We must go to the National Gallery to take the
taste out of our mouths. Why does everyone go to the English Loan Exhibition and the Dutch Loan Exhibition and all the other Loan Exhibitions, where he has to pay half a crown for the pleasure of smelling the multitude and catching an occasional glimpse of a picture, and why does no one go to the National Gallery when he can walk round it - day after day, in freedom and solitude, and examine, for nothing, many of the masterpieces of the world ? The answer is—humbug, again. They go to these exhibitions because it is the thing to do, because they have been boomed in the Press, because they have to pay for the pleasure (which, of course, makes it certain that it is a pleasure), for any reason, in short, but to see the pictures. And they arc quite right, because one never can see the pictures !
There is not a bad picture in the National Gallery. Or if there is, I have not discovered it. Of what other Gallery in Europe can that be said ? It is not very large, and therefore it is not very tiring. It is universal, though certainly the Spaniards are weak. And there is very frequently something new to be seen—either a new gift or a loan or some treasure raked up from the cellars. I suggest that next time you are feeling " arty," you do not go to the Academy, nor even to the private exhibition of somebody's garden in water-colours or the more rugged affair of somebody else's body in cubes, but that you go quite simply to the National Gallery. No charge for admission. No catalogues. And I bet you a shilling, that you will find at least one picture which you have never seen before in your life I
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