recognisable as of the kind they are intended to represent. To travel out of the horse discussion for a moment, must it not have struck every casual stroller through the halls of Burlington House how much better had it been for the credit of Mr. Millais, either for him. to have omitted altogether that animal of fearful and wonderful make and hue, apparently endeavouring to trace the dial-shadow in his deserted garden, or to have depicted the 'bunny' of every-day life in its normal position, size, and colouring? Again, because sitters are exigeant on the demands of the portrait-painter, why should he travel out of his special line to introduce a favourite dog, parrot, monkey, or cat, when fur and feather' is unknown and untrodden ground to his capabilities? One of the most charming portraits in the Academy Exhibition is materially injured, not to say spoiled, by the painter's having yielded to his fair model's caprice of being represented along with her pet dog, which we are sure Bill George would fail to recognise as belonging to the canine genus at all. Again, let us repeat, we confess to our utter inability to imagine anything more difficult of execution than the style in which modern taste(?) requires a crack racehorse or favourite hunter to be delineated. It quite smacks of Spartan severity, and might adopt 'nuda veritas' as its motto. Accessories are to be cast on one side altogether, or strictly to be limited to the regulation straw bed (after a most uncompromising 'fail' to bays and browns), the stable bucket, a heap of clothes flung negligently in a corner, or the conventional and everlasting cat. Backgrounds can be only relieved by rack and manger, or an occasional ventilator, and must be a strict reproduction of the builder's labour, otherwise outsiders will take exception to the colouring of the walls which, imaginatively handled, might have given a general happier turn to the painting. The animal must be standing broadside on to the spectator, and in an attitude of rest, which few of us have had opportunities of studying, or which, if seen, has provoked the remark of sleepy-looking devil' from the spectator. Moreover, it must be clean as a new pin from head to tail, the latter duly squared and combed out, mane water-brushed, and coat like ebony or copper, and bright as sherry in the brilliancy of its polish. No wonder we hear complaints that the whole thing is stiff, hard, metallic, and unnatural; notwithstanding that each 'point' is faithfully rendered, that the anatomy is strictly correct, and general characteristics rendered with painstaking fidelity. We are rather apt to class such work with that of those industrious workers in oil who set up their easels at the Agricultural Hall during Cattle Show week, however superior its execution may be; and we feel that both, in their attempt to follow nature, are copying her in too flunkeyfied a style, which they might very well leave to those students of mankind whose mission it is to transfer the latest fashions to tailors' cards, or to mere facsimile draughtsmen, who render line for line with such provoking punctiliousness. Mr. Lutyens, in his anxious endeavour to avoid the errors of conventionalism, has rushed into the opposite extreme of offence against realism in his attempts to inaugurate a NOBLE ANIMAL' AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY. [July, new style of equine portraiture. Colour is a distinction (often the only one) which can be drawn by the merest tyro between horses which may or may not differ materially in general conformation. But either the limner of Aventurière, Gang Forward, and King Lud is careless upon this rather important point, or the horse-clipping machine had been at work on their coats, turning Lord Aylesbury's bay filly into a dun, binding Mr. Crawfurd's 'motto' horse in law-calf, and changing the bay sheen of King Lud's coat into a nondescript shade of leaden dullness. Moreover, nothing seems to suffer from the effects of foreshortening, produced by hanging on the sky line,' as the noble animal; and hence it is that the Fyfield Cesare witch winner's natural lightness and legginess are exaggerated to distraction; while Gang Forward puts us strongly in mind of some fashionable 'fatling' leaning dyspeptically against his manger after a surfeit of oilcake or Thorley's food. Lord Lonsdale's horse and his rider are too cobby and pudgy, as seen from the level of ordinary mortals, and savour too strongly of the lay figure to please the exigeant taste of racing men. A fourth contribution by the same artist, more favourably hung, and its figures better posed, is more the thing to catch our conscience, though it might be reckoned questionable taste or the extreme of punctiliousness to reproduce upon canvas marks of the firing-iron upon the legs of the hunter bestridden by a form as well known by the covert-side in Lincolnshire as cantering down the cords at Newmarket, or hovering round the ring at a yearling sale. 'Baily,' too, knows him well, though the touches of his pen have long been missing from between the covers of Batthyany green which each month sees unfolding for the public's recreation. Testimonial hunting pictures try men very highly, unless, as by Stephen Pearce, they are made a spécialité of; for your ordinary artist is apt to be led out of his element by the desire to fulfil the requirements of his employers; and the results are too often such melancholy fiascos as the huge canvas affecting to honour Lord Middleton. The herses are apparently modelled from that wooden one which carries Mr. Nicoll's huntsman in his Regent Street window; and a glance at the pack would drive Mr. Tom Parrington from the flags to the nearest lunatic asylum. If we turn from the November Morning' of the R.A. to the Equestrian Portrait of C. J. Radclyffe, Esq.,' by Pearce, we shall find our senses offended more by the finicking elaboration of truthfulness than by any lack of knowledge in treatment of the subject. The picture strikes us as hard and painfully bright and clean. Appointments, anatomy, attitude, all seem too ' faultily faultless.' The breeches have evidently been cut by an eminent London firm, and the boots will cut a shine' in or over any country.' The grey is perfection itself, and Sheward or Rice could price him to within five guineas of his figure, even if they did not recognise him at once. The hounds have evidently gone through a course of areca-nut within and Naldire's tablet without, so sleek, shining, and dapper have they been turned out of kennel; and over the landscape breaks the beau ideal of a hunting morning. Yet the likenesses, we have been told, are admirable, and with all its failings it will please popular tastes in a far higher degree than its more pretentious rival. Only we wish it could have been marked with a bolder, freer touch, such as the President has taught us to admire in former years; and we see no reason why incident should not be more largely imported into such works, as tending to relieve their general spiritless character, and to allow some scope for imagination without dipping the wings of fidelity in execution. We cannot altogether compliment Mr. Hopkins upon his pair of hunting studies in Gallery No. 5. There is not one atom of character either in men, horses, or hounds, and they are altogether on too small a scale and too carelessly executed to take rank above the ordinary sporting prints which attract passers-by in Regent Street or Piccadilly. The proof of the inferiority of these to Herring's masterpieces lies in the fact that the public never seem to tire of the latter, though they succeed each other in monotonous rotation year after year, while novelties of the same description (excepting perhaps the annual coloured print of the Derby winner) very soon fail to attract attention in the shop windows. But when an animal painter of Mr. Briton Riviere's calibre enters the field as a painter of horses we are entitled to look for something to furnish an exempler of what such productions should be. We are sorry that we fail to find anything of the sort in his portrait of a gentleman pensively standing at his 'favourite mare's' side, by the sad sea waves, and with his dogs. grouped in repose in the foreground. Except upon the ground that Pindar attributed to Neptune the creation of the horse, we cannot perceive the 'situation' to be in any degree appropriate; but artists, like poets, are allowed licences, and this may be one of them. Anything more unsatisfactory as representing a horse and dogs it would be impossible to conceive. Professors of the Veterinary College must stand aghast before such a production; and we commend a study of this equine favourite to Messrs. Field and Mavor, who, in all their experience, could never have looked over an animal so fearfully and wonderfully made. We never heard of a horse being afflicted with varicose veins in his legs, but the washy chestnut shows them surely enough, and we long to send her into Hal of the Wynd's Smithy' to have her feet looked to, or for the ingenious Mr. Clark to operate upon her with some of his unpronounceable remedies. Human legs are an easier study than equine understandings; so Mr. Riviere's young man is obligingly posed in front of his mare's fore legs, and we are bound to say that he looks sound all round. There seems to be a strong affinity between the seaweed and the coat of the Skye terrier, while all the animals are too flat and lacking in the finish so conspicuous in other paintings by the same artist. For a happier production commend us to Mr. Partington's portrait (No. 204), the conception of which is far more in accordance with our notions of an equestrian figure, the drawing fairly correct, the attitude easy, and the painting satisfactory, so far as it goes. To descend once more to the dogs,' we must give Mr. Goddard a good NOBLE ANIMAL' AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY. [July, word for his study of Lord Wolverton's bloodhound pack, a brave subject bravely treated, and that in no conventional manner, but with a freshness and vigour we hope to see associated with higher sporting subjects. The experiment was a bold one, but has been essayed with no fear of failure before the artist's eyes; and if some minor faults of detail are apparent, it cannot but please by the life and spirit imparted to his subject by the limner of this noble pack. Compare the style of Mr. Goddard with that of Mr. Barber, whose Roaring Stag and Royal Colley are surely too much of the 'tea-board' order to please admirers of these branches of natural history, in the former of which the impossible but irrepressible 'bunny' crops up once more. Ansdell, with his sheep-dogs and ponies, gets more unnaturally clean every year; and we infinitely prefer the two rather rough but bold sketches of the foreigners Weber and Poingdestre to a branch of art apparently decaying among our own countrymen. We look forward to a better time coming among those who are content to bring Art to the door of Sport, and to illustrate the pastimes which, as the highest authorities have asserted, go so far in forming our national character. There is a large field yet unbroken in the direction of racing and hunting subjects, which animal painters would do well to cultivate, instead of confining themselves to the lower ranges of animated nature. The public demand for our 'present indifferent specimens induces a belief that something of a more exalted character would be duly appreciated, and there is nothing whatever derogatory to high Art in courting her aid for the production of a piper and a pair of nutcrackers, any more than invoking her on behalf of the noble animal. The horse is well worthy of a school of his own, instead of having to bear the reproach of being a sort of 'casual' among our painters, occasionally introduced as a subordinate monstrosity, and fated to have the study of his 'beauties and 'defects' persistently ignored. The fifteen-thousand-guinea Doncaster is almost worthy of a place among the Grosvenor family portraits, but after Sir Edwin's great Voltigeur fiasco his noble owner will be in no hurry to repeat the experiment among our Royal Academicians. We want a less cramped and conventional style than that at present obtaining among those who 'go in for racing and hunting subjects, and a modification of that execrable public taste which clogs the best efforts of those who might, if left to their own imaginations, become shining lights in the line they have chosen to adopt. Above all, we are unwilling to see great reputations tarnished by that Russell-like versatility of genius which undertakes anything at the shortest notice, and draws down upon itself well-merited public rebuke. Ne sutor ultra crepidam is a motto which holds good in art as in trade, and the next time the meet is at Birdsall House 'let distance lend en'chantment to the view' of horses and hounds alike. AMPHION. NEW GAMES AT HURLINGHAM. 'If wealth, sir knight, perchance be thine, SOCIETY changes its pastimes as it does its fashions, and in many Backgammon is also of Indian origin, it being simply a modification of the Indian game of pachese, played at the present time all over Hindostan. The latest importation from eastern climes is 'polo,' or 'hockey 'on horseback,' which was introduced into this country about two years ago by the 9th Lancers, who did such good service in the Indian Mutiny under Colonel Drysdale. The first game was played at Windsor, then Lillie Bridge Grounds became the headquarters of the players; and now the more picturesque ground of Hurlingham, where the Polo Club meets, is one of the chief attractions of la crème de la crème of society. The game of polo, or chaugán as it is called in Kashmere and Thibet, has for centuries been a favourite game amongst the chiefs and ameers of Upper India, as the Emperor Baber frequently mentions the game as being common in his time. Abul Fazl, in the 'Ain-i-Akbari,' gives an account of the game, and tells us that the great Akbar was a proficient in it. The Maharajah of Kashmere is in the present day very fond of the game, and is unrivalled amongst the natives for his skill, as he often hits the ball when in the air. When a ball is driven to the hál or a goal made, the naggárah, or great war-drum, is beaten. His Majesty often plays chaugan at night, when fire-balls are used made of palaswood, which burns for a long time. At Srinuggur the Chaugán Maidan is about 350 yards long by 60 in breadth, covered with fine turf, and surrounded with a low wall. At each end two pillars of stone are let into the ground about 10 yards apart, which is the hál or goal of the players. The ball is made of the knot of willow |