The Royal Academy

Abstract

A VISIT to the Royal Academy cannot fail to be of interest to those who take pleasure in the ways of Nature, the varying moods of which are shown in so many of the pictures exhibited. Unfortunately, it has to be admitted that while there is much of interest to the scientific worker in each year's exhibition, there is also much that is jarring by reason of its lack of adherence to the truth. So much adverse comment is passed upon the works of the exhibitors by artistic critics at the opening of the exhibition each summer that it is perhaps natural for artists to make greater efforts to meet this criticism than a purely scientific criticism, which in general, though well deserved, remains unvoiced. To the man of science no result can be pleasing which is produced merely for the sake of effect and in its production overrides the laws of Nature. As an example of this type may be cited “Off the Western Land” (198) in the exhibition which opened at Burlington House at the beginning of the present week. It is difficult to believe that the combination of colours there depicted on the sea and in the sky could ever be approached in Nature. In the same way the colouring of the clouds in “The House on the Sea Wall” (309) cannot be passed over without comment. The complete semicircular rainbow in “Passing Storm” (232) seems to be independent of the presence of raindrops in its formation. While rain is seen to be falling in one part of the sky, the artist appears to have gone out of his way to indicate that there is no rain in another part of the bow, the cumulus cloud behind showing up with absolute clearness.