THE PICTURES AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
The pictures which now constitute the private gallery of her Majesty at Buckingham Palace, were principally collected by George the Fourth, whose exclusive predilection for pictures of the Dutch and Flemish schools is well known. To those which he brought together here, and which formerly hung in Carlton House, her present Majesty has made, since her accession, many valuable additions—some purchased, and others selected from the royal collections at Windsor and Hampton Court; others have been added by Prince Albert, from the collection of the late Professor d’Alton, of Bonn. * * * George IV. began to form his collection about the year 1802, and was chiefly guided by the advice and judgment of Sir Charles Long, afterwards Lord Farnborough, an accomplished man, whose taste for art, and intimacy with the king, then Prince of Wales, rendered him a very fit person to carry the royal wishes into execution. The importation of the Orleans gallery had diffused a feeling—or, it may be, a fashion—for the higher specimens of the Italian schools, but under the auspices of George IV. the tide set in an opposite direction. In the year 1812, the very select gallery of Flemish and Dutch pictures collected by Sir Francis Baring was transferred by purchase to the Prince Regent. Sir Francis Baring had purchased the best pictures from the collections of M. Geldermeester of Amsterdam, (sold in 1800,) and that of the Countess of Holderness, (sold in 1802,) and, except the Hope Gallery, there was nothing at that time to compare with it in England. Mr. Seguier valued this collection at eighty thousand pounds; but the exact sum paid for it was certainly much less.
The specimens of Rubens and Van Dyck are excellent, but do not present sufficient variety to afford an adequate idea of the wide range or power of the first of these great painters, nor of the particular talent of the last. On the other hand, the works and style of Gerard Douw, Teniers, Jan Steen, Adrian and Wilhelm Vandevelde, Wouvermans, and Burghem, may be very advantageously studied in this gallery, each of their specimens being many in number, various in subject, and good in their kind. Of Mieris and Metzes, there are finer specimens at Mr. Hope’s and Sir Robert Peel’s; and the Hobbimas and Cuyps must yield to those of Lord Ashburton and Lord Francis Egerton. But, on the whole, it is certainly the finest gallery of this class of works in England. The collection derives additional interest from the presence of some pictures of the modern British artists—Reynolds, Wilkie, Allan, Newton, Gainsborough. It is, however, only just to these painters to add, that not one of their pictures here ought to be considered as a first-rate example of their power.—Mrs. Jameson.