WORD should now be said about the pictures, which have been brought from various Royal residences to furnish these State Apartments, and to illustrate the history of this Palace. The bulk of them have come from Hampton Court, and a large number are pieces which were removed when the State Rooms were dismantled by George IV. and William IV., from the very walls where they now once again hang. Their return here from Hampton Court, in the overcrowded galleries of which it has been impossible ever properly to display them, has been a most auspicious thing for that Palace, and has rendered feasible many long-desired rearrangements and improvements.
In selecting the pictures which seemed most suitable for hanging at Kensington, the principle has been followed of restricting them almost entirely to portraits and historical compositions belonging to the epoch with which the Palace is connected—the reigns of William and Mary, Queen Anne, and the Georges, and, finally, of course that of Queen Victoria.
In the carrying out of this plan an endeavour has been made to group the pictures together in the various apartments as far as possible according to the periods to which they belong—making separate collections, at the same time, of the curious topographical subjects relating to “Old London,” in the Queen’s Closet; of the interesting series of Georgian sea-pieces, sea-fights, and dockyards, in the King’s Gallery—where for the first time they may now at last be really seen and examined—and the ceremonial and other pictures, relating to the Queen’s reign, in the “Presence Chamber” and the actual rooms originally occupied by Her Majesty in her youth.
Having given these general indications as to the arrangements, it will not be necessary to do more than refer to our subsequent pages for the details of the scheme. Nor need we dwell on what will at once be only too obvious to the connoisseur, that anyone who expects to behold in this Palace a fine collection of choice works of art will certainly be disappointed. Kneller and Zeeman, Paton and Pocock, Huggins and Serres, West and Beechey, are not exactly names to conjure with—nor even, indeed, Scott, Monamy, Drouais, or Hoppner, in their somewhat second-rate productions here. Moreover, it is to be clearly understood, that it is not as an Art Gallery that these rooms are opened to the inspection of the public, but as a Royal Palace, with pictures hung in it illustrative of its history and associations, and as furniture to its walls.
Nevertheless, it is not high art only, nor great imaginative works, which can interest and instruct; and, historically, these bewigged, ponderous, puffy personages of the unromantic eighteenth century, whose portraits decorate these walls, are more in accord with their setting, than would be the finer, simpler, and nobler creations of the great epochs of art.
N the other hand, the Victorian pictures, and the apartments in which they are arranged, stand apart on a different footing of their own. It is to the three small, plain and simple rooms, with their contents, in the south-eastern corner of the building, that all visitors to the Palace will turn with the liveliest interest, and with the keenest, the most thrilling emotion. Romance, and all the thoughts and feelings of tender, natural affection, which appear to have been smothered in the preceding century and a half of powder and gold-lace, seem to awaken and revive once more with the child born in this Palace eighty years ago, in the little girl playing about in these rooms and in these gardens, in the youthful Queen, who stepped forth from her simple chamber here to take possession of the greatest throne in the world!
It is as the scene of such memorable events that Kensington Palace possesses, and will hereafter ever possess, abiding interests and engrossing charms altogether its own; and that it will ever inspire, among those who come to visit it, thoughts and memories moving and deep. And not to us only in these islands; not to us only of this age; but to thousands and thousands likewise across the seas; to countless millions yet unborn, will this ancient structure become, now and in the ages yet to be, a revered place of loving pilgrimage as the birthplace and early home of Queen Victoria.