sentimentality. The baby's face is somewhat hard; it is, perhaps, the
least satisfactory thing in the picture. The picture is wanting in
that totality which we find in the greatest masters--for instance, in
that exquisite portrait of a mother and child by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
exhibited this year in the Guildhall--that beautiful portrait of the
mother holding out her babe at arms'-length above her knee.

Room 4 is remarkable for Stanhope Forbes' picture of "Forging the
Anchor". Mr. Stanhope Forbes is the last-elected Academician, and the
most prominent exponent of the art of Bastien-Lepage. Perhaps the most
instructive article that could be written on the Academy would be one
in which the writer would confine his examination to this and Mr.
Clausen's picture of "Mowers", comparing and contrasting the two
pictures at every point, showing where they diverge, and tracing their
artistic history back to its ultimate source. But to do this
thoroughly would be to write the history of the artistic movement in
France and England for the last thirty years; and I must limit myself
to pointing out that Mr. Clausen has gone back to first principles,
whereas Mr. Stanhope Forbes still continues at the point where
Bastien-Lepage began to curtail, deform, and degrade the original
inspiration. Mr. Clausen, I said, overcame the difficulty of the
trousers by generalisation. Mr. Stanhope Forbes copied the trousers
seam by seam, patch by patch; and the ugliness of the garment bores
you in the picture, exactly as it would in nature. And the same
criticism applies equally well to the faces, the hands, the leather
aprons, the loose iron, the hammers, the pincers, the smoked walls. I
should not be surprised to learn that Mr. Stanhope Forbes had had a
forge built up in his studio, and had copied it all as it stood. A
handful of dry facts instead of a passionate impression of life in its
envelope of mystery and suggestion.