PICTURES AND PICTURE-GALLERY.
17th November 1851.
Sm—As you have taken up the subject of a new building for a National Gallery, I venture to address a few lines to you, in hope of calling through
you the attention of the slublie to the subject, not of the building, but of what will be deemed hardly leas importante-via. the pictures. Let us by all aiseans build the beat gullet), All the heat site, but for pity's make let us have pictures to put into it. What, let me Ask, has been done of late years by the united wisdom and wealth of the Royal Academy and the Government towards securing to this nation a collection of pictures which shall be worthy of the name? Is thole any reason Why we should have an inferioreollection to those of Munich and Berlin ?—I say nothing of-older pilleriee. Why should we have in our public gallery so few pictures, and, what is worse, so few good ones? We buy pictures, true. Some are very good; but we give 7001. or 800/. for a sham liolbein, and 3000/. for a Rubens which no man or woman can look on with benefit to his mind or morals. I believe there has been a surplus in the revenues I even believe that, so far back as 1850, there was an em- barrassing surplus. In that year was sold the collection of the King of Hol- land; a collection which exceeded many public and most private collections in the number of good pictures and fewness of bad ones which it contained. At that sale there were present commissioners from Russia, Prussia, France, and otherGovemments; whilst to a private English nobleman was left the task of representing his country, in purchasing, not for his country, but him- self, some of the most costly bat not most valuable paintings. There was not even the shadow of a representative of the English Government. Nor is this all. The whole collection was not sold then. In the part s id sub- sequently, were contained among other drawings, the studies made by Lionardo dal7inci timselffor his Last Supper; a collection that may fairly be (as it is in the judgment of Kugler and his translator Sir C. Eastlake) con- sidered invaluable. Many are aware that these drawings might at Sir Thomas Lawrence's death have been in the possession of this nation : but the Chancellor of the Exchequer was too embarrassed with his surplus, or the Academicians too apathetic, to venture on an attempt to recover these inestimable treasures. They have been, it is true, bought by an English- man, the sense discerning dealer in pictures in whose possession they for- merly wene. Can anything now be done to secure them ? write in isino- xance of any possible attempts in that direction, but in hope, hcwever faint, that they may still be had. Surely, Sir, it is time for us to give up the vanity of pretending to possess a National Gallery, When no more is done than is done at present towards getting pictures, to say nothing of drawings, for it. It seems to be a besetting folly of public architecture in England, to build large houses without reference to the purposes which they are meant to.serve. My hope of calling the attention of the public to an net .of self- preservation in this respect must be my apology in troubling you.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, H. W. P.
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