“At what hour will your ladyship have the barouche?” says Bedford, with perfect gravity.
If Mr. Drencher had whipped out a lancet and bled Lady B. on the spot, he would have done her good. I shall draw the curtain over this sad—this humiliating scene. Drop, little curtain! on this absurd little act.
The National Gallery Difficulty Solved.
Just half a century ago, the pictures now in the Dulwich Gallery were offered to the Government as the commencement of a National Gallery, by Sir Francis Bourgeois, who had been a soldier, but became a painter, and was subsequently elected Royal Academician. He inherited these pictures, which Stanislaus, king of Poland, had purposed to form the nucleus of a national collection in that country. But the Government refused the proffered gift. The thoughts of England were then turned not to pictures, but in very different directions. The little four-paged broad-sheets of The Times brought their morning news of the victories of Wellington in Spain and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia; of war declared against England by America; of the Prime Minister’s assassination in the House of Commons; of bread riots, when corn was not to be bought until landlords had secured their eighty shillings a quarter; of the insanity of George the Third and the regency of his unpopular son. There was no inclination in such times to think of National Galleries of Art.
After ten years of peace, with Napoleon at St. Helena, Peterloo riots suppressed, and Thistlewood hanged, George the Fourth was making his investments in Dutch paintings, Goutier cabinets and Sèvres porcelain, and the government (Sir Charles Long says), prompted by the king, induced the House of Commons, in 1824, to vote fifty-seven thousand pounds for the purchase of thirty-eight pictures collected by Mr. Angerstein, the banker. Thus began our National Collection of Pictures. These were shown to the public in a small, dingy, ill-lighted house on the south side of Pall Mall, until 1833, when it was proposed to erect a special building for them. The site chosen was in Trafalgar Square, on which had stood the “King’s Mews,” where, from the days of the Plantagenets, the royal falcons had been kept and “mewed” or moulted their feathers. In our own time, Mr. Cross’s lions and wild beasts from Exeter ’Change have been lodged there; there, also, the first exhibitions of machinery were held, and the public records were eaten by rats in these “Mews,” which were pulled down to make way for the present National Gallery.
From its first conception to the present time, no building has ever been a more lively subject for public criticism than this unlucky National Gallery. Poor Mr. Wilkins, the architect, was sorely perplexed with conditions. The building was not to intercept the view of St. Martin’s portico; it must not infringe on the barrack space in the rear; the public must have one right of way through it, and the Guards another; the old columns of Carlton House were to be used up; and true faith in architecture insisted on having porticos, dome, and cupolas; moreover, the building, by no means too large for a National Gallery, was to be shared with the Royal Academy. With such instructions, Mr. Wilkins prepared his plans and estimates. The building was to cost 50,000l., but no architect is to be bound by his estimate; and judging from late instances, the public got well out of this job in having to pay only 76,867l.
The structure was scarcely occupied before it was discovered to be much too small. The National Gallery had no space to display its additional purchases and bequests, and the Royal Academy found itself obliged to close its schools of art whenever its annual exhibition was open. For these inconveniences parliaments and governments have been for nearly twenty years trying to find a remedy. In 1848, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Hume, and others, forming one House of Commons Committee, “after careful deliberation, unanimously concurred in the opinion” that the present National Gallery should be enlarged and improved. In 1850, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Hume, and others, constituting another Commons Committee, reported that they could not “recommend that any expenditure should be at present incurred for the purpose of increasing the accommodation of a National Gallery on the present site,” and “were not prepared to state that the preservation of the pictures and convenient access for the purpose of study and improvement of taste would not be better secured in a gallery farther removed from the smoke and dust of London.”
The result of this recommendation was to instigate architects and dilettanti to bore an ungrateful public, year after year, with different solutions of the vexed question. A few specimens of them may be amusing. One suggestion was to put a third story on the top of the Greek porticos and columns of the British Museum, and invite the public to climb a hundred stairs to get to the picture gallery; another was to pull down Burlington House, which Sir William Chambers characterizes as “one of the finest pieces of architecture in Europe,” and turn out the Royal Society. The “ring” in Hyde Park, and the inner circle of the Regent’s Park, were in turn recommended as eligible sites for a picture gallery; it was proposed to convert Marlborough House and St James’s Palace into a great National Gallery; also to pull down Kensington Palace—a favourite idea with The Times and “H. B.” My Lord Elcho proposed to build on the site of the Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, and the Duke of Somerset, when First Commissioner of Works, caused one plan to be prepared for appropriating a part of Kensington Gardens in the Bayswater Road, and a second for erecting a building opposite the Kensington Road. Finally, the House of Commons voted 167,000l., and the Prince Consort added to that sum the surplus of the Exhibition of 1851, with which was bought the land opposite and outside Hyde Park, at Kensington Gore,—a site the government had previously commenced negotiations for with the same object, and failed to secure. The House of Commons, however, rejected the plan for removing the National Gallery to this site; and the present conclusion seems to be that the pictures will remain where they are.
Is it possible to render the structure in Trafalgar Square suitable for a National Picture Gallery? And, if so, how is this desirable object to be effected? We submit, for the consideration of our readers, a very practical answer to these questions.