ART.
THE NEW ROOMS AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
THE thing that art lovers for many years have hoped for has at last come to pass, and the National Gallery has been enlarged by a new wing that makes about a fifth part of the whole. Within the last few years the Turner wing has been added to the Tate Gallery, and the great collection at South Kensington has been splendidly rehoused, while a large addition to the British Museum will be completed this year. Taken together, these notable operations indicate very plainly the advance that has been made in the nation's recognition of its need for the stimulus and the solace of art.
The new wing in the National Gallery consists of three fair-sized rooms, a domed hall with three doorways, and a long gallery, which corresponds to the great Dutch gallery in the eastern wing. In the basement are three large rooms, which at present form a house of refuge to a very mis- cellaneous crowd exiled from the rooms that are being rebuilt.
The striking part of the addition is, of course, the long gallery which Sir Charles Holroyd has treated as a hall of honour for the English school. Until now English art could only be seen here split up in the smaller rooms. It is now possible from one spot to look around you and behold its ehiefest glories. One end wall is given up to Grainsborough, with the " Baillie Family " shining in the centre. Opposite is a wonderful wall of Hogarths, showing all the " Marriage h la Mode " series, but not the " Calais Gate." On the long wall facing the door Reynolds is seen in all his grandeur and lustre with " The Three Graces " as the centre. The opposite wall displays great landscapes by Old Crome and Constable, Gainsborough's " Musidora " and the big Morland. Without the aid of Turner and Raeburn and Cotman and Lawrence what an assembly of fresh and varied beauty they
make—what a series of sweet and wilful adventures ! The wall is of an old-gold colour tarnished with purple into which
the frames merge quietly A few of the works, especially "The Three Graces "—which has a tendency to over-ripeness —lose something through the surfeit of yellow. In three of the other rooms the strong green walls at present remind one too insistently of their presence, but this assertiveness will pass in time. In the room of the Ferrarese, Par- mese, and Bolognese pictures, however, the Correggios never looked better, and the Cosima Turas—the green is the same shade as the arch over his Madonna—make a lovely wall.
Francia's Buonvisi altar-piece has been reunited, and the Pieth, which in its separate hanging has long been one of the most popular pictures in the National, is now seen in its original place as a lunette over the panel. The sixteen Turners that remain at Trafalgar Square are hung together, and here the green background is least successful. Another, room is occupied by modern French and Dutch pictures, apparently chosen and hung for a short sojourn. The domed hall, which has walls of terra-cotta, contains some eighteenth• century French works. In Room V. of the old section Lord Lansdowne's picture, " The Mill," by Rembrandt, is on view for a short time. The suggestion that Lord Lansdowne should be asked to lend the picture to the National Gallery was made by a correspondent
• At a rehearsal of the Venusbarg music from Tannhauser Dr. Richter is reported to have once said to his band, " You play it like teetotallers, which
you are not!"
in the Spectator of March 4. "The Mill" is being visited by large crowds. It seems, alas! a farewell levee.
J. B.
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