THE NATIONAL PICTURES AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE FINE ARTS.
IT appears to be suite decided that the National Gallery shall be altered, so as to give more room for the pictures, without,disturb- ing the Academy ; not only so, but a new sculpture gallery will be made and placed at the service of the Academy. The First Commissioner of Works has taken upon himself to reject the plan designed by Captain Fowkes of the Royal Engineers, who has had much to do with the gouth Kensington Museum—a plan which was some time ago very fully explained in the Corothill Magazine. It is understood the alterations to be made, al- though the plans have not been regularly laid before Parliament, are the proposition of Mr. Pennethorne, the architect who so ably designed the enlargement of Somerset House, and they will, no doubt, be carried out under his superintendence. The intention is to make use of the present entrance hall, which has always been so much space thrown away, by erecting a spacious saloon, 75 feet by 40 and 35 feet high, lit from the roof, for pictures; and beneath this a somewhat smaller gallery, will be obtained by sinking the present floor a few feet, which is to be offered to the Academy for the use of the sculptors. The estimated cost of this enlargement is 15,000/., and. that sum has now been voted for the purpose by Parliament. Anything like an advance towards the better and more compre- hensive exhibition of the national pictures must be welcomed after the constant discussion in Parliament and by the various public Journals, which has been going on before and ever since the first Parliamentary Committee reported in 1848 against the existing state of things. The Royal Commission in 1857 again recom- mended that the half of the building lent to the Academy- should be put to the purpose originally intended, and that the Academy should be ordered to quit possession. The important questions, also, as to the suitability of the site and the liability, of the pictures to suffer injury from smoke and dust, were at this time settled in favour of keeping the national pictures where they are ; as the most convenient place, quite as free as any other from destructive at- mospheric agents. The project of a grand new gallery to contain the whole line art property of the nation is naturally an accept- able one, and has many supporters. It would undoubtedly be the most worthy thing to do, and the advantage to the arts would be incalculable. The Derby Administration and Mr. Disraeli were ready to commence this undertaking, but the Government now in power are not prepared to provide for the outlay of about a million, and, as Lord Pahnerston pointed out, it would probably be ten years before such a gallery could be available.
We are asked to accept the step now determined upon as the best that could be devised short of a new building, and to regard it
as the commencement of the entire reconstruction of the present gallery, with the occupation eventually of the ground behind,. now covered by the barracks and workhouse. It will give uni- versal satisfaction to see our sculptors fairly treated by being allowed the use of the new room, though we owe no thanks to the Academy for this ; and, indeed, it has long been a disgrace to this wealthy body, deriving a large income from the public, that some more decent place than "the cellar" has not been provided for ,the sculpture. But it can never be satisfactory- to the public to see the whole of the 332 pictures forming the British school banished to the Brompton Boilers for want of room, while the Academy rests like a cuckoo in the home where Turner's magniii- cent works and the Vernon collection ought to be, and where in fact, by solemn bequest, they were intended to be. The new room will not suffice to contain the British school ; it will not even give place for the 100 noble landscapes by Turner, now at Kensington, and it will not enable the public to see the extensive collection of sketches and drawings made by Turner's own hand for his " liber studiorum," pronounced by Mr. Ruskin to be priceless in their inte- rest, of which only a very scanty selection is to be seen at Kensing-, ton. All that the new room can be made to do will be to exhibit some of the largest gallery pictures, such as "The Raising of Lazarus" by Sebastian del Piombo, the "St. Jerome" by Parmegiano, the "Alexander and Darius" by Paul Veronese, and some other large works, which have never yet been properly seen in the miserably small, low, and badly-lighted rooms. Therefore, un- questionably, the Academy ought to be called upon to change places with the British school at South Kensington, or to find some place for themselves. There is something outrageously en- croaching in this proposition to keep the British school collection almost out of the metropolis for another ten 'years; and bearing in mind the unmistakeable expression of public opinion, both in and out of Parliament upon this subject, it is not possible to sup- press the feeling that there has been some clever management in the important operations which have lately been going on in the administration of the fine arts. The Director of the National Gallery has been reappointed for a second term of five years, as though there had been no serious errors during his direction, and as if it were not objectionable that this gentleman is also Presi- dent of the Royal Academy and member of the Fine Arts Coin- mission for the Houses of Parliament. Let alone the absorption of the honoraria of these offices by this permitted kind of plu- ralism, it is not desirable, if it were fair to other distinguished artists, that one person should possess this influence, and espe- cially when the interests of the Academy and the National Gal- lery clash as they do, and when the public would suffer by any compromise. It is not that any complicity can be asserted, but thatthe settlement is so extravagantly in favour of the Academy, so utterly regardless of previous decisions, and one sanctioned by what was justly stigmatized at the time, as "a phantom of a House."
Simultaneously with the vote for improving the National Gal- lery, we have a demand for 17,0001., for extending the temporary buildings for the Museum of the Department of Science and Art. And here arises the question, why this expense when the pictures should be removed to the National Gallery, and thus abundance of room given to the works of ornamental art in the Museum The pictures, too, are manifestly out of place and incongruous with objects illustrating and teaching designing, ornamentation, and applied art generally ; although a periodical exhibition of pictures such as the Academy would afford would be appropriate enough as showing the state and progress of art at the time. Then there is the vote for the British Museum, and another for the National Portrait Gallery ; so that we have all these fine art establishments, each under independent and invidious directors. It may be an exigence of economy to delay the providing of a gallery capacious enough for all our present and future ac- quisitions, but there should be no further delay in placing the whole fine art interests of the country under one administrative head.
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