National Gallery, published in 1883, on one of Rembrandt's pictures in the Louvre:—
"The Bath, a very ugly and offensive picture, in which the principal object is the ill-proportioned figure of a naked woman, distinguished by flesh tones whose colour suggests the need of a bath rather than the fact that it has been taken. The position of the old servant wiping the woman's feet is not very intelligible, and the drawing of the bather's legs is distinctly defective. The light and shade of the picture, though obviously untrue to natural effect, are managed with the painter's usual dexterity."
V
THE ROYAL ACADEMY
The last revolt of the nineteenth century was effected in a peaceable and business-like, but none the less successful manner, by the establishment, in 1886, of the New English Art Club as a means of defence against the mighty vis inertiæ of the Royal Academy. As an example of the disadvantage under which any artist laboured who did not bow down to the great Idol, I venture to quote a few sentences from the report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the administration of the Chantrey Trust, in 1904:——
"With five exceptions, all the works in the collection have been bought from summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy."
"It is admitted by those most friendly to the present system that the Chantrey collection regarded as a national gallery of modern British art is incomplete, and in a large degree unrepresentative. The works of many of the most brilliant and capable artists who worked in the last quarter of the nineteenth century are missing from the gallery, and the endeavour to account for these omissions has formed one main branch of the inquiry."