THE MANCHESTER ART EXHIBITION OF 1857.
Tim Queen has willed that the Exhibition of Art Treasures in Manchester shall be a suocess, and of course the Queen's will must be carried out. The example of. her Majesty in sending a varied list of thirty-eight pictures to form part of the Exhibition will strengthen the confidence of those- who wish to send, and shame those who feared. The simple fact that pia-urea belonging to the Queen are to be exhibited' in the Exhibition would of it- self be quite enough to crowd Manchester with numbers coining to see it. Not only have many noblemen and gentlemen overcome the apprehension which we thought likely to restrain them, but others are certain to copy so illustrious an ex- ample ; and the Exhibition is likely to be such as no insti- tution in London has displayed. We may say, that of pic- tures alone the British Institution never brought together such a selection from so many galleries as will be hung upon the walls of the Manchester Louvre. But the Exhibition will not con- sist of pictures alone ; manufacturers, with a keener eye to busi- ness had already agreed to send specimens of ornamental ware
for busi- ness, collection ; others will follow ; and Manchester, for the time, will be the art-capital of England.
There are many uses which such an Exhibition will serve. The working classes have comparatively few opportunities of contem- plating pictures ; still fewer, we may say none, of comparing works of art. The railway, which has done so much to make the humbler orders acquainted with their own country, still serves them little here ; because, with very few exceptions, it is not the custom to open galleries on railway excursion-days—that is, on the one day of the working classes. Those who imagine that the weaver, the spinner, or the dyer, will want the ca- pacity for appreciating pictures, think without knowledge. The working men of our great towns have trained themselves so well to observe, examine and reflect—they have been so well practised in comparing the nature and value of evidence, that numbers will enter the walls of a large exhibition for the first time far better-prepared than many a student of much higher orders to receive manifold and distinct impressions. They will no doubt be perplexed by varieties of style, quaintnesses of man- ner, perhaps anachronisms of costume ; and, judging of pictures upon secondary considerations, they may shut themselves out from the full force of the lesson placed before them. But many will be wiser • and if there is a plain descriptive catalogue, dis- criminating the characteristics for which the artists are severally distinguished, the Manchester men will get over years of picture- observation within as many weeks ; and we doubt much whether there are many men in the receipt of decent wages in Manchester who will not enter the collection at least once a week.
Previous page
