the four pictures of the
story of Pygmalion, where the sculptor is represented in dress and in
looks rather as a Christian St. Francis, than as a pure Greek artist in
the first morning tide of art, creating his own ideal, and worshipping
it. For delicacy and melody of colour these pictures are beyond praise,
nor can anything exceed the idyllic loveliness of Aphrodite waking the
statue into sensuous life: the world above her head like a brittle globe
of glass, her feet resting on a drift of the blue sky, and a choir of
doves fluttering around her like a fall of white snow. Following in the
same school of ideal and imaginative painting is Miss Evelyn Pickering,
whose picture of St. Catherine, in the Dudley of some years ago,
attracted such great attention. To the present gallery she has
contributed a large picture of Night and Sleep, twin brothers floating
over the world in indissoluble embrace, the one spreading the cloak of
darkness, while from the other's listless hands the Leathean poppies fall
in a scarlet shower. Mr. Strudwich sends a picture of Isabella, which
realises in some measure the pathos of Keats's poem, and another of the
lover in the lily garden from the Song of Solomon, both works full of
delicacy of design and refinement of detail, yet essentially weak in
colour, and in comparison with the splendid Giorgione-like work of Mr.
Fairfax Murray, are more like the coloured drawings of the modern German
school than what we properly call a painting. The last-named artist,
while essentially weak in draughtsmanship, yet possesses the higher