Gallery (art)

“ So that all art consists in this commerce, every soul being an artist and every brain that is worth talking about being an art gallery, and there is no gallery in this world, not in the Vatican or the Louvre or any other place, comparable with the gallery in every great brain. The millions of pictures that are in every brain to-night; the landscapes, the faces, the groups, the millions of millions of millions of things that are now living here in every brain, all unseen, all invisible forever! ”

“ Now, with respect to my knowledge of life, I have often compared myself to those connoisseurs in art who, without a picture or an engraving of their own, can roam through a gallery, taking the most intense pleasure in all it contains, gazing with ecstasy at the Raffaeles, and lingering delighted over the sunny landscapes of Claude. To me the world has, for years, imparted a sense of much enjoyment. Human nature has been my gallery, with all its variety, its breadth, its effect, its warm colouring, and its cold tints. ”

“ And turning the gaze within, how calm and refreshing seemed the long and high vistas of the gallery; how happy the artists at their easels;—girls with their frugal dinners in a basket on the pavement, copying a Flemish scene; youths drawing intently some head of an old master; veterans of the palette reproducing the tints born under Venetian skies; and groups standing in silent admiration before some exquisite gem or wonderful conception. It is like an audience with the peers of art to range the Louvre ”

“ A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same lesson. As picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anatomy of form. When I have seen fine statues, and afterwards enter a public assembly, I understand well what he meant who said, "When I have been reading Homer, all men look like giants." I too see that painting and sculpture are gymnastics of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities of its function. There is no statue like this living man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. What a gallery of art have I here! ”

“ A gallery of art is a perpetual feast of the most intense and refined enjoyment to every one capable of entering into its phases of thought and execution, analyzing its external and internal being, and tracing the mysterious transformations of spirit into form. ”

“ When he entertained it was in a vast drawing- room, palatially equipped, its walls hung with flowing masses of pale red velvet, embroidered with foliage flowers and butterflies, and set with crystals and precious stones.
It was his art gallery, however, which flattered him most. He knew nothing of art, and underneath his pretentions cared less, for he was a complete utilitarian; but it had become fashionable to have an elaborate art gallery, and he forthwith disbursed money right and left to assemble an aggregation of paintings. ”

“ So, too, the art gallery, recalling the gentler associations of the past amidst surroundings of harmonious beauty and its attendant sense of comfort, is essentially a place of rest for the mind and eye. In the more famous galleries where the wealth of paintings allows a grouping of pictures according to their respective schools, one may choose the country, the epoch, the style or even the emotion best suited to one’s taste. ”

“ The value of an art gallery depends, therefore, on its size and representative nature so far as art students are concerned, and on the appeal which fine paintings make to the higher feelings and perceptions of mankind for its influence as a creator of taste and stimulator of a love of the beautiful. When an art collection takes the form of a special exhibition illustrative of a subject, rather than a particular school of painting, its value and interest are enormously increased. ”

“ A gallery of paintings or sculpture is a temple of Art, and he is little better than a barbarian who can enter it without a feeling of reverence for the presiding divinity of the place. Loud talking, laughing, pushing before others who are examining a picture or statue, moving seats noisily, or any rude or discourteous conduct, seems like profanation in such a place. Avoid them by all means, we entreat you; and though you wear your hat everywhere else, reverently remove it here. ”

“ This gallery has a great attraction, owing principally to the taste of its present possessor: it contains some excellent works of modern English painters. Near to the famous “Rising of the Gale,” by Van de Velde, hangs the “Gale at Sea,” by Turner, not less sublime, not less true to the grandeur and the modesty of nature; and by Edwin Landseer, the beautiful original of a composition which the art of the engraver has made familiar to the eye, the “Return of the Hawking Party,” a picture which has all the romance of poetry and the antique time, and all the charm and value of a family picture. ”

“ ART GALLERIES. An art gallery (by which, as distinguished from more general Museums of Art, q.v., is here meant one specially for pictures) epitomizes so many phases of human thought and imagination that it connotes much more than a mere collection of paintings. In its technical and aesthetic aspect the gallery shows the treatment of colour, form and composition. In its historical aspect we find the true portraits of great men of the past ”

“ As we look at the pictures and statues in a gallery, we read the stories they tell, feel the sentiment they express, study the grace they embody, or linger lovingly over the evidences they present of artistic skill. ”

“ All these apartments communicate with each other by [85] ample doors; but from the corridor already mentioned, which opens into the whole suite, the visitor has access to any particular gallery, or school of painting, without passing through the others: an obvious advantage, which will be duly estimated by those who, in visiting a gallery of painting, have felt their eyes dazzled, their heads bewildered, their attention distracted, by too much variety of temptation and attraction, before they have reached the particular object or school of art to which their attention was especially directed. ”

“ In the second story is the art gallery. Around it are five other rooms, which can be devoted to any of the uses such an institution may require. When completed the inside will be finished in hard woods, and according to modern ideas of taste and elegance. The art gallery will be a model of its kind.
With a collection of books and of works of art to match the thought of the donor expressed in the building the library will be a lasting blessing to our city. ”

“ Domestic.—The south gallery of the new academy is the largest and best lighted of the several exhibition rooms, and contains some of the most ambitious pictures of the year. As the visitor, pausing for a moment to survey the paintings, drawings, studies, architectural designs, and miscellanea which are hung around the four sides of the open corridor at the head of the grand staircase, turns naturally into the great gallery, through whose wide entrance he catches glimpses of the art treasures within, so do we propose to conduct the reader thither without further parley. ”

“ The Gallery of Paintings, which occupies two sides of the quadrangle, and from which access is had to the various apartments, contains, with the adjoining ante-room, many remarkably fine and valuable art-treasures—such, indeed, as no other mansion can boast. ”

“ The word is also used of an internal passage primarily provided to place various rooms in communication with one another; but if of narrow width this is usually called a corridor or passage. When of sufficient width the gallery is utilized to exhibit pictures and other art treasures. In the 16th century the picture gallery formed the largest room or hall in English mansions, with wainscoted walls and a richly decorated plaster ceiling ”

“ The universal taste for portraiture exhibited by the ancients, and the encouragement to art which the vast wealth of many enabled them to afford, soon led to the formation of a gallery of portraits in every house of importance. ”

“ Any way the subject is important since our hoardings are evidently the most obviously public education in pictorial and typographical design. It is, after all, [pg 112] what meets our eyes every day that influences us. It is the surrounding—the set scene of every-day life that affects our artistic sense more than anything. While a visit to a museum or art gallery is only an occasional matter, except for students, the mass of mankind must take their impressions of colour and form from what they see around them. ”

“ And all the old masters are here, represented each in several of the pictures that made their fame. In fact a national gallery of paintings, of creditable number and variety, might be filled from the treasures of the art exhibited in these splendid apartments. ”

“ To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country, or sea-side, stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. ”

“ The sophisticated, almost exotic, color of the walls, emphasizing in the work of some all that is crude and materialistic in execution or interpretation, makes their work appear to less advantage than would the usual bleak gallery. And why so many pictures? Why not one picture in each space and that the best each artist could offer? How much more satisfactory the room would then be. Anyone who follows exhibitions will agree that each exhibitor has shown better work at other times. ”

“ You should have beautiful sculpture in the middle of the room, with dark walls round it to throw out its profile, and you should have all the arrangements made there [Pg 22] so as to harmonize with it, and to set forth every line of it. So the painting gallery, I think, might be made a glorious thing, if the pictures were level, and the architecture above produced unity of impression from the beauty and glow of color and the purity of form. ”

“ The gallery is a feature of every house in this city that lives outdoors, be it big or little, humble or grand, or lowly or mean. It is on the first floor or the second, or even the third, though the third it seldom reaches, for few people care for houses of great height. Indeed, there are hundreds of homes of but one story, full of the costliest tokens of the taste of an artistic people. And the soil below is so like a morass that ample space must be left between floor and earth; while as for cellars, I have heard of but two in all the great city. ”

“ The gallery of portraits continues, as if unfolding, as you pass into the sitting room, up the stairway — two flights — along another hall, and then into the workshop, where are gathered the master spirits of the world. ”

“ At the opposite end of the palace is situated the picture gallery, which opens into another garden department, with hornbeam hedges, and numerous box edging scrolls; but this piece of ground is evidently not much attended to: the walks, flowers, borders, are not in good order. The collection of paintings, however, in the gallery will infinitely repay the visitor for the disappointment he may experience in the badly kept garden. This gallery is two hundred and fifty-two feet long, and thirty-six feet wide; the dome and cove ceiling are richly gilt, the floor and walls inlaid with marble. ”

“ Of what avail is it, that curtains of the richest damask keep out the too intrusive sunlight, or that carpets of the finest texture cover the floors, since the shutters are always closed, and the magnificent parlors rarely echo the steps of a visitor? Of what avail is the gallery of really exquisite paintings, selected at an immense cost from European collections? Hidden from the curious eye, lest perchance some harm might come to them, never looked upon by the possessor, they might as well be buried under ground, so far as concerns the actual enjoyment derived from them. ”

“ Are you willing to forsake the thoughtful soberness of antique oak-panelling for the tinsel of Venetian gold and the richness of Genoa velvet, Florentine tapestry, and Persian arras? If so, we will ascend to the drawing-rooms and gallery. But stay a moment and permit this lady and oddly-dressed gentleman to pass us on their exit from the gallery, where they have been rehearsing some charming entertainment for the evening, or getting p. 232up some piece of fanciful mummery to amuse the idle guests who have congregated around the garden fountain. ”

“ Passing through a lofty guard-room with raftered ceiling—the walls hung with tapestry—where casques and shields of antique pattern shone out, side by side with crescent banners and scimitars captured from the Moors, the guests arrive and are ushered into a Gothic hall of sculptured oak heavily carved, a richly wrought balustraded gallery breaking the lines high up under the cornice. ”

“ If the visitor is amazed at the fine collection of sculpture and statuary, what are his feelings at beholding the grand and almost endless halls of paintings as he ascends to the floors above! Here, grand galleries, spacious and well lighted, stretch out seemingly as far as the eye can reach, while halls and ante-rooms, here and there passages, and vestibules, and rooms, are crammed with the very wealth of art; here the chefs d'œuvre of the great artists of Europe, known all over the world by copies and engravings, are collected ”

“ Then comes the long gallery, running the whole width of the building, stored with curiosities, where we used to run races and play hide-and-seek with the children of the house in bygone days, and tremble when evening came on lest some bogie from his lurking-place should spring out upon us. ”