This picture was presented to Lord Cowley by the Court of Spain; and from him came into the hands of Mr Farrer, a dealer in pictures. By him it was sent to Holland, having been refused by our Gallery, and offered to the king, who rejected it. On its return from Holland, Mr Farrer left it in its case, in his front shop, with the direction on it to his Majesty the King of Holland—no direction to Mr Farrer appearing. Mr B. Wall, one of the Commissioners, sees the case, and asks what it contains; is told the Velasquez: has the “impression,” but is not quite certain, that Mr Farrer told him it was going to the King of Holland. Mr B. Wall upon this goes to Sir Robert Peel, and both fear the picture may be lost; and, with the sanction and at the desire of Sir R. Peel, it was purchased for the Gallery. Now, Mr B. Wall was not the only person who saw the case in Mr Farrer’s shop. Mr Morris Moore was one, and, as he says, there were many others. He names two—Mr Coningham and Mr Chambers Hall—to all of whom Mr Farrer, according to the evidence of Mr Morris Moore, told the same tale—namely, “that the Trustees were but just in time to save it from exportation to the King of Holland.” This Mr Farrer stoutly denies, and Mr Morris Moore offers to take his oath to the fact. In the denial, Mr Farrer states, that he may have said he was going to send it abroad, for that he intended to offer it in Paris; but, after a while, speaks rather uncertainly, not knowing exactly where abroad he should have sent it; but it is possible he may have intended again to send it to Holland, under a kind of conviction that the King of Holland would, after all, have it. Then he asserts that the visit from, and conversation with, Mr Morris Moore upon the subject were before, not after, the picture had gone to Holland. Mr Moore, on the other hand, is positive it was after it had returned, because it was then secured for the National Gallery, and Mr Farrer admits it was not so secured till after its return from Holland. This is, as far as we can make it, a plain statement, in abstract, from the evidence. The Commissioners leave these “discrepancies” where they found them; so do we. It is a common saying that truth lies somewhere between two contradictory statements. Wherever it may appear to lie, there appears but little space, on any intermediate ground, upon which it could, by any possibility, stand upright. This little history has seen the picture lodged in the Gallery. We must beg the reader to imagine it not as yet to have been located, that he may learn a little of its antecedents. Lord Cowley had placed the picture in the hands of Mr Thane to keep, where it remained some years. But Mr Lance shall tell the tale. “After a considerable time, Mr Thane, as I heard afterwards, had been commissioned to clean the picture, and reline it. A colourman was employed to reline the picture, a most skilful man, and, in relining it, I understand, he blistered it with hot irons.... When the picture was returned to Mr Thane in this condition, it naturally distressed him very much; he was a very conscientious man, and he became very deeply distressed about it: he saw the picture passing over his bed in procession. After a certain time, he thought it got worse, and that the figure of it was more attenuated; and at length he fancied he saw a skeleton. In fact, the poor man’s mind was very much injured. It was then proposed that he should employ some painter to restore the picture; and three persons were selected for that purpose. Sir David Wilkie, Sir Edwin Landseer, and myself, were mentioned; but it was supposed that neither Sir David Wilkie nor Sir Edwin Landseer would give their time to it, and that probably I might; and, therefore, the picture was placed with me, with a representation that, if I did not do something to it, serious consequences would follow to the cleaner. I undertook it, though I was very much employed at the time; and, to be as short as possible, I painted on this picture. I generally paint very rapidly, and I painted on that occasion as industriously as I could, and was engaged for six weeks upon it. When it was completed, Lord Cowley saw it, never having been aware of the misfortune that had happened to the picture. It was then in Mr Thane’s possession, and remained with him some time afterwards. From that time I saw no more of the picture until it was exhibited in the British Gallery some time afterwards, where it was a very popular picture, and was very much thought of. Since then, I have heard it was sold to the nation; and twice I have seen it in the National Gallery. I saw it only about a week ago, and I then thought it was not in the same condition (indeed, I am certain it is not) as when it was exhibited in the British Gallery formerly, after I had done it.” This is sufficient evidence that the picture has been damaged in cleaning. Let us pursue the story through question and answer.
“Q. 5124. What was the state of the picture when it came into your hands? There were portions of the picture entirely gone.—Q. 5125. What portions? Whole groups of figures, and there was a portion of the foreground entirely gone also.—Q. 5126. Do you mean that celebrated group which is so often copied—the man in a red coat? That is original. I think that any man, with any knowledge of art, will see at once that that is original; and I am only surprised that it has not been seen that other parts are original also.—Q. 5127. Which portions of these groups did you chiefly restore? You are very near the mark when you speak of the red coat; it is the group on the right hand; the outlines were entirely gone.—Q. 5128. Do you mean to say, that the whole of the paint was removed from that part of the picture? Entirely.—Q. 5129. Was the canvass laid bare? Entirely.—Q. 5130. What guide had you in repainting those groups? Not any.—Q. 5131. Did you paint groups that you yourself imagined and designed? Yes.—Q. 5132. Did Lord Cowley not distinguish any difference in the groups? Not any.—Q. 5133. What was the extent of paint wanting on that group which you say you repainted on the right—was it a portion as large as a sheet of note-paper? Larger, considerably; the figures themselves are larger than that.—Q. 5134. Was it as large as a sheet of foolscap? About that size, I should imagine.—Q. 5135. There was a piece of the original paint wanting as large as that? Yes, in the foreground.—Q. 5136. It was totally wanting, and the canvass to that extent laid bare—is that so? Yes.—Q. 5137. And on that bare canvass you painted the groups of figures we see now? Exactly.—Q. 5138. Will you have the goodness to describe to the committee any other portions of the picture where the paint was in a similar or in an analogous state? The whole of the centre of the picture was destroyed, with slight indications here and there of men; there were some men without horses, and some horses without men.—Q. 5139. That is in the arena? Yes.—Q. 5140. You are speaking of the figures on horseback? Yes: some riders had no horses, and some horses had no riders.”
We must curtail the evidence for want of space. It appears that his brush, taking the number of square feet, went over a great deal more than half. He is sorry to say it is now gone back to “Velasquez mutilated.” But are there not infallible judges to discover all this repainting? “I may mention that, many years ago, when the picture was at the British Gallery, I was invited by a member of the Academy to go and look at it; and I went there; Mr Seguier and Mr Barnard (who was also a picture-cleaner) were present. They said, ‘I know what you have come for; you have come to see the magnificent Velasquez.’ I said, ‘Well, I have;’ and, with the greatest simplicity in the world, I said it gave me a notion that some part had been much repaired and painted upon: upon which Mr Barnard, the keeper of the British Institution, said immediately, ‘No, you are wrong there; we never had a picture so free from repair in our lives.’ I did not think it at all desirable to make any statement,” &c. He hopes there is no engraving of the picture, for the group in the foreground, entirely his, would be detected immediately.
So much for Mr Lance’s doings with this celebrated Boar-hunt, which, whatever part of it may be by Mr Lance, we are very glad to see in our National Gallery, and should have been more glad if they had abstained from cleaning it. But Mr Lance has further amusement for us. That account is the serious play in which he was principal actor. We shall see him again in the entertainment. It has a very excellent title—“Diogenes in search of an Honest Man.” The part of Diogenes, Mr Lance; the point being, the vain search for a time, but discovered at last—in whom? In a negro. This was Mr Diogenes Lance’s satirical discovery. There are countries where the scene must not be exhibited. He shall tell the story. “Q. 5230. Have you ever restored any other picture in the ordinary course of your professional practice? During the time I was engaged upon that picture at Mr Thane’s, he had a picture belonging to the Archbishop of York, to which rather an amusing thing occurred.—Q. 5231. What was the subject of it? It was a picture of Diogenes in search of an Honest Man, by Rembrandt; a portion of it was much injured. Mr Thane said to me, ‘I wish you would help me out in this difficulty.’ He did not paint himself.—Q. 5232. Which Archbishop was it? The Archbishop of York. I said, ‘What am I to do? tell me what you want.’ He said, ‘There’s a deficiency here—what is it?’ I said, ‘It appears to me very much as if a cow’s head had been there.’ He said, ‘It cannot be a cow’s head; for how could a cow stand there?’ I said, ‘That is very true; there is no room for her legs.’ I fancied first one thing, then another: at one time, I fancied it was a tree that was wanting; and at length I said, ‘Well, I will tell you what will do—if you will let me put in a black man grinning, that will do very well, and rather help out the subject.’ He said, ‘Could you put in a black man?’ I said, ‘Yes, in a very short time;’ and in about half an hour I painted in a black man’s head, which was said very much to have improved the picture. Shortly afterwards Mr Harcourt came in, and seeing the picture, he said, ‘Dear me, Mr Thane, how beautifully they have got out this picture! my father will be delighted. We never saw this black man before.’ And that is the extent of my picture-repairing.” Mr Lance is a man of humour. When Mr Harcourt came to examine the picture, did what his namesake Launce in the play said occur to the painter? This is “the blackest news that ever thou heard’st.” But no; both Lances were discreet in their humour, and the one thought like the other—“Thou shalt never get a secret from me but by a parable.” The idea of a black man grinning at the folly of Diogenes, in looking for an honest man among the whites, was a most original piece of humour, worthy the concentrated geniuses of all the Launces that ever were.
All the world knew Mr Lance’s powers as a painter of still life; he has now doubly established his fame, and notwithstanding that his modesty would look shy upon his performances on the Velasquez “The Boar-hunt,” as nobody else has been startled by them, we sincerely hope they will be allowed to remain—that is, as much of them as the cleaners have spared. We hope, also, that no experimentalists in nostrums will be allowed to reiterate the attempt of the fable, and try to “wash his blackamore white.” Let this be the picture’s motto—“Hic niger est, hunc tu——caveto.”
It is to be feared that picture-cleaning has become a necessary evil, as patients who have been long under the hands of empirics must needs have recourse to regular practitioners to preserve even a sickly life. Empirical nostrums must be got out of the constitution, for by a habit of maintenance, however advantageous they may appear at first, they are sure to side with the disease, and kill the patient. There is the first Mr Seguier’s boiled oil, that terrible black dose—must that be allowed to remain? Then comes the question, by what desperate remedies is it to be eradicated? There is the Gaspar Poussin landscape near the injured Claude “Queen of Sheba,” the “Abraham and Isaac:” we remember it a very beautiful clear picture. It is now all obscured; there are large brown patches in the once lucid sky. As so large a proportion of the pictures in the Gallery are suffering under this oil-disease, and seem to petition for a ticket to the hospital, we offer a suggestion made by De Burtin, that experienced and cautious cleaner, who speaks with utter abhorrence of the oiling system. He says that he tried every secret of his art without success; “continuing always my experiments, however, though with little hope, I have at length had the happiness to find in the application of this same oil itself the means of so softening the old oil, that I have afterwards, with spirit of wine, removed both the oils, new and old together, without at all injuring the picture. Although this plan has succeeded equally well with four pictures on which I had occasion to employ it, yet I must not be understood to hold it out as infallible until, from the number of the cases in which it is tried, and the uniformity of its success, it shall earn for itself that title; but, persuaded that the want of other known means will induce connoisseurs to make trial of this one, I feel desirous to put them in possession of all the information that I myself have in regard to it. My four pictures, all painted on panel, were evidently covered with an oil which gave them an aspect alike sad and monotonous, and which seemed to be of many years’ duration. I gave them a coat of linseed oil during the warmest days of summer, renewing once, and even twice a-day, the places on which it seemed to be absorbed. On the twelfth day the oil on one of the pictures was become so softened that it clung to my finger. I then employed good spirit of wine, without any other admixture whatever, to remove all the oil which I had put upon the picture; and the pleasure I experienced was only equalled by my surprise, when I saw the vivacity of the colours restored under my hands as the spirit of wine removed the old oil along with the new. After a few days’ interval, the other three pictures gave me renewed occasion for congratulation by the same results, and with equal success.”
De Burtin has at least the great merit of having no concealments in his practice. And here the Commissioners have done well in recommending that no varnishes be used, the ingredients of which are kept secret. Mr Farrer thinks he is the only person in this country using gum damas. He is mistaken—we have used it many years, and agree with him that it is far less liable to chill than mastic. The recommendation, also, that, before cleaning a picture, an able chemist should be applied to, is a proper precaution, which would, of course, include varnishing. That pictures may not be subject to secret varnishes, the only one we would have kept secret is that mentioned by Mr Niewenhuys, the experimentalising in which brought the indignation of the court of Lilliput on the unfortunate Gulliver. Picture-scourers have been hitherto a ruthless race—with their corrosives they take the life’s blood out of the flesh of works, like true Vampires, and appropriately enough talk of vamping them up. Few are as conscientious as Mr Thane, to be persecuted with the “processions” of the skeletons they make. There is an amusing story illustrated by Cruikshank. A lover, anxious for the safety of his sick mistress, goes about seeking physicians; he is gifted, for the occasion, to see over the doors of the faculty the ghosts of the patients they had killed. It is within doors we would have the picture possessor go. The outer shop of the cleaner is enchanting—perhaps it may exhibit a face half of which is cleaned, and half dirty, that, according to Mr Ford’s notion of looking better and worse, customers may take their choice of the dingy or the clean. The connoisseur and collector need have some “Diable Boiteux” to take them unseen into the interior laboratories where the ghosts and skeletons lie concealed, while the Medea’s pot is on the fire, whose boiling is to transfer new flesh to the dry bones, that they may be produceable again, as they often are, novelties of a frightful vigour and unnatural sprightliness, to be reduced to an after-sobriety under a regimen of boiled oil and asphaltum. Even Mr Lance’s work, which was believed to be original, has been obscured and otherwise damaged. Salvator Rosa’s “Mercury and the Woodman,” is as if it had been dipped in “the sooty Acheron.” There is little pleasure in looking at pictures in such a state. Altogether, then, to leave pictures “black, dirty, and in a filthy state,” a condition which Mr Stansfield[[6]] properly abominates, is to mislead the public, whom to instruct is one great object of a National Gallery. But who is to restore the gem-like lustre when once removed? There should be a cleaning, or rather a preservation committee. Philosophers say, that diamonds are but charcoal; none have, however, succeeded in converting the carbon into diamonds; but it may be possible to convert the diamonds of art into charcoal, or into something worse, “black, dingy, and filthy.”
We scarcely know where to stop with so large a volume as this Report, with its evidence before us. The questions, with their answers, amount to the astonishing number of 10,410! We necessarily leave much matter untouched, very much interesting matter—We would gladly enlarge upon some of the suggestions thrown out in our article on this subject of December, but adequate space in this Magazine may not be allowed. Yet we will refer to one suggestion, because it is now the very time that public attention should be directed to it; we mean the appointment of Professorships of the Fine Arts at our Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Lord Palmerston’s letter to the Chancellor of Cambridge shows that great changes are in contemplation. Such professorships would be a graceful offering to the universities, who may have been a little suspicious of the movement of a commission; and we feel sure, that nothing could be more promotive of the fine arts, the real taste of the country, or more beneficial, as leading the educated to pursuits of a high and noble nature. We will not attempt to discuss the “Removal of the Gallery.” The Blue Book affords details, and plans of site. The appendix is full of valuable information; but it contains matter upon which we feel some alarm. We know there is a scheme, under peculiar favour, to make our National Gallery a Chronological Almanac of Art, than which nothing can be more worthless or more beyond the objects for which we should have a National Gallery at all. What we should collect is a large subject, which we may feel disposed to consider more at large in a future article.
The public will now inquire, what is to be the result of this pains-taking Commission? We are aware that the Chairman repudiates the Report. It is one to which he does not give his assent. We know not the particulars in which he differs from the Report as agreed upon. We could have wished, for the sake of the arts, that there had been no difference.
Of this there can be no doubt, that the system, if such it may be called, is most unsatisfactory. If we would have a National Gallery at all, the public have a right to demand that it shall be one befitting the dignity of the country and the objects proposed by such an establishment, none of which, it is manifest from the entire evidence, can be realised unless the trust be thoroughly revised. Evils to be avoided are now laid bare to sight. If it be true,