Part 22 (1/2)

”At South Kensington” (he says), ”where I lost myself in a Cretan labyrinth of military ironmongery, advertis.e.m.e.nts of spring blinds, model fish-farming, and plaster bathing nymphs with a year's s.m.u.t on the noses of them; and had to put myself in charge of a policeman to get out again.”

Indeed, in its vast size, its involved construction, and its encyclopaedic scope, the South Kensington Museum much resembles a maze, and, once inside it, it is difficult indeed to know the points of the compa.s.s. Yet, everything can be seen here, if only you know where to look for it. It is, itself, a ”General Exhibition” on no mean scale. And here is more than ever exemplified the great truth, that the most beautiful objects lose in effect in proportion to the unsuitableness of their immediate surroundings. Even the model of the Pisan pulpit, crowded as it is among so many incongruous objects, seems here a sort of glorified stove-pipe, while the carved front of Sir Paul Pindar's old house almost suggests a magnified dolls'-house awaiting sale, and plaster casts jostle on all sides with the valuable treasures of antiquity. Here again are the groups of feminine students with their guides, and also many isolated toilers, ”working up” some special branch of knowledge in the different sections, such as Ivories, Porcelain, Lace, Musical Instruments, or Italian woodwork.

(The students are here, I may add, a trifle better dressed than those at the British Museum; they are also, on an average, a thought cleaner, and their hair has, perhaps, a tendency to be neater.) The ”omnium-gatherum,” as it has been called, of South Kensington, should, like any other Exhibition, be taken piecemeal, and on the first visit the stranger should merely try, if possible, to see the historic Raphael cartoons, and those most interesting pictures of the British School that form the famous ”Sheepshanks” collection.

The neighbouring Natural History Museum, Waterhouse's vast edifice of terra-cotta, is, internally, a most beautifully planned building, and the arrangement of its various cla.s.ses of specimens is no less excellent. Nothing could be better done, either for purposes of entertainment or of instruction, than the groups in the Great Hall of the building, where animals, birds, and insects, are shown charmingly mounted and in their own natural surroundings; and where, by careful and well-selected ill.u.s.tration, such strange living mysteries as ”melanism” and ”albinism” are demonstrated and explained. One of the most striking gla.s.s cases of all is that which ill.u.s.trates ”Protective Resemblances and Mimicry,” a subject which is attracting much notice at the present day among naturalists (see the late Professor Henry Drummond's _Tropical Africa_ for further curious information on this interesting subject). Some of the strange natural imitations shown here, such as of dead leaves by b.u.t.terflies, or of bits of straw by insects, are wonderful indeed.

The new Tate Gallery, raised by the munificence of one of our merchant princes for the enshrinement of modern British Art, is a building of quite another kind. This edifice, in the Greek style, was built by the late Sir Henry Tate, on the site of old Millbank Prison, at Westminster. When this Gallery was first opened, in July, 1897, its approaches were always thronged by private carriages, and powdered footmen waited in the muddy, half-finished roads (for the whole locality was then in a state of incompleteness). But this was in the early days of its fame; the vagaries of fas.h.i.+on are of short duration, and although even yet ”smart” people are to be met with occasionally in the Tate Gallery, they are now in a decided minority; they have, most likely, betaken themselves to the still newer exhibition of Hertford House.

It is the artisan, the small shopkeeper, the great ”lower middle-cla.s.s,” that frequent chiefly the Tate Gallery. Not by any means the same cla.s.s, for instance, that you see at the National Gallery; the visitors to the Tate Gallery are mainly the lovers of ”the human interest” in a picture, and not the earnest students. Here the sightseers roam, like b.u.t.terflies, from flower to flower; not so much to gather the honey, as just to enjoy the moment. Therefore, at Millbank, they are but rarely gowned in angular ”art serge,” and are but seldom be-spectacled and be-catalogued. Neither are the Hypatia-like girl-lecturers at all evident. Sir Henry Tate used to take an evident pleasure in walking about the galleries that his munificence had provided. Only a short time before his death, he was to be seen there, benevolent and urbane as ever, the type of what Mr.

Ruskin has called ”the entirely honest merchant.”

The Tate Gallery is considered, administratively, as part of the National Gallery; and many pictures of the modern British school have, as every one knows, been removed to Millbank from the older collection. But the earlier pictures of the British School, and the Turners, are still in Trafalgar Square.

The wealth of foreign pictures now to be seen in the National Gallery of London renders it the Mecca of every visitor, both from our own country, and from overseas. The National Gallery, fine as it is, is but a comparatively modern growth. Founded in 1824 by the purchase of the Angerstein Collection, it slowly, very slowly at first, crept into fame and distinction. Only some forty-five years ago, Mr. Ruskin said of it that it was ”an European jest!” Since 1887 its pictures have nearly doubled in number and it is now, if not one of the finest, at least one of the most representative, collections in the world. The internal arrangement of the Gallery leaves little to be desired, and its s.p.a.cious entrance hall and staircase, adorned with coloured marbles, has a solid dignity, with a cheerfulness and brightness usually somewhat lacking in London. A fine bust of Egyptian porphyry, called the ”Dying Alexander,” (a copy of one in the Uffizi), presented by Mr. Henry Yates Thompson, forms an effective centre-piece for the Entrance Vestibule.

Once inside the magic portals of the National Gallery, a very paradise is opened to the art-loving visitor. He will soon forget, revelling in those soft Italian skies, that glowing southern colour, that outside his shelter hums the London of the twentieth century. The pictures are finely arranged, and they are not crowded. A hint has been taken from the Louvre, and the famous ”Blenheim Raphael,” the _Ansidei Madonna_ (bought by the nation for such a tremendous price from the Duke of Marlborough), greets the entering visitor from the far end of a long vista. The walls on which the pictures are hung are covered in Pompeian red or sober green, with a wall-covering that has the soothing effect of rich Venetian brocade, and that even improves in tone with years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Recruiting Serjeants by the National Gallery._]

The National Gallery cannot be seen in one visit. For any real appreciation of the vast collections, ten, twenty visits rather are needed; visits that need never, now, be other than a pleasure; the improved conditions making the place itself attractive, and whatever light is obtainable in London finding its way to those large and lofty galleries. The ma.s.s of ”the People” mainly frequent the British Schools; and, even in the larger portion of the building occupied by the Foreign Schools, every room has usually, like the London collections generally, its special votaries. For instance, in the little room devoted to the Early Sienese painters, you will nearly always find a few earnest students, making pencil marks on note-books or in elaborate catalogues; in the long Italian Gallery they are, perhaps, just a trifle less severe, but are still more or less of the same type, sitting in rapt contemplation and still with catalogues; but the Dutch School is already more flippant, and but few catalogues survive into the Spanish and French Schools.

The romance of the National Gallery,--what volumes might not be written on the fascinating subject! If, here again, old pictures could tell stories of their past, what adventures could they not relate! The long corridors of the National Gallery, filled with masterpieces from all nations and ages, would of themselves furnish as copious records as many a shelf in the British Museum Library. What stories might these pictures tell: of their painting, their owners, the generations to which they have served as the Lares and Penates, the families whose vicissitudes they have shared! This, maybe, had hung for years, blackened and tarnished, in a p.a.w.nbroker's shop till some vigilant eye rescued it from its oblivion; that, perhaps, had saved its owner's life, or redeemed the fortunes of a nation. This, again, formed the ”wedding-chest” of a beautiful dark-eyed bride, dust long ago; that caused the imprisonment, almost the death, of its author. Unhappily, old pictures are ”silent witnesses” of history. We can, indeed, discover, through much searching in dusty archives, the _provenance_ of a few of our most celebrated pictures, or read, perhaps, one or two of the stories relating to them; but how many are there of which we have not been able to find a record? It depends mainly on chance what stories survive, and what do not. Then, such as are known are often not widely known; they lie hidden, for the most part, in musty blue-books, or in tomes of ancient lore, attainable by the student only. The mere t.i.tle, _The Cornfield_ or _The Repose_, tells so little. Does it not add to our interest in the pictures to know that the one was thought by Constable to be his best work, and that the scene of the other was laid among the hills of t.i.tian's own country?

In connection with the inscriptions on the frames, most visitors, I fancy, will share the disappointment I felt, when on revisiting the Gallery one day I found the familiar ”Raphael” disguised as ”Sanzio,”

”Tintoret,” as ”Robusti” and so forth; but this somewhat pedantic innovation has now been partially remedied.

The early Italian pictures were usually painted to adorn particular places; some, perhaps, to decorate a wooden chest for the furnis.h.i.+ng of a room, as Benozzo Gozzoli's _Rape of Helen_; others to consecrate an altar, as Raphael's _Madonna_; many to a.s.sist in the carrying out of some architectural design, as in Crivelli's pictures, or Fra Filippo Lippi's _Vision of St. Bernard_. All, at any rate, were painted, not to hang in rows in a gallery, but for particular persons, places, and occasions, far removed from the present environment of them. Perhaps our only pictures specially painted with a view to the Gallery which they now adorn, are those in which Turner's rivalry with Claude is immortalised. Visitors may wonder why, in a room devoted to the French School of Painting, they are suddenly confronted with two large canvases of Turner's. The fact is that Turner painted them in direct compet.i.tion with Claude. The great modern landscape-painter determined to beat the ancient on his own cla.s.sical ground. Whether he has conquered is indeed a question; but the pictures still hang side by side in unconscious rivalry, telling the pathetic story of the dead man's ambition. Turner, who left these two pictures, among many others, to the nation, expressly stipulated that they should hang between those two by Claude. In vain, during his life, large sums were offered for them; he steadily refused to sell. ”What in the world, Turner, are you going to do with it?” his friend Chantrey asked, referring to the _Carthage_. ”Be buried in it,” Turner replied grimly, keeping its real destination a secret.

There are in the National Gallery some pictures actually painted for the sitters to be buried in. These are the early Graeco-Egyptian portraits, which glare down upon us in the vestibule. A few years ago a workman's spade, digging in the Fayoum, accidentally struck against a mummy-case. Affixed to the outside covering, in a position corresponding to the head of the corpse, was a portrait of a man in his habit as he lived. That ”find” led to others. Some dozen tombs, closed 1,500 years ago, were rifled in order to supply a fresh link in the historical development of art as exhibited in our National Gallery.

Just above these old-world pagans hangs Spinello Aretino's _Fall of the Rebel Angels_, with devils and dragons galore. If you gaze at the mummy faces long enough, you can quite imagine the dead men's faces looking at you; as Spinello, who was an imaginative Florentine, used to think his devils did. Spinello's picture was painted to decorate the church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, in his native town of Arezzo; and he laboured hard to make the chief fiend, Lucifer, as hideous as possible. So much did this idea prey upon him, that one night he had a terrible dream. The demon he had painted appeared to him in his sleep, demanding to know why the painter had made him so ugly. Spinello, it is said, did not survive the shock, which is a warning to those who take liberties with the devil. The Greek painter, who, when confronted with an unpleasing sitter, said frankly, ”Paint you? Who would paint you, when no one would even look at you?” was wiser.

Seeing the pictures in the National Gallery is like reading bits of old biographies. All true artists put their life into their work, and leave it there. Take Marco Marziale's work--_The Circ.u.mcision of Christ_ (No. 803)--it is wonderful in respect of the faithful labour put into things that the modern painter would generalise as mere accessories. An amateur embroideress could easily copy the elaborate cross-st.i.tch of Marziale's lectern border, and find no st.i.tch in its wrong place. He who did this was only a second-rate Venetian painter, and a label painted on the canvas fixes the date and makes it probable that this was his first important commission; therefore, Marco spared no trouble, and crowded his picture with all the most beautiful textures and patterns known to the Venice of his day. People did not scamp work in those times.

The painter-poet, William Blake, with his charming insanity, has left us glimpses of his strangely warped mind in his mysterious painting of _Pitt Guiding Behemoth_, which hangs on the walls in another part of the gallery. The more one looks at this little picture, the more its green and gold hues and the tongues of its flames have fascination. It is dark and unattractive at a first glance: but, to show how fatally easy it is to attract a ”following,” and also how much in need the average visitor is of a pilot to the Gallery, one only has to draw up a chair and seat one's self before this small canvas to collect an inquisitive crowd. People, even educated people, are strangely imitative! Besides this picture, there are only one or two minor works by Blake in our National Gallery. Instead of his _Canterbury Pilgrims_, we have here that of his contemporary Stothard, who took the idea from Blake and supplanted him. Stothard's _Canterbury Pilgrims_ caused a quarrel between himself and Blake; a quarrel which was never healed; and Blake criticised his rival's painting freely on its exhibition. Hoppner, the artist, praised it; adding that Stothard had ”contrived to give a value to a common scene, and very ordinary forms.” Thereupon Blake, in criticising the critic, said that this was Hoppner's only just observation; ”for it is so, and very wretchedly so indeed. The scene of Mr. S.'s picture,” he adds, ”is by Dulwich hills, which is not the way to Canterbury; but perhaps the painter thought he would give them a ride round about, because they were a burlesque set of scarecrows, not worth any man's respect or care.” _Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?_

Among the works of the Lombard School is a picture by Parmigiano, _The Vision of St. Jerome_ (No. 33), which shows how the artist can forget himself in his work. For Parmigiano was engaged on this very picture, in Rome, during the German sack of the city in 1527. Vasari says that the painter was so intent on his work that, even while his own dwelling was filled with the German invaders, he continued undisturbed; and that when they arrived in his room and found him so employed they stood amazed at the beautiful paintings, and wisely permitted him to continue. Parmigiano's picture is thus, in the truest sense, historical.

There is another cla.s.s of pictures that is a.s.sociated with incidents in history. First, we have that priceless little painting by Gerard Terburg, _The Peace of Munster_ (896), mentioned before in connection with Hertford House. It hangs in the Dutch Room, and is so small that one might easily overlook it. Small as it is, it cost at its last sale 8,800; 24 for every square inch of canvas. The Dutch painter has represented one of the turning-points of his country's history; the ratification, in 1684, of the Treaty of Munster, by which the long war between Spain and the United Provinces was ended. The numerous heads are all portraits, and, in the background, the painter has introduced himself. There is about this painting a photographic truth, a minute fidelity, which makes it doubly interesting. Terburg would not part with it during his life. Afterwards, amid many vicissitudes, it pa.s.sed into the possession of Prince Talleyrand, and was actually hanging in the room of his hotel, under the view of the Allied Sovereigns, at the signing of the Treaty of 1814. Not less interesting in its way is the painting by Holbein of the d.u.c.h.ess Christina of Denmark. Among Holbein's duties, as Court painter and favourite of Henry VIII., was that of taking the portraits of the ladies whom the King proposed to wed. This young Christina was prime favourite after the death of Jane Seymour, and Holbein was despatched to Brussels to paint her. The picture pleased his Majesty; but, for political reasons, the match was broken off. The story of Christina's message to the King, that she had but one head, but that if she ”had two one should be at the service of his Majesty,” is now discredited; but the d.u.c.h.ess seems to have had a character of her own.

_Peace and War_, by Rubens, an allegorical canvas (46), is another picture designed to sway the fate of nations. Rubens painted it when he came over to England, in 1630, as amba.s.sador to negotiate a peace with Spain. He produced an elaborate allegory showing forth the Blessings of Peace, and presented it, with much diplomacy, to Charles I. It was sold, after the King's death, for 100; to be bought back again for 3,000. With regard to Charles I.'s pictures generally, much might be said of the strange irony of history. The large equestrian picture of the King by Vandyck (1172), bought for the nation at the Blenheim sale for 17,000, was, after his death, sold by Parliament, for a paltry sum; and Correggio's famous _Mercury, Venus, and Cupid_, (10), also included in Charles's collection, was sold and bought again by successive Parliaments.

Among the early Florentine pictures in the Gallery, Botticelli's _Nativity of Christ_ (1034), is history in the sense of showing the force of the religious revival in Savonarola's time. Botticelli, at the age of forty, fell under the preacher's influence, and, forsaking the world's pleasures, made a ”mourner” of himself until his death.

This is the picture that, as Mr. Lang says, was:

”Wrought in the troublous times of Italy By Sandro Botticelli, when for fear Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near, To end all labour and all revelry, He wept and prayed in silence.”

The painting is full of theological symbolism, and its Greek inscription, being translated, runs: ”This, I, Alexander, painted at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the time during the fulfilment of the eleventh of St. John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the Devil for three years and a half. Afterwards he shall be chained, and we shall see him trodden down, as in this picture.” Botticelli had already, earlier in life, got into religious trouble by his reforming tendencies. When quite a young man, he had painted, for a Florentine citizen, Matteo Palmieri, a large picture called _The a.s.sumption of the Virgin_, which also hangs in our Gallery (No. 1126). Palmieri had adopted Origen's strange heresy that the human race was an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer, were neither for G.o.d nor for his enemies; and, as he and Botticelli, in working out the design of the picture, had made amendments in theology, they fell into disgrace. Suspected of heresy, Botticelli's work was covered up; and the chapel for which it had been painted was closed until the picture left Florence for the Duke of Hamilton's collection and was bought by the nation in 1882. ”The story of the heresy interprets,” Mr. Pater says, ”much of the peculiar sentiment with which Botticelli infuses his profane and sacred persons, neither all human nor all divine.”

Most interesting, too, is Carpaccio's Venetian painting of the Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (750), which faithfully represents a page of the history of Venice. The doge is shown kneeling before the Virgin, and begging her protection, on the occasion of the plague in 1478.