Miserable contrast! while five or six hundred thousand francs have been given for a Virgin by Murillo, which is now turning the heads of all who behold it. I confess that mine has entirely resisted. I admire the freshness, the sweetness, the harmony of color; but every other superior quality which one looks to find in such a subject is wanting, or at least escaped me. Ecstasy never transfigured that face, which is neither noble nor great. The lovely infant before me does not seem sensible of the profound mystery accomplished in her. What, then, can there be in this vaunted Virgin which so catches the multitude? She is supported by beautiful angels, in a fine dress, of a charming color, the effect of all which is doubtless highly pleasant.
Page [195]: "We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the Seven Sacraments, and for not having known how to keep from England and Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign collections," etc.
After having expressed our regret that we were unacquainted with the Seven Sacraments save from the engravings of Pesne, we made a journey to London, to see with our own eyes, and judge for ourselves these famous pictures, with many others of our great countryman, now fallen into the possession of England, through our culpable indifference, and which have been brought under our notice by M Waagen.
In the few days we were able to dedicate to this little journey, we had to examine four galleries: the National Gallery, answering to our Museum, those of Lord Ellesmere and the Marquis of Westminster, and, at some miles from London, the collection at Dulwich College, celebrated in England, though but little known on the continent.
We likewise visited another collection, resulting from an institution which might easily be introduced into France, to the decided advantage of art and taste. A society has been formed in England, called the British Institution for promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom. Every year it has, in London, an exhibition of ancient paintings, to which individual galleries send their choice pieces, so that in a certain number of years all the most remarkable pictures in England pass under the public eye. But for this exhibition, what riches would remain buried in the mansions of the aristocracy or unknown cabinets of provincial amateurs! The society, having at its head the greatest names of England, enjoys a certain authority, and all ranks respond eagerly to its appeal.
We ourselves saw the list of persons who this year contributed to the exhibition; there were her Majesty the Queen, the Dukes of Bedford, Devonshire, Newcastle, Northumberland, Sutherland, the Earls of Derby and Suffolk, and numerous other great men, besides bankers, merchants, savants, and artists. The exhibition is public, but not free, as you must pay both for admission and the printed catalogue. The money thus acquired is appropriated to defray the expenses of the exhibition; whatever remains is employed in the purchase of pictures, which are then presented to the National Gallery.
At this year's exhibition we saw three of Claude Lorrain's, which well sustained the name of that master. Apollo watching the herds of Admetus; a Sea-port, both belonging to the Earl of Leicester, and Psyche and Amor, the property of Mr. Perkins; a pretended Lesueur, the Death of the Virgin, from the Earl of Suffolk; seven Sebastian Bourdons, the Seven Works of Mercy,[285] lent by the Earl of Yarborough; a landscape by Gaspar Poussin, but not one morceau of his illustrious brother-in-law's.
We were more fortunate in the National Gallery.
There, to begin, what admirable Claudes! We counted as many as ten, some of them of the highest value. We will confine ourselves to the recapitulation of three, the Embarkation of St. Ursula, a large landscape, and the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.
1st. The Embarkation of St. Ursula, which was painted for the Barberini, and adorned their palace at Rome until the year 1760, when an English amateur purchased it from the Princess Barberini, with other works of the first class. This picture is 3 feet 8 inches high, 4 feet 11 inches wide.