Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880

[From "The Morning Chronicle," January 20, 1855. (Reprinted in "The Evening Journal," January 22.)]
THE ANIMALS OF SCRIPTURE: A REVIEW.[158]

Among the various illustrated works which usually grace the beginning of the year, has appeared one which, though of graver and less attractive character than its companions, is likely to occupy a more permanent place on the library shelves. We allude to "Illustrations of Scripture, by an Animal Painter," a work which, whatever its faults or weaknesses, shows at least a singular power of giving reality and interest to scenes which are apt to be but feebly, if at all, brought before the mental vision, in consequence of our familiarity with the words which describe them. The idea of the work is itself sufficiently original. The animals are throughout principal, and the pathos or moral of the passage to be illustrated is developed from its apparently subordinate part in it. Thus the luxury and idolatry of the reign of Solomon are hinted behind a group of "apes and peacocks;" the Deluge is subordinate to the dove; and the healing of the lunatic at Gennesareth to the destruction of the herd of swine.

In general, to approach an object from a new point of view is to place it in a clearer light, and perhaps the very strangeness of the treatment in some cases renders the subject more impressive than it could have been made by any more regular method of conception. But, at all events, supposing the studies of the artist to have been chiefly directed to animals, and her power to lie principally in seizing their character, she is to be thanked for filling her sketches of the inferior creatures with so much depth of meaning, and rendering the delineation even of an ape, or a swallow, suggestive of the most solemn trains of thought.

As so suggestive, without pretence or formalism, these drawings deserve a place of peculiar honor in the libraries of the young, while there are also some qualities in them which fit them for companionship with more elaborate works of art. The subject of "Lazarus" is treated with a courage and tenderness which say much for the painter's imagination, and more for her heart; and the waste of waters above which the raven hovers is expressed, though rudely, yet in a way which tells of many an hour spent in watching the play of the evening light upon the movement of the wearied sea. It is true that most of the compositions are weakened by a very visible contempt, if not ignorance, of the laws which regulate the harmonies of shade, as well as by a painful deficiency in the drawing. Still there is a life and sincerity in them which are among the rarest qualities in art; and one characteristic, very remarkable in the works of a person described in the text (we doubt not, much against her will) as an "accomplished lady"—we mean the peculiar tendency to conceptions of fearfulness, or horror, rather than of beauty. The camel, for instance, might, we should have thought, as easily, and to many persons much more pleasingly, have illustrated the meeting of Rebekah with the servant of Abraham, as the desolation of Rabbah; and the dog might as gracefully have been brought forward to remind us of the words of the Syro-Phœnician woman, as to increase the horror of the death of Jezebel. There are curious evidences of a similar disposition in some of the other plates; and while it appears to us indicative of the strength of a mind of no common order, we would caution the fair artist against permitting it to appear too frequently. It renders the series of drawings in some degree repulsive to many persons, and even by those who can sympathize with it might sometimes be suspected of having its root in a sublime kind of affectation.

We have spoken of these studies as drawings. They are, in fact, as good, being photographic facsimiles of the original sketches. The text is copious, and useful as an elucidation of the natural history of Scripture.