THE NATIONAL GALLERY.*
AT the suggestion of the Director, Sir Edward Poynter, Messrs. Cassell and Co. have issued a catalogue which may be described as monumental. The edition is limited to one thousand copies, and published at seven guineas. The first two volumes, containing the foreign school's, have already appeared, and the third, containing the English pictures, is to be produced in the autumn. The great feature of this catalogue is that it has a photographic reproduction of every picture in the national collection. The publishers claim that the work will be the most complete illustrated catalogue of any national collection in the world. In one respect the arrangement of the present book deserves all praise. With only one exception, the printed descriptions face the illustra- tions on the opposite page; so that no tiresome turning backwards and forwards is necessary. But here we fear that praise of the arrangement must stop. For some reason all the Italian, Spanish, German, Flemish, French, and Dutch pictures are jumbled up together in a chaos of alphabetical order,—so that the eye and mind are made to skip from late Dutch to early Italian and back again a hundred times, and we jump from Signorelli's Circumcision to Snyder's monkey and pumpkin, and back again from his asparagus and radishes to Solario's solemn Milanese gentlemen. The result is almost as un- pleasant and confusing as an exhibition at the Academy ; happily the Gallery itself is not arranged on this bewildering plan.
When we come to the names of the painters the confusion continues. In this department Smelfungus has claimed dictatorship, and such well-known names as Michelangelo, Perugino, Raphael, Francia, Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoretto are banished to a list at the beginning, and we have to look for these painters under the heads of Buonarroti, Vannucci, Sanzio, Raibolini, Veccelli, Cagliari, and Robusti. Considering that the key to these names is given in a list in the first volume, only difficulties are sure to arise. Stevenson says that honesty is not as easy as blind-man's buff ; no more easy is consistency when it comes to the names of Italian painters. For instance, Raphael has to be looked out in this
The Sational Gallery. Edited by Sir E. J. Poynter, P.B.A. London • Cassell
and OCI. 7s. the set net.] catalogue under Sanzio. But why this, and not Santi, which was his real name P Santi was Latinised into Sanctins, and this was Italianised back into Sanzio. Why, we may well ask, should this roundabout name be used now instead of his real family name, or, indeed, the name by which he was known to his contemporaries and to the world ever since? If it is so wrong to speak of this painter as Raphael, why does the writer of the note on Veronese's St. Helena use the forbidden name? The ungracious task of finding fault must be persisted in still further. In the official catalogue sold at the National Gallery is to be found a short description of each picture, which was reasonable in an unillustrated work. When, how- ever, we have a very clear and good reproduction by process of the Ansidei Madonna, it is quite superfluous, and even ridiculous, to fill nearly a page of print telling us that the Virgin is sitting on a throne, and that St. Nicolas is in episcopal robes and reading a book. The illustration tells us that with greater precision. This useless verbiage might be left out, and some interesting facts as to the history of the picture might have been given instead. The sizes of the pictures are given, but no record as to whether pictures are painted in tempera or oil, though the few frescoes transferred to canvas are noted.
In several instances Sir Edward Poynter has added some notes of his own. These are expressions of individual taste which do not always carry conviction. Few will endorse the announcement that the Bacchanalian Festival of Ponsain is a
"masterpiece conceived in the manner of Titian incomparable for its qualities of drawing and painting .
. . is among the moat valued possessions of the National Gallery," though most will agree with the note added to the description of Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, which says : " This is, perhaps, Titian's masterpiece as a composition of figures and landscape, and in its combination of all the qualities which go to make a great work of art is possibly the finest picture in the world."
A consideration of the catalogue of the National Gallery naturally suggests the question of omissions. In what particulars, that is, is the national collection weak ? In his preface Sir Edward Poynter says that only three painters of the first importance are unrepresented in our Gallery, —Fra Bartolommeo, Darer, and Watteau. The present writer would unhesitatingly put Millet above the last of these three, both for his profound poetry and magnificent sense of form, and Millet is entirely unrepresented. The French landscape art which, inspired by Constable, has influenced modern English painting so deeply is also entirely unrepresented in the National Gallery. It is little leas than a scandal that not a single work by so great an artist as Corot is to be found in the collection.
Probably no picture was ever consciously painted with the object of being hung in a vast collection. Certainly none of the old masters anticipated the effect their works would make when hung as they are now. But if pictures are to produce their full effect their surroundings should be considered. To hang a small panel in the huge Venetian Room because it belongs to the school to which that room is devoted seems rather absurd. It may be doubted if very large rooms are an advantage. Probably the ideal conditions would be to have a number of rooms of different sizes, and bang very few pictures on each wall. If the present Venetian Room were to be divided up into rooms of a smaller size there would be a gain in wall space. Many of the pictures now swamped by the large proportions of the present gallery would be able to assert themselves in smaller rooms, the walls of which would be less crowded together. In this room as it is its great length requires its present height, but this removes the sky- light too far from the pictures. Except on an extremely bright day, which is rare in London, the colour of many of the finest pictures is but imperfectly seen.
It would be ungenerous, when discussing the National Gallery, not to acknowledge the ability of the Directors who have formed our national collection, and for the great dis- crimination they have shown. Foremost among these mast be placed the late Sir Frederick Burton, under whose adminis- tration so many fine works were added to the Gallery.
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