FINE ARTS.
THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
THE National Gallery reopened this week, after a long interval of closure; and it looks more like an auction-room than ever: the pictures do not seem in their proper places, as forming part of a well-arranged collection, but as if hung up anywhere for the moment; presenting a strange jumble of subjects, styles, and schools. Moreover, it has been impoverished by the addition of some twelve or fourteen low-class pictures, bequeathed by a Mr. Richard Simmons as a memento of his munificence and bad taste; and by the ruin of a splendid Rubens, " Peace and War," which has been flayed. by some member of the Skinners Company. On the other hand, the col lection has been enriched by the acquisition of an excellent cabinet picture of the " Temptation of St. Anthony," by Annibale Carucci, in good pre- servation; and a slight but masterly painting of a Court Boar-hunt in Spain, by Velasquez. The St. Anthony has not yet undergone a second mar- tyrdom of flaying; but the Velasquez has been scoured till it is raw; and a coat of varnish has been substituted for the glazed tints of the Spanish Titian. Both are curious and valuable works of art, and fine specimens of the respec- tive masters; but neither has so much interest or beautyas to make it very desirable for the national collection. Mr. Simmons's bequest includes a cold blue and white Madonna by Sasso Ferrate; a feeble head by Grease; a filmy landscape by Both, with ivory nudities by Polemberg; a Dutch vrow by Maes; some cocks and bens by Hondekoeter; a bad bit of Back- huysen ; and a few other hard, polished, and laboured productions, with names that do not make it worth while to question their genuineness: which in some of the instances above mentioned one feels inclined to do.
" Never look a gift-horse in the mouth," is a prudent proverb for a private individual to act upon; but as a nation confers honour by accept- mg, a gift and reaps discredit when it exhibits what is worthless or false, it becomes a duty to decline injudicious generosity. A few more such bequests as this would turn the whole wealth of Wardour Street into Trafalgar Square; and if the work of every vacation be to rob Ruben, and Titian of their tone, the national collection will in time exhibit only the triumph of picture-dealers and doctors over the painter's art.
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