FINE ARTS.
THE NATION AL GALLERY AND THE PARLIAMENTARY' COMMITTEE. a any person has questioned the occasion for the appointment, in March last, of a Select Committee to inquire into the management of the National Gallery and its relation to our other collections of art, his doubt ought to be set at rest by the Committee's Report, recently presented and printed. It displays a state of things which the public should be ashamed of as practical business men, and grieved or indignant at as the possessors of property held in trust by " a body of noblemen and gentlemen," who leave it to take care of itself; or who interfere mostly to blunder. Such is the picture presented in a report which cannot surely be accused of over- severity ; which labours rather to avoid an expression of opinion on con- troverted points, and to smooth over such shortcomings as are clearly chargeable on individuals. In the absence of the Minutes of Evidence, on which the report is founded, we were entitled to have the facts plainly and fully stated by the Committee. It cannot be said that the report itself fails to indicate defects in abundance, and to point out remedies more or less efficacious ; yet enough of some points of the evidence has oozed out here and there, and the impression of its actual tenour seems to be sufficiently general, to warrant the belief that it would snore than confirm the Committee's strictures. Indeed, the Appendix to the Report proves this. The draught-report of the Chairman, Colonel Mure, there- printed, uses the details of evidence more freely, is less tender, not to say timorous, in bringing home to individuals the responsibility attaching to them, and is altogether more incisive in tone. The Parliamentary Com- mittee, emulating the cleaning-processes to which they demur, tone down his fads, and serape down his suggestions : in a word, the honourable gentlemen are a little too " Parliamentary." That want of responsibility lay at the bottom of the mistakes and in- efficiencies of the National Gallery, has long been shrewdly suspected, and by some broadly affirmed : it will henceforward be a patent fact. The Committee trace to it, "for the most part," the "many imperfections and some irregularities" which they announce to exist. The unpaid Com- mittee of six gentlemen, which has gradually swelled into a trust of seventeen, were nominated merely to " undertake the superintendence of the. National Gallery of pictures, and to give such directions as may be neces- sary. for the conservation of. them " to the Keeper. Of new purchases no mention. The Keeper, whose antecedent appointment included gene- rally much the same functions, is " to value and negotiate (if called upon) the purchase of any pictures that may in future be added to the collec- tion." But who is to call upon him ? or is the vocation to originate with himself spontaneously ? The Select Committee seem to go too far in say- ing that "the duty or responsibility of picture-purchasing attached by the original minute of Treasury to the office of Keeper" : his duty was confined to negotiating purchases decreed by some one else. Accordingly's we find that, "from an early date, the Trustees appear to have morn= mended pictures for purchase,"—whether with any power of enforcing their recommendation on a reluctant Keeper, is not shown. " By a more recent instruction from the Treasury, of date 14th August 1845, the Keeper is understood to have been relieved from all responsibility what-
ever in regard to the purchase of pictures. That duty has consequently since devolved, under the Treasury, exclusively on the Trustees." And here we have dividing the responsibility or irresponsibility of purchase, seven_ teen gentlemen, some of whom meet once a month during the sitting of Parliament, and not at all beyond that period ; who have never yet since 1824 so much as fixed a quorum of their number ; whose business is transacted "by one or two or more members, according as attendance might suit the convenience of each " ; who seem to keep minutes, or not to keep them, as they please ; and who never "record dissents, even in the more important questions." Is it to be wondered at, as is even " ad-. milted by members of the trust, that the additions to the collection have not been made on any definite principle, whether with a view of impart.. ing to it completeness, of illustrating the history of art, or of raising the standard of national taste" ?
The circumstance which induced this Treasury order of 1845 is notre- called by the Committee ; but Colonel Mure's draught-report alludes to it, and it is sufficiently well known to have been the purchase of as grossly spurious a "Holbein" as ever was believed in by a "body of noblemen and gentlemen." To this order was attached the insulting condition, that, "in future, before any purchase was effected, the opinion of two eminent judges, unconnected with the gallery, should be taken as to the value of the picture." To the Royal Academician, now Pre- sident of the Academy, who then held the office of Keeper, this would have been as supercilious an affront as a body of unprofessional officials could well offer to an artist, had it not been that that gentleman had ex- pressly stipulated from the beginning that " he should incur no responsi- bility " except as to Italian pictures. But the rule is not observed ; and its promulgators of the Treasury, falling in with the laissez-alter tone characteristic of National Gallery concerns, allow the breach to pass un- challenged.
In the hands of Mr. Uwins, the keepership has, on his own showing, become a nullity. His predecessor informed him officially, that "he was to consider himself free from all responsibility as to the purchase of pic- tures." Except as to the Paolo Veronese, "he never spoke to the Trus- tees on the subject of picture-cleaning, nor was he ever consulted by them." He attended the meeting at which the question was considered, but did not offer any opinion, though ho privately disapproved of the cleaning. He did not interfere one way or another with the employment of an assistant by the cleaner ; although in the time of his prede- cessor such employment had been prohibited. He superintended the process of cleaning, "though without instructions to that effect" ; but he asserts that the cleaner, Mr. Seguier, did not, to his knowledge, adopt a method dangerous in his eyes, which Mr. Seguier asserts he did adopt. He was not consulted when a change was made in the quality of the varnish used. And he has no knowledge whatever of a dusting of the backs of all the pictures, which the operator says was performed.on his order. " He does not consider himself authorized to apply a silk handkerchief to the surface of a picture without the express directions of the Trustees." Thus, the officer who, even under the present system of trusteeship, ought to be the pivot on which all matters of technical treat- ment should turn, is reduced absolutely to a cipher—is nonexistent for any practical purpose. He has the disgust as well as the immunities of irresponsibility, and has lost interest in what he is neither bound nor expected to control.
We have touched. on the vexed question of the cleanings. The Com- mittee, as we think improperly, forbear to express any opinion of their own as to the actual effect on the pictures, but say—" The preponderance of testimony is to the effect that the appearance of the pictures has, for the present, been rendered less agreeable by the operation of cleaning ; in some of them, in regard to their general aspect, by the removal of the mellow tone which they previously exhibited ; in others, from special blemishes which have become apparent, and which in a former state of the pictures were not perceptible." For our own part, we have before expressed a qualified disapproval of the cleaning, in some instances, with a recognition that in others the pictures have been much improved by the process. We may add, that works still remain which demand judicious cleaning ; and we continue fully of opinion that the ill effects, in what- ever instances, have been exaggerated by perverse views of art, or picture- dealing self-interest, envenomed by rancorous personality. It will be ob- served that the summing-up given by the Committee of the evidence as to the results of the cleaning is adverse in a very modified degree, if at all : but in regard to the manner in which tho process has been conducted in the time both of Sir Charles Eastlake and of Mr. Uwins,—the want of proper preliminary inquiry, want of method, of precaution, of control,— a decided and deserved condemnation is pronounced. Certain regulations are also suggested, for insuring ,a definite understanding of what the pic- ture requires and what the cleaner proposes, which appear well calcu- lated to provide for the right performance of necessary work hence- forward. Into the details of this, the most temporarily exciting topic of the Committee's inquiry, we have not space to enter further:: indeed, it loses half its weight and more than half its piquancy wanting the Minutes of Evidence.
Before passing to the question of the future management of the Gallery, the Committee pay a compliment to the Trustees individually ; making the old distinction between transgression and transgressors. This is one of the too frequent cases in which a goodnatured but unmeaning civility, amounts very much to a shirking of the plain question. The Trustees, as voluntary guardians of an important national property, were bound to make regulations—either themselves, or through the Treasury, or the Treasury for them—which would have done away with at least a great part of the want of system inherent nevertheless in their constitution. To thank them " for their disinterested services," is somewhat gratuitous. A body chiefly of connoisseurs, a few of whoaemembers meet five or six times a year to ventilate their connoisseurship, and legislate—if such easy- going performance can be called legislation—in matters pertaining thereto, are really not sacrificing much to public spirit. But this bland civility does worse than turn a phrase. If one prin- ciple results more certainly than another from the confessed imperfections, of the present system, it is that a single Director, of the first qualifications, assisted by qualified subordinates,. should have tbe chief charge of. tba National Gallery, Colonel Mure included this proposition in his scheme of reform : but Lord Seymour moves the continuance of Trustees, and the question is, apparently without a dissentient voice, "put, and agreed to." Lord Mello would have restricted their power "to those of a visit- ing and inspecting body " ; but his motion was lost. Then come the fol- lowing resolutions. "2. That no person should in future, in virtue of any office, become a Trutt- teeof the National Gallery. 3. That the Trustees be appointed by the Trea- sury, 4. That it is expedient that the number of Trustees be diminished as vacancies occur. 5. That the office of Keeper of the Gallery should be abolished. 6. That a salaried Director should be appointed by the Treasury for a definite time, at the expiration of which he may be reappointed. 7. That every recommendation for the purchase of a picture should originate with the Director, and be made in writing to the Trustees."
So far so good, if the main proposition—the continuance of Trustees— be once admitted. But surely it would be more reasonable to make pro- vision for many suggesters of purchases and a single deciding power, than fora single suggester and a divided decision. If there is any meaning in the last resolution, the choice of pictures will be equally limited, the undue bias towards particular schools or artists equally probable, for all proposals are to bear the stamp of one mind ; while both the responsibility and the knowledge requisite in the final determination will be frittered away among various men likely to be the inferiors of the Director in artistic information, and something will always be left to chance. If this arrangement is necessary as a complement to a Board of Trustees—and perhaps it is so—no better proof need be asked for that the Trustees them- selves are unnecessary. The resolutions continue-
" 8. That a fixed sum should be annually proposed to Parliament for the purchase of pictures, and placed at the disposal of the Trustees. 9. That the site of the present National Gallery is not well adapted for the construction of a new Gallery. 10. That the estate at Kensington Gore, purchased by the Royal Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1851, and by them offered to the nation, presents many of the advantages recommended by the witnesses be- fore your Committee • and they are prepared to recommend the ac- ceptance of the offer of the Commissioners. 11. That the Committee are of opinion that the question of combining the various artistic and arehmological collections in the British Museum with the National Gallery be referred to a Royal Commission. 12. That no time should be lost in obtaining the deci- sion upon the above question, in order that the new National Gallery should be commenced with all convenient speed."
On •the motion of Mr. Vernon, the Committee concurred in recom- mending that the salary of the proposed Director should be not less than 10001., with reference more especially to the high qualifications required for purchasing or initiating the purchase of pictures. This suggestion, and the observations which follow on the necessity of acquiring the mate- rials for studying the history of art through its earlier monuments, are conceived in the right spirit. We do not know, however, why only one of the Italian schools is alluded to by the Committee in their remark, that "what Chaucer and Spenser are to Shakspere and Milton, Giotto and Masaccio are to the great masters of the Florentine school " : Raffaelle, who belonged to the Roman school, was more particularly indebted to Masaccio.
Three topics of some interest embodied in Colonel Mare's draught- report have vanished altogether -from that of the Committee. Colonel Mare animadverts on the permanence of the Royal Academy, contrary to their contract, in the National Gallery building, after all the space had become requisite for the housing of the national pictures ; and on the partiality shown at the Gallery to Academy students over others,—a par- tiality perhaps not altogether unjustifiable, if proved ; and he recommends that, in case of the fusion of the national pictures, sculptures, &c., the supreme management of the whole should be committed to the same governing power—a single Director. We wish the views of the gallant eschewer-of half-measures in this respect, and in most others throughout, may find acceptance with Parliament.
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