National Gallery

“ In the National Gallery one finds a throng of nursery-maids, and men just come from their work; true, they make a great deal of noise thronging to and fro on the uncarpeted floors in their thick boots, and noise from which, when penetrated by the atmosphere of Art, men in the thickest boots would know how to refrain; still I felt that the sight of such objects must be gradually doing them a great deal of good. The British Museum would, in itself, be an education for a man who should go there once a week, and think and read at his leisure moments about what he saw. ”

“ It is the same with regard to our pictures. Let us be frank—the National Gallery is a national disgrace. Of course, as far as the number of pictures is concerned, we cannot yet boast of being upon an equality with some of the continental nations, but we possess many pictures by the hands of the old masters which are of the very highest merit. Our national collection is small, but in the main it is good. There is not in it, even comparatively speaking, anything like the same amount of inferior pictures as may be seen, for example, in the great gallery of the Louvre. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As objects for daily use, the decorative arts allow a close insight into cultures of the past. Among its holdings, the National Gallery has an extensive collection of European furniture, tapestries, and ceramics from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as well as medieval church vessels and Renaissance jewelry. ”

“ When one thinks of [Pg 373] the old buildings in which we used to assemble, which are now devoted to the purposes of the National Gallery, and when one sees this new edifice, which has existed now for nineteen years, and the beautiful objects that adorn its walls, one can form some idea of the great progress that has been made in art in this country. It is a remarkable fact that, although many new galleries are constantly springing up, there appears to be no difficulty in adorning their walls and filling them with pictures and sculpture. ”

“ I am supposing a crowded room—of course the object of a National Gallery is that it should be crowded—that as large a number of the public should have access to it as possible—there would of course be certain limited hours, and the gallery would be liable to get filled with the public in great numbers?—It would be disadvantageous certainly, but not so disadvantageous as to balance the much greater advantage of preservation. I imagine that, in fact, glass is essential; it is not merely an expedient thing, but an essential thing to the safety of the pictures for twenty or thirty years. ”

“ A present of copies of the British Museum casts, along with the fund of the Ancient Art Society, would originate a Cast Gallery, and a few good pictures could be bought as a commencement of a National Gallery of Painting, leaving the economy of the managers and the liberality of the public gradually to fill up. ”

“ The National Gallery of Art belongs to all the people of the United States of America. Established by a joint resolution of Congress, it is supported by public appropriation. The Board of Trustees consists of four public servants, ex officio, and five private citizens. Chairman of the Board is the Chief Justice of the United States. Under the policies set by the Board, the Gallery assembles and maintains a collection of paintings, sculpture, and the graphic arts, representative of the best in the artistic heritage of America and Europe. ”

“ Do you think that the sculpture in the British Museum should be in the same building with the pictures in the National Gallery, that is to say, making an application of your principle to that particular case?—Yes, certainly; I think so for several reasons—chiefly because I think the taste of the nation can only be rightly directed by having always sculpture and painting visible together. Many of the highest and best points of painting, I think, can only be discerned after some discipline of the eye by sculpture. ”

“ An extension of the National Gallery is proposed, for an increase of the accommodation for the national collections of art, and for the use of the Royal Academy and Schools of Design, as well as for periodical displays of art and science, &c., in galleries exclusively devoted to the purpose. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The only one silent there was little Joe Gander—and he was gone to join in the great symphony above.
A DEAD FINGER I
Why the National Gallery should not attract so many visitors as, say, the British Museum, I cannot explain. The latter does not contain much that, one would suppose, appeals to the interest of the ordinary sightseer. What knows such of prehistoric flints and scratched bones? Of Assyrian sculpture? Of Egyptian hieroglyphics? The Greek and Roman statuary is cold and dead. The paintings in the National Gallery glow with colour, and are instinct with life. ”

“ When the English National Gallery is rebuilt according to Barry’s design and the two glazed loggie, flanking the main entrance and each running for 300 feet by 15 along the face of the building, are filled with British sculpture, doubt will be impossible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order, therefore, to render the British National Gallery worthy the name it bears, your committee think that the funds appropriated to the enlargement of the collection should be expended with a view not merely of exhibiting to the public beautiful works of art, but of instructing the people in the history of that art, and of the age in which, and the men by whom, those works were produced. ”

“ One thing is beyond doubt: that with the Arabian Nights and the others on this short list you have a National Gallery of the best things—not the best of all possible collections, not even an exhaustive collection of specimens of each, but a good working assortment that suffices to uphold the glory of 'the golden decade,' and can only be supplemented but not surpassed by the addition of all the others. ”

“ Even if it were thought desirable to place statues under the same building, we would put them under the direction of a person specially acquainted with sculpture.
The interest of the nation has been now awakened with regard to the National Gallery, to the pictures only, to their collection and preservation. A national museum, such as Mr Dyce and others propose, is far too large a subject, to discuss which seriously would be only drawing away the public mind from that which is a pressing necessity. ”

“ The family goes to the Exhibition once a year, to the National Gallery once in ten years: to the former place they have an inducement to go; there are their own portraits, or the portraits of their friends, or the portraits of public characters; and you will see them infallibly wondering over No. 2645 in the catalogue, representing “The Portrait of a Lady,” or of the “First Mayor of Little Pedlington since the passing of the Reform Bill;” or else bustling and squeezing among the miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the Gallery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are of the class one reads with certain enjoyment, and does not want to recur to.
The National Gallery gets on slowly. It is impossible to get an adequate grant for it. £1,000 buys only one good picture; but I have been meditating other measures. Every gallery in Europe has duplicates, which could be spared, if we offered them, as we might, stuffed animals and birds in exchange. ”

“ Because the Church defined much of the social and cultural structure of medieval life, Christian themes predominated as the subject matter for the arts of the period. In the National Gallery collections, works created in Florence, Siena, Rome, and Central Italy show the range of skills and styles prevalent in painting as it progressed from the highly religious art of the Middle Ages to the more secular art of the Renaissance. ”

“ The National Gallery owns a good though small example of his art in the ‘Interior of Burgos Cathedral;’ at Edinburgh he is represented by a ‘Sunset View at Rome,’ and at South Kensington by a large selection of views and studies of picturesque architecture in Spain, Italy, Egypt, and Scotland. ”

“ The Gallery itself occupies the whole of the upper story of the wing of the edifice, and has five divisions formed by pilasters, on the side walls, the ceilings being also divided into the same number of compartments, which gives an harmonious proportion to the whole it would not otherwise possess. The light comes from elevated skylights, and it may be a question whether, taken altogether, its advantages for the display of paintings are not superior to those of the National Gallery, in Trafalgar-square. ”

“ Most men of aesthetically good will would agree that they are blasphemously out of place in the National Gallery, and that in allowing them to crowd real pictures off the walls and into the cellars, our officials have committed an extravagant and unpardonable error. ”

“ The subjects are often grouped to form a series treating a single aspect of art history. Admission is free and no reservations are required. The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, a special series commissioned by the National Gallery, which are subsequently published in book form, take place during the spring. ”

“ Sensitive to physical characteristics, he had, both abroad and in England, looked at pictures as well as men, and in a vacant hour he had sometimes lingered in the National Gallery in search of paintings which might feed his hopefulness with grave and noble types of the human form, such as might well belong to men of his own race. ”

“ The Index of American Design is a collection of watercolor renderings of objects of popular art in the United States from before 1700 until about 1900. The renderings represent American ceramics, furniture, woodcarving, glassware, metalwork, tools and utensils, textiles, costumes, and other types of American craftsmanship. There are some seventeen thousand renderings and about five hundred photographs. These are available for study, by appointment. The works themselves may be loaned to organizations for exhibition outside the Gallery. ”

“ In 1895, as the new building for the National Portrait Gallery was approaching completion, he arranged to present to it fifteen paintings and two drawings of distinguished contemporaries; the number of his works there has since doubled. In 1897 his eightieth birthday was celebrated by an exhibition of his oolleoted works at the New Gallery and the presentation of a widely signed address of congratulation. ”

“ It is fitting, therefore, that our two great democracies pause to realize how much they have benefited and continue to benefit from each other. As part of this effort, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Ministry of Culture of Greece have gathered a landmark exhibit of sculptures from the 5th century B.C. These sculptures, many of which have never left Greek soil, document in art the birth of the concept of the individual. ”

“ I was astonished and disgusted at such a collection having such a name, and there and then decided that I would make this the subject of my lecture, and the following is briefly my indictment as I then laid it before the Grand Jury, composed of the Press and the Public:
"Of all places, a Portrait Gallery should appeal to you most, and the National Portrait Gallery is the place in which to spend a happy day. ”

“ In 1765 he gained the premium of the Society of Arts for the elevation of a side of a street in classical style, being then under thirty years of age, and from 1766 he was a frequent exhibitor at that society's gallery. ”

“ And in these are painted 3889 figures, including thirty-two contemporary historical personages, a crowd of saints and prophets in thirty-eight separate legends, and groups of tradesmen in the costumes of their guilds. This is the national portrait gallery of mediæval France! It is one of the most precious documents of mediæval archæology. It is one of the most rich and poetical applications of symbolic art. ”

“ Until after the Civil War, the best training was still abroad, but usually the American students returned to the United States, where a growing urban society with more leisure was providing a market for works of art.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, many untrained artists, working in the cities but more often traveling about the countryside, provided naïve or primitive pictures for the ever-increasing middle classes. Up to this time the artist had been mainly a portraitist ”