tie e.4prctator, fRarcb 19:1), 1833 FINE ARTS
Exhibition of. the National Institution
THE NATIONAL INSTITUTION gets worse and worse. Setting aside some pretty landscapes, interiors, and so on, it is becoming a show-room for the artistic incompetence of the country=-incompetence of such a k'nd, and so intense in degree, that the stigma of having exhibited there will soon be as a felonial brand- among painters. What else, indeed, can be expected when we find such names as Barraud, 0. R. Campbell,
and Middleton, thronging the list of "proprietary members "—the men who give a tone to the "Institution," who accept, and who reject ? It must be evident that none but the lowest order of practitioners will willingly belong to such a college. The better few have fallen off gradually, and are almost entirely absent this year: the one or two who remain are so remiss that they ought rather to have absta'ned altogether; the very President seems to " fight shy " of his own gallery. Radical reform will be, if only possible, the most creditable course for the National Institution; death by inanition the next best; a continuance of its present inanition, just minus death, the worst.
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