ART.
HISTORICAL ART.
ENGLISH KINGS AND QUEENS AT THE NEW GALLERY.
WHEN looking at the pictures now on the walls of the New Gallery it is impossible not to speculate upon questions con- nected with portraiture. In the first place, did these early Kings and Queens whose names are attached to the pictures really look thus in life ? What evidence is there that no mistakes have been made, and that obscure individuals, once having been raised to the dignity of a kingly name, do not still- masquerade under it, to the confusion of our visual impressions of history? But if we grant that the pictures portray those whom they profess to, how are we to know they are like the originals? Can a picture be a good likeness when it is quite obvious that the painter was incapable of draw- ing correctly? Though incorrect in drawing, schoolboys' caricatures of their masters are often admirably true por- traits. But who does not know the difficulties that arise when a person of imperfect technical accomplishment displays her portraits of her family and asks you if you can recognise the pictures? Are we to assume that primitive painters could render the individual characteristics and diversities of their sitters faithfully when they had not attained to complete power in rendering human form ? Nevertheless, there are pictures of early Kings which from their strongly marked individuality incline us to accept them as portraits. Here, however, we still have to be satisfied that the picture represents the person whose name it now bears. Hung in the South Gallery is a beautiful little tempera diptych (No. 2) which contains a portrait of Richard IL The profile of the youthful King is so full of character that it is impossible to feel it to be a type merely and not an individual. The painting is most delicate, and the preservation excellent. The portraits of• succeeding Kings, till we get to the time of Hemy VIII., raise the doubts already alluded to. When we reach the age of Holbein and his followers the ground becomes firmer. In the reign of Henry VII. there are still difficulties. For example, take the Three Children. of Henry VII. (No. 34) ascribed to Mabuse. How reasonable to suppose that these are the children they claim to be, for one of them is exactly what one would expect Henry VIII. to have been when a child. The catalogue tells us, all the same, that the late Sir G. Scharf identified "the figures with those of the three children of Christian IL of Denmark."
• Of Henry VII. there are litany portraits ; but they by no means corroborate each other, for the face undergoes many variations. The most striking picture, whatever it may be as a portrait, is No. 33. The work is ascribed to Mabuse, and it is a forcible picture. Here we do seem to see the face of the man Bacon portrayed in words; he who had no pleasures, but looked on while his courtiers amused themselves, who kept a dossier of those about him, and a pet monkey who tore it up and scattered it about the Court. But it is when we come to Henry VIII. that we get real and convincing portraiture. Foremost here must be placed the great cartoon which Holbein made for his fresco at Whitehall, which unfortu- nately perished there in the fire of 1698. There can still be seen the holes pricked through the paper for transferring the design to the wall. These holes are an index as to where the work has been restored; where they are filled up the original has been repainted. Although the face of Henry VIII. has been much damaged, it remains the most striking of any pertraits of the King. It and the drawing at Munich are, in fact, the only portraits of Henry by the hand of Holbein, none of the many oil pictures being authentic. In the cartoon the King is not seen quite in full face, but the copy of the fresco made by Leemput for Charles- II., and still at Hampton Court, shows the King quite full face. It has been suggested that the Munich drawing may have been made when it was determined to alter the pose of the head in the fresco. We cannot help being amazed at the preposterous costume of Henry as he stands legs apart; the space he occupies is that of a rectangular parallelogram. The figure of Henry 'VII. standing behind his son is clothed in a much more reasonable and less expansive costume. The face of Henry VIII. as we here see it—when we piece together the lines of Holbein, obscured as they are by decay—agrees with all that has been said to the disadvantage of the King; a more villainous appearance it would be hard to imagine. How good must have been the cause that triumphed in spite of such a champion who used it for his own ends ! How can this man be that winning and irank figure shown us by Erasmus, who respected Colet when he preached against the Royal policy of the war abroad! Anne of Cleves (No. 58) appears decidedly to advantage in the picture ascribed to Holbein, and has a more interesting face than Anne Boleyn (No. 61), which can hardly be by Janet, to whom it is ascribed. The wonderful assump- tions of authorship which startle and amuse us throughout the exhibition culminate in the treacly head of Philip II. (No. 74) ascribed to Titian. As we turn from the pictures te the catalogue, and find such names as Titian, -Van Dyck, Janet, Holbein, freely bestowed by their owners, we exclaim with Mr. Pepys, "But, Lord, their innocence !"
each other greatly. Probably the hard-featured Queen of sour expression was not difficult to portray. The best examples are the two by Lucas de Heere, the large one (No. 75), and the miniature (No. 252) in Case F in the West Gallery. The large picture is a fine piece of colour, and if the face were as well painted as the clothes and background, the whole would be a remarkable work.
The portraits of Queen Elizabeth by or after Zuccheio raise a curious point. How was it that an Italian of the latest Renaissance, one who outlived Tintoretto, should have painted while in England in such a curiously stiff and con- strained manner ? Was it that the taste of an artistically backward country would not tolerate the freedom and bravura of the artist whose aim it was to excel the painting of Vasari ?
The seventeenth-century Kings do not make much show. Charles I. (No. 104), painted a year before his death by E. Bower, has an older, sadder, and more bigoted face than when Van Dyck painted him before the troublous times The picture is black and sombre but interesting. Charles II. (No. 115), done very large, is not only ugly but ridiculous ; and Anne Hyde (No. 122) good-natured and blowzy.
With the eighteenth century we enter the epoch of por- tentous periwigs and dismal shams. We reach the period of large canvases, many showing signs of decay, with dingy contemporary frames, gilt plaster crowns, and all the pretentious assumptions of "sacred majesty." By a polite and courtly fiction Cromwell has been omitted from this col- lection of English Monarchs. He is assumed not to have existed—except in a collection of coins. Had his wonderful face as seen in the miniatures of Cooper, or in the Siston Court portrait, looked down from these walls, the 'enchanted wiggeries" would have been even less imposing than they are.
The closing pictures of the series revive the old regret that there is no great portrait of Queen Victoria. Think of the picture of imaginative insight and symbolical meaning that Mr. Watts might have painted; or, the exact aspect that Millais would have recorded; or the brilliant characterisation which could have been achieved by Mr. Sargent. We have now to put up wiih the facile inanities of courtly Academicians or of un- knoa-n foreigners, or at best the large Four Generations (No. 161), which is not one of Mr. Orchardson's successes. The two portraits of King Edward VII. are very divergent in style and effect. The little unfinished panel by Bastien Lepage is a gem ; the style is so delicate and the colour so beautiful. Of the large one the less said the better; it is merely photographic.
Space remains only to call attention to the wonderful collection of relics in the cases, which include net only, personal relics and historical documents, but also many beautiful examples of the applied arts. The baby-linen made by Elizabeth for her sister Queen Mary's expected child is here. If it had been worn, and the wearer had survived, how different would have been the portraits on these walls ! The catalogue must be mentioned as being well done, and not too diffuse ; it contains an interesting historical summary at the
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