MR. HOBDAY’S GALLERY.
No. 54, Pall-mall.
In addition to the associations for the exhibition and sale of pictures by living artists, Mr. Hobday opened an establishment on the 21st of May for the same purpose, adjoining the British Institution, This gentleman is known to the public as a respectable portrait painter, with a taste for art entitled to consideration for his present spirited endeavour in its behalf.
In this exhibition there are performances of distinguished merit by several eminent artists. The Upas, or poison-tree of Java, by Mr. Danby, in illustration of the legend in Darwin’s Loves of the Plants, is a fine picture, already known. Another by Mr. Danby—is a wood on the sea-shore, with figures, Ulysses and Nausicaa, from Homer. A Fête Champêtre, by Mr. Stothard, is one of a class of subjects, which its venerable painter has distinguished by his magic pencil; Mr. Edwin Landseer’s Lion disturbed at his repast, a forcible and well-remembered effort of his genius, stands near it. Mr. Charles Landseer’s Merchant, with Slaves and Merchandise, reposing in a Brazilian Rancho; the Entombing of Christ, by Mr. Westall; landscapes, by Messrs. Daniel, Glover, Hoffland, Laporte, Linnell, W. Westall, &c.; pictures by sir W. Beechey, Messrs. Chalon, Kidd, Heaphy, Rigaud, Singleton, Stephanoff, J. Ward, &c., grace the walls of the establishment. Every picture in this gallery is for sale; and, under Mr. Hobday’s management, it promises to be a means of introducing the public to an acquaintance with distinguished works of art still remaining open to the selection of its patrons.
Topography.
ORIGINAL NOTICE.
For the Table Book.
Denton-castle, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and on the north-west side of Otley, was once the seat of the parliament’s general, Fairfax, and came to the present family of Ibbetson by relationship. Prince Rupert in passing by it on his march into Lancashire, in order to assist the king’s troops in that quarter, was about to raze it, but going into the house, he observed the pictures of the Manners and the Villiers, Fairfax’s ancestors, and out of good will towards them he desisted. It, however, was afterwards unfortunately destroyed by the carelessness of a maid servant, who dropping asleep at the time she was picking feathers, the candle fell into the feathers and burnt the house to the ground. In a few years afterwards, it was rebuilt by the father of sir Henry Ibbetson, bart. in the year 1721, and has this remarkable motto in the pediment:—
“Quod nec Jovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum.”