[55] Query, a misprint? as six pictures are mentioned.
[56] “The Art of a nation is, I think, one of the most important points of its history, and a part which, if once destroyed, no history will ever supply the place of; and the first idea of a National Gallery is that it should be a Library of Art, in which the rudest efforts are, in some cases, hardly less important than the noblest.”—National Gallery Commission, 1857: Mr. Ruskin’s evidence.
[57] It was at this time proposed to remove the national pictures from Trafalgar Square to some new building to be erected for them elsewhere. This proposal was, however, negatived by the commission ultimately appointed (1857) to consider the matter, and to some extent rendered unnecessary by the enlargement of the gallery, decided upon in 1866.
[58] The galleries of the Louvre were reorganized on their being declared national instead of crown property, after the Revolution of 1848; and the choicest pictures were then collected together in the “grand salon carré,” which, although since rearranged, still contains a similar selection. The “best Tintoret on this side of the Alps” is the “Susannah and the Elders,” now No. 349 in that room.
[59] The gift of Mr. Robert Vernon, in 1847, consisted of 157 pictures, all of them, with two exceptions only, of the British school. The Turner bequest included 105 finished oil paintings, in addition to the numerous sketches and drawings.
[60] An example of a cognate school might, however, be occasionally introduced for the sake of direct comparison, as in one instance would be necessitated by the condition above mentioned attached to part of the Turner bequest.
[61] At the meeting of the Society, in the Hall, Adelphi, Lord Henry Lennox read a paper on “The Uses of National Museums to Local Institutions,” in which he spoke of Mr. Ruskin’s suggestions “adopted and recommended to Parliament in annual reports, and in obedience to distinct Commissions,” as having been unwarrantably disregarded since 1858. See Mr. Ruskin’s official report on the Turner Bequest, printed in the “Report of the Director of the National Gallery to the Lords of the Treasury, 1858,” Appendix vii.
[62] Professor Nevil Story-Maskelyne (now M.P. for Cricklade) was then, and till his recent resignation, Keeper of Mineralogy at the Museum.
[63] In Mr. Ruskin’s official report already mentioned, and which was made at the close of his labors in arranging the Turner drawings, and dated March 27, 1858, he divided the collection into three classes, of which the third consisted of drawings available for distribution among provincial Schools of Art. The passage of the report referred to is as follows: “The remainder of the collection consists of drawings of miscellaneous character, from which many might be spared with little loss to the collection in London, and great advantage to students in the provinces. Five or six collections, each completely illustrative of Turner’s modes of study, and successions of practice, might easily be prepared for the academies of Edinburgh, Dublin, and the principal English manufacturing towns.”—See also the similar recommendation with regard to the “Outlines of John Leech,” in the letter on that subject.
[64] Titian’s “Bacchus and Ariadne”—already mentioned, p. 40. Henry VI.’s Psalter is in the British Museum (“Domitian A. 17,” in the Cottonian Catalogue). It is of early fifteenth century work, and was executed in England by a French artist for the then youthful king, from whom it takes its name.