THE PICTURES IN WESTMINSTER HALL.
We attended the private view of the pictures in Westminster Hall today. The collection, on the whole, surpassed our expectations. In awarding the prizes, the judges have evidently had a leaning to those paintings which were in the " higher walk " of art; but upon the whole the discretion has been well exercised. The prizemen, we think, show an advance upon last years prize-pictures. Apart from any difference that may arise from greater familiarity with oils, in which material the present works are exe- cuted, there is more life, more imagination, and less crudity either of design or treatment. And some of the pictures which have not obtained prizes possess great merit. Altogether, the collection, numerous but still select, consisting for the most part of large pictures, displayed in the ample space of the great hall, is among the most striking that we have seen of contem- porary works.
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