Art is a topic on which the "collective wisdom" of
the country does not discourse with the happiest effect. When such a subject as the National Gallery, or the frescoes in the Houses of Parliament, is broached, we may be pretty sure to find honourable members talking,, if not nonsense, at least something that is a very close imitation of it. The opinions of the Earl of Aberdeen, then Lord Haddo, on tha propriety of permitting the use of the nude figure in the Art-schools,, will long be remembered, affording. as they did so remarkable an in- stance of the folly of a legislator interfering with matters of which he: knows nothing. This week furnishes another instance of Parliamen- tarian rashness when discoursing on matters connected with paint- ing. Lord Henry Lennox, in. his speech on the National Gallery
vote on Tuesday night, took objection to the "prurient' nature of some of the Turner pictures and drawings. This is, indeed, news!
In Turner's lifetime every species of abuse in the shape of contain-
tuous epithets and ridiculonscomparisonswas heaped upon..his works) but it has been reserved for Lord Lennox to discover a fault of whicir
the world had hitherto been ignorant. His lordship may have had greater facilities than most people for forming his opinion, but as far as inquiry and personal examination of the works in question can go, I believe the charge to be wholly unfounded. Turner, thorough genius as he was, did not confine himself to landscape painting, lie thirsted to draw everything. Accordingly, among his studies, many from the naked human figure will be found, but if these are " prm- rient," every drawing of an undraped figure that was ever made in "prurient." In his pictures the amount of nudity is so small and delicately treated as to cause a wish that the critic, having givea
us an idea of what he considers pruriency, would1 favour us with his- notions of purity-. Is "the age grown so picked" that the vials of wrath are to be poured on an unoffending "life-study," while wanton vice rears its head in every public thoroughfare unrehuked ? This-
insult to the memory of the world's greatest landscape painter is of a piece with the neglect with which the works he left to a, grateful nation have been treated. For years they were entombed in the cellars of Trafalgar-square. The time in which he stipulated that a place suitable for their reception should. be built has nearly elapse14, and not a stone of the bnildng is yet visible.
Dax P-CaNT..
Previous page
