A splendid Exhibition of paintings by old English masters —including
many fine specimens of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, Hoppner, Raeburn, and Lawrence—was opened on Saturday last at the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin in the presence of the German Emperor and Empress, the British Ambassador, and many of the leading figures in the artistic world. The collection, which fills nine rooms, owes its representative character to the generosity of German as well as British collectors, and has been greeted with a chorus of frank and enthusiastic admiration by the German Press. For this agreeable result the thanks of both nations are due to Count Seckendorff, the Chief Marshal of the Court of the late Empress Frederick, who took a leading part in organising the Exhibition. It was, he said, the Emperor's recent visit to England, "a country related to our own by racial kinship and by exalted family connexions," which prompted the idea whether," in order to impart renewed cordiality to sentiments of reciprocal respect and mutual appreciation," the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin might not "in the realm of art also be able to contribute its own small share to the furtherance of this object." The attitude of the Berlin public seems to indicate that the promoters have gone far towards realising this laudable aim. Nations do not refrain from going to war because they admire each other's pictures ; but at least an artistic entente extends the mutual understanding which is the best guarantee for peace.
