Sculpture: The Dublin Exhibition of 1865.

A GREAT hall—architectural, cool, spacious, elegant; its walls toned to the true maroon tint-with an opening above, round which runs a balustrade, every now and then fringed with faces and figures looking down below; a hall half-Pompeian, tiled with gay tiles, marked out with pillars and carved capitals;-these are glorious days for Sculpture, when such a temple as this is to be constructed to do honour to statues. Think of the cellar at the Royal Academy-think of the tearful protests of the sculptors: of the den where there was no light, no room, and no hope-think of Exhibitions where Sapphos and Venuses lay with their backs to an iron column, or under a "girder;" or of the goddesses ranged in lines, crowded together, in wooden sheds, "on view," like Madame Tussaud's "life-like" collection. We may think of the unfavourable conditions under which-with the best intentionsstatuary has hitherto been presented, and we may congratulate ourselves, and the noble company of the statue-world, that such fine and picturesque accommodation has been discovered for them as in THE SCULPTURE HALL OF THE DUBLIN EXHIBITION.

The "Museum idea" of a collection is dreadful, thinking as we do of the white room, with the red cords and railings, and the "herding" of the "objects" like so many cattle, and the printed invitations "not to touch." Not unnaturally, therefore, we treat the entertainment as it was meant to be treated-as we would inspect a company of soldiers— and pass on, feeling there are yet many white rooms to be travelled through. Thus, in the Vatican, we travel and travel through miles of gallery, where there are gods, and emperors, and goddesses, and fauns, and all manner of animals, "on view;" but when we come to the open court with the fountain, round which are the four little temples where the great Belvidere, and the Laocoon, and the other famous figures are found, we stop, and are charmed. There is a fitness-they harmonise with the architecture about them; and it is only appropriate that what represents so much of skill, labour, trouble, grace, and such infinite lasting power, should not stand in barren loneliness, or herded with its fellow, but should be "set off" with accessories as grand, as laborious, as graceful, and as enduring. Never, certainly, did statuary receive such "fair play." We seem to be entering the hall of a Roman palace.

Here, too, as we have the different "styles" and nations pretty fairly represented, with every conceivable sort of subject and treatment, a good opportunity offers for a Meditation, as it were, on this wonderful art, which certainly stands some steps nearer the Divine than Painting

(but not so near as Music), and which very nearly escapes from the earthly conditions of mortality. Any one studying the human figure will see with delight the exquisite lines, the curves and combinations of curves, with a hundred other beauties of pure Form. What a feast such is to the mind, we can find an idea of in Haydon's rhapsodies over the Elgin Marbles, and over the chests of some of the Guardsmen who came to him as models. But still this notion of pure form seems to be inseparable from corporeal mortality, from the earthly notions of decay, of fading skin and imperfect flesh. True, we can get pure form on paper by outlines of the human figure, but they are only outlines; there is no roundness, or breadth, or thickness.

The problem was to find some medium which would give mere form to the eye with the least possible distraction; but by the conditions of life form was inseparable from matter, of which it was the boundary, and matter was so coarse and earthy in its nature, that it was sure to introduce such earthly distractions as colour and texture to the eye. If there could indeed be found a sort of monotonous medium, without grain or texture or colour, it would be as near an approach to pure form as could be accomplished. It is curious that there should be only one such medium in the world-marble.

Common metals, such as iron, from their low coarse colour and debasing "kitchen" associations, are out of the question. Brass is yellow. Tin is another bright flashing colour. Wood has a colour and a grain. Marble alone is surprisingly suited for all the conditions. It furnishes an exquisitely delicate outline, and a surface almost as smooth as glass; and though, indeed, it would seem that a glaring snowy white material was as discordant with the idea of a representation of human flesh, still, with a very little training, the eye has learnt to accept this matter, which is so surprisingly "pure," firm, delicate, hard, yet with a deceptive appearance of velvety softness, and which is costly (for costliness is a popular element in beauty), as a sort of substitute for human flesh, or, as Lamb would call it, a glorified" human flesh. It is colourless: so the eye is carried on to the pure form and outline. It is grainless and textureless: so the eye is not distracted by infinite little breaks and shadows, which would give the idea of corruption or decay. We find ourselves looking at lines and sweeps and curves: and as we walk round, we find other lines and sweeps and curves growing upon us; find roundings, risings, and falls; in short, we forget the material.

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Bronze is an exceptional case; and there are accidents which take it out of the class of metals which are unsuitable for statues. Our "street bronze," the chimney-sweep material, there can be no question is unsuited either to dignity or grace. A cast-iron statue would be as mean, as vulgar, and as good. But this is the work of our skies. Bronze under other conditions, Italian or French, has much to redeem it. It alone has bright and smooth surfaces, and becomes a glorified metal. It takes barbaric conditions, and from its richness and costliness we are

half inclined to accept it. Fine bronze too has much of the purity and delicacy of surface of marble; it has also the "imperishable" notion floating about it like a cloud, which gives it a dignity. But of the melancholy degradations, the metal scarecrows, to which this hapless metal has helped us-seen in every town in the kingdom-it is scarcely necessary to speak. The long metal frock-coats and creased trousers, repeated over and over again, are monuments of folly and vile taste. A mere glance at the revolting party of heroes who stand in Trafalgar Square almost debases the mind. The mischief of such things in the open street—— taken as cheap open-air educators-must be incalculable; just as the cheap open-air benefit from a choice work of art must be beneficial. In this very city, where Mr. Foley's Goldsmith stands, elegant in figure and costume-filling the mind of the passer-by with delight, sending him back, if he be a Boswellian, to the Mitre and the Literary Club, calling up the Deserted Village and the traveller with his flute-for the oldfashioned coat, not yet an obtrusive old-fashioned coat, and the quaint but familiar Reynolds' head, bring back all these associations;-only a hundred yards further on is another poet in a cast-iron cloak, in presence of which it is hopeless to think of a single "melody," or of the fairy music of "Lalla Rookh." To use an old hackneyed saw-whose teeth, however, are as good as ever-"They order this matter better in France:" and the traveller, landing sick and wearied at Dieppe, as he crosses the little Place is roused into delight by the flashing, dashing figure of the sailor Duquesne, who in his hat and feather and open throat, in his jerkins and trunks, stands there looking to the sea, and perhaps defying the English-a little theatrical perhaps—a little too 'flamboyant," as in the instances of many French statues, which is still, however, a fault that shows life and vigour and a good spirit, and not an artistic instinct about as stiff and stagnant as the bronze frockcoat or cloak.

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Coming back, however, to marble. Many questions suggest themselves, which, however, there seem to be certain principles to regulate. Looking round our Dublin sculpture-hall, the first thing we remark is the evident tendency to popularise sculpture. Formerly the mythology had a monopoly. It was thought that the only persons dignified enough for marble were the beautiful women, with quivers on their back, with "Diana" written underneath; or the lady lying on the sofa playing with a boy, who was called Venus; and often various graceful, agile-looking men, with tunics and without tunics, with clubs, tridents, thunderbolts, bows, &c., who were supposed to represent gods.

It is a subject for congratulation that the day of these creations has passed away. We have indeed a stray Venus or two from the hand of a great man; but this was a harmless fiction, being but a competition who should create the most beautiful woman in sculpture, who by common consent was to be called Venus. But it is delightful to have done with these cold, false abstractions. There is one solitary Diana

here (No. 29), in the traditional attitude, "arrayed for the chase," the quiver across, the dog, and the short skirt fluttering behind, from the "atelier Benzoni," who will turn out a whole drawing-room of such figures-if they be in demand-in a month. The whole notion is false -false in spirit, tone, and effect. We can fancy a heathen sculptor, when his gods were in the temple at the end of the street, or on the columns outside his door, and who believed devoutly in their power and grandeur who laid his offerings on their altars on feast-days-who had prayed to them, and believed he had been assisted in his labour -who saw the priests, and was in fact filled with a heathen devotion, au bout des ongles,-such a one we can fancy sitting down to his clay, and striving hard and reverentially to throw into the moist mass his notion of the beautiful and awful divinities whom he worshipped. That faith and that knowledge would surely bear fruit in those that believed, and could trust. But what can the elegant Gibson, who neither knows nor believes, nor has reverence for the mythology—who is seventeen or eighteen hundred years away from the ages of that faith-what can he know about Pandora, or Diana, or Venus? It is indeed to be lamented that he, and many more as great, should have wasted precious years in poring over these dry bones, piecing them together into what was only inspired by a false sympathy, and can only arouse a false sympathy. These are only the theatricals of sculpture. The Junos and Venuses, the Apollos, and a hundred such, are no more than lay figures dressed up from the stage wardrobe, where costumes of every age and country are kept.

At the same time there are exceptions, and natural ones. The story of Endymion, say, apart from any heathen associations, is a pretty one, and with an easy stretch the "beautiful youth" might be idealised by the modern sculptor. So with the notion of representing Love as a little boy with wings. These, and a few more simple notions, are comprehensible, and have grown into our system. And thus as we walk up the hall, and stop before the Sleeping Faun (No. 15) of the American lady, we can quite conceive the notion of graceful youths who lived among the leaves and trees, and look with something like sympathy upon this wonderful work.

And now for Colour, this new heresy by which it is said sculpture becomes debased and utterly meretricious. The heresiarch, as we know, is Mr. Gibson, who has brought the new religion out to the best advantage; and we all think of the charming "toned" Venus, which competes with those of Canova, or the De' Medici. A loud cry has been raised against this new feature in sculpture: it has been found "meretricious," verges on waxwork, is debasing, "tricky," and unworthy of sculpture. But the true way to look at the matter is to suppose, not that it is white sculpture abolished, or presume that it is a reformation of sculpture, but that it is meant for a different class of art, and conceived in no rivalry to sculpture. The writer of this paper has often talked with

Mr. Gibson over this pet theory of his, up in the little stable-loft which was his studio in Rome, where a mass of moist mud-coloured clay was growing into a brown Pandora or a Hebe; and the great sculptor has over and over again grimly disclaimed the vulgar theory which supposed he was trying to rival the colours of human skin and hair and eyes. His idea was to suggest a hint of ivory and gold, with a sort of general barbaric soupçon, which it will be felt was quite in character with the subjects he was treating, which indeed deserved a sort of heathen gorgeousness. There was no notion of "painting," for the marble was in fact stained, a faint delicate wash being rubbed in, and becoming part of the substance. The delicacy of the whole process is its charm; and in the whole effect there is a warmth, a glowing beauty, which has a charm both of novelty and of beauty. There is one little bust here, with the ivory skin and gilt Etruscan necklace, which is yet no instance in point; for it requires the graceful limbs and the curved arms to show off the system with proper effect. But besides this exaggeration of tint, which excites controversy, there is a modified toning which will surely commend itself to a larger class, and of which we have many capital examples in the present collection.

Every one knows the popular Dying Gladiator, "who leans upon his hand;" for nearly every one knows and admires the attitude from engravings, and a great many know and admire it still more from the models that have been sent through the world. But those who have been to the Capitol in Rome, and have walked round that touching and all but perfect piece of sculpture, will recall how much of the effect is due to the tone of the marble, which is worn so gray and dark, and of a dull "no-colour," from the usage of centuries. This gives it a warmth-an air of work and weariness, of dust and labour and suffering-which we could not gather from a pure speckless piece of marble. The cold white, after all, only suits a special class of subjects; and those who look at Miss Hosmer's Faun, and at Story's Judith, will own what good warm effect is gathered from the pale yellow toning, and which gives the effect of their having been cut out of a block of one colour. Yet, if the gods and goddesses are being driven out like the Indian tribes, it is impossible, as we look round, not to see that a reaction has set-in in the opposite direction.

The tendency of modern popular sculpture is to be material and realistic; and just as in painting, little cabinet pictures of what has been called the "back-kitchen" style,-"Truants," "Mitherless Bairns," "Lost Needles," "The Dose of Physic," and a hundred such, are in request as "bits" of "true nature," to which the merchant-connoisseur may bring over his friend, and say, "Look at the leaf of that cap, sir;" or at "the medicine-bottle with the label half-torn off;" or "the bit of flannel round his head: you might touch it, sir,"-so there seems to be growing up a demand for "back-kitchen" sculpture also. And there can be no question but that this taste received an enormous impulse