National Gallery, London

“ No Englishman can visit the Picture Galleries at the Louvre without thinking of a building in London devoted to the same purpose, which is neither very beautiful nor very convenient; and it is rather tempting to enlarge on the despicable show the Trafalgar Square collection makes beside the principal Continental ones. The equitable temper, however, of your Correspondent leads him to suggest some reflections which will mitigate that censure. The National Gallery was not built by the luxurious sovereign of an impoverished people, or it might have been larger and more splendid. ”

“ He had amassed at the time of his death a valuable gallery of pictures, principally of the German and Dutch schools, and of water-colour drawings by English artists. By his will he left to the trustees of the National Gallery, London, such of his oil-paintings, not exceeding one hundred, as they might choose to select, and in case of their declining to accept the gift wholly or in part, then the same right of selection to the department of science and art at South Kensington. ”

“ All is given to us, unsparingly. For us and for the enrichment of the walls of our National Gallery, did the rude barbarians, in the sack of Italian cities, stay the hand of destruction; for us the treasures of art were wrested from many a palace of antiquity; it was for the delight of thousands of modern Londoners that the monasteries of the Middle Ages were plundered. Altar-pieces painted for adoration in the private chapel of some patron saint are now seen dimly, through London fog and smoke, hanging, maybe, next to some pagan Bacchus and Ariadne, or Venus and the Loves. ”

“ For you has been dug from the earth all that remains of mighty empires and long-vanished civilisations. The arts of Greece and Rome, and Egypt and Assyria, and the not less wonderful arts of India, are all contributory to your pleasures. The whole art and mystery of painting is unfolded for you on the walls of our National Gallery.... You are rich indeed, for you are the heirs of all the Ages."
Are picture-galleries, museums, and such-like treasures of the metropolis, to be described as London's Highways, or as its Byways? ”

“ The very atmosphere of London is an argument against building a new national gallery in the neighbourhood of any of the centres of metropolitan life. Trees may be blackened, but flourish under the soot; but the purity of the marble, and the freshness of the canvass, are liable to be permanently discoloured by the constant action of an air impregnated with smoke, in a manner far other than that in which they receive the mere mellowness of age. ”

“ If England has no grand National Gallery like the French Louvre, she has works of art that would fill fifty Louvres, collected and treasured in these quiet private halls, embosomed in green parks and plantations, from one end of the land to the other. ”

“ But in spite of all these treasures, acquired by purchase or by bequest, the nation cannot boast that its gallery does justice to our taste or national wealth. It is still lamentably deficient in more than one department; and there are not wanting those who assert that the Royal Academy stifles art rather than promotes it. ”

“ To speak the truth, when genre pictures are so full of interest and life as this, I prefer them to all the gods of Olympus. But, generally, they are entirely wanting in this first quality, and abound in the second, which becomes vulgarity; and so the foundation of art, which is the beauty of truth, is wanting, and only the "business" remains, with its puerile attractions.
THE NATIONAL GALLERY IN LONDON.
I saw many other works of art, both in painting and sculpture, at this exhibition of living English artists, but none of them compared with that marvellous work. ”

“ When I left London some six and twenty years ago to settle at Westbury-on-Trym, I also added to my library a large number of works on the fine arts, feeling, as every lover of pictures must do, that it is necessary, in some way or another, to make up for the loss of the National Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, and other delightful places which I was leaving behind. ”

“ Death intervening, the commission thus offered was never completed, but with a portion of the money 'Christ washing Peter's Feet' was bought for the National Gallery, where it now is, the large cartoon of 'The Body of Harold brought to the Conqueror' was secured for the South London Art Gallery, and a number of designs, which are chiefly decorative, were bought and distributed among the art schools of England. ”

“ Ever since the modern pictures were removed to South Kensington, there has been a constant effort to transfer the ancient pictures and to abandon the National Gallery to the Royal Academy—a rich society, making £5000 or £6000 a year, which its members cannot spend, and which tenants [Pg 225] the national building only by permission. To remove the pictures from the centre of London is to remove them from those who cannot go far to see them, to the neighbourhood of rich people who do not need their teaching, and who have picture-galleries of their own. ”

“ His mythologic subjects are generally unpleasant-such as the “Silenus,” in the Studji Gallery of Naples, and “Venus Lamenting over Adonis,” in the Corsini Gallery of Rome. The Louvre contains altogether twenty-five of his paintings; the National Gallery, London, two-one of them, a “Peita,” being an excellent though not exactly a leading specimen. He executed several fine male portraits ”

“ Sir SIDNEY LEE pointed out that, owing to the occupation of a large part of the National Gallery, all the National Portrait Gallery, all the Tate Gallery, and all Hertford House, where the Wallace Collection is, by Government clerks, these national institutions were not open to our soldiers from the Dominions and the provinces, who might never again have the opportunity of refreshing their eyes by gazing upon some of our most beautiful possessions. ”

“ The average number of visitors to the Museum yearly is over one million, and the galleries are entirely free to the public.
NELSON'S MONUMENT.
Next to the British Museum, the most frequented place in London is the National Gallery of Art, in Trafalgar Square, facing Nelson's Monument. This lofty monument fills the eye of the spectator as it takes in the range of one of the finest squares in Europe. The column is a circular one, 145 feet high, and the figure of the great naval hero, Nelson, on the top, is 17 feet high. ”

“ It is the artisan, the small shopkeeper, the great "lower middle-class," that frequent chiefly the Tate Gallery. Not by any means the same class, for instance, that you see at the National Gallery; the visitors to the Tate Gallery are mainly the lovers of "the human interest" in a picture, and not the earnest students. ”

“ We do, however, protest against being tacked on as a sort of outside back-stair appendage to the National Gallery, that will soon want the space we shall be forced to occupy for its own natural and legitimate expansion. ”

“ Best works of inferior artists to be secured.
125. All the works of a painter, however incongruous their subjects, to be exhibited in juxtaposition.
126. Love of detail in pictures among workmen.—Great refinement of their perceptions.
127. Accessibility of new National Gallery.
128. There should be two galleries—one containing gems, placed in as safe a position as possible; the other containing works good, but inferior to the highest, and located solely with a view to accessibility.
129. Impossible to protect sculpture from London atmosphere. ”

“ Between 1860 and his death, which took place in London, 26 Oct. 1877, he exhibited 186 landscapes at the gallery of the society, many of which were sold at high prices. The subjects were taken from all parts of the United Kingdom. He also exhibited once at the Royal Academy and three times in Suffolk Street. ”

“ He continued to send pictures, chiefly of Welsh mountain, moorland, and coast scenery, to these exhibitions, as well as to the Society of British Artists, Dudley Gallery, Portland Gallery, and elsewhere, and in 1859 came to reside in London. ”

“ He also painted a few portraits. 'Still Life' (1852) and 'Sunday Afternoon' (cottage interiors) are at the Victoria and Albert Museum; 'Children Playing at Doctors' (1863) at the Bethnal Green Museum; 'Try This Pair' and 'Little Helpers' at the Corporation Art Gallery, Guildhall, London ”

“ On either side as one enters are marble statues, life-size, of Hampden, Falkland, Walpole, Fox, Pitt, Burke, Grattan, and others,—the work of England's greatest sculptors, placed on pedestals of stone.
We are told by the policeman who attends at one of the inner doorways to seat ourselves on a stone bench in an alcove, and wait our turn as is the custom here. The Stranger's Gallery will not hold more than a hundred persons when crowded; and when a heavy debate is in progress, on a great public measure, the gallery is sure to be full. ”

“ A better taste, and a truer appreciation of the relative merits of works of Art, prevails in England now than at any previous time, and the recent acquisitions are distinguished not more by their number than by their intrinsic value. The National Gallery has at last begun to make its purchases upon a systematic plan, and is endeavoring to form such a collection as shall exhibit the historic progress of the various schools of painting. ”

“ Why not throw the British Museum open every day, except on the few days when it may be necessary, if it is necessary, that artists should have it all to themselves—like the National Gallery? What good do the statues, the stuffed animals, the antiquities, and the mummies do half their time, wasting their sweetness on the desert—or at least the vacant—air? ”

“ And it is this modicum of pleasure to all which justifies expenditure for a national gallery. The real, solid benefit, delight, and improvement are very great, but they are the luxury of the few.
It must be that the multitudes go to such an exhibition more from curiosity than from any love of art. Nor is love of art likely, in the first place, to be there implanted; for, in most cases, a certain love of art, commencing, perhaps, with a mere love of imitation, precedes taste—that perception of what is good. If we were to collect only for the masses, we should have a very worthless gallery. ”

“ We look to the mind in it—to its real greatness of manner, and we believe it to be a work of which the nation may be proud; and were we to look for a parallel, we must go to some of the best works of the best painters of the best ages. We were surprised to find that so small a sum as L 400 was set upon the picture—and more so that it was not sold. We regret that there is no power in the directors of our National Gallery to buy occasionally a modern production. Is there, in that gallery, one work of a British painter in any way equal to it? ”

“ The sun is shining brightly, pleasantly, over all London, England, even penetrating into the dim, dirty alleys, and tenements; but is also shining, with all its wealth of golden, cheering gladness, into the long, handsome gallery of art at the great London exhibition. ”

“ A people apparently less apt for that kind of achievement never existed. So profound is the English joy in meadow and stream and hill, that, unsatisfied at last with vocal expression, it took up the brush, the pencil, the etching tool, and created a new form of art. The National Gallery represents only in a very imperfect way the richness and variety of our landscape work. ”

“ Not a soul is to be seen; and our footfalls echo in the deserted court.
In every direction we see old, flamboyant black oak. How imposing is the entrance to the Banqueting Hall, and really monumental—a massive ponderous gateway of black oak, with pillars and pediments and capitals, and figures soaring and gesticulating aloft, and flanked by solid panelling! Within there is the great oaken gallery, the tall windows, with the leaded panes. There is nothing finer in London than the great fireplace and mantel, which rises to the ceiling and offers an extraordinary display of the carver’s art. ”

“ In the British Museum one meets an occasional German student. Here the galleries and museums are full of working people. London provides revues and plays of humiliating mediocrity, which the educated classes enjoy and applaud. Here{178} the masses crowd to see Shakespeare. At Covent Garden it is the gallery that cares for music, and the boxes are full of weary fashion, which arrives late and talks all the time. Here the houses are overcrowded with workers and peasants who listen to the most classical operas. ”

“ If a suitable frame serves to bring out the beauties of a picture, so also does a suitable room serve to bring out the full beauties of the pictures when framed. Light is, of course, a vital question. Even the light at the National Gallery is admitted in an insufficient way. It is easy enough for Londoners to appreciate the difference which good hanging and good light may make in the apparent value of pictures. Not so long since, the magnificent collection of his own works, bequeathed by Mr. Turner to the nation, was exhibited in the dull, dingy rooms of Marlborough House. ”

“ It is not only in shops that we in England have to learn how to "dress our windows." But at any rate, no one will deny that we have of late made enormous advances in the art.
Nevertheless, the beauty and grandeur of the British Museum collections, beauty on which I have already touched in the Bloomsbury chapter, impress us in spite of fog, and grime, and dull London galleries. And the feeling for the suitable arrangement and disposal of our artistic treasures grows upon our directors year by year. ”