TUE ROYA.L GALLERY OP ART.*
We referred some time ago, when we saw at Messrs. Colnaghi's the water-colour copies from the pictures here engraved, to the project of which the realized commencement is before us. The Royal Gallery of Art is to be issued to subscribers only ; every impression being an India proof, with a guarantee that no other copies equally fine can ever be struck off again ; and each monthly part of three engravings is published at three prices, varying from 31. 3s. to 12s. The selection is to include a considerable variety of schools and periods, with a majority of contem- poraneous British works ; the choice of the particular specimens having been left by the Queen and Prince Albert to the editor, Mr. Hall. The strict art-critic will inquire what special value attaches to works in the possession of the Sovereign and her consort, and will infer, not without some colour of truth, that the proprietorship weighs for more than the authorship. He will ponder over the conditions of the case ; but the public of purchasers may be disposed to hail them. Waiving, however, any inopportune scrutiny into the artistic merit of the units which make up the 123 pictures selected for engraving, there cannot be a question that the work, if carried out in the spirit which inaugurates it—and the publishers' name is a good pledge on that point— will be truly a sumptuous one. Engravers of high reputation are re- tained—French, German, and Belgian, as well as English ; and the whole affair is done in style. The First Part contains the Virgin Mo- ther, engraved by Mr. Vernon after Dyee,—a work fine in manner, like everything of its eminent author, though somewhat too concretely imita- tive of the past ; the Royal Yacht off Mount St. Michael, by Mr. R. Wallis after Stanfield,—a laudable specimen of a laudable painter ; and the Duchess of Devonshire, 1784, by Mr. Lightfoot after Sir Joshua Reynolds. All three are elaborate examples of line-engraving.
• The Royal Gallery of Art, Ancient and Modern : Engravings from the Private Collections of H.M. the Queen and II.R.H. Prince Albert, and the Art Heirlooms of the Crown, at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and Osborne. Edited by S. C. Hall, F.S.A., Fr.e. Published by Colnaghi.
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