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THE SOUL.A.OES COLLECTION.
The curiosity which was raised some weeks ago as to the purchase and character of the Soulages Collection, and which has since been fed from time to time by scraps or full courses of description and disquisition, may now be satisfied by every one for himself. The collection has been placed.provisionally in Marlborough House, where it occupies three.of
the rooms heretofore filled by the Museum of Ornamental Art ; to which, our readers may remember, it is tendered as an accession. Pub4 opinion is invited to pronounce upon the offer, and every facility is given it for doing so. The collection was formed by "M. Jules Soulages,.advocate," chiefly between 1830 and 1840. He scoured Italy repeatedly in his quest; not, as we are told, in the spirit of an amateur old-curiosity-shop keeper, but with a real view to the illustration of art, aiming to make the col- lection complete within its limits, and to acquire the works of great artists—" minor works " though they might be through the nature of their material. Such opportunities as he enjoyed are now matter of the past, the value of such objects of art, and the quicksightedness of their owners, having risen enormously and reciprocally within late years ; and M. Solloges enjoyed among Italians the invidious renown of being one of the keenest of art-harpies. Removed from Paris to his native Tou- louse, M. Soulages's collection was kept intact ; and intact it has come into the hands of its present holders.
We have before stated the mode and objects of the purchase. A num- ber of gentlemen, with a view to the interests of art in England, bought the collection for 11,0001., having first moved Government directly, for the purchase, but being met by the objections of the war-time ; and they are now offering it for repurchase by Government at the original price, in- creased by expenses to about 13,0001. If unsuccessful in this effort, they will disperse the works by public auction ; not, however, with any view to individual profit, but intending to devote any surplus to the advance- ment of art in one way or another. A large body of subscribers took part in the raising of the original guarantee fund ; being represented in all necessary negotiations past and contingent, by three of their members, Messrs. Dudley Coutt,s Marjoribanks, Matthew Uzielli, and Henry Cole, of the Department of Science and Art.
The three principal sections of the collection are majolica, bronzes, and cinque-cento furniture; to which are added medals, Venetian glass, tapestry, enamel-work, ivories, metal-work, an occasional group of sculp- ture, and a few pictures. The three chief sections are brought forward as unequalled in any other single collection either imported or offered for sale in this country ; and in all are found " an unusual number of works of extraordinary importance of their several kinds, with a very small number of trivial specimens, whilst there is perhaps not one bad or du- bious piece."
The majolica, more commonly termed Faenza ware or Raffaelle ware, (a title to which modern research has decided that it possesses no sub- stantial claim,) includes an unusual or even unexampled number of the works of Maestro Giorgio, the greatest representative of the art, who worked at the end of the fifteenth and in the first half of the sixteenth centuries—a number exceeding forty pieces. It is only of late that Giorgio has lost the exclusive prestige of being considered the solitary representative of one charm of the process—the crimson or ruby lustre ; which, together with other metallic iridescent lustres, distinguishes a con- siderable proportion of the specimens in the Soulages collection. Any one who has had an opportunity of comparing the majolica here with other col- lections is likely to acknowledge the distinguished excellence of this. Tried by the canons of strict art, we do not estimate majolica very highly. The designs are generally cumbrous and overcharged; the co- lour often glaring and unharmonized. Yet there is a certain overruling tone of gravity and dignity about both; and the effect of the lustres is undoubtedly fascinating. Among the works of Maestro Giorgio, we re- mark a large plateau with the arms of the Brancaleoni family; a ruby- lustre plate containing an amorino, noticeably brilliant ; and another with a profile bust inscribed " Danielle Diva." Then, from other hands, there are a large bacile plateau with a portrait of Perugino ; a plateau with upwards of fifty figures, including Leo X in the act of benediction, borne on a palanquin—the background deep blue, the colour generally dark, with a profusion of orange and red enamel-colour; a pretty frut- tiera with a female bust inscribed " Sepia," and owing its charm of smoky i colour, it appears, mainly to an accident in the enamel glazing; a group in the round, intended for an inkstand, of a young man playing an organ, while a boy works two pair of bellows behind ; a splendid two- handled vase of Hispano-Moresco lustre ware; and a small fruttiera, which, though not one of the crack pieces, may serve as a favourable example of the generic colour of majolica,—fine, soft, and simple. A bust of a young man, inscribed " Capitanio Gentile," with a yellowish- green mantle, and very yellow face-shadows, is designed upon a dark- blue ground. Of the enamelled sculpture of Luca della Robbia's school, there are two interesting specimens ; one (of which, if we recollect aright, the Crystal Palace possesses a cast) of the Virgin and Child, with two cherubs, in white on a concave ground of light greyish blue. Palissy ware is represented in about a score of pieces, some of remarkable excel- lence: the "rustic pieces," while condemned for anomaly and whim, cannot but be viewed with curiosity and liking for their character and natural truth. Of Flemish stone-ware also there are some pleasant ex- amples. Its quaintness is exhibited in the eccentric cruches, one of which presents the not very alluring form of a cauliflower crawled over by an enormous snail; its homely serviceableness in sturdy bottles and jugs, more rational than other highly-wrought ware lavish in form and colour, and so, after all, nearer to the truth of art.
The bronzes, although one of the leading features of the collection, do not number many works which we should be inclined to single out for intrinsic excellence or beauty. There is a grotesque dragon with a semi- elephantine second head growing out of his back, and seeming to be pugnaciously disposed against the legitimate dragon-head ; and, in other metal work, there are several elaborate and some beautiful mediaeval locks and keys, with knives and forks, and other utensils and knicknacks. The medals, though not a large, form a most admirable and interesting series. Estes, Malatestas, and Valentinois, popes and cardinals, dukes, counts, ladies, and poets,—grim, lordly, martial, sleek, and beautiful,— exquisite in individuality and in art. The massive furniture comprises a large number of folding and cross- ing chairs, generally of some beauty or originality of design and work- manship—sometimes exceedingly chaste and sumptuous. The later einque-cento chairs, however, with interstices of dark wood amid a mass of gilding, and loaded with frightful grotesque ornament, are veritable eyesores ; worth money, no doubt, in market-value, but in all essential respects warnings and not examples. Ponderous chests, which must make a porter's back ache merely for looking at them, suggest sarcophagi rather than the use to which they appear to have been destined,—that of containing the bride's marriage-trousseau,—and remind one of the grim story of poor Ginevra, and our doleful ballad of the Old Oak Chest. In the centre of the first room stands a vast fireplace with carved chimney- piece, the work, it is supposed, of Pietro Lombardo. In the hunting groups with which the chisel has crowded it, many a pretty girl's face, many a curious action of strained vigour, many a strange and gorgeous costume, catch the eye; hares, boars, lions, leopards, horses, and doge, run, stand at bay, leap, champ, and course, in mingling hurry. Here and there, too, some nondescript puzzles the brain, while you linger willingly over so much skill and profusion, not caring to be offended at a good deal which, in moments of stricter analysis, could but be pronounced vicious style.
Pacing the rooms, you see now a quattrocento wood casket, with ivory carvings of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, quaint and graceful, and simple through all their multiplicity of groups topped by city-towers and hill-trees ; now a case of Venetian glass, or a weighty chandelier of the same interspersed with coloured flowers ; a marble group of the Holy Family, in a good style of art ; enamels—Apollo, the Muses, and Pegasus, Judith and Holofernes, Delilah and Samson, Adam and Eve, with purplish scolloped flesh, eating the forbidden fruit; the history of the Prodigal Son in alabaster, with the fatted calf close on accomplishing his " mission," and a whole stye of porkers ; an ivory of the Flagellation and Crucifixion, and Judas hanging himself ; combs with knights and ladies in compartments between trees ' • and now a large tapestry of rural joys and tasks, or one with the grotesquest of primitive Annunciations. The pictures are of varying merit. The old Basle school shows a lady in a gilded dress, her hands wholly ensconced in cuffs rounding out like dice-boxes; Heinrich Schwaln has rescued his name from oblivion in a lengthy legend upon the portrait of an elderly man of staid German pre- sence; and from Crivelli's hand comes a picture in two compartments of half-1;ngth saints,—one a St. Catharine painfully skinny and distorted, but still with a beauty and expression which would render the work an acquisition for the National Gallery. Last is a John Bellini, which any gallery should be proud to possess—a head of St. Dominic, admirable in earnest suavity of expression, tender in subdued colour, and with a pe- culiar beauty in the background of green curtain broad-patterned with daisy and other floral devices. The work has been subject to some repainting, and it originally bore a date, 1515, (now erased,) which was deemed a spurious addition : but the imitative strip of paper inscribed with the painter's name is there and there seems no reason to question that it is a genuine work of his latest period, "his eye not dim nor his natural force abated" ; and, even if it were not, we have only to say that it deserves to be
With this rapid glance through a collection each department of which merits careful study, we come to the question whether it is worthy of purchase by Government. We incline to judge that it is. Beyond all question, it is a most rare and precious collection : assuredly Govern- ment is right in devoting funds not grudgingly to the promotion of art, and, having founded the Museum of Ornamental Art, has here an op- portunity of augmenting it, such as may not recur for years : and we make not the slightest question that, in market value, the collection is amply worth the price at which it is offered. If Government were al- lowed the pick of the collection, or could be safe of obtaining at public sale the lots whose acquisition is most desirable, we should advocate this course of action; but we presume the first alternative is not be- fore them, and the second is wholly uncertain. There is a proportion of the collection, not inconsiderable, which we have no ambition to see national property at all, still less purchased with national money—we see no occasion for so much majolica, nor for any of the furniture of a certain class. But another large portion of the collection we should very much like to find added to the Museum ; and it is certainly safer policy, and in all likelihood truer economy, to buy the collection en masse than to take the chance with eager bidders in competing for particular lots. Once in the hands of Government, anything which is not wanted can be redisposed of; a plan which, on the scale which we should deem advisable, could not fail of reimbursing a fair share of the expense.
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