CURRENT LITERATURE.
ART-BOOKS.
The National Gallery _Lewis Bequest. By M. W. Brockwell. (G. Allen and Sons. 5s. net.)—Forty years ago £10,000 was left by Thomas Denison Lewis to the National Gallery. The interest of this sum, which amounts to 1'246 a year, is spent in buying pictures. How well the money has been laid out the present volume testifies. In all one hundred and sixteen works have been bought. A large number of these, chiefly drawings by Alfred Stevens, are to be found in the Tate Gallery, where are also to be seen his pictures of Judith and of King Alfred and his mother, which were bought out of this bequest. The National Gallery itself owes many fine pictures to this fund,—among others, the heads of four nuns by Lorenzetti, the exquisite Florentine picture of the combat between Amor and Castitas, Signorelli's large "Nativity," Era Bartolomeo's " Virgin and Child," and Antonello da Messina's portrait head. Italian pictures only have been cited. To these must be added French, German, and Dutch works. Among the last may be mentioned the portrait of a woman by Franz Ibis. To have attained such a result from an income of £246 is indeed a testimony to the management of the National Gallery. In 1907 Colonel Temple West left a sum of £100,000, the interest of which is to be spent on pictures. No doubt in the future an equally satisfactory result will be attained as in the case of the Lewis bequest. Mr. Brockwell has compiled a very interesting list of Italian pictures, based on Mr. Berenson's researches, indicating their distribution in the galleries of Europe. We can only give a few of the figures here, but these show the wealth of Italian pictures in England :-- -Italian Pictures in—..
Public Galleries. Private Collections.
London... ...
... 276 ... 485
Berlin ... ... 265 ... 70
Paris ... 226 ... 125
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