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THE CRYSTAL PALACE PICTCRE-GALLERY,
We have before expressed our opinion of the high value of which the picture-gallery at Sydenham might be made as representing the several European schools of art, and of the increasing, and on the whole not in- significant, measure of success with which this endeavour has been at- tended. The collection opened last autumn was a great advance upon those which had preceded it, especially with respect to the French school, and in virtue of the works by old masters which it included.
tinder the new directorship of the Crystal Palace, a proposal has been advertised to transfer the management of the picture-gallery to private hands ; the person accepting this tender being at liberty, as we under- stand it, to carry out any plans of his own for making the gallery effec- tive and remunerative. If we are not mistaken, this proposal has been acted upon, and the Management rests now with a gentleman well known in the picture-dealing world, who, it is to be hoped, will find it his in- terest to make the gallery "a good thing" by sending into it, as into the best show-room at his disposal, a continuous stream of new and in- teresting works, whether his own property or that of the artists. One change which has attended the transfer of management is a re- moval of the pictures to the main gallery in the south nave, which they suffice to fill very fairly from end to end, and where they are seen to advantage under a quiet and uniform light. The great bulk of the pictures still continue the same which formed the autumn exhibition, bath by old masters and contemporary painters. ' The distinction between these two classes of works is preserved ; but, in other respects, the various schools have been mixed together more than was heretofore the case, and, we conceive, to the manifest disadvantage of the collection. It should be remembered that this is the only gallery where Londoners have an opportunity of inspecting, side by side, the works of our own and of foreign living painters. This is the distinctive feature of the collection, and a most valuable one ; but the means of study which it affords are frittered away when no visible or intelligible classification of the schools is adopted. To the artistic or critical visitor, indead, this matters little, as he is sufficiently aware beforehand of the facts which a proper arrangement of the works would he calculated to impress ; but the Crystal Palace is eminently a people's study-hall, and everything should be done to make its teaching plain and definite. • The small number of fresh works restricts our remarks upon individua pictures to a. very small compass. A German or Belgian artist, Herr Krockow, appears before the English public—as far as we know, for the first time—as a noticeable animal-painter, having a special predilection for wild boars • the picture of a squad of these unsightly animals wading across a 'swamp, ;hose green ooze and slimy rusheS trail after them, clogging their bristles, is one of those works in which the exact observation and truth-telling of The artist on a small point Produces a convincine° im- pression of characteristic truth.. Equally literal in its facts, in a diffe- rent sort of way, is the "Coast Scene, Ostend," of M. Germak ; vigor- ously French in style, strong iit broad light and shade, and recalling vividly the aspect of those melancholy shifting sand-mounds, and that poverty-stricken seashore. The excellence of the French school in the downright exhibition of peasant life and labour appears once more in Roussin's Breton Interior, where the blue-jacketed peasants are enjoying their dinner—or 'rather "going through it" in their somewhat moody,. silent manner; and in Ternante's "Gathering Potatoes," where the* s gainly, stooping straddle of the women is caught with far more atten- tion to truth than to graces, but in a simple positive way that has no leaning to exaggeration or caricature. These pictures are worthy of hanging beside Seryin's "Stone-gatherers," Gercin's "Provencal Pea- sants crossing a Marsh," Langee's "Orphan," and Linninais's "Breton Pilgrimage," which formed part of the autumn exhibition, and still re- main in the gallery. Another work remarkably faithful and easy in expression, and, though a little vulgar-looking at first, not more so than befits the homely bourgeois personages represented, is "My Birth- day" by Lebours ; where an old danae, at her solitary snugAniner at- tended only by a female servant 'and a plethoric lap-dog, invites the former to drink her good health in a glass of wine. The unenviable in- terest which attached to the name of Madame O'Connell in the recent proceedings connected with the likeness ,of the dying Rachel may at- tract the attention of those who are net acquainted with the fine portraits painted by this lady, to her, small picture of a grande dame of the Louis the Fourteenth time burning love-letters—" ashes to ashes." A "Huntsman and Dogs," by M. Melin—a name new to US" is Very excellent and unforced in canine expression. Of the fresh Eng- lish works, the most remarkable—but seen here for the hundredth time—. is the Burning of Joan of Arc, by Etty : an old picture by Anthony, a ruinous Irish churchyard, may also be particularized. The section of works by Old Masters comprises a few fine novel, ties. Such are a "Nativity" by Roger of Bruges ; a "Holy Virgin, by Masolino da Panicale, as evidently deep as it is charmingly naive in feeling after the manner of the Lippi school; a Lucas van Leyden of a middle-aged man and a most ancient lady playing on guitar and fiddle— one of his well-known compositions, grotesquely true ; and a very 1A- mirable Cuyp, a refined family-group at fresco. Few Dutch picture", whether portraits or subjects, have so much beauty and sweetness as this. A group of humourous heads front the pit of a theatre, by Regarth, is universally popular in the engraving. Two martial 'pictures ascribed to Tintoret, and another ascribed to Giorgione, also hang in the gallery. They are all evidently works of fine style, and the so- called Giorgione has a grand effect of tone and colour. If these pictures are genuine, the manager of the gallery has only himself to blame for preventing their merits from being verified, and their authorship acknowledged. The perversity which should hang real Tintorets and Giorgiones wholly out of sight, is so extreme as almost to imply a confession of their spuriousness.
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