THE ABUSES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NATIONAL GALLERY 
 
 THE LETTERS OF "A. G.," OF "THE OXFORD GRADUATE;" 
 THE DEFENCE OF MR. EASTLAKE, IN " THE DAILY NEWS,' 
 
 &C. &C. 
 
 AND REMARKS UPON THEM. 
 BY VERAX. 
 
 TO WHICH ARE ADDED, 
 
 OBSERVATIONS 
 
 ON 
 
 W&t Minutw of tbt Cniotcco 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NATIONAL GALLERY, 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 MR. EASTLAKE'S REPORT. 
 
 BY VERAX. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 WILLIAM PICKERING, 177, PICCADILLY. 
 
 MDCCCXLVII. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 Printed by B. W. Gardiner, 20, Princes Street, Cavendish Square. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS iii 
 
 I. LETTER TO "THE TIMES," .... October 26th 1846. 7 
 On the injuries to certain pictures in the National Gallery. 
 
 II. LETTER TO " THE TIMES/'. . . .November 19th 1846. 9 
 On the Purchases of the National Gallery. 
 
 The Ten Pictures purchased by Mr. Eastlake - . - 10 
 
 Neglect of Fine works 11 
 
 The Hanging of the Pictures 12 
 
 Postscript — Injuries to the " Bacchus and Ariadne.". .. 13 
 
 III. LETTER TO "THE TIMES/'. . . .December 10th 1846. 14 
 
 On the Abuses of the National Gallery. 
 Remarks on a Letter by Mr. Eastlake to Sir Robert Peel. 15 
 Particulars of the purchase of Mr. Eastlake's libel on 
 
 Holbein 18 
 
 The Fine Arts and National Education 20 
 
 IV. Remarks on Mr. Coningham's Letters to "The Times." 21 
 
 Mr. C.'s " gratuitous assaults/' on everybody 22 
 
 Mr. C's Note to " The Times," against " Verax." 23 
 
 Mr. C.'s " gentlemanly frankness and perfect good faith," 
 
 in apologizing to Sir Martin Shee 24 
 
 Mr. Woodburn's anecdote of Sir Martin Shee 25 
 
 V. LETTER TO "THE TIMES," December 30th & 31st 1846. 26 
 On the Abuses of the National Gallery. 
 
 Wasteful outlay on the libel on Holbein 27 
 
 .... " Susanna and the Elders," by Guido. 28 
 
 .... .... " Spanish Boar Hunt," by Velasquez. 29 
 
 Particulars of the purchases of the two latler pictures, and 
 
 a Note to " The Times," by " Verax." 29 
 
 Mutilation of the Pictures, and determination expressed by 
 
 by Mr. Eastlake to continue his operations 32 
 
 The Royal Academy 35 
 
 Remarks on a Leading Article of "The Morning Herald". . 37 
 
 , "A. G.'s" Letter to "The Times," with remarks by " Verax" 38 
 Some account of the History of the " Bacchus and Ari- 
 adne." 39 
 
 The Trustees and Keeper as " cleaners and restorers" of 
 
 the Public Pictures 42 
 
 . The " Oxford Graduate's" Letter to " The Times,' ' with re- 
 marks by " Verax." 44 
 
 Particulars of the Injuries inflicted on the " Bacchus and 
 
 Ariadne" during the last vacation 48 
 
 Extracts from " The Graduate's" Book 55 
 
ii 
 
 Page 
 
 IX. Remarks on Sir Martin Shee's attempts to throw discredit on 
 
 "Verax." 59 
 
 The President's opinions of the National Gallery and 
 Royal Academy 61 
 
 X. LETTER TO « THE TIMES/' ...... January 18th 1847 64 
 
 On the Abuses of the National Gallery, 
 
 The Principal Grievances 65 
 
 Refusal of Sir Robert Gordon's Picture 67 
 
 Necessity for some Minister responsible to Parliament for 
 
 the management of the National Gallery 71 
 
 XI. REFUTATION OF MR. EASTLAKE'S DEFENCE IN 
 
 "THE DAILY NEWS." 72 
 
 The Effect of Glazings 73 
 
 Two Letters of Rubens quoted by Mr. Eastlake and 
 
 explained by " Verax." - 75 
 
 Mr. Eastlake 's te Notorious Testimonials." 77 
 
 XII. Remarks on Sir Martin Shee's impertinent insinuations 
 
 against " Verax/' and Letter to " the Times"by the 
 
 latter 79 
 
 Sir Martin Shee's unearned pension 80 
 
 XIII. Remarks on Mr. Coningham's Pamphlet and " Supplement." 81 
 
 This " Learned Connoisseur's" Monomania for adverti- 
 sing himself, and his fruitless attempts to appease the 
 flunkey "Art Union Journal." 83 
 
 Mr. Eastlake's " Semi-official Message" to this (< well- 
 known Collector" . . — 84 
 
 XIV. A few Remarks on " Personalities." .... 85 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF THE PROOFS OF MR. 
 
 EASTLAKE'S INCAPACITY 86 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE " MINUTES OF THE TRUS- 
 TEES." 88 
 
 Sir Robert Peel's great eminence as a connoisseur.. .... 90 
 
 MR. EASTLAKE'S REPORT. 98 
 
 MR. EASTLAKE'S VIEWS FOR PROMOTING 
 "PUBLIC TASTE AND A HIGHER CLASS OF 
 ART." 108 
 
 Concluding Remarks , 113 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 The following* Letters, most of which have appeared in the 
 u Times" since the last vacation, are here again presented to the 
 public, in order that all those who take an interest in the subject 
 may have a full opportunity of judging of the whole of the charges 
 which I have brought against the managers and keeper of the 
 National Gallery. Their republication has moreover become 
 an act of justice to myself, since many things which have been 
 said by others, have been in several public papers attributed to 
 me. As I find it difficult enough in the face of gross ignorance, 
 monstrous arrogance, and unexampled stupidity, to maintain 
 and enforce my own positions without encumbering myself with 
 allies whose intentions I misdoubt, and whose ability I alto- 
 gether deny, I hereby enable the reader to judge for what decla- 
 rations I am responsible.* 
 
 * I am especially unambitious of having the weight of Mr. William 
 Coningham's sayings saddled upon me. One paper goes so far as to call 
 " Verax" Mr. Coningham's " first echo," whereas that gentleman only 
 vouchsafed to announce the first of his discoveries on the 8th December, 
 six weeks after his " first echo". 
 
 I have my suspicions that the abuses in question would have remained 
 unnoticed till doomsday ; had it depended on Mr. William Coningham's 
 ingenuity to have detected them ; and I will venture to suggest that his 
 unqualified desertion to the ranks of the enemy would be a most joyful 
 event, as his contradictory explosions might there be of some assistance 
 to the true and consistent friends of Art, whereas at present he is not 
 only an encumbrance to them but positively mischievous. 
 
 B 
 
iv 
 
 The task of a Public Censor which I have assumed on this 
 occasion, was wholly unpremeditated, and it was not until after 
 my first letter on " The Abuses of the National Gallery/' that 
 I determined to make a complete exposure of those facts which 
 had come within my own personal knowledge. I however give 
 the upholders of abuses notice that I have plenty more shafts in 
 store. I had, it is true, written a letter last year against the 
 " cleaning" and " restoring" which had been carried on during 
 the vacation preceding the last, but as it was not published, it 
 never would have entered my thoughts to have attempted ano- 
 ther appeal to the public on the same subject, had it not been for 
 such unprecedented and wholesale desecration as that of the last 
 vacation. The sight of the " Peace and War" roused my in- 
 dignation to the highest pitch; I wrote my first short letter to 
 the " Times" on the very day of the re-opening of the Gallery, 
 and the result of my subsequent examination of the " Bacchus 
 and Ariadne," was not such as to allay the flame which had 
 been kindled, as the injuries which have been inflicted on that 
 noble painting, though not to be compared in extent with those 
 of the " Peace and War," are very considerable, and in reality 
 far more serious, on account of the infinitely greater importance 
 of the work. 
 
 Those two numerous classes of " knaves concerned and pedants 
 unconcerned" have, as was to be expected, denounced my lan- 
 guage as violent, intemperate, and what not. My answer is 
 that I have used strong expressions, and that I see no reason for 
 withdrawing any one of them. I have on principle used such 
 terms as I deemed most applicable to the facts. To cavil at 
 words is the last resource of those who despair of refuting accu- 
 sations. If these had been false, I very much doubt whether 
 the charity of those worthies would extend to wishing I had 
 advanced them more mildly. I feel, on the contrary, more in- 
 clined to suspect that they would be rejoiced to have an additio- 
 nal hold upon me. To the charge of " personality" against the 
 
V 
 
 keeper, I beg' to say, that as I had undertaken to expose the 
 abuses, I could not consistently avoid exposing him as he is 
 identified with one of the principal of them.* In reply to the 
 absurd twaddle about " anonymous correspondents," I pledge 
 myself that at the proper time, some one shall, if required, ap- 
 pear in his own name and person, to substantiate everything 
 which has been asserted in these letters. My sole object (and 
 those who cannot believe it are to be pitied) has been to expose, 
 in the hope that they may be removed, the flagrant abuses 
 which not only prevent the formation of a National Collection 
 worthy of so great a country as England, but which also act 
 as a fatal impediment to the production of such works as are 
 worthy of the name of Fine Art. 
 
 Great works are the results of great conceptions, and great 
 conceptions consist in the correct and original application of prin- 
 ciples which none but great minds assisted by severe study can 
 perform. If the tradition of these principles is lost, the con- 
 ceptions of Artists become at once beggarly and fantastical, and 
 their sympathies are all perverted. Had the Artists of this 
 country come forward as one man, and joined in denouncing all 
 the abuses which have been laid open, and in protesting against 
 the sacrilege offered to the mighty works of their predecessors, 
 there would have been some hope that they looked upon our 
 National Gallery, not as a repository of curious specimens of a 
 Taste exploded, but as the Palladium of all that is true in na- 
 ture and laudable in Painting. If the}' persist in this tame 
 submission, we must suppose them indifferent to these principles 
 and consequently incapable of applying them, incapable of great 
 or even true conceptions and of the works emanating from them.f 
 
 * Vide 12th grievance, Letter V. 
 
 f There are, however, I am happy to say, a few whose intelligence 
 and candour are an exception to this general censure, and I would gladly 
 use the permission which they have given me to mention their names, 
 did I not trust that they would do themselves more adequate justice by 
 the spontaneous avowal of their own convictions. 
 
vi 
 
 If from the body of Artists we appeal to the Academy, we find 
 there, not indifference, but the liveliest zeal ; for whom ? for 
 Titian, for Rubens, for Velasquez? No! but for Mr. Eastlake. 
 R. A's. in esse are indignant at the violent attack upon their 
 colleague, while R. A's. in posse who are still on their probati- 
 onary diet of humility and subserviency, yelp in docile under- 
 key to their masters, in defence of the keeper and his dignity. 
 
 My hope is in a general appeal like the present, for although 
 I fear that there are but few men of sound taste, yet it is my 
 firm conviction that they are in sufficient number to bring about 
 a better order of things, if they will unite and actively co-ope- 
 rate to effect this great object. There are besides many honest 
 and independent minds, which, though for the present unquali- 
 fied to lead, will willingly lend every assistance in their power 
 as soon as they shall have been convinced how they ought to 
 act in this matter. 
 
 Extensive, nay, fundamental alterations must be made in the 
 administration of our Museums ; — the Government must pursue 
 an enlightened course in the selection of model-works, and dis- 
 play them to the greatest advantage for public instruction, 
 which will both impress on the minds of the rising generation 
 of Artists what it is they are required to emulate, and enable 
 the people to form a good taste by inspiring them with confidence 
 in the works which are placed before them. England may then 
 look forward to an age of revival which being quickened by the 
 same soul will display the same features as the age of Michael 
 Angelo ; for even then in its highest manifestations it was re- 
 cognized as the same spirit which had animated an earlier gene- 
 ration by him who sc ably remarked : 0 lo spirito di Donato 
 opera in Buonaroti i 0 quello di Buonaroti anticipb di operare 
 in Donato. 
 
 VERAX. 
 
THE ABUSES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 I. 
 
 From The Times, Thursday, October 26th 1840. 
 THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I beg to represent to you that, should the present pernicious 
 system with regard to our national pictures be continued, in a 
 very few years those noble works of the great masters, which 
 we have collected at so much expense, will be utterly destroyed. 
 
 I visited the National Gallery yesterday morning on its re- 
 opening, and to my great surprise and indignation I found the 
 finest Rubens we possess, viz : u Peace and War," presented by 
 the Marquis of Stafford, completely flayed. — I know no more 
 appropriate word to designate the shameful manner in which 
 this splendid work has been treated during the last holydays. 
 
 To close the gallery for so long a period is very bad manage- 
 ment, but that, in addition to being deprived of the study of 
 our pictures annually six consecutive weeks, * there should be 
 during that time persons actively labouring to deprive us of 
 
 * From the middle of September to the end of October. 
 
8 
 
 them altogether, is a question which demands strict and public 
 inquiry. If the gallery were always kept open, as under proper 
 management it would be, the public would be better enabled to 
 watch the proceedings of the persons intrusted with the care of 
 the pictures, and the work of destruction might perhaps be pre- 
 vented from being carried on wholesale, as at present. To 
 return, however, from this digression. 
 
 The " Peace and War," so pre-eminently rich and harmonious 
 in colour, is now almost as remarkably crude and discordant. 
 With characteristic ignorance the fine rich glazings have been 
 scoured off without the slightest regard to or perception of pro- 
 portion, so that we now have the distant objects most offensively 
 confusing themselves with those in the foreground. 
 
 The fine Cuyp has been treated in a similar manner, and such 
 is the rage for destruction that the Velasquez, one of the new 
 purchases, has also been subjected to the dreadful ordeal of 
 the cleaner's hands. This picture was as remarkable for its fine 
 preservation as for its noble qualities as a work of art. Those who 
 were well acquainted with this picture before its recent misfor- 
 tune will find, instead of its pure and solemn tone, a chalky 
 film spread over it. The same system was pursued with regard 
 to the Penrice Guidos, especially towards " Susanna and the 
 Elders," which was scrubbed quite raw and repainted. 
 
 I am acquainted with most of the finest pictures in Europe, 
 and I have seen the dreadful havoc committed on many of 
 them, but I never saw a more flagrant case than that of the 
 u Peace and War," nor one that more urgently called for inter- 
 ference. It will, however, be fortunate if this strong case 
 prove the means of saving other great works from a similar 
 fate. 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 Tuesday, October 27. 
 
9 
 
 II. 
 
 From The Times, November \§th 1846. 
 
 THE PURCHASES OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 The establishment of a National Gallery is a formal recogni- 
 tion on the part of the Government which underakes it of the 
 powerful influence which the fine arts were intended by Provi- 
 dence to exercise on mankind. The only way by which a Legis- 
 lature can render this influence effective is by exempting, as far 
 as possible, the principles of sound taste and genuine art from 
 the caprices and fluctuations of fashion. The selection, there- 
 fore, of works of art is a question of national importance. 
 Deeply impressed with these views, I venture to offer a few 
 remarks on the purchases made for the National Gallery since 
 the year 1842. 
 
 It must be evident to every reflecting person that works of 
 the highest character — that is, works which illustrate in a con- 
 summate degree any one or more of the great principles of art, 
 contain not only the greatest amount of instruction, but, to a 
 mind educated into a perception of their beauties, pleasure of 
 the most exquisite kind. 
 
 Whether such views have influenced the choice of our pictures 
 since the year 1842, your readers will be better able to judge 
 when they are informed that every addition, save one, belongs 
 to an age whose works, so far from possessing that consummate 
 excellence which is essential to a model, are but imperfect re- 
 hearsals of their great predecessors, tinged with the advancing 
 decay. The exception is the portrait of a Doge by Giovanni 
 Bellini, an artist whom I sincerely admire, but whose fitness for 
 imparting the great lessons of his craft I shall only then ac- 
 knowledge when I have been convinced that the contemplation 
 of an imperfect, and therefore unsuccessful experiment, is more 
 instructive than the same exhibited in its complete and satis- 
 factory results. 
 
10 
 
 Not only have these works been bought at enormous prices, 
 but during the same period undoubted pictures of first rate con- 
 sequence, by some of the g*reatest masters which might have 
 been procured at considerably less expense, were refused or 
 neglected. 
 
 Here is a list of the pictures purchased since 1842, together 
 
 with their prices : 
 
 £ s. 
 
 " Doge Loredano," G. Bellini 630 0 
 
 •* A Jewish Rabbi," Rembrandt 430 10 
 
 " The Infant Christ and St. John/' Guido . . 409 0 
 
 " Portrait of Gerard Dow/' G. Dow 131 5 
 
 The Libel on Holbein, . 600 0 
 
 « Lot and his Daughters/' Guido 1680 0 
 
 « Susanna and the Elders/' Guido 1260 0 
 
 " The Judgement of Paris/' Rubens 4200 0 
 
 " Spanish Boar Hunt/' Velasquez 2200 0 
 
 The Temptation of St. Anthony/' A. Caracci 735 0 
 
 £12,275 15* 
 
 A further sum of £3500 was offered, but fortunately not 
 accepted, for two other pictures very inferior to some of these. 
 
 Of the abovementioned pictures none exhibit in any way 
 first-rate excellence ; some are below mediocrity ; and three, 
 namely, the " Infant Christ and St. John/' the " G. Dow," 
 and the Libel on Holbein, — would reflect no credit on the 
 meanest amateur, and serve only to mark the utter incapacity 
 and extravagance of those who selected them, qualities still 
 further evinced by the fact that several of these works had 
 been previously offered to private persons at much lower prices 
 than we have paid for them. I was present when that Libel 
 on Holbein was offered for £300 by the dealer who sold it to 
 the Gallery. 
 
 The following, among other well-known and authentic works, 
 by some of the greatest masters of the brightest period of art, 
 
 * Besides the sum of £12,275 15s. fees have been paid to dealers 
 for valuing some of the above Pictures, but owing to the defective state 
 of the official Catalogue, I am not able to give exact information as to 
 the amount of public money thrown away for this purpose. 
 
11 
 
 have likewise changed hands since 1842, and might, at a com- 
 paratively small outlay, have ennobled the walls of the National 
 Gallery, and reflected the highest credit on the country : — 
 "The Holy Family," by Sebastiano del Piombo, £1,100, from 
 Sir T. Baring's collection ; " The Virgin and Child," Raphael, 
 less than £1,000, Lord Methuen's collection 5 " Tarquin and 
 Lucre tia," by Titian, formerly in the collection of Charles I., 
 and sold by the executors of Joseph Buonaparte in 1844 for 
 £700. I have mentioned these in particular, because they are 
 well known. Must not every true and enlightened lover of art 
 feel grieved on comparing what we have with what we might 
 have had ? The united cost of " The Infant Christ and 
 St. John," of " The G. Dow," and of the portrait, " painted 
 by an artist contemporary with Holbein, and resembling him in 
 manner," as we have it in the new catalogue, would more than 
 have sufficed to secure either of the above noble works. The 
 prices of the last two alone exceeds that of Titian's u Tarquin 
 and Lucretia." Some objection was urged against the immoral- 
 ity of the subject of "Tarquin and Lucretia." The immorality 
 is in the mind which could perceive any indelicacy in Titian's 
 noble conception of this subject. It is equally strange and un- 
 fortunate that no such scruples prevented the extravagant pur- 
 chase of u . Lot and his Daughters," and of a second u Susanna 
 and the Elders," in spite of our already possessing a better 
 picture by L. Caracci of the same subject. Surely the repre- 
 sentation of the fiery and unbridled passions of youth is not 
 more scandalous or demoralizing than that of the impotent 
 lasciviousness of age ! 
 
 If a great work is to be rejected because its author has not 
 taken due precautions lest the crude pedant should be choked 
 with an anachronism, or the sickly sentimentalist should sw oon 
 away at the expression of suffering, or the puling religionist be 
 shocked by human depravity, let us, in the name of common 
 sincerity, speak no more in admiration of the great spirits of 
 the past, whether in poetry, painting, or sculpture. 
 
 But we are not yet come to this pass. There is, I would fain 
 hope, a sufficient number of men of sound judgment in this 
 country to warrant the assertion that the national intelligence, 
 
12 
 
 as regards the arts, is greatly misrepresented by the conduct 
 pursued of late years in the National Gallery. 
 
 Our Gallery had a glorious beginning. The " Resurrection 
 of Lazarus," the united effort of Michael Angelo and Sebastian 
 del Piombo, was in itself a colossal foundation. The presence 
 of such a work ought so to have elevated our thoughts as to 
 have placed us beyond the possibility of descending to such 
 pictures as some of those purchased of late years. Compare 
 the earlier with the more recent part of the collection. What 
 a falling off ! Every truly noble work of art, exiled from the 
 country of its birth through the degeneracy or poverty of its 
 first possessors, ought to find a welcome reception and final 
 asylum in the National Gallery of England. 
 
 Indifference to works of the first order is moreover flagrant 
 injustice to our artists, and especially when we are offering pre- 
 miums to induce them to pursue the highest walks of art. 
 Must it not be discouraging to every noble-minded student to 
 see that excellence neglected, of which, if he could but promise 
 to himself the scantiest portion, he would feel that he had not 
 lived in vain ? Must he not foresee, at the end of a long life of 
 laborious study and self-denial, the probability of neglect and 
 a broken spirit 1 
 
 The baneful spirit of ignorance which presides over one of 
 the most important of our national establishments is but the 
 continuation of that which deprived us of the drawings of Michael 
 Angelo and Raphael, the most stupendous collection in the world. 
 It first allowed it to be dismembered, whereby part went to 
 Holland, and then, instead of partially redeeming the error by 
 securing the remainder, with characteristic obstinacy and folly 
 it rejected that also, though still a collection of first-rate impor- 
 tance. This, with the three fine pictures quoted above, would 
 have cost us considerably less than the pictures added to the 
 Gallery since 1842, which should never have been thought of 
 till the others were secured, and not even then unless at more 
 moderate prices. 
 
 I will conclude with a few remarks on the hanging of the 
 pictures. The Spectator compares it to an auction-room, and 
 with good reason. One of the most wonderful productions of 
 
13 
 
 human genius, and by far the finest picture we possess, " The 
 Eesurrection of Lazarus/' is hung in the very worst light in the 
 room, and, consistently enough, a poor but most expensive one 
 is in the best. Almost an entire wall is sacrificed to the low- 
 class pictures of the late bequest, while Titian's " Ganymede," 
 and " Concert," the " Giulia Gonzaga," some N. Poussins, &c, 
 are either thrust into dark corners, or hung so high as to be 
 utterly useless to the student. There is sufficient room on the 
 line for all our best pictures, but not so long as we perversely 
 keep the inferior ones there. Is the second " Susanna and the 
 Elders," for ever to usurp the place of Titian's noble "Ganymede?" 
 How much longer are the Lawrences and the Wests to remain 
 as monuments of our ignorance and conceit, while so many 
 good pictures require their room? Every addition, however 
 poor, thrusts some fine work out of reach. It ought to be 
 a fundamental rule, that no inferior picture shall usurp the place 
 of a better. 
 
 This, Sir, is a subject worthy of your readers' earnest consi- 
 deration, and I feel confident that your powerful assistance will 
 go very far to remedy the evils complained of and deeply re- 
 gretted by the enlightened friends of art* 
 
 I remain, Sir, yours obediently, 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 November 10th 1846. 
 
 P.S. — In a former letter I strongly animadverted on the shame- 
 ful treatment which several fine pictures had received during 
 the last vacation, but I had not at that time extended my ob- 
 servations to the " Bacchus and Ariadne." I now feel called 
 upon to denounce the injuries inflicted on that great and important 
 picture also. Some parts have been scraped raw, and others have 
 been repainted. The former process, especially, has had the effect 
 of altering the apparent position of some of the objects. Consi- 
 dering the much greater importance of the work, this is the 
 worst case of all, and it ought to be the last of a series of barba- 
 risms obstinately persevered in for a long time past, and by no 
 means confined to onr National Gallery. 
 
 All repainting is inadmissable, because it is diametrically op- 
 posed to reason. Great works are interesting and valuable for 
 
14 
 
 those parts only which can be relied upon as genuine, and they 
 have suffered more from the ignorant and abortive attempts at 
 what is commonly and most falsely called " restoration," than 
 from any other cause. 
 
 Every miscalled " restoration" is made to cover more or less 
 of the original, in order to disguise what never ought to have 
 been attenpted. Unlike the interpolations of a written work, it 
 cannot be removed without great danger to the text. It is as 
 absurd to repaint any part of a Raphael or a Titian, as it would 
 be to putty up the corrosions of the Ilyssus. Every means 
 should be employed to preserve a great work, but " restoration", 
 is but a specious synonyme of destruction. 
 
 III. 
 
 From The Times, Thursday, December 10, 1846. 
 
 THE ABUSES OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 When, in my former letters, I endeavoured to direct your 
 readers' attention to the irreparable injuries inflicted on some of 
 the -most precious works of art in the National Gallery, I felt 
 that my task would be incomplete unless I could suggest the 
 most effectual means of preventing the recurrence of such Van- 
 dalisms, by letting the public know at whose suggestion, and 
 under whose authority, they had been committed. 
 
 As no picture can be touched without the express sanction of 
 the keeper, the person holding that responsible office must be 
 necessarily best qualified to give the requisite information ; it 
 happens, therefore, very opportunely, that we are indebted to 
 that gentleman himself for the names, not only of the subordi- 
 nate agents in these achievements, but also for pointing out to 
 us the master mind which directed them. The document in 
 which we are favoured with this information is entitled "The 
 
IS 
 
 National Gallery. Observations on the unfitness of the pre- 
 sent building- for its purpose. In a letter to the Right Hon. 
 Sir Robert Peel, Bart., by Charles Lock Eastlake, R.A., 
 Keeper of the National Galley. London : Clowes and Sons, 
 Stamford-street, 1845." At page 17, Mr. Eastlake, after com- 
 plaining- of the smallness of the building, enlarges upon " the 
 want of spacious and well lighted rooms for cleaning and re- 
 storing pictures," as a, "more serious evil." " Such rooms 
 should," he says, " if possible, be on the same floor with the 
 Gallery, so as to avoid all risk in moving the pictures. The 
 operation of cleaning the paintings could then be conve- 
 niently carried on whenever it might be required, the Gal- 
 lery being deprived for a short period of one picture at a 
 time. But under present circumstances it is only during the 
 vacation in the autumn that such operations can be undertaken. 
 The pictures having remained many years without having been 
 cleaned before the last vacation, it was impossible to complete 
 the work within the few weeks allowed, the cleaning of some 
 was necessarily postponed for another year." To this we 
 find the following note: — " / may here be permitted to express 
 my entire satisfaction at the result of the labours of Mr. Se- 
 guier and Mr. T. Boden Brown, who, at the period in ques- 
 tion, by direction of the trustees, and under my daily superin- 
 tendence, cleaned a considerable number of pictures in the 
 Gallery:'* 
 
 To tourists who come back with a taste, to ladies and gen- 
 tlemen who have a talent for drawing, to men who look on 
 art as a means of gain and advancement — in short, to all 
 dealers, drivellers, and dilettanti, this will seem a very na- 
 tural boast, and in no way contradictory to the dread of 
 "risk," and the anxiety for the "careful preservation" of the 
 pictures elsewhere expressed. A more intelligent class will 
 perhaps look upon these statements as specimens of a ludi- 
 
 * " The result of the labours" which so especially excited Mr. East- 
 lake's enthusiasm was the reduction of the four-thousand guinea Rubens 
 " The Judgment of Paris" to comparative monotony, and the skinning 
 and repainting of the two two-thousand eight hundred guinea Guidos 
 purchased from the Penrice and Buchanan Collections. 
 
10 
 
 crous inconsistency, and enjoy the event as a good subject for 
 banter and ridicule. But those who are truly passionate for 
 art, and make it the business of their lives, who alone are 
 judges of this case — though all are interested in it — will feel 
 nothing but unmixed indignation at the conduct of a public of- 
 ficer, who, in utter ignorance of the principles on which those 
 works were painted, and with that still more culpable ignorance 
 which blinded him to his own incapacity, suffered the works 
 of a Titian, of a Rubens, and of a Velasquez to be so handled 
 that the rich glazings, and masterly touches with which these 
 authors rivalled the harmony, saliency, and roundness of 
 nature, have been removed as dirt — who, mistaking the tints 
 of the painter for the incrustations of age, has brought into 
 offensive nearness that which had been toned down into its 
 proper distance, and thus made the colouring and the drawing 
 falsify each other — nay, has put the very colouring in contra- 
 diction to itself. But the worst is yet to come. In the same 
 pamphlet the author expresses his regret at not being able to 
 carry on "such operations" on a more extensive scale, and 
 pledges himself to their continuance. A part of this pledge 
 was fearfully redeemed during the last vacation ; whether Mr. 
 Eastlake should be left in a situation which will enable him to 
 fulfil the remainder is for the public to decide. 
 
 I had intended to confine my remarks for the present to the 
 subject of the mutilated pictures, but the instances of the mis- 
 management of our National Gallery in all its branches, from 
 the destruction of some of the finest works down to the compo- 
 sition of the catalogue, are so flagrant, and the public letter 
 from which I have quoted bears so immediately upon some of 
 them, that I will venture to trespass on your attention by a few 
 more selections from that document, and a little further com- 
 mentary of my own. 
 
 Mr. Eastlake's second objection to the present building is 
 the " insufficient space for the due exhibition of even the pre- 
 sent collection of paintings." The present building is certainly 
 insufficient for such a gallery as England ought to possess, and 
 will, I hope, one day acquire, despite the present unfavourable 
 prospects; but would any intelligent stranger suspect "insufn- 
 
17 
 
 ciency of space," on finding nearly an entire wall sacrificed to the 
 low class pictures of the late bequest? At page 7, Mr. Eastlake 
 finds that u in consequence, even of the addition of two pictures 
 of moderate dimensions/' &c, " other works, which were before 
 hung near the eye, have been unavoidably placed at too gTeat a 
 distance to be duly seen, or to be of use to the students," &c. 
 That Mr. Eastlake should find it unavoidable to displace su- 
 perior works to make room for inferior ones, is an instance of 
 that gTacious preference for the weaker side, which, however, 
 it may move our admiration when practised in social life, is 
 apt when applied to matters of logic or taste to provoke a very 
 different feeling. We agree with Mr. Eastlake that the 
 u display " of the pictures for " the public advantage" is a 
 point " deserving the attention of Government." But how can 
 he reconcile this zeal for " public advantage " with his present 
 distribution of the " insufficient space," by which a whole wall 
 of the Gallery is made to look like a temple of Neptune or 
 /Esculapius, decorated with its votive daubs, while the great 
 masters are removed to some dark corner to await their doom 
 until the dread fiat goes forth to " restore " them. 
 
 From page 23 we learn that the author is in gTeat anxiety 
 lest " foreigners should entertain erroneous judgments respect- 
 ing the state of art in this country," &c. The religious pre- 
 servation of works of consummate excellence, and the judgment 
 displayed in the additions to its museums, will ever be the sure 
 and only infallible test of a nation's refinement in the arts ; the 
 highest appreciation and the greatest powers of production 
 having always been contemporary. If we are, indeed, afraid of 
 the judgments of intelligent men, whether foreigners or En- 
 glishmen, and are alive to the degradation of being thought a 
 nation of barbarians, let us no longer permit the reckless de- 
 struction of our finest works, nor tolerate the systematic per- 
 versity which is every year displayed in the purchase of inferior 
 pictures; but I again assert that the national taste, as regard^ 
 the arts, is shamefully misrepresented in the conduct of the 
 rulers in Trafalgar Square. It is said, however, and I trust 
 with truth, that some of the trustees disapprove these proceed- 
 ings; but, until they openly avow their disapprobation, they 
 
18 
 
 must bear that portion of* the blame which ought to attach to 
 every one who lends his name to stupid and mischievous 
 practices. 
 
 The last passage I shall quote from Mr. Eastlake is in the 
 prophetical style. At page 7, "every specimen," says he, "of 
 art in a national collection should, perhaps, (perhaps !) be as- 
 sumed to be fit to challenge inspection, and to be worthy of 
 being well displayed. It is hoped that there is little danger of 
 pictures being purchased for the nation w,hich will not bear this 
 test." The letter is dated May. Before the end of July, 
 within two months of the prophecy, Mr. Eastlake, with the as^ 
 sistance of an " eminent German friend," had the luck to stumble 
 on the Libel on Holbein, name and all, for £600. The 
 name having been found too much for the money, it was 
 conscientiously taken out, and, I suppose, returned to the 
 dealer. The present is a favourable opportunity for giving- 
 the public the full particulars connected with this interesting 
 acquisition. It must not be for a moment supposed that things 
 were done in a hurry. Mr. Eastlake was not a man to be taken 
 by storm. Although he and his " eminent German friend" had 
 discovered and enthusiastically admired this beautiful work, it 
 was not until after two months' possession, distressing anxiety^ 
 and indefatigable examination, that the bargain was concluded \ 
 " Tantce molts erat Romanam condere gentem." As I have 
 before stated, it was offered in my presence to a private person 
 for £300 ; but that would have been a price unworthy of the 
 nation. The more dignified sum of £800 was, therefore, de- 
 manded, and, after a little delicate flirtation, it was secured for 
 £600. So great was the rejoicing on this memorable occasion; 
 that the dealer was even complimented for having favoured us 
 with so precious an article, and the fine Vandyke horses were 
 displaced to make room for it. But, alas for the fallibility of 
 "eminent" Germans, and the gullibility of "eminent" English- 
 men ! within a fortnight after its installation (horrible to relate !) 
 this admirable production, this signed "Holbein," was disco- 
 vered to be a mistake. Down it came ; entreaties and threats 
 were used alternately to induce the dealer to return the money; 
 but to no purpose. In vain did Mr. Eastlake endeavour to coax 
 
Ihe obdurate man with the splendid offer of £100 on the part of 
 the trustees, and an additional £50 out of his own pocket, 
 to take back the Libel. The " tremendous sacrifice of 25 per 
 cent, under prime cost," was obstinately refused. All this Mr. 
 Eastlake did, and it is but right that the public should be 
 informed of his disinterested conduct on this memorable occa- 
 sion. He made, however, one little mistake ; for, having* been 
 informed that the picture was not worth more than £40, his 
 offer was really very like asking" the man to give him £600 for 
 £190. Had he been modestly requested to take back the pic- 
 ture and return £40, he would probably have consented, and 
 the catalogue would have been wanting- in one of the richest 
 gems which adorn that repertory of graceful scholarship. How 
 George Kobinsesque is the description which heralds its re-ap- 
 pearance! In this we are told that it is "painted by an artist 
 -contemporary frith HOLBEIN, and nu w M mg him in manner" 
 The old compromise of a " cousin german that played the 
 German flute," is the only model I know for this species of 
 commendation. It was during the secession that the "I. Hol- 
 bein," on the background was rubbed out. The picture was 
 subsequently placed on the line, but it now offers itself to the 
 admiring gaze of a grateful public in its original position, and is 
 still thought, by those who think ex-ojficio, of more u public ad- 
 vantage " than Vandyke's horses. 
 
 How much longer is this trifling to continue ? How much 
 longer are idle dilettanti to be our caterers of art I Let us not 
 be told that many of these personages are distinguished for 
 energy and ability in other pursuits or professions ; their being 
 so offers of itself a strong presumption of their insufliciency. It 
 is not to be expected that the Muse before whom Phidias and 
 Michael An°*elo laid their colossal minds, as offerings which could 
 only become worthy of her acceptance after the intense labour 
 and passionate meditation of a whole life, will deign to accept as 
 her votaries the jaded intellects of lawyers and politicians, who 
 treat her arts as a pastime, and too often merely as a source of 
 gratification to their personal vanity. 
 
 I would fain hope that the growing interest which attaches 
 to the subject of national education, will not suffer this most im- 
 
 o 
 
20 
 
 portant branch of that question to be any longer at the mercy 
 of a mixed coterie of dilettanti and picture-dealers ; for, surely, 
 that is no small part of national education which teaches men 
 to look upon the face of nature with an intelligent eye and 
 a feeling heart; and this is the true province of painting*, 
 sculpture, and architecture. It is because men will not recog- 
 nize this truth, but assume that they can learn, or have learnt, 
 from nature, that which they are afterwards to verify in the 
 works of her imitators, that the taste of our age is so false, and 
 its performances so mean. The poets and the historians of 
 Greece learnt from her Phidias and her Apelles instead of criti- 
 cising them; and these would have disdained to ask the opinion 
 of the wisest and greatest men, who had only the moments of 
 leisure to bestow on that, which had to themselves been the se- 
 rious occupation of life. If our national repositories of art are 
 not to be regarded as great educational establishments, let us, in 
 the name of common sense, spend no more money on pictures ; 
 let us rather close the Gallery, and advertise the sale of its 
 contents throughout Europe. Let the thousands we shall yet 
 have to spend in finishing an asylum worthy of the works of 
 Phidias, be applied to some humbler purpose. 
 
 I trust, Sir, that I have made it sufficiently clear, that the 
 perverse acquisition of inferior pictures, the neglect of great 
 works, and still more the desecration of those we possess, 
 loudly call for public and searching inquiry. The office of 
 guardian of the National Gallery is the most important artistic 
 appointment in the country, and it ought not to be lightly 
 bestowed. It can only be efficiently filled by a man of compre- 
 hensive and independent mind, and acquainted, as much at least 
 as can be expected in these degenerate days, with the theory 
 and practice of the great masters whose works he is appointed 
 to protect. We must not have one whose chief reliance is on 
 Passavant and German hand-books, and who judg-es Eaphael by 
 the measure of a panel. Whatever may be the requisites for 
 such an office, ignorance and " flunkeyism" are not among' the 
 number. 
 
 I remain, Sir, yours obediently, 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 December. 
 
2] 
 
 IV. 
 
 It was not until the 8th of December,* nearly two months 
 after the Times, the Spectator, the Examiner, the Bri- 
 tannia, the Atlas, &c.f had repeatedly and earnestly called 
 public attention to the fact, that a gentleman signing" 
 himself " William Coningham," condescended to inform, not 
 the Public, but Mr. Eastlake, above all others, that " profane 
 hands had irreparably injured pictures that had been pre- 
 served with the utmost care for centuries," &c, and called upon 
 him (I) "to stand forward in their defence." After nick- 
 naming' Sebastiano del Piombo, the "awe-inspiring JPiombo," J 
 this, his first note, ends with something* about " the glowing 
 Coreg-gios," which, in their present state may, indeed, form a 
 dangerous contrast to the chalhy absurdities of Mr. Turner, or 
 to the pictures in the Royal Academy." 
 
 In note the second, this same gentleman, after encouraging 
 u Verax" with a splendid compliment, § inveighs against Mr- 
 Eastlake's " stupidity of mistaking a portrait of the younger 
 Claessens, for a work by Holbein." The learned distinction he 
 
 ♦ " Times," December 8th, 1846. 
 
 f The friends of art are greatly indebted to the Editors of the above 
 mentioned papers for their consistency and intelligence on this occasion. 
 " The Spectator," especially, has been distinguished both for ability and 
 perseverance. 
 
 X In nothing is the acquaintance of our dilettanti with the Old 
 Masters more conspicuous than in the familiar manner in which they 
 frequently nickname them. Sebastiano del Piombo took his surname from 
 the office he held of keeper of the Papal signet, in allusion to the lead 
 of the seal. Now, although, Mr. Comngham in calling Sebastiano del 
 Piombo, in his playful, friendly way, simply, " Piombo,''' or "awe-in- 
 spiring Piombo," (awe inspiring Lead), undoubtedly proves his great 
 intimacy with that, master, it does not follow that every whipper- 
 snapper has a right to take such liberties. I, therefore, beg to inform 
 these, that not even the most crafty Italian would ever suspect that 
 "Piombo " alone, meant anything but lead. I would, humbly suggest 
 to those dilettanti who enjoy the privilege of bestowing nicknames on 
 Sebastiano del Piombo, that " Pipes," or " awe-inspiring Pipes " would 
 be at once more endearing and more English, and consequently much 
 better understood in London. 
 
 § " Sir. — The gross mismanagement of the National Gallery has 
 been so completely and so ably exposed by 1 Verax,' in your paper of the 
 10th inst. as to require no further commentary, &c." — Times, Dec. 16th. 
 
2^ 
 
 draws between the " Low Dutch or Flemish/' and the " TLigh 
 Dutch or German School/' is worthy of the most attentive 
 study. He then proceeds to say, "Thus not only did Mr. 
 Eastlake display total ignorance" &c, "but a want of common 
 acuteness in failing- to detect" the forgery of the signature 
 I. HOLBEIN, and "the extensive restorations on the hack- 
 ground. How then, I ask, can such a man he entrusted to 
 purchase pictures for a National Museum, or to decide whether 
 those which have passed through the hands of his assistants 
 have or have not been overcleaned, and then restored to conceal 
 the injury?" &c. "Mr. Eastlake must either acknowledge his 
 incapacity, or become obnoxious to graver accusations." His 
 proposal to decide the question by an appeal to Mr. T. Boden 
 Brown, a "professional cleaner" (one of those whose "labours" 
 of the preceding year had so excited Mr. Eastlake's enthu- 
 siasm), and his anxiety lest the picture of "Peace and War," if 
 now "valued," should be worth less money, are of an equally 
 exalted character. 
 
 Note the third* begins by cautiously making* Mr. Beckford 
 " nickname the present picture-cleaner to the National Gallery, 
 the Master of the Skinners' Company ! " " The formal sanction" 
 given to Mr. Eastlake by Mr. Mulready, Mr. Etty, and Mr. 
 Leslie, he considers " as the first clear evidence of the design of 
 Sir Martin Shee and of the Academicians to persuade the 
 Public that the qualities in which the painters of that Establish- 
 ment (the Academy) are totally deficient, &c. are merely the 
 result of time and mastic varnish." Mr. Turner is a second 
 time attacked in his " Limpet on the Rock j" and a third time 
 by being told that " his pictures are the colour of dirty plaster." 
 " The Trustees and the Public at large " are entreated " not to- 
 allow themselves to be misled by these interested parties." 
 Sir Martin Shee is then held up as an object of contempt, "as 
 well known to have ridiculed the drawings of Michael Angelo 
 and of JRqffaelle;" we are informed that "the criticisms of Sir 
 William Ross are become a standing joke in the Eternal City j. 
 and as the strongest evidence of these gentlemen's incapacity , '* 
 
 " Times," January 7, IS47- 
 
33 
 
 lie appeals H to their own exhibition rooms." This mild epistle 
 concludes by saying- that u as long as a Member of this body,, 
 assisted by a master skinner, continues to be the keeper of the 
 National Gallery, so long" will the pictures be in danger;" and 
 that nothing- should be wanting, he calls them all " harpies?' 
 
 The above specimens of the powerful arguments adduced by 
 Mr. William Coningham, and of his delicate forbearance from 
 unnecessary personality, will have prepared the reader for the 
 following" note, which appeared in The Times, on the very next 
 day, Friday, January 8th. — 
 
 " To the Editor of The Times. 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 "May I beg publicly to state, through the medium of 
 your columns, that I am not ' Verax,' and that I have not the 
 slightest acquaintance with that gentleman, whoever he may be? I 
 also think the personalities he indulges in only calculated to injure 
 a good cause. 
 
 " I remain, &c. 
 
 " William Coningham." * 
 
 I will here observe, that three of the persons whom Mr. 
 William Coningham has thus honoured with his especial notice, 
 namely, Sir Martin Shee, Sir William Ross, and Mr. Turner, 
 had not, at the time the above notes were written, taken any 
 part in the controversy. The two latter gentlemen have not, 
 even since, to my knowledge, made themselves in any way 
 obnoxious. The mere fact of their not being great painters, 
 does not give any person a right to insult them. What Mr. 
 Coningham is pleased to call " personalities," have been sup- 
 ported by such overwhelming facts, that they would make the 
 harshest terms sink into comparative insignificance, and the 
 persons I have attacked in my letters are so intimately connected 
 with the abuses I have exposed, that it was impossible to sepa- 
 rate them. But wanton abuse is the surest mark of ignorance 
 and depraved motives, and it was, therefore, a piece of very super- 
 fluous precaution, on Mr. Coningham's part, to have disclaimed 
 
 * So scrupulous was Mr. Coningham in not wishing to usurp the 
 credit due to " Verax," that he even put himself to the inconvenience of 
 addressing another note, to the same effect, to " The Spectator." I trust 
 he will persevere in observing the golden rule, of never assuming any 
 merit to which he is not entitled. 
 
24 
 
 the authorship of the letters signed " Verax." Still more dim- 
 cult is it to explain how any one, at the very time he was me- 
 ditating- his own apostacy, should have been so anxious about 
 the " good cause/' as to deprecate personalities, because, forsooth, 
 " thep were calculated to injure it." Perhaps he thinks that a 
 good cause is not likely to be injured by his inconsistency, or deser- 
 tion from it: if so, it is the truest judgment he has ever formed, and 
 I heartily concur with him in it. But it was not enough for him 
 that no one should confound him with " Verax — he must not be 
 supposed to have " the slightest acquaintance with that gentle- 
 man, whoever he may be" — that is, " ' Verax' maybe any gentle- 
 man you please, but I have not the slightest acquaintance with 
 him — I dont know any gentleman." — His words either mean 
 that, or they mean nothing ; and in the latter case they have 
 many more such sentences in the productions of the same writer 
 to keep them company. 
 
 The next scene in which Mr. Coningham appears is one of a 
 sudden and miraculous conversion. On the very day after his 
 " wanton attack" (Vide Sir M. Shee's letter)* had appeared, he 
 was compelled to write as follows: — 
 
 " To the Editor of The Times. 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 I am requested formally to contradict a statement in 
 my last letter on the subject of the Gallery, that Sir Martin Shee 
 ' had ridiculed the drawings by Michael Angelo and Raffaelle.' I 
 much regret having been led into this false assertion, of the truth of 
 which I was at that time firmly convinced. 
 
 " I remain your obedient Servant, 
 
 " William Coningham. 
 
 "Brighton, Jan. 8, 1847"f 
 
 The letter by " Veritas" (Times, Jan. 13), evidently written 
 by some one desirous that the truth should be known, very sea- 
 sonably chastised Mr. Coningham for his hasty compliance with 
 Sir Martin Shee's " formal request." 
 
 It is necessary to state that Mr. Coningham had frequently 
 heard Mr. Woodburn repeat the expressions attributed to Sir 
 M. Shee by " Veritas," and had more than once expressed his 
 
 * "Times," January 15th. 
 
 f This did not appear till January 11th. 
 
25 
 
 belief in the truth of Mr. Woodburn's statement. " Veritas" 
 has however omitted the most pithy part of the dialogue, which 
 will prove a valuable addition to the anecdotes of " eminent " 
 British Painters. It runs thus : Sir Martin Shee having se- 
 lected the drawing of S. Cecilia, by Raphael, as the subject of 
 his critique, observed, " Why, many of my young men could 
 do as well." To which Mr. Woodburn, if we are to believe him, 
 replied, " I have heard, Sir Martin, that Shakspeare, Milton, 
 Virgil, &c. were not great poets, but I never thought it the fault 
 of those great men." Upon this, according to Mr. Woodburn, 
 the late Mr. Phillips, R. A., who was with Sir Martin Shee at 
 the time, remarked, "You had it there, Sir Martin." Mr. Con- 
 ingham made his public apology to Sir Martin Shee, thus ac- 
 cusing Mr. Woodburn of having made a false assertion, without 
 having previously communicated to him the receipt of Sir M. 
 Shee's request. Such conduct requires no comment. 
 
 Mr. Coningham's last epistle, {Times, Jan. 25,) in which he 
 says, that his " opinion upon the system of painting adopted by 
 certain Members of the Royal Academy, who have abandoned 
 their early and careful manner, remains unchanged," is another 
 interesting* pledge that he is fast approaching that happy state 
 to which the Pecksniff, who makes his monthly appearance 
 under the cognizance of the only virtuous Gambling Society 
 in the country, has so happily predicted his return. " That a 
 gentleman having the reputation of 'being a learned connoisseur 
 in ancient Art should be so partial and so bigoted to the admi- 
 ration of its remains, as to doat on the dilapidations which 
 time and other causes have inflicted, rather than on its pristine 
 beauties — and that he should be so deficient in good feeling for 
 the glory of his country, and its rising school, as to anathematise 
 • it as a gathering of f chalky absurdities^ — is much to be re- 
 gretted; but we think Mr. Conyngham will hereafter withdraw 
 the intemperate phrase, when others will have forgotten the 
 hasty enthusiasm that gave rise to its utterance."* As Mr. 
 Coningham now informs us that only " certain members of the 
 Royal Academy" have adopted "a system of painting" of which 
 
 * "Art Union Journal," Jan. 1, 1847. 
 
26 
 
 he disapproves, and as he has already favoured us with the 
 names of these, I trust he will soon point out to us those 
 other members of that august body whose " system of painting*" 
 he finds so congenial, that we, who anxiously look forward to 
 that blaze of light which can alone emanate from the genuine 
 dilettante, may know whom it is lawful to admire. 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 V. 
 
 From The Times, Wednesday, December 30th, 1846, and 
 re-published therein entire the following day. 
 
 THE ABUSES OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I suppose that your readers will have sufficiently perceived 
 from the statements in my last letter but one, (which have not 
 yet been refuted,) that in the purchases made for the National 
 Gallery since 1842, that plainest rule of economy has been vio- 
 lated, which common sense dictates to all, and which Franklin 
 has embodied in that pithy sentence, " Nothing is cheap that 
 you do not want." But there is a refinement of silly ex- 
 travagance, an embellishment of common recklessness, which 
 not even Franklin had anticipated — I mean the endeavour to 
 add a zest to the sense of possession, by the self-imposition 
 of an unnecessary price for an unnecessary article. Those 
 who doubt of the existence of so singularly morbid a propen- 
 sity, will be surprised to learn, that the trustees and their profes- 
 sional adviser, Mr. Eastlake, have been so deeply possessed 
 with this unhappy craving, that they have, in some cases, 
 paid for a picture more than double the sum for which it had 
 been offered to private persons. It will be seen, from what 
 I am about to relate, that the wasteful excess of expenditure on 
 three of the ten pictures purchased since the appointment of 
 
27 
 
 Mr. Eastlake to the office of keeper, would have been alone more 
 than sufficient to have secured to us, within the same period, 
 among" other fine works of the best age of art, Titian's gTeat 
 historical picture of " Tarquin and Lucretia," formerly in the 
 collection of Charles I. ; and the " Methuen Raphael" — works 
 I have elsewhere quoted. 
 
 If we must, indeed, submit to have inferior works annually 
 thrust upou us, we should at least be allowed the reasonable 
 consolation of paying- as little as possible for them ; but it is 
 useless to expect even this, while there is so little chance of any 
 picture finding- its way into the public Gallery until it has been 
 long hawked about the town, by way of testing its originality, 
 and till both trustees and keeper have been successfully 
 u earvvigged" (I use a disreputable, though significant word, to 
 designate a disreputable practice) by the agents of the owner. 
 I have already stated that the Libel on Holbein, that prodi- 
 gious specimen of the incompetence of " competent persons," 
 was offered in my presence for £300; but I now know tbat it 
 might have been had for £250 of the same dealer who sold it to 
 the Gallery ; and I have also learnt that the price paid for it by 
 u Parliament," was 600 guineas, instead of £600. Is it not 
 comfortable to reflect that so choice a " specimen of art," so 
 " fit," according to Mr. Eastlake's happy prediction, " to chal- 
 lenge inspection," and so * worthy of being well displayed," 
 has cost us only £380 more than was necessary ? 
 
 At the sale of Mr. Penrice's collection in 1844, the trustees 
 decided on giving the very moderate sum of £5,580 for " the 
 Judgment of Paris," by Rubens, and that " Lot and his 
 Daughters," by Guido. It was surprising that'another work of 
 the latter master, u Susanna and the Elders," should, in spite of 
 the strict propriety of its moral and the unassuming tameness of 
 its treatment, have been overlooked by such congenial purchasers. 
 But, that Deus ex machina" of embarrassed dilettanti, an ever- 
 vigilant and high-spirited dealer, was waking while they slum- 
 bered. He purchased and kept the picture by him until he 
 should be able to bring Mr. Keeper Eastlake to a just sense of 
 its value. Within a year his eloquence prevailed, and his 
 patriotism was rewarded : for less than £850 he had rescued his 
 
 D 
 
2cS 
 
 prize ; for 1,200 guineas he laid it at the feet of a grateful 
 country.* Little more than half of this sum might have pro- 
 cured us Titian's " Tarquin and Lucretia," but that was an 
 " immoral" subject. Could Titian have foreseen an age of 
 decencies and mediocrities which would reject a picture whereon 
 he had expended the might of his genius and the riches of his 
 experience, because the subject was " immoral/' surely his dis- 
 dain of so worthless a posterity, his disgust at a vision of such 
 pruriency and imbecility combined, would have at once extin- 
 guished the " original and fiery virtue" within him, and have 
 paralized his godlike powers. 
 
 Thus, Sir, we see that on the " Susanna and the Elders" — 
 the first purchase since the libel on Holbein — we have another 
 trifling unnecessary excess of more than £410. In the discussion 
 which took place in the House of Commons on the latter valua- 
 ble acquisition, many of your readers will doubtless remember 
 the declaration of Sir Robert Peel, that " the trustees intended 
 in future to fortify their opinions by the advice of eminent 
 artists and experienced dealers." We are now, therefore, I pre- 
 sume, enjoying the blessings of that ingenious device ; but would 
 it not be an additional relish if we were informed of the names of 
 the " eminent artists" who counselled the purchase of this 
 " Susanna and the Elders?" It is reported that the u expe- 
 rienced dealer," who sagaciously valued it at 1,200 guineas, was 
 rewarded with 2% per cent., nay, some say 10 per cent, on the 
 purchase money. The charge for valuation, whatever it may 
 have been, as it was incurred through Mr. Eastlake's inexpe- 
 rience, was doubtless defrayed by him, and it therefore con- 
 cerns us but little. The touching instance of generosity which 
 he displayed in the offer of £50 out of his own pocket, to 
 induce the dealer to take back the picture " resembling" HOL- 
 BEIN in " manner," leaves us no room to question it. 
 
 The third and last purchase which I intend to notice for the 
 present, is that of " Philip IV. of Spain hunting the Wild 
 Boar," by Velasquez. This is, indeed, a most pleasant history, 
 
 * It is necessary to bear in mind that the beautiful " new " appear- 
 ance which this picture now presents, is owing to Mr. Eastlake having 
 superintended the removal of the " dirt," and the repainting of the 
 cracks. 
 
29 
 
 and one whose novelty will, unless I am greatly deceived, prove 
 not more striking* to the public than to some of the heroes 
 engaged in it. The trustees and the keeper, totally uncon- 
 scious of the strings which regulate their movements, are, it is 
 said, to the present moment, under the soothing impression that 
 a noble act of patriotism, on their part, has prevented the expor- 
 tation of this picture. They are still, perhaps, enjoying in bliss- 
 fid ignorance, the consolatory thought that it is free from the 
 degradation of having been hawked about in any other country 
 besides their own. Alas, that so charming a vision should ever 
 be dispelled ! It is, nevertheless, currently reported that it had 
 only just returned from an unsuccessful trip to Holland ; that 
 the threatened exportation was only a hoax ; and, finally, that 
 in the incredibly short space of four months it had been exported, 
 rejected in Holland, re-imported, and sold to the Gallery for the 
 small sum of £2,200. If this is the case, the excessive gullibi- 
 lity and ingenious trickery displayed in this transaction are both 
 so admirable in their way, that it would be difficult to award the 
 palm.* 
 
 Now, Sir, I hope it is unnecessary for me to remind the public, 
 that it is on them, and not on the silly vacillating dupe who 
 misrepresents them, that such egregious impostures can have 
 been practised ; and if any thing could add to our indignation at 
 official waste and official misdemeanour, it is when we see it re- 
 lieved and contrasted by the successful cunning of ignorant and 
 uneducated men. If this Velasquez was worthy of so great a 
 
 * A letter received from Holland has, since, fully confirmed the truth 
 of the above report ; I, in consequence, addressed the following note to 
 the Editor of " The Times" : — " Sir, — 1 beg to inform you that 1 have 
 ascertained by a letter this day received from Holland, that the picture 
 by Velasquez, which was ottered for sale at the Hague, about five 
 months ago, represented ' Philip the lVth of Spain, hunting the Wild 
 Boar.' — the same picture, which is now in the National Gallery, and for 
 which £2,200 were given. 
 
 " 1 remain, Sir, yours obediently, 
 
 "Verax. 
 
 " Wednesday, Jan. 20///." 
 
 " The Spectator" also favoured me by publishing on Saturday the 
 23rd of January, a note to the same effect. The confirmation of the 
 report that this pictnre had been sent to the Hague and there rejected, 
 arrived very opportunely, as it had come to my knowledge that attempts 
 were being made to throw discredit on my statement. 
 
 d2 
 
so 
 
 sacrifice to keep it in the country, what must we say of that cul- 
 pable indifference, which, after neglecting' it for so many years> 
 risked its loss in having allowed it to go to the Continent ? If, on 
 the other hand, it was not of such vast importance, how can we 
 sufficiently condemn the managers of the National Gallery, for 
 having suffered themselves to be bullied into buying it for £2,200 
 by the threat of exportation ? Not many months since this pic- 
 ture was offered to a private gentleman for £1,200 — little more 
 than half the sum we have been made to pay for it; but even at this 
 price it would not have been a desirable acquisition, as a better 
 picture might have been had for the money. We must, as I 
 have before insisted, have model works, if any, and not squander 
 the public money on fashionable mediocrity. 
 
 We are thus plundered through the notorious incapacity of 
 Mr. Eastlake, whose only guides in estimating a picture are 
 a eminent German friends," German handbooks, German twaddle 
 of every description, measurement of panels, exorbitant prices, 
 and threats of exportation. I have met with some persons who 
 are so pig-headed as to think that the " head and front" of his 
 "offending" in the libel case r was in having mistaken a name; 
 whereas, his offence lay in the gross ignorance manifested in his 
 admiration and purchase of a low-class picture at a price which 
 would have secured us a fine one. Had he bought a good, 
 though nameless work, he might have successfully defied the 
 revilings of all silly name- worshippers. So long as the purchases 
 continue under the control of a " board" consisting of persons 
 who ground their pretensions to such an ofiice on rank and poli- 
 tical distinction alone, and who mainly rely on an ignorant keeper, 
 who again rests on the solid basis of Teutonic pedantry, (of which 
 more on another occasion,) we must be constantly exposed to 
 the rapacity of every greedy speculator, whether disguised * or 
 professional. 
 
 * One of this numerous section of amateurs, recently had the modesty 
 to ask £2000 for an inferior picture by an inferior master ; — only a 
 little more than six hundred per cent, on the price he had paid for it a 
 few months previously. This self-denying individual did not " want" to 
 sell it, but he was " open " to an offer of £2000. It is confidently as- 
 serted that Mr. Keeper Eastlake, in (< his consummate knowledge of that 
 art of which he is so distinguished an ornament " was very nearly 
 
31 
 
 It is well known that commissions to agents Lave formed no 
 insignificant part of the prices of many of the pictures facetiously 
 said, in the official catalogue, to have been purchased by " Parlia- 
 ment." I may add, as a specimen of the utter helplessness of the 
 keeper, the explanation which he gave, to my certain knowledge, 
 in a public auction-room, when he was reproached with the 
 wretched selections which he made at Harman's sale in 1844. 
 His reply on that occasion was, " We (we?) thought it very de- 
 sirable to get something from that collection." Mr. Eastlake can 
 doubtless, explain, officially, the peculiar charm attached to the 
 name of " Harman." Although there is a cogency of reasoning 
 in this reply perfectly irresistible, I confess I have sometimes 
 thought that the " something" might have been better than the 
 choice souvenirs with which he has favoured us, in the low-class 
 u Infant Christ and St. John," by Guido, and the trumpery 
 " Portrait of G. Dow." 
 
 With a competent officer at the head of the National Gal- 
 lery, we should have as good, nay, a better chance of acquiring 
 pictures at a fair price than a private collector. A gentleman 
 wishing to dispose of a valuable work of art, would certainly, on 
 equal terms, prefer the nation as a customer ; for, besides the 
 satisfaction of having his name connected with an important 
 public establishment, he would retain a share in the property. 
 Any professed dealer would, I am convinced, be too happy to 
 make even a reduction in our favour, in consideration of so excel- 
 lent an advertisement, (the best he could possibly desire,) were it 
 not the general and very correct impression that a preposterous 
 price is an indispensable bait to catch the so-called " National " 
 purchasers. I here subjoin the unnecessary expense on each of 
 the three pictures above quoted : — 
 
 Unnecessary excess of expenditure 011 the Libel on 
 Holbein £380 
 
 Ditto on " Susanna and the Elders" 410 
 
 Ditto on the Velasquez 1,000 
 
 £1,790 
 
 swallowing the bait. The salutary doses administered by " Verax" had 
 perhaps,begun to operate, and made him cautious. The picture in ques- 
 tion, was to be seen a few weeks ago, in a fashionable shop not a hundred 
 miles from Trafalgar Square. 
 
32 
 
 Thus we find that the sum of £12,300 expended since Mr. 
 Eastlake's accession to the office of keeper, might, without reck- 
 oning- commissions, &c, not only have procured us both the 
 Methuen Raphael and Titian's " Tarquin and Lucretia," in 
 addition to his other acquisitions, but have left a handsome 
 balance in our favour. 
 
 I will venture to trespass on your time and space by a few 
 more remarks on circumstances of very recent occurrence. It 
 cannot be too forcibly urged on your readers' attention, that, in 
 spite of the just denunciations uttered by the press and public 
 generally, against the Vandalisms committed in the National 
 Gallery, Mr. Eastlake has not scrupled to declare that he had 
 anticipated a great deal of clamour, but that he intended, not- 
 withstanding, to proceed with the " cleaning." He has even 
 condescended to inform several persons that the " Consecration 
 of St. Nicholas," by Paul Veronese, is to be his next victim. 
 It is, therefore, necessary that the public speedily decide, whether 
 he is to continue in a position which will enable him to add 
 another to the already too many fatal proofs of his mischievous 
 incapacity. So violent has been the scouring on the mutilated 
 pictures, that, in addition to the removal of the rich transparent 
 glazings as so much dirt, the body-colour has also been injured ; 
 and the " Bacchus and Ariadne," besides having, in several 
 parts, suffered from the most shameful erasures, has, moreover, 
 been vitiated by some of those detestable interpolations as im- 
 pudently as falsely called " restorations." The crude and filmy 
 opacity of an ignorant " restorer" has, to Mr. Eastlake's 
 "entire satisfaction," usurped the place of Titian's resplendent 
 tints, and that marvellous truth of gradation so pre-eminently 
 conspicuous in the works of this prince of colourists, has been 
 cruelly violated by the merciless assaults of Mr. Eastlake and 
 his u daring familiars." I have lived too many years among the 
 finest works of Titian, not to know that this great author was 
 incapable of committing the gross blunders in aerial perspective, 
 now discernible in the " Bacchus and Ariadne," but which did 
 not exist previous to the last vacation. Mr. Eastlake will doubt- 
 less, in his next pamphlet on the National Gallery, again express 
 his " entire satisfaction" at the " result" of " such labours," 
 and make it his boast, that that which had resisted the attacks 
 
33 
 
 of more than three centuries, had been compelled, in a few hours, 
 to succumb to the " operations" carried on under his " super- 
 intendence." Should he favour us with a second edition of the 
 admirable pamphlet, from which I took the liberty of quoting 
 so largely in my last letter, a few explanatory remarks on his " 
 notions of the terms " risk" and " careful preservation," as 
 applied to pictures, would greatly extend its circulation, and 
 considerably enhance its value as a literary curiosity. 
 
 The blighting process partially effected on the " Bacchus 
 and Ariadne," has been consummated on the " Peace and War," 
 formerly so glowing and harmonious, now so conspicuously the 
 reverse that it is barely recognizable. So dreadfully has this 
 work been handled, that notwithstanding a well-practised and 
 tenacious memory with regard to pictures, my first impression 
 on seeing it after the last holydays was, (and I wish it to be un- 
 derstood literally), that it could not be the same picture. The 
 subversion of every law of aerial perspective is here so fla- 
 grant, that indignation is overwhelmed by astonishment at 
 the persevering stupidity which effected it. Yet Mr. East- 
 lake thinks that this now repnlsively discordant picture is as 
 Rubens left it. For a further condemnation of Mr. Eastlake's 
 " operations" on this fine work, I refer every intelligent person 
 to the " Chateau of Rubens," and to the " Rape of the Sabines" 
 in the same room, by the same master. Another, though 
 less elevated Trafalgar- square official, amuses himself by telling 
 people that " it is a notorious fact that the great masters never 
 glazed, and, consequently, that no glazings can have been re- 
 moved." Here we have at least a glimmering of reason, but it 
 happens unfortunately that there is no truth in the statement. 
 But what shall we say to the still more grievous drivelling 
 of those, who maintain that no great harm has been done to 
 the " Peace and War," as it is sure to "recover" in time?" 
 Cannot these subtle logicians see that the very term implies actual 
 disease ? But I will not insult your readers' understandings by 
 entering into a lengthy demonstration, that important results 
 can alone proceed from the operation of great principles ; that 
 the stupendous effects visible in the works of the greatest 
 painters, sculptors, and architects, are no exception to this 
 
34 
 
 law ; and, finally, that " time," so far from improving* any work 
 of human production, must inevitably injure, and at length 
 destroy it.* Let Mr. Eastlake enjoy as much liberty of con- 
 science as his " eminent German friends" will allow him ; let 
 him in private revel in the convenient belief that " time" will 
 transform bad pictures into good ones, but it is absolutely neces- 
 sary to prevent him from making- further experiments at the 
 expense of the civilized world. It is not sufficient that he pro- 
 mise " never to do so any more his removal would not only 
 be an act of justice to the violated muse, but a charity to him- 
 self. " If there is any sincerity in his u entire satisfaction," 
 (and who can doubt it?) must not his distorted vision suffer 
 the most excruciating torture, so long as a single picture is 
 allowed to retain its harmonious glazings ? Must we be con- 
 demned to live in perpetual dread lest some sudden practical 
 display of his outraged feelings deprive another picture of its 
 harmony and tone ? 
 
 The large Cuyp has also been injured; but the recently 
 purchased Velasquez has been reduced to a mere wreck. So 
 successfully have the warmth and strength been scoured out 
 of the foreground, that the distant wood-crowned hills threaten 
 to overwhelm the spectator, and make him fear the " wood 
 begins to move." The background being now as prominent 
 as any other part, the picture might be turned upside down, 
 by way of change, as it is quite as admissible, and far easier, 
 
 * " Notwithstanding the deep-rooted notion, even amongst the majo- 
 rity of Painters themselves, that time is a great improver of good pic- 
 tures, I will undertake to show that nothing can be more absurd. Hav- 
 ing mentioned the whole effect of the oil, let us now see in what manner 
 time operates on the colours themselves ; in order to discover if any 
 changes in them can give a picture more union and harmony than has 
 been in the power of a skilful master, with all his rules of art, to do. 
 When colours change at all, it must be somewhat in the manner follow- 
 ing ; for as they are made some of metal, some of earth, some of stone, 
 and others of more perishable materials, time cannot operate on them 
 otherwise than as by daily experience we find it doth, which is, that one 
 changes darker, another lighter, one quite to a different colour, whilst 
 another, as ultramarine, will keep its natural brightness even in the fire. 
 Therefore how is it possible that such different materials, ever variously 
 changing (visibly after a certain time), should accidentally coincide with 
 the artist's intention, and bring about the greater harmony of the piece, 
 when it is manifestly contrary to their nature?" — Hogarth* 
 
35 
 
 to turn figures with their legs upwards, than to lug distant 
 hills into the foreground. As it would be found a somewhat 
 difficult task to restore Velasquez's glazings, suppose we try 
 the effect of this picture in the position here suggested. The 
 bill for all this glorious work will be a document of no small 
 interest to posterity; the spirits alone must figure as no inconsider- 
 able item ; some idea of their strength may be gathered from the 
 expressions of a gentleman well known in the pictorial world, 
 who was heard to declare, more forcibly than grammatically, 
 that the denunciations of the press against the late Vandalisms, 
 " wasn't half so strong as the sperets as was used on the 
 " Peace and War.'" 
 
 Some persons have expressed their surprise that an " eminent 
 artist and Academician should so have committed himself." 
 These belong to a very simple class, as they are unacquainted 
 with the self-evident truth, that a knowledge of art is by no 
 means an indispensable qualification to becoming an " eminent 
 Academician," and that there are other and far easier means of 
 attaining that awful dignity. So great indeed is our refine- 
 ment in the fine arts, that there are Academicians who think 
 they can afford to sneer at the works of the greatest masters. 
 But as to that other question, whether an " eminent artist " 
 could have destroyed the excellence which he was bound to 
 revere, I feel that I cannot withdraw myself from the dilemma^ 
 except by either advancing a supposition detrimental to the 
 renown of Mr. Eastlake, or by belying my former asser- 
 tions : which course I am most likely to take I will leave to 
 the sagacity of your readers. Nevertheless, the Academy has 
 now a noble opportunity of throwing discredit on many of the 
 charges brought against it. Some of its enemies naturally hope 
 that it will display no interest in the matter ; but I, though no 
 admirer of such institutions, sincerely trust that it will. I scorn 
 to wish that any body of men should commit foolish acts, or 
 abstain from wise ones, to justify any theories I may enter- 
 tain concerning them. I should wish these to be tested by what 
 is excellent, not exalted by a comparison with what is the re- 
 verse. If the Academy has any veneration for what is truly 
 great in art — if its schools are not intended to cover some gross 
 
 E 
 
36 
 
 deception—it will come forward to denounce the proceedings 
 of its infatuated member. This were a step at once honorable 
 and politic ; but as it is much easier to find voters than men of 
 sense ; should those who are entitled to this name, (which I dare 
 almost think a more illustrious one than even that of Academi- 
 cian), be overruled by the majority, let them do themselves jus- 
 tice in the eyes of the world, by entering their individual pro- 
 tests against the decision of their colleagues. 
 
 Nothing but loud and reiterated condemnations of the irreve- 
 rent mangling-s which have been committed, and the interfer- 
 ence of Parliament ratifying' the public censure, will satisfy the 
 true and judicious friends of art ; for if the public be lukewarm, 
 there is every reason to fear that the blasting example of the 
 National Gallery will find imitators among the less judicious of 
 our private collectors. 
 
 Among the many specimens of intolerable cant in which 
 the upholders of abuses try to shelter themselves, there is one 
 which I hear is becoming very prevalent in certain quarters, 
 namely, that " Mr. Eastlake must be supported." Now, Sir, 
 we can all of us understand and recognise the necessity of sup- 
 porting* public officers ; we are bound not to shackle their pro- 
 ceedings by calling for explanations of every step they may 
 take in a series of complicated operations ; we are bound not to 
 prejudicate their conduct ; we ought, perhaps, to consider that 
 their very election to a public department is a presumptive argu- 
 ment for their capacity r, but if, after being obliged to witness 
 the palpable effects of gross blundering repeated in several 
 branches of the same charge, we are still told to respect the 
 sacro-sanct privileges of office, we are apt to transfer some por- 
 tion of our indignation from the principal culprit, to his mean 
 and disingenuous supporters. Support Mr. Eastlake ! in what ? 
 and against whom ? — in his rash ignorance against those works 
 of the great masters, whose very essence he has so wantonly de- 
 stroyed? or in his insolent arrogance against the outraged 
 public, whose indignation moves him so little, that he has de- 
 clared his resolution to persevere in spite of public opinion. 
 
 You, Sir, I am sure, and all who look boldly into the conduct 
 even of the highest functionaries, and care nothing for their emi- 
 
37 
 
 nence or the numbers of their followers, will support Truth, Genius, 
 Knowledge, and Taste, well knowing that those who dare to 
 tamper with their eternal foundations will be crushed in the 
 sacrilegious attempt. 
 
 I remain, Sir, 
 Your obedient and obliged servant, 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 Dec. 29. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Harrisian* Professor of Political Economy has contri- 
 buted her mite to the elucidation of the present question. She 
 kindly suggests to our public officers that it matters not how 
 they throw away the public money. We are to appoint and pay 
 them for their imagined superior intelligence and honesty, and 
 they, in return, are to allow us to be plundered without mercy 
 through the stupidity of dilettanti " boards" and by the rapacity 
 of conspiring knaves. Her puny mind cannot comprehend that 
 the "greatest customer" includes, not only the " prince" and the 
 " flunkey," but also the poor starving creature, without a home 
 to shelter herself and children. She afterwards thus announces 
 her discoveries on the value of master-pieces in painting; — " As 
 a picture has no reflex action on the production of wealth," 
 (bravo ! No influence even on the improvement of manufac- 
 tures ?) " it is always worth precisely as much as it will bring 
 at a given time, and neither more nor less. It has no intrinsic 
 money value, beyond so much canvass, lead and oil." 
 
 " A primrose by a river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him — 
 And it was nothing more !" 
 
 * " In trade, the gradations of rank murk the standard of price, from 
 the prince to the flunkey; and the nation, being the greatest customer 
 that any man can have, must be content to suffer some of the penalties 
 of its pre-eminence. As a picture has no reflex action in the production of 
 wealth, it is always worth precisely as much as it will bring at a given 
 time, and neither more nor less. It has no intrinsic money value be- 
 yond so much canvass, lead, and oil." — Ed. Morning Herald, Sa- 
 turday, January 2, 1837- 1 am sorry to say, that these are the opi- 
 nions of a very numerous class. It is because I believe that many of 
 them are well-intentioned and worth undeceiving, that 1 condescend to 
 notice the contemptible trash of " The Morning Herald." 
 
 e 2 
 
38 
 
 The creeds of Peter Bell and Mrs. Harris strikingly resemble 
 each other. According* to this rule, the works of Bacon, 
 Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, are just so much ink and 
 paper, which derive their adventitious value from the favour 
 with which any old woman may happen to regard them. For 
 my own part, I shall take leave to adhere to my former con- 
 victions, well assured that they are shared by the best and most 
 enlightened thinkers amongst us: — that the productions of 
 genius must be appraised by the beneficial effects which they 
 exercise upon mankind ; and that as " the ages of art and re- 
 finement are both the happiest and the most virtuous f and, 
 moreover, as " industry, knowledge, and humanity, are insepa- 
 rable from those ages, and not advantageous in private life 
 alone, but diffuse their beneficial influence on the public, and 
 render the Government as great and flourishing as they make 
 individuals happy and prosperous," so none but the most gro- 
 velling and disingenuous minds will ever seek to depreciate 
 the value of those productions, which are at once the solace and 
 the glory of mankind. 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I shall now notice a letter which appeared in " The Times" 
 of January 4th,* purporting to be a defence (!) of the doings of 
 
 * " THE SPOILT (?) PICTURES IN THE NATIONAL 
 GALLERY. 
 
 " To the Editor of The Times. 
 
 (( Sir, — Circumstances have prevented me until very recently from pay- 
 ing a visit to the National Gallery since it reopened after the autumn 
 recess. I went there with no anticipations of gratification ; for, deeming 
 it improbable that the reiterated complaints of your correspondents were 
 wholly without foundation, I expected to have found the mere wrecks of 
 some of the pictures, from the contemplation of which I had heretofore 
 derived the greatest pleasure. 
 
 ' ( Judge, then, of my agreeable surprise when I find that, so far from 
 being spoilt, the Cuyp is restored to its pristine freshness, the ( Peace 
 and War' of Rubens, comes out with a power and brilliancy which 
 throws the other works of that master in the Gallery comparatively into 
 
30 
 
 Mr. Eastlake in the NationaJ Gallery. If such was the inten- 
 tion of the writer, that gentleman has indeed reason to cry out, 
 " Save me from my friends!" Although it is foreign to my 
 purpose to notice all the random notions which any person so 
 totally unacquainted with the subject as " A. G." may be 
 pleased to utter, especially as I have already refuted, by antici- 
 pation, the would-be arguments adduced in that letter, I will, 
 nevertheless, say a few words in reply to this gentleman's won- 
 derful appreciation of Titian. He says that the " Bacchus and 
 Ariadne " evinces all the care of a young painter, whose reputa- 
 tion was hardly yet established," and draws his conclusions from 
 that assertion. Now, let us see what Vasari, Ridolfi, Ticozzi, 
 &c, say about this " hardly yet established reputation." 
 Giorgione died in 1511, and as Titian was born in 1477, he must 
 have been thirty-four years of age at that period. It is very well 
 known, to those who know any tiling of the subject, that Titian 
 had attained such excellence, and so great a reputation before 
 the death of his mighty rival, that their works were frequently 
 confounded, and that all historians concur in assigning the 
 estrangement which unfortunately befel these wonderful men, to 
 the friends of Titian having complimented Giorgione as having 
 surpassed lumself, in a work executed by the former on the out- 
 side of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, which both had been employed 
 to adorn in 1507 — four years previous to the decease of Gior- 
 gione. After this, Titian, " invited by the people of Vicenza, 
 
 the shade, and the ' Bacchus and Ariadne ' of Titian is seen for the 
 first time, since its acquisition by the nation, in a state to justify the esti- 
 mation in which it has been held as a masterpiece of colour. 
 
 " Here is assertion for assertion; but as I do not assume the privilege 
 of dictating to the public, 1 will endeavour to assign a valid reason for 
 the opinion which I have formed. It will be best illustrated by a re- 
 ference to the works of Titian in the Gallery. 
 
 " A very cursory examination of the three great works which we pos- 
 sess of this master would satisfy the meanest tyro in art that, while in 
 general conception and manner the)" show the working of the same mind, 
 they differ from each other greatly "in the details of execution. In fact, 
 indepeudentlv of their great intrinsic merit, they are valuable and inte- 
 resting, as affording, in three works, examples of the practice followed 
 by Titian at different periods of his life. The fust — the * Bacchus and 
 Ariadne' — the history of which is well known, evinces all the care of a 
 young painter, whose reputation was hardly yet established. It is distin- 
 guisliea by the purity, truth, and vivacity of its local colours, no less 
 
40 
 
 painted in their Palagio della Curia, the ' Judgment of Solomon/ 
 that it might serve as an example for the magistrates to judge 
 wisely." He afterwards executed the famous frescoes for the 
 Compagnia di Sant' Antonio in Padua, which are of a fine and 
 full manner. Still later, after having finished several works 
 Giorgione had left incomplete at the time of his death, he pro- 
 duced his second " Tobit and the Angel," for the church of San 
 Marcelliano ; " on which much admired picture he employed his 
 most delicate manner, tempering that wonted boldness" (not 
 much like a " young painter whose reputation was hardly yet 
 established " ) " with which he long afterwards continued to 
 paint." Then came our glorious " Bacchus and Ariadne," 
 whose date is pretty accurately ascertained by the fact of its 
 having- been one of a series of pictures, painted for a cabinet in 
 the palace of Alfonso I. of Ferrara. The first of these was 
 allotted to G. Bellini, whose death prevented him from painting 
 more than the figures. The following words are inscribed on a 
 tub to the right of the spectator ; " Joannes Bellinus, Venetus, 
 p. 1514;" and with this work he closed his career. The won- 
 derful landscape in this picture was added by Titian, who was 
 afterwards commissioned to complete the series. It may be 
 further observed, that Dolce, Titian's intimate friend, places the 
 date of that stupendous " Assumption of the Virgin," in the 
 Academy of Venice, described as painted nel fervore degli anni 
 suoi, and not remarkable for timidity of execution, as far back 
 
 than by the elaborate art which, by the aid of bold but skilfully har- 
 monized contrast, has given that lustre of effect for which this work 
 stands pre-eminent in the history of painting. The second — the ( Gany- 
 mede' — is a production of matured genius, worked with a full and bold 
 Pencil, and depending more for its effect on tone and arrangement of 
 light and shade, than on the play of colour observable in Titian's earlier 
 works. The third— the 'Venus and Adonis,' — is in the last style of 
 the master. In general attributes it differs little from his second manner, 
 but its colour depends more on what painters call glazings than either of 
 the other works. Though the term is familiar to those who have any 
 acquaintance with art, it may not be amiss to explain that glazings are 
 transparent colours, generally combined with varnish, and applied thinly 
 over opaque colours, to subdue or enrich and harmonize their effect. 
 
 " It is evident that the effect of dirt or accumulated and discoloured 
 varnish must be very different on pictures in which much glazing has 
 been employed, and on those in which tone has been acquired by the 
 careful use of virgin tints. In both cases obscurity is the result ; but in 
 the first the accumulation has the effect of exaggerating rather than 
 
41 
 
 as 1607, while none make it later than 1510. It is therefore 
 evident, that Titian was not far short of forty years old when he 
 produced our splendid, but much injured u Bacchus and Ari- 
 adne/' and it is equally clear that he was then a painter of vast 
 renown, the companion of princes, and, what is better, the inti- 
 mate friend of some of the most intellectual men of that day. 
 Vasari and Ticozzi, moreover, agTee in fixing* the year 1513 for 
 his appointment to the office of the Sensaria,* usually given, like 
 that of the Piombo in Rome, as a reward to the most excellent 
 painter. Of such perfection did the gTeat Annibale Caracci 
 esteem the " Bacchus and Ariadne," and the other pictures of the 
 series, that in his enthusiasm he pronounced them the " finest 
 pictures in the world ;" and the hig-h-minded Domenichino was 
 moved even to tears when its companions were exported from 
 Italyf. So much for " A. G.'s" kind allowances for the " Bacchus 
 and Ariadne,"and his appreciation of its merits}. "A. G." has also 
 been pleased to contribute his mite to the history of art, — but 
 even this modest designation of his pretensions is far, very far 
 above his genuine value. I would suggest a rap,\ (a bad half- 
 
 * Ridolfi places this event later, 
 f To Spain. 
 
 + It is of too common occurrence to hear priggish dilettanti make allow- 
 ances for the great works which they cannot comprehend ; whereas, had 
 they, instead, the modesty and the seme to make allowances for them- 
 selves, they would have some chance of improvement. '* The Bacchus 
 and Ariadne," whose history is so well known" to A. G., " evinces all 
 the care, &c." because Titian had the wit to know that high finish was 
 essential to pictures intended to ornament a small room. High finish, 
 in its best sense, that is, the attainment of the greatest result, so far from 
 evincing zveakness, is the greatest proof of power ; and the " Bacchus 
 and Ariadne", is a beautiful example of this, as being not only one of the 
 most highly finished, but, at the same time, one of the most powerfully 
 executed pictures in the Gallery. 
 
 § Vide Walker's Dictionary. 
 
 altering the subduing effect of the glaze; in the second, it wholly con- 
 ceals the delicate and pearly colours which give freshness to the work. 
 The effect of the removal of the accumulation is, of course, equally dif- 
 ferent. In the case of the first, the spectator is pleased to see the beau- 
 ties of the picture more clearly developed, while its general effect remains 
 the same. In the second, he sees the work in an entirely new aspect ; 
 and used, perhaps, to dirt, as the usual accompaniment of old pictures, 
 and mistaking monotony for harmony, he is startled by the appearance 
 of contrasts for which his eye is not prepared, and raises or joins a cry 
 that the picture has been scrubbed to death. 
 
42 
 
 penny), by way of various reading*, which will present us 
 with that combination of penury and forgery, that will at once 
 represent the meagreness of his logic and the falsehood of his 
 facts. But the next time he offers his bad halfpenny to the 
 support of a congenial cause, I would advise him to remember 
 that no one ever despised his readers, but he ended by making 
 himself ridiculous ; for what can we call it but contempt for his 
 readers' understandings, when, in treating the question of the 
 mutilations, he omits all mention of the proofs which I have 
 advanced in my former letters, and speaks confidently in the 
 face of mangled works, which, I will venture to say, nine-tenths 
 of the inhabitants of London, uninitiated as they are, will 
 perceive to have been most foully handled, the moment they 
 are taught where to look, and with what to compare them. 
 For a refutation, therefore, of " A. G. V ridiculous jargon, I 
 must refer the reader to my former letters, and to the elaborate 
 expositions of The Spectator on the subject, which have been 
 repeated in TJie Examiner, and several other papers. I have 
 only one more argument to add in this place, and that is of the 
 presumptive kind : — Given managers and a keeper who prefer 
 inferiority on principle, and lavish needless sums in the acquisi- 
 tion of all that partakes of it, while they are insensible to the 
 merit of consummate masterpieces ; and supposing such persons 
 to have exercised their ingenuity as " cleaners" and " restorers" 
 on works of the latter kind, to that degree, that one witness finds 
 
 " Now, this is precisely what has occurred with the pictures of the 
 'Venus and Adonis' and the 'Bacchus and Ariadne.' The former 
 was cleaned about two years ago : connoisseurs were pleased with the 
 result, and cavillers were silent. The latter has undergone precisely the 
 same process, and, if I am not mistaken, by the same hand ; and the 
 result is an outcry against the managers of the institution. 
 
 " It is remarkable that the foregoing remarks apply equally to two 
 works of Rubens. The ' Judgment of Paris,' acquired last year, was 
 cleaned before it was hung up in the Gallery. Those who had seen it in 
 the auction gallery when it was purchased, were sensible of the judici- 
 ous manner in which its beauties were brought to light before it was 
 exhibited to the public. That picture is painted on panel with very 
 thin colour, and depends much on glazing for its effect. The * Peace and 
 War,' on the other hand, is painted with solid colour on canvass, and 
 has little if any glazing about it. Why, its fresh and delicate tones 
 would have been totally destroyed by glazing, as they were obscured, 
 until lately, by dirt and discoloured varnish. 
 
43 
 
 it hard to recognise the u Peace and War" as the same picture, 
 while another declares that the " Bacchus and Ariadne" is ren- 
 dered visible, " for the first time, since its acquisition to the na- 
 tion, in a state to justify the estimation in which it has been 
 held as a masterpiece of colour ;" and that all the world admits 
 a very extensive change of one kind or another, — to what cate- 
 gory, I ask, would a man of experience be inclined to refer their 
 operations? — to that of improvement, or to that of corruption? 
 But, alas, for induction and common sense, when the authority 
 of " boards " is at stake ! We should load the sciolist with the 
 bitterest reproaches, who, if he found a MSS., (suppose of some 
 inedited play of Shakspeare,) should presume to rectify it by 
 erasures and interpolations ; but those who defile the sanctuary 
 of visible nature are to rejoice in official impunity, and all the 
 u small change" of sham intellect and the mites of criticism 
 are to defend them, As to " A. G.'s" triumphant sally upon 
 the " Judgment of Paris," " those (?) who had seen it in the 
 auction gallery," &c , were sensible of the judicious manner in 
 which its beauties had been brought to light," <fec, — it was not 
 to be expected that " A. G.," who so innocently begs people to 
 " judge of his agreeable surprise on finding the 1 Peace and War' 
 of Rubens come out with a power and brilliancy," &c, should 
 have discovered the smooth and monotonous tamSness to which 
 the " Judgment of Paris," * by the same master, has been re- 
 
 • It was for this very reason that I forbore to make any mention of 
 this pictnre when I cited the " Chateau of Rubens," which I wished 
 the public to compare with the " Peace and War," in order that they 
 might see what it was that a practised eye missed on beholding that 
 picture after it had been cleaned. 
 
 " I am far from being an advocate for overcleaning. The Gallery, 
 unfortunately, has examples enough of that fatal practice, though its 
 managers are not answerable for them. Witness mat still noble work, 
 the " Ecce Homo," by Correggio. But where pictures are obscured by 
 neglect or injudicious treatment, it is necessary that the superficial en- 
 cumbrance should be removed. Your correspondent " Argus" is, I 
 suppose, keen-sighted enough to see through obstacles which baffle 
 •ordinary sight ; but, humble mortal as I am, I confess that it is only on 
 very favourable days that I can discover the silvery tones of Paul 
 Veronose through trie horny substance which covers his fine work in the 
 Gallery ; that the Salvator Rosa would to me lose nothing of its poetry if, 
 
duced by the scrubbing' process ; but those who could understand, 
 and knew this work, not only in the " auction gallery," but in 
 Mr. Penrice's house in Yarmouth, are fully aware that it has 
 since been considerably injured. The " cavillers" were not so 
 silent as "A. G." imagines. A letter on the subject was for- 
 warded last year to " The Times" but the writer, unacquainted 
 with the rules to be observed in such cases, omitted to send his 
 name and address, — otherwise those Vandalisms would have 
 been exposed, and the still greater recent ones might perhaps 
 have been prevented. 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 it were something more palpable than mere " darkness visible ;" and 
 that I should regard some of the Claudes with more pleasure if the re- 
 moval of the semi-opaque oil which the treatment of the late Sir George 
 Beaumont has left upon their surface restored to light the fresh and 
 aerial tones of those delightful landscapes. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 A. G. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 For two months and upwards, had the ears of the public been 
 ringing with the denunciations uttered by the more intelligent 
 portion of the press against the unrelenting havoc committed 
 on several fine pictures ; " The Times" had devoted column after 
 column to the recital of manifold and gross abuses in the ma- 
 nagement of the National Gallery, when, at last, the " coming 
 man" who was, by his decision, to settle the controversy for 
 ever, vouchsafed to declare himself.* " The Author of Modern 
 
 * " To the Editor of The Times. 
 
 « January 7, 1847. 
 ce Sir, — As I am sincerely desirous that a stop may be put to the dan- 
 gerous process of cleaning lately begun in our National Gallery, and as 
 I believe that what is right is most effectively when most kindly advocated, 
 and what is true most convincingly when least passionately asserted, I was 
 grieved to see the violent attack upon Mr. Eastlake in your columns of 
 Friday last ; yet not less surprised at the attempted defence which ap- 
 peared in them yesterday. The outcry which has arisen upon this 
 subject has been just, but it has been too loud; the injury done is 
 
45 
 
 Painters" lias deigned to inform us that, as regards the " Peace 
 and War/' he lias " no hesitation in asserting, that for the pre- 
 sent it is utterly, and for ever partially, destroyed." Those 
 who are dissatisfied with this decree hecause they cannot under- 
 stand how it is possible to destroy a picture utterly for the 
 present, and only partially for ever, must endeavour to find a 
 solution of the difficulty, by pondering over that other dictum, 
 that the u mellow effect left by time is almost as precious as 
 the glazing of the picture. It is probable that when they come 
 to perceive a meaning in the latter, they will also find that the 
 former is in strict accordance with all the rules of logic. Our 
 " Author," furthermore, says that he " could not but look upon the 
 attack made upon the pictures" (mark the plural) u as on the 
 violation of a sanctuary," although he has, as yet, discovered 
 only one injured picture, that is, the u Peace and War." He 
 has likewise found out that "our national collection" is badly 
 managed and wretchedly arranged, and that " the principles of 
 selection which have been acted upon in the various purchases 
 made within the last five or six years, have been as extraordi- 
 nary as unjustifiable." Of that libel on Holbein, he says ; " I do 
 not speak of the spurious Holbein, for though the veriest tyro 
 might well be ashamed of such a purchase, it (the i spurious 
 Holbein') would have been a judicious addition, had it (the 
 ' spurious Holbein') been genuine." Here we have in a " genuine 
 spurious Holbein," another example of that kind of juxtaposi- 
 
 neithor so great nor so wilful as has been asserted, and I fear that ihe 
 respect which might have been paid to remonstrance may be refused to 
 clamour. 
 
 • " I was inclined at first to join as loudly as any in the hue and cry. 
 Accustomed, as I have been, to look to England as the refuge of the 
 pictorial as of all other distress, and to hope thatj having no high art of 
 her own, she would at least protect what she could not produce, and 
 respect what she could not restore, 1 could not but look upon the attack 
 which has been made on the pictures in question as on the violation of a 
 sanctuary. I had seen in Venice the noblest works of Veronese painted 
 over with flake white with a brush fit for tarring ships; 1 had seen in 
 Florence Angelica's highest inspiration rotted and scared into fragments 
 of old wood, burnt into'blisters, or blotted into glutinous maps of mildew; 
 I had seen in Paris Raphael restored bv David and Vemet; and 1 re- 
 turned to England in the one last trust that, though her National Gal- 
 lery was an European jest, her art a shadow, and her connoisseurship 
 
 f2 
 
46 
 
 tion of ideas which the same authority calls " magnificently im- 
 possible." He was, moreover, "inclined at first to join as 
 loudly as any in the hue and cry/' but the mere " violation of a 
 sanctuary, * — the destruction of the "Peace and utterly for 
 the present and partial for ever, — the bad management and 
 ignorant arrangement of our national collection, — the unjus- 
 tifiable as extraordinary selection in the purchase of pictures 
 generally, and the shameful acquisition of the " spurious Hol- 
 bein" in particular, — have since convinced him that " the outcry 
 which has arisen on the subject, has been too loud," and he "was 
 grieved to see in the columns of ' The Times/ the violent at- 
 tack upon Mr. Eastlake," whom as the purchaser of the " Spu- 
 rious Holbein," he himself has classed beneath "the veriest 
 tyro ;" but he is nevertheless, " not disposed lightly to impugn 
 the judgment of Mr. Eastlake." He adds, "the large Cuyp is, 
 I think, nearly uninjured &c." " The distance has indeed lost 
 the appearance of sunny haze, which was its chief charm, but 
 this" (the sunny haze, its chief charm), " I have little doubt it 
 originally did not possess, and in process of time may reco- 
 ver." The sense is here very obscure, but the nonsense is so 
 beautifully conspicuous, that the reader will be curious to learn 
 who this "Author of Modern Painters" may be, whose decisions 
 I am introducing to their notice. His full style and cogni- 
 zance is, as follows: — "The Author of Modern Painters 5 their 
 superiority (!) in the Art of landscape painting to all the ancient 
 
 an hypocrisy, though she knew neither how to cherish nor how to 
 choose, and lay exposed to the cheats of every vendor of old canvass, 
 yet that such good pictures as through chance or oversight might, find 
 their way beneath that preposterous portico, and into those melancholy 
 and miserable rooms, were at least to be vindicated thenceforward from 
 the mercy of republican, priest, or painter, safe alike from musketry, 
 monkery, and manipulation. 
 
 " But, whatever pain I may feel at the dissipation of this dream, I am 
 not disposed altogether to deny the necessity of some illuminatory process 
 with respect to pictures exposed to a London atmosphere and populace. 
 Dust an inch thick, accumulated upon the frames m the course of the 
 day, and darkness closing over the canvass like a curtain, attest too 
 forcibly the influence on floor and air of the ' mutable, rank-scented, 
 many.' It is of little use to be over anxious for the preservation of pic- 
 tures which we cannot see ; the only question is, whether in the present 
 instance the process may not have been carried perilously far, and 
 
1? 
 
 Masters, proved (!) by examples of the True (!), the Beautiful (. r ), 
 and the Intellectual (!), from the works of modern Artists, 
 especially from those of J. M. W. Turner, Esq. R. A." Lest we 
 should be tempted to question the authority of his work, he has 
 given us to understand that he is a " Graduate of Oxford." 
 What service he has rendered the cause of Art in general, we 
 shall have occasion to see presently ; the amount of his achieve- 
 ments in settling' the present question, the reader will have already 
 perceived to be, that with the exception of what he says about 
 the Cuyp, which is entirely his own, he has rehearsed, in his pe- 
 culiar fashion, (I cannot say that he has confirmed,) that portion 
 of my grave charges against the " board" and Keeper of the 
 National Gallery, which has been stated above. 
 
 Now, it appears to me that none but a very unfair, or a very 
 impudent and self-sumcient person, after recognizing the truth of 
 so many of my most important statements, would have lightly 
 contradicted me in others of a grave character. A modert 
 person would have argued, that a man who had discovered so 
 much of truth, might, possibly, have detected things which he 
 could not ; a clever person would have been shrewd enough to 
 have surmised, at least the improbability of such folly as that of 
 asserting an untruth for the slight chance of any temporary 
 assistance it could bring, with the certainty of its object 
 being defeated in the end. But the " Author of Modern Pain- 
 ters, &c." who is neither just, nor modest, nor wise, meets me 
 
 whether in future simpler and safer means may not be adopted to 
 remove the coat of dust and smoke, without affecting either the 
 glazing of the picture, or, what is almost as precious, the mellow 
 tone left by time. 
 
 "As regards the ' Peace and War,' I have no hesitation in assert- 
 ing that for the present it is utterly, and for ever partially, destroyed. 
 I am not disposed lightly to impugn the judgment of Mr. Eastlake,' but 
 this was indisputably of all the pictures in the gallery that which least 
 required and least could endure the process of cleaning. It was in 
 the most advantageous condition under which a work of Rubens can 
 be seen ; mellowed by time into more perfect harmony than when it 
 left the easel, enriched and warmed without losing any of its freshness 
 or energy. The execution of the master is always so bold and frank 
 as to be completely, perhaps, even most agreeably, seen under cir- 
 cumstances of obscurity, which would be injurious to pictures of 
 greater refinement: and, though this was, indeed, one of his most 
 
48 
 
 with a flat contradiction, and at once pronounces Verax " alike 
 unacquainted with the previous condition of the ' Bacchus and 
 Ariadne/ and with the character of Titian distances in general, 
 when he complains of a loss of aerial quality, resulting in the 
 present case, from cleaning." To the first, I beg to say, that it 
 would give me the greatest pleasure to know any one better 
 acquainted with the general appearance of this noble work, or 
 with every portion of its details, than I have been for the last 
 five years. To the second, I reply, that if the greater part of a 
 life spent in places where I was daily surrounded by the most 
 stupendous productions of Titian and his mighty compeers; if 
 the most persevering investigation, during that period, of Titian's 
 works in particular, have left me unacquainted with " Titian 
 distances in general," the " Oxford Graduate," who was employ- 
 ing- his time in collecting the sesthetical jargon, and the frippery 
 of false antithesis and tawdry alliteration, which he was to palm 
 off on his readers for criticism and fine writing, is not likely to 
 have learnt so much of " Titian distances in general" as to 
 justify his taxing me with ignorance. If scraping or rubbing 
 the lights of the white drapery of the foreshortened uplifted off 
 arm of the " Ariadne," so violently as to move even the body- 
 colour, and so raw as to deprive it of that warmth with which 
 Titian overspread the rest of the picture — thus leaving it more 
 positive and white than another portion of the same white dra- 
 pery on the advancing leg of the same figure, and bringing into 
 
 highly finished and careful works (to my mind, before it suffered this 
 recent injury, far superior to everything at Antwerp, Malines, or Co- 
 logne), this was a more weighty reason for caution than for interference. 
 Some portions of colour have been exhibited which were formerly un- 
 traceable ; but even these have lost in power what they have gained in 
 definiteness, — the majesty and preciousness of all the tones are de- 
 parted, the balance of distances lost. Time may, perhaps, restore some- 
 thing of the glow, but never the subordination ; and the more delicate 
 portion of flesh tints, especially the back of the female on the left, and of 
 the boy in the centre, are destroyed for ever. 
 
 " The large Cuyp is, I think, nearly uninjured. Many portions of the 
 foreground painting have been revealed, which were before only to be 
 traced painfully, if at all. The distance has, indeed, lost the appearance 
 of sunny haze, which was its chief charm, but this I have little doubt it 
 originally did not possess, and in process of time may recover. 
 
 " The e Bacchus and Ariadne ' of Titian has escaped so scot-free 
 
49 
 
 offensive nearness that which should appear more remote, thereby 
 causing- the colouring- and the drawing to belie each other; 
 — if scraping- or rubbing- the lights of the Hying- red drapery of 
 the " Bacchus/' so raw, that it now seems to advance before its 
 proper plane, and is so painfully obtrusive that it threatens either to 
 drag- its owner out of the picture or to leave him without his cloak ; 
 — if scraping- or rubbing- the wreath of white jasmines which encir- 
 cles the head of the inimitable young- satyr, so raw, that it now 
 advances more than the beautiful flower (which has escaped the 
 claws of Mr. Eastlake's familiars) in the ground on the first plane 
 of the picture, and must, consequently, either be divorced from 
 the lovely head of which it is so appropriate an ornament, or 
 bring that lovely head along- with it away from its body ; — if 
 scraping- or rubbing- the lights of the white draperies of the 
 nymph with the cymbals, so raw, that besides being robbed of 
 their harmonious warmth, they force their lovely mistress offen- 
 sively in advance of the magnificent Faun with the serpents, 
 who, according to the linear perspective, is considerably nearer 
 to the spectator ; —if scraping or rubbing the upper part of the 
 " Silenus" so raw, as to render it to that degree positive and 
 advancing, that the jolly old man is not only made to look like 
 a wretched dwarf, but the intention of the painter to make him 
 lean from the observer, is completely frustrated ; — if scraping or 
 rubbing the uplifted arm of the Faun brandishing a calf's leg, 
 so raw, that it now obtrudes itself in a manner that the 
 
 that, not knowing it had been cleaned, I passed it without noticing any 
 change. 1 observed only that the blue ot the distance was more intense 
 than I had previously thought it, though, four years ago, 1 said of that 
 distance that it was ' difficult to imagine anything more magnificently 
 impossible, not from its vividness, but because it is not faint and aerial 
 enough to account for its purity of colour. There is so total a want of 
 atmosphere in it, that but for the difference of form, it would be impos- 
 sible to distinguish the mountains from the robe of Ariadne.' • 
 
 " Your correspondent is alike unacquainted with the previous condi- 
 tion of this picture, and with the character of Titian distances in gene- 
 ral, when he complains of a loss of aerial quality resulting in the present 
 case from cleaning. 
 
 " I unfortunately did not see the new Velasquez until it had under- 
 gone its discipline, but I have seldom met with an example of the 
 
 * "Modern Painters," vol. i. p. 14G. 
 
50 
 
 position of tins figure is rendered " magnificently impossible - 
 if scrubbing so much of the glazing off the sky, as to give it the 
 appearance of being illumined by a different light from that 
 which belonged to the design of the author ; — if stippling the 
 left pectoral and deltoid muscles of the " Bacchus" with the 
 filthy, filmy, and opaque daubings of a contemptible "restorer f — 
 if all this and more* is not infamously mutilating that great 
 work, and violating the laws of aerial perspective, the " Gra- 
 duate," in addition to having told us what is, may, perhaps, 
 inform us what is not escaping "scot free." His voluntary 
 confession of incapacity in first saying, "The Bacchus and 
 Ariadne" has escaped so scot free that, not knowing it had been 
 cleaned, I passed it without noticing any change 5" and then add- 
 ing immediately after ; " I observed only that the blue of the dis- 
 tance was more intense," more " magnificently impossible," &c. ; 
 I shall leave the reader to dispose of, reminding him, lest he 
 should be weakly merciful in his verdict, that this very person 
 has not scrupled in his book to speak of the " glaringly false 
 distances of Titian:"! — the contempt of the public, therefore, 
 should be in proportion to the impudence of those who make 
 experiments on its forbearance. The small fry, " wriggling" 
 
 * I am perfectly aware that the " Bacchus and Aradne " had suffered 
 before, but it has undergone these additional serious injuries during the 
 last vacation. 
 
 f For this, and every other passage not in his letter to ef The Times," 
 I refer the reader to the Graduate's book. 
 
 master which gave me more delight, or which I believed to be in more 
 genuine or perfect condition. I saw no traces of the retouching, which 
 is hinted at by your correspondent f Verax,' nor are the touches on that 
 canvass such as to admit of very easy or untraceable interpolation of 
 meaner handling. His complaint of loss of substance in the figures of the 
 foreground is, I have no doubt, altogether groundless. He has seen 
 little southern scenery if he supposes that the brilliancy and apparent 
 nearness of the silver clouds is in the slightest degree overcharged, 
 and shows little appreciation of Velasquez, in supposing him to have sa- 
 crificed the solemnity and might of such a distance to the inferior in- 
 terest of the figures in the foreground. Had he studied the picture 
 attentively, he might have observed that the position of the horizon 
 suggests, and the lateral extent of the foreground proves^ such a 
 distance between the spectator and even its nearest figures as may well 
 justify the slightness of their execution. 
 
51 
 
 through their u own mud," is no inapt illustration of the ponl* 
 pous self-complacency with which this " Author" pilfers from 
 his own lucubrations of " four years ago." But let it be re- 
 marked, that he is " no mere theorist, but has been devoted from 
 his youth to the laborious study of practical Art, " so laborious 
 indeed, that he has not even had time to see that the phrase, 
 H magnificently impossible," when reduced by the rules of com- 
 mon sense, means nothing more than the preposterously 
 absurd; that the " impossible" is the false ; and that the 
 false is the despicable, and not " magnificent." He has indeed 
 discovered a " mare's nest" if he has found " magnificent impos- 
 sibilities" in Titian! During a tolerably long acquaintance with 
 his works, I never did ; but I have found, instead, something 
 rather better- — magnificent possibilities; that is, stupendous 
 truths conveyed to the senses through the most enchanting me- 
 dium. Those, and those only, who with a modest and perse- 
 vering spirit, search for these in the works of that wonderful 
 man, will find in the end a rich reward for their labours. 
 
 The following furnishes a specimen of distortion of vision as 
 remarkable, though not so mischievous, as that which has beea 
 displayed in Mr. Eastlake's exploits : " How many people are 
 misled by what has been said or sung of the serenity of Italian 
 skies, to suppose that they must be more blue than the skies of 
 the North,* and that they see them so ; whereas, the sky of Italy 
 
 • Some one has told the " Graduate," that, the skies of the North, 
 that is, of the extreme North, are occasionally very blue, and he has 
 jumped to the conclusion that Italian skies must be very grey and dull. 
 Now I beg to hint that those who have " snug" best about the " se- 
 renity of the Italian skies," have had their upper stories rather better 
 furnished than his, and have generally made a right use of their eyes. 
 1 would, therefore, suggest to the " Graduate," that when he next 
 honours Italy with his presence, should the sky there appear to him 
 " far more dull and grey " than ours, he would do well to doubt the 
 evidence of his senses, and to " suppose" it more blue. 
 
 " Even granting that some of the upper glazings of these figures had 
 been removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, gray, and glit- 
 tering, and the dependence on the power of its whites so absolute, that 
 I think the process hardly to be regretted which has left these in lustre 
 so precious, and restored to a brilliancy which a comparison with any 
 modern work of similar aim would render apparently supernatural the 
 sparkling motion of its figures, and the serene snow of its sky. 
 
 G 
 
52 
 
 is far more dull and grey in colour than the skies of the North, 
 and is distinguishable only by its intense repose of light". To be 
 sure ! or intense light of repose, or any other way you may 
 please to arrange the sentence. Those who have lived in Italy 
 will be much edified by this " Graduate's" discoveries on 
 Italian skies. 
 
 That other barbarously mutilated picture, the recently pur- 
 chased Velasquez, which, since it was half rubbed out, has been 
 not inaptly compared, to a " chalk-pit," he " unfortunately did 
 not see until it had undergone its discipline" by the " illumina- 
 tory process but he was quite delighted at its genuine and 
 perfect condition," and has "no doubt" that what " Verax" has 
 advanced respecting the loss of the warmth and strength to 
 the foreground, is "altogether groundless." Let me now call the 
 readers' attention to what follows shortly after ; " even granting 
 that some of the upper glazings have been removed, the tone of 
 the whole picture is so light, gray, and glittering, and the de- 
 pendence on the power of its whites so absolute, that I think the 
 process hardly to be regretted which has left these in lustre so 
 precious, and restored to a brilliancy which a comparison with 
 any modern work of similar aim would render apparently super- 
 natural the sparkling motion (!) of its figures and the serene 
 snow (!) of its sky." Thus, he first pronounces my complaint 
 of injury to the figures in the foreground, " altogether ground- 
 less," and immediately after, graciously allows that some of the 
 
 " I believe I have stated to its fullest extent all the harm which has 
 as yet been done, yet I earnestly protest against any continuance of the 
 treatment to which these pictures have been subjected. It is useless to 
 allege that nothing but discoloured varnish has been withdrawn, for it 
 is perfectly possible to alter the structure and continuity, and so destroy 
 the aerial relations of colours, of which no part has been removed. 1 
 have seen the dark blue of a water-colour drawing made opaque and 
 pale merely by mounting it, and, even supposing no other injury were 
 done, every time a picture is cleaned it loses, like a restored building, 
 part of its authority ; and is thenceforward liable to dispute and suspi- 
 cion, every one of its beauties open to question, while its faults are 
 screened from accusation. It cannot be any more reasoned from with 
 security ; for, though allowance may be made for the effect of time, no 
 one can calculate the arbitrary and accidental changes occasioned by 
 violent cleaning. None of the varnishes should be attacked ; whatever 
 the medium used, nothing but soot and dust should be taken away, and 
 
33 
 
 " upper glazings" have been removed from these figures, but 
 that the " process is hardly to be regretted." So that £2,200 of 
 the public money is to be squandered on an inferior work, to in- 
 dulge the Keeper in futile attempts to reduce whatever merits 
 it may possess, to a level with his own conceptions, and to sa- 
 tisfy the diseased fancies of his friend the " Oxford Graduate." 
 
 The principles of the Sublime and Beautiful in nature and art, 
 are like all principles fixed in themselves, though only to be at- 
 tained by severe study ; and yet every whipper-snapper who has 
 learnt a little of that barbarous terminology which passes under 
 the name of science at Oxford, or who has flattered himself into 
 a belief that he is a metaphysician because he spells his adjec- 
 tives with capital letters, imagines that he is quite at liberty to 
 venture into the province of artists, and to prattle about those 
 rules of taste which it is their duty to inculcate. When, how- 
 ever, this interference extends to printing authoritative judg- 
 ments upon the art and its masters, every blunder and absurdity 
 which is committed in such a work, is aggravated into a moral 
 fault , and its author is justly chargeable with all the odium 
 which attaches to those who sacrifice important truths which 
 they cannot understand, to personal vanity. As I believe every 
 one to be morally responsible for dogmatizing on matters in 
 which a principle is involved, I must notice the surmises which 
 this " Graduate" has uttered against my competency as a judge 
 of this question. He says " Verax" has seen little southern 
 
 that chiefly by delicate and patient friction ; and, in order to protract as 
 long as possible the necessity even for this, all the important pictures in 
 the gallery should at once be put under glass, and closed, not merely by 
 hinged doors, like the Correggio, but permanently and securely. I 
 should be glad to see this done in all rich galleries, but it is peculiarly 
 necessary in the case of pictures exposed in London, and to a crowd 
 freely admitted four days in the week ; it would do good also by neces- 
 sitating the enlargement of the rooms, and the bringing ot all the 
 pictures down to the level of the eye. Every picture that is worth 
 buying or retaining is worth exhibiting in its proper place, and if its 
 scale be large and its handling rough, there is the more instruction to 
 be gained by close study of the various means adopted by the master to 
 secure his distant effect. We can certainly spare both the ground and 
 the funds which would enable us to exhibit pictures for which no price 
 is thought too large, and for all purposes of study, and for most of en- 
 joyment, pictures are useless when tney are even a little above the line. 
 
 a 2 
 
54 
 
 scenery if he supposes that the brilliancy and appearance of the 
 silver (!) clouds, (a sky of ' serene snow' with ' silver clouds' 1 
 would, indeed, belong 1 to the 4 magnificently impossible/) is in 
 the slightest degree overcharged, and shews little knowledge 
 of Velasquez, in supposing him" (to have known what glazings 
 to put on his picture ?) " to have sacrificed the solemnity and 
 might of such a distance," (mark the term,) " to the inferior in- 
 terest of the figures in the foreground." As to the first 
 part of this sentence, it so happens that " Verax" has lived up- 
 wards of twenty years in countries varying in latitude from 45° 
 North to 40° South of the Equator, so that he must at least 
 have had opportunities of seeing a tolerably extensive range of 
 southern scenery. As to the second, it happens unfortunately 
 for this " Graduate's" postulate, that the Great Masters were so 
 confoundedly obstinate as to have invariably kept solemn and 
 mighty distances in the distance. Even Titian, in that model- 
 back-ground of his "Peter Martyr," has given the strongest 
 instance of his " glaringly false" manner of treating " distance," 
 in not having lugged it into the foreground as Mr. Eastlake has 
 done in the case of the Velasquez. How the u Graduate" re- 
 conciles his " earnest protest against any continuance of the 
 treatment to which these pictures have been subjected" with the 
 not-to-be-regretted process which has left "the Velasquez so 
 precious in lustre," is a riddle to be explained at the same time 
 as those which I have quoted in the beginning of my letter. 
 
 The fatigue complained of by most persons in examining a picture gal- 
 lery is attributable, not to the number of works, but to their confused 
 order of succession, and to the straining of the sight in endeavouring to 
 penetrate the details of those above the eye. Every gallery should be 
 long enough to admit of its whole collection being hung in one line, 
 side by side, and wide enough to allow of the spectators retiring to the 
 distance at which the largest picture was intended to be seen. The 
 works of every master should be brought together, and arranged in 
 chronological order, and such drawings or engravings as may exist in 
 the collection, either of, or for, its pictures, or in any way illustrative of 
 them, should be placed in frames opposite each, in the middle of the 
 room. 
 
 " But, Sir, the subjects of regret connected with the present manage- 
 ment of our national collection are not limited either to its treatment or 
 its arrangement. The principles of selection which have been acted upon 
 in the various purchases made in the course of the last five or six 
 
55 
 
 Thus the condition of this picture, according- to him, is first 
 " genuine and perfect/' and then again it is not genuine, but is 
 all the more perfect from not being so ! and that others may- 
 despair of improving- on his drivelling-, he adds, that " every 
 time a picture is cleaned it loses part of its authority," and that 
 " none of the varnishes should be attacked yet the removal of 
 the g'lazing-s from this picture, " is hardly to be regretted." 
 
 His slender contributions, suggestive of a more efficient admi- 
 nistration of the National Gallery, are mere plagiarisms from 
 what has been far better and more consistently offered by others ; 
 but even these he has contrived to disfigure and make ridiculous, 
 by altering them into all the frowzy finery which his conceited 
 vocabulary could supply. The notion of hermetically sealing 
 up the pictures in glass cases in order to necessitate " the en- 
 largement of the rooms," is evidently, from its excessive stupi- 
 dity, entirely his own. 
 
 I will now subjoin a few quotations from " Modern Painters 
 
 and their superiority over the ancients, <£c," that the public 
 
 may have every opportunity of judging, for themselves, of the 
 
 value of the author's observations : — 
 
 " Gasper Poussin more ignorant than Claude, and almost as dead to 
 beauty as Cuyp." 
 
 " Clarkson Stanfield unerring in his knowledge." 
 " Claude occasionally right rather by chance than by knowledge." 
 " Sir Joshua Reynolds as inaccurate in fact as false in principle." 
 ** Turner exquisitely true." 
 
 years have been as extraordinary as unjustifiable. Whatever may 
 be the intrinsic power, interest, or artistical utility of the earlier 
 essays of any school of art, it cannot be disputed that characteristic 
 examples of everyone of its most important phases should form part of a 
 national collection ; granting them of little value individually, their col- 
 lective teaching is of irrefragable authority, and the exhibition of per- 
 fected results alone, while the course of national progress through which 
 these were reached is altogether concealed, is more likely to discourage 
 than to assist the efforts of an undeveloped school. Granting even what 
 the shallowest materialism of modern artists would assume, that the 
 works of Perugino were of no value but as they taught Raphael, — that 
 John Bellini is altogether absorbed and overmastered by Titian — that 
 Nino Pisano was utterly superseded by Bandinelli or Cellini, and Ghir- 
 landajo sunk in the shadow of Buonaroti — granting Van Eyck to be 
 a mere mechanist, and Giotto a mere child, and Angelico a superstitious 
 monk, and whatever you choose to grant that ever blindness deemed or 
 insolence affirmed, still it is to be maintained and proved, that if we wish 
 
56 
 
 " Rembrandt and Correggio fatally, and constantly wrong in the ma- 
 nagement of chiaroscuro." 
 
 ** Both the Poussins, Salvator, and our own Wilson are always 
 wrong." 
 
 '* Claude sometimes right by accident." 
 
 " The chiaroscuro of Stanfield, and that of J. D. Harding, deserving 
 the most attentive study. " 
 
 The fallowing- is, I am told, considered by his admirers, 
 highly poetical : — 
 
 " Copley Fielding casting his whole soul into space, and exulting like 
 a wild duck, (in the original it is misprinted deer), in the motion of the 
 swift winds." 
 
 " David Cox (f) whose pencil never falls but in dew." 
 
 " Turner glorious in conception, — unfathomable in knowledge, — soli- 
 tary in power, — with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night 
 and morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet by God to reveal to 
 men the mysteries of the universe, standing like the great angel of the 
 Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow on his head, and 
 with the sun and stars given into his hand." 
 
 Turner is also " above all criticism, and beyond all praise, — 
 we are not to approach his works to be pleased (Heaven forbid !) 
 but to be taught." The following ingenuous admission of his own 
 imbecility may also assist towards appreciating this " Graduate " 
 at his true value : " I have said that the old masters did not give 
 the truth of nature ; if the reader chooses thence to infer that 
 they were not masters at all, it is his conclusion, not mineP Ag'ain 
 we read, " Turner's colour is glaring to some person's sensations 
 and beautiful to another's. This proves nothing." Why, even a child 
 would be able to see that it at least " proves" that one of them 
 
 to have a Buonaroti or a Titian of our own we shall with more wisdom 
 learn of those of whom Buonaroti and Titian learned, and at whose knees 
 they were brought up, and whom to their day of death they ever revered 
 and worshipped, than of those wretched pupils and partisans who sank 
 every high function of art into a form and a faction, betrayed her trusts, 
 darkened her traditions, overthrew her throne, and left us where we 
 now are, stumbling among its fragments. Sir, if the canvasses of Guido, 
 lately introduced into the gallery, had been works of the best of those 
 pupils, which they are not — if they had been good works of even that 
 bad master, which they are not — if they had been genuine or untouched 
 works, even though feeble, which they are not — if, though false and 
 retouched remnants of a feeble and fallen school, they had been endurably 
 decent or elementarily instructive, some conceivable excuse might 
 perhaps have been by ingenuity forged, and by impudence uttered, for 
 their introduction into a gallery where we previously possessed two good 
 
57 
 
 is wrong, and that either the eyes of Turner's admirers are dis- 
 eased, or that the only healthy eyes in England belong to that 
 small company. Our " Author" says it is his " admiration" for M. 
 Angelo, Raphael, and da Vinci/' which makes him look with con- 
 tempton Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin," His contempt for 
 the latter great masters is, I willingly admit, perfectly compat- 
 ble with such appreciation of the former as his, but since his 
 admiration of M. Angelo, Raphael, and " da Vinci," is so injuri- 
 ous to whatver serves him instead of mind, the sooner he gets rid 
 of it the better. 
 
 From what comes next we may gather some idea of his fa- 
 vourite recreations : — " I am exceedingly fond of standing by a 
 bright ( ! ) Turner in the Academy, to listen to the unintentional 
 compliments of the mutable and rank-scented many ; ' What a 
 glaring thing ! ' ' I declare I can't look at it' — ' Don't it hurt 
 your eyes ' ? Although a the Graduate" desires to u honour the 
 great living masters," rather than to " pour flattery into the ear of 
 Death!" by exalting the names of those who cannot regard his 
 " gratitude," he occasionally dares, positively dares, to abuse 
 certain Royal Academicians ; but terrified at his own rashness 
 in having attacked Mr. Maclise's u ruffian figures," he " cannot 
 refrain from beseeching him to devote his vivid imagination and 
 vigorous powers of hand, &c, and " not to condescend, capable 
 as he is of kindling his canvass into life, &c." And of Mr. 
 Lee, another Royal Academician • — " It is with great pain that I 
 
 Guidos aud no Perugino (for the attribution to him of the wretched 
 panel which now bears his name is a mere insult), no Angelico, no Fra 
 Bartolomeo, no Albertinelli, no Ghirlandajo, no Verrocchio, no Lorenzo 
 di Credi (what shall I more say, for the time would fail me ?) — but now, 
 Sir, what vestige of apology remains for the cumbering our walls with 
 pictures that have no single virtue, no colour, no drawing, no character, 
 no history, no thought ? Yet two thousand guineas were, I believe, 
 given for one of these encumbrances, and five thousand for the coarse 
 and unnecessary Rubens, added to a room half filled with Rubens 
 before, while a mighty and perfect work of Angelico was sold from 
 Cardinal Fesch's collection for one thousand five hundred. I do not 
 speak of the spurious Holbein, for though the veriest tyro might well be 
 ashamed of such a purchase, it would have been a judicious addition had it 
 been genuine, so was the John Bellini, so was the Van Eyck ; but 
 the mighty Venetian master who alone of all the painters of Italy, 
 united purity of religious aim with perfection of artistical power, is 
 
58 
 
 ever speak severely of the works of living masters/' (particularly 
 of Academicians who can regard his gratitude,) "especially 
 when, like Mr. Lee's, they are well intentioned, simple, free from 
 affectation or imitation, and evidently painted with a constant 
 reference to Nature. But I believe that these qualities will 
 always secure him the admiration which he deserves ; — that 
 there will be many unsophisticated and honest minds always 
 ready to follow his guidance, and answer his efforts with 
 delight." 
 
 Si Pergama dextra 
 Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent. 
 
 Let the Academy rejoice that this spirit is not yet extinct, 
 This is the congenial tone in which all such bodies should be 
 approached j the badge of humility that every aspirant to the 
 favours of Boards, Committees, and irresponsible corporations 
 must wear : — but enough of this " Graduate" and his sayings. The 
 public will henceforward know whether his opinions or mine are 
 most deserving of attention. 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 poorly represented by a single head ; and I askj in the name of the 
 earnest students of England^ that the funds set apart for her gallery may 
 no longer be played with like pebbles in London auction-rooms. Let 
 agents be sent to all the cities of Italy ; let the noble pictures which are 
 perishing there be rescued from the invisibility and ill-treatment 
 which their position too commonly implies, and let us have a national 
 collection, which, however imperfect, shall be orderly and continuous, 
 and shall exhibit with something like relative candour and justice the 
 claims to our reverence of those great and ancient builders whose 
 mighty foundation has been for two centuries concealed by wood, and 
 hay, and stubble, the distorted growing, and thin gleaning of vain men 
 in blasted fields. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 « THE AUTHOR OF 'MODERN PAINTERS*' '» 
 
59 
 
 IX. 
 
 Another attempt to throw discredit on u Verax," and his 
 statements, is that made by Sir Martin Shee, President of the 
 Royal Academy ; and in dealing with this, I shall be compelled 
 to notice the disreputable squabble between him and Mr. Samuel 
 Woodburn.* Sir Martin Shee, in a letter (" Times," Jan. 15,) 
 wherein he denies having used certain expressions imputed to 
 him by " Veritas," t on the authority of Mr. Woodburn,! writes as 
 follows : — 
 
 " I never was referred to by the late Lord Grey, by Lord 
 Monteagle, or any other member of the Government, respecting 
 the purchase for the nation of the Lawrence Collection of drawings. 
 I never made any report whatever to Lord Grey on the subject of 
 the proposed purchase. I never examined ' the Raphaels, or Mi- 
 chael Augelos,' as one of Mhe competent judges,' who are said to 
 have been consulted on the occasion, for the purpose of influencing 
 the decisions of the Government, nor did I select the original draw- 
 ing, or any drawing of St. Cecilia for either official comment or 
 criticism." 
 
 The extremely cautious manner in which Sir Martin Shee denies 
 
 * Since Mr. Samuel Woodburn, in a private letter to Sir M. Shee, 
 which he afterwards published, as an advertisement, in " The Times," 
 of January 23, thought proper to say that he had ** expostulated with 
 an artist who is supposed to have written the letters signed ' Verax,' " 
 I hereby inform the public that Mr. Woodburn never expostulated with 
 me. In the first place, the expression implies much greater familiarity 
 between u< than exists : aud secondly, among the verv small number of 
 persons from whom I would brook such a libertv, there is certainly not 
 one of the name of Woodburn." How Mr. Eastlake would respond 
 to Mr. Woodbuni's appeal, to bear testimonv 4< in what proper and hand- 
 some manner " he had always spoken of Sir M. Shee, I know not; but 
 I am well aware, that manv could bear witness to his having frequently 
 and justly ridiculed the President's notorious ignorance of art. Mr. 
 Woodbuni's twaddling and nauseous repetitions of his respect for •* a 
 gentleman holding so nigh a situation in the Fine Arts of this country," 
 is of a piece with the rest. 
 
 f Several persons having confounded "Veritas"' with "Verax," 
 I shall here state that 1 not only do not know who wrote the letter 
 signed " Veritas," (" Times," January 13th,) but I have not the slight- 
 est suspicion who he is. Lest this denial should be misinterpreted, I 
 will add, that I Jiighly approve of the spirit which dictated his letter. — 
 Verax. 
 
 ♦ Mr. Woodburn still maintains that Sir Martin Shee did make use of 
 those expressions. 
 
 u 
 
60 
 
 having done or said this, that, or the other, officially, amounts to 
 an admission that he did say something similar to what has been 
 attributed to him ; and yet Sir Martin Shee is so confident in the 
 defence he has set up, that he generously offers to impart the shel- 
 ter of it, to other objects of public accusation, in the following 
 terms : — 
 
 " As a trustee of the National Gallery, I, several years ago, felt 
 it to be my duty to oppose the reiterated attempts of Mr. Woodburn, 
 to force upon the trustees, at an extravagant price, the residue of a 
 collection of drawings,* the most authentic and attractive portion 
 of which had been previously withdrawn, and sold to other parties. 
 This circumstance will, I have no doubt, satisfactorily enlighten 
 the public as to the extraordinary and gratuitous assaults on me, 
 and effectually illustrate, also, the virtuous indignation excited 
 against Mr. Eastlake and the trustees of the Gallery, by the ' irre- 
 parable destruction' of the works entrusted to their negligent 
 guardianship." f — Times, January, 15. 
 
 Now, although I have frequently heard Mr. Woodburn relate 
 the anecdote which I have given at page 25 of this pamphlet, I 
 should never have thought of publishing it, had not Sir Martin 
 Shee interfered improperly in the present controversy ; because 
 it would have been both an unprovoked and an unnecessary 
 attack upon him. It was reserved for that morbid, no-person- 
 ality gentleman, Mr. William Coningham, to make the " extra- 
 ordinary and gratuitous assault" upon Sir M. Shee, before the lat- 
 ter had made himself liable to any public animadversions as the 
 supporter of official misdemeanour. But, now that instead of 
 confining himself to a defence of his own conduct, he has volun- 
 tarily identified his cause with that of Mr. Eastlake, (and cer^- 
 
 * The Oxford collection, for which Mr. Woodburn received seven 
 thousand pounds, is part of this " residue." What, then, shall we say 
 to the (i extravagant price " of thirteen thousand pounds, paid by Mr. 
 Eastlake and Sir M. Shee, for the inferior and even bad pictures which 
 they have purchased for the National Gallery since 1842 ? 
 
 f I beg the reader to observe the ridiculous inconsistency of Sir M. 
 Shee, who first bitterly complains of " gratuitous assaults " on himself, 
 and then immediately makes an unprovoked attack upon me, by endea- 
 vouring to cast discredit on my accusations against Mr. Eastlake, 
 although in the very next paragraph he says : — " Not having been able 
 to visit the gallery since the picture-cleaner was employed there, I shall, 
 of course, say nothing on the subject of his operations." 
 
61 
 
 tainly there is no denying' the great resemblance between them,) 
 he cannot complain if I repel this unprovoked * invasion of my 
 judgment and trustworthiness, by letting the world know how r 
 very unsafe it would be to rely on his testimony, in any matter 
 wherein the works of the Great Masters were under consideration ; 
 for, that he does not appreciate them, but, on the contrary ? 
 speaks of them with a contempt which would be impertinent in 
 any one but the President of a Royal Academy, I think that all 
 will admit, who shall read the following declaration : — " Sir 
 Martin Shee loquitur : 
 
 " I consider the Royal Academy a much more important institu- 
 tion to the nation than the National Gallery ; I look upon it that a 
 garden is of more consequence than a granary, and you may heap 
 up a hortus-siccua of Art without producing any of the salutary 
 effects which never fail to result from the operations of such a school 
 as the Royal Academy, f It would, therefore, I conceive, be an 
 injury to the nation, as well as to the Royal Academy, if they were 
 to be removed, in order to make room for even the best works of the 
 old masters." \ 
 
 In other words, Sir Martin Shee is of opinion that a school 
 which not only teaches iwthbuj, but absolutely perverts the 
 natural tendencies of all who have the misfortune to enter it, 
 is a much more important institution to the nation than a 
 library stored with " even the best ?uorhs" of the greatest Poets, 
 
 * The reader will find that I have attacked only those persons who 
 are identified with the abuses I have exposed, and such as have attempted 
 to invalidate the truth of my statements. 
 
 f " We all must have experienced how lazily, and consequently how 
 ineffectually, instruction is received when forced upon the mind by others. 
 Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own 
 teachers." — Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 \ " On whom can (the student) rely, or who shall show him the path 
 that leads to excellence ? The answer is obvious. Those great masters 
 who have travelled the same road with success are the most likely to 
 conduct others. The works of those who have stood the test of ages 
 have a claim to that respect and veneration to which no modern can 
 pretend. The duration and stability of their fame is sufficient to evince 
 that it has not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and 
 caprice ; but bound to the human heart by every tie of sympathetic 
 approbation." — Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 " There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great 
 men ; but how they may be studied to advantage is an enquiry of great 
 importance." — Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
02 
 
 Historians, and Philosophers. The impudence of this declara- 
 tion is peculiarly academical; but the jumble of "garden/' 
 a granary/' " hortus- siccus," &c, which is beyond my compre- 
 hension, I shall leave to the reader's ingenuity to explain : lest, 
 however, he should suspend his judgment, in expectation that the 
 President may disclaim the use of these expressions, I must 
 inform him that they are to be found, booked to his account, in 
 the "Minutes of Evidence, before Select Committee of Arts and 
 Manufactures. 2041, 15 July, 1836." * 
 
 It may be necessary to state for the information of many, that 
 the President of the Royal Academy is, ex-qfficio, a trustee of 
 the National Gallery. The appointment of Sir Martin Shee to 
 such an office, is another instance of the wretched manner in 
 which this important establishment is mismanaged. He pre- 
 sents the anomaly of a man appointed as guardian to a great- 
 national institution, publicly avowing himself ready to sacrifice 
 it, if necessary, to the advancement of a private society worse 
 than useless, but with which his own personal interests and 
 vanity are inseparably linked. This fully exposes the absurdity 
 of appointing trustees, ex-qfficio, regardless of the qualifications 
 necessary to the proper fulfilment of their duties. 
 
 Another instance, scarcely less astounding, though not official, 
 
 * In order that the reader may fully appreciate Sir M. Shee's enlight- 
 ened opinions on the National Gallery, I furnish him with the following 
 extracts from the " Minutes of Evidence," &c. 
 
 <( Mr. William Ewart in the Chair. 
 
 " 2039. Chairman. — If you consider it for the convenience of the 
 Government, and of the Academy, that the Royal Academy might be 
 shifted from Somerset House elsewhere, would it not be right that they 
 should be moved from the projected situation in the National Gallery, if 
 
 it were for the good of the nation ? Sir M. Shee. — I must observe 
 
 that that seems to be begging the question. I do not conceive that 
 such a measure could be for the good of the nation. 
 
 " 2040. Chairman. — Might it or might it not be ? Sir M. Shee.— 
 
 I do not think it possible that it could be. (!) 
 
 " 2041. Chairman. — I will just put the case, that one half of the 
 building was not sufficient for the national pictures, do you think the 
 nation have or have not a right to call for the Royal Academy to give up 
 
 the whole of the building for which the nation paid ? Sir M. Shee. 
 
 — It is not for me to decide as to what are the rights of the nation ; 
 therefore I give no opinion on that subject, but I beg leave to observe 
 that I consider the Royal Academy, &c, &c." See above. 
 
(58 
 
 will serve to illustrate Sir Martin Shee's great appreciation of 
 "the brightest genius that ever adorned my profession." About 
 three years ago, a gentleman for whose accuracy I can vouch, 
 chanced to be at a house when Sir Martin Shee called to see 
 some pictures he had been invited to inspect. The master of 
 the house informed him that the gentleman in question had re- 
 sided long in Italy, and was a great admirer of the old Italian 
 Masters. The President did not even turn his head to the gen- 
 tleman so introduced, but after staring at the pictures he had 
 been especially invited to see, he took it into his head to talk at 
 him. There was in the same room a poor Spanish picture, the 
 sight of which drew from Sir Martin Shee the remark, that lie 
 durst say, some persons were so prejudiced in favour of old pic- 
 tures as to call that fine drawing. The other observed, that 
 it would be a great mistake, as that was not fine drawing. 
 Sir Martin Shee, by way, I presume, of taking a very strong 
 position, retorted by suggesting that it would be difficult to find 
 as bad drawing in modern works as in the Cartoons of Raphael, 
 at Hampton Court. Upon this the admirer of " old pictures" 
 significantly remarked, that " it would be more difficult to find 
 as good." These observations were made by either party, not 
 to, but at each other, so that Sir Martin Shee will have a beau- 
 tiful opportunity of publishing the double denial, that his re- 
 marks on that occasion, were neither official, nor made to 
 any one. 
 
 What now becomes of Sir Martin Shee's " surprise and indig- 
 nation when I found myself the object of various false and slan- 
 derous statements in a public newspaper — statements which re- 
 presented me as treating with contemptuous ridicule the bright- 
 est genius that ever adorned my profession?" Sir Martin Shee has 
 treated with the most " contemptuous ridicule the brightest genius 
 that ever adorned" what he is pleased to call his "profession," in 
 the endeavour to exalt that most worthless institution, the Royal 
 Academy,* above a collection of " even the best works of the 
 
 * It is a frightful, though natural effect, of the demoralizing influence 
 which the Academy exercises over the minds of the artists, that many 
 of them, and even some members of the Royal Academy, have expressed 
 their conviction that Mr. Eastlake has seriously injured the pictures 
 
64 
 
 Old Masters" which must of necessity contain, in addition to 
 the works of the " brightest genius &c," those of others 
 scarcely less great an establishment which should be revered 
 as one of the brightest ornaments of the country, and as the 
 Palladium of all that is great in Painting. 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 which have been recently " restored ;" but they dare not avow it openly, 
 for fear of forfeiting their favour with the Academy ! 
 
 The opinions expressed by that great man, Hogarth, on the utility of 
 Royal Academies, are as follow : — 
 
 te It will be vain to attempt to force what can never be accomplished, 
 at least by such institutions as Royal Academies," &c. — Hogarth. 
 
 "As to electing Presidents, Directors, Professors, &c, I consider it as 
 a ridiculous imitation of the foolish parade of the French Academy, by 
 the establishment of which, Lewis the Fourteenth got a large portion of 
 fame and flattery, on very easy terms. But I could never learn that the 
 arts were benefitted, or that members acquired any other advantages 
 than what arose to a few leaders, &c, &c, which, as must always be 
 the case, were engrossed by those who had most influence, without any 
 regard to their merit." — Hogarth. 
 
 Again, in alluding to the " ridiculous address " about to be made to 
 the King, Lords, and Commons by the artists, for the formation of a 
 Royal Academy, he says : " How far their mighty project will succeed, 
 I neither know nor care ; certain I am, it deserves to be laughted at, 
 and laughed at it has been. The business rests in the breast of his 
 Majesty ; and the question now is, whether he will do what Sir James 
 Thornhill did before him, t. e. establish an academy, with the little 
 addition of a Royal name, and salaries for those professors who can make 
 most interest, and obtain the greatest patronage." — Hogarth. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE ABUSES OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 My exposure of the mismanagement which has of late years 
 gone so far to nullify the vast benefits which ought to be derived 
 
65 
 
 from a National Gallery, has been supported by a statement of 
 facts so incontrovertible and overwhelming-, that any one who 
 shall endeavour to resist the conclusions which they force upon 
 us, is sure to be either ridiculed for the weakness of his wit, or 
 branded as a dishonest sycophant. That the public is persuaded 
 of the truth of the accusations contained in my letters I am 
 firmly persuaded ; that it will interest itself in the subject I 
 confidently hope ; but in order to offer to all who are disposed 
 to co-operate in this worthy object, as complete an assistance as 
 possible, I have here drawn up a list of the principal grievances, 
 upon the removal of which, the friends of art and of national edu- 
 cation should insist ; and I have merely added such explanations 
 of some amongst them, as I deemed necessary for those who 
 have not had leisure to inquire into the subject themselves. 
 
 1. The mutilation of the national pictures in the ignorant and 
 impudent attempt to improve them by the processes vulgarly 
 called "cleaning" and "restoration."* During the vacation 
 preceding the last, " the Judgment of Paris," by Rubens, pur- 
 chased at the enormous sacrifice of £-1200, was considerably in- 
 jured ; its vigour and vivacity having been reduced to smooth 
 and monotonous insipidity by the scouring, which has had the 
 effect of enervating those last masterly finishing touches which 
 gave point and variety to the whole. The two Guidos, " Lot 
 and his Daughters," and "Susanna and the Elders," which 
 cost us, £29-40, without reckoning commissions for valuation, 
 were completely flayed ; and drivellers may wait in vain for their 
 " recovery." They should never have been purchased, as they 
 are of no importance to a national collection, as works of art ; 
 but. as they were bought, common sense tells us that they should 
 not have been injured. But the desecration so daringly com- 
 menced, sinks into insignificance when compared with that of last 
 
 • I have received the following anecdote on the best authority, and I 
 recommend it. to the notice of the trustees and the keeper : — The late 
 Marquis of Stafford, who presented his fellow-citizens with that noble 
 but ill-fated picture of "Peace and War," by Rubens, was frequently 
 advised by Mr. Prolt Dubligni, a very " experienced dealer " ami pic- 
 ture-cleaner of that day, to have his pictures " restored," but that 
 nobleman judiciously and constantly replied, that " it should never be 
 done so long as he lived." 
 
October. The " Bacchus and Ariadne" by Titian, one of the most 
 important works in this country, and which was executed at a pe- 
 riod when its great author was the most renowned painter of his 
 school, has suffered grievously, both by the subversion of the 
 laws of aerial perspective, effected by the partial erasure of its 
 glazing, and by the contamination of filthy " restoration." The 
 incalculably greater importance of the work considered, this is 
 the worst case of all. The " Peace and War/' by Rubens, 
 admirable for its magnificence, and interesting in its history, has 
 been so mauled that it is barely recognizable as the same pic- 
 ture, and is now as repulsive and discordant, as it was previously 
 attractive and harmonious. 
 
 2. The insolent determination expressed by the keeper to per- 
 severe in such Vandalisms, in spite of the indignation so loudly 
 and generally expressed ; the " Consecration of St. Nicholas," 
 by Paul Veronese, having been even mentioned by him, as the 
 next object of his mischievous diligence. 
 
 3. The utter silence of the trustees, who ought to have put 
 forth an official document, expressive of their resolution to pre- 
 vent the keeper from carrying his menace into effect — a menace 
 with which they have been well acquainted, at least since the 
 appearance of my last letter to you. Until some document of 
 this nature appear, the public cannot but infer that the recent 
 occurrences have met with the approbation of the trustees, and 
 they feel the more inclined to this belief, from a pamphlet pub- 
 lished by the keeper in 1845, in which he not only expresses his 
 " entire satisfaction at the result " of similar labours, performed 
 during the vacation "preceding the last, but he says, moreover, 
 that they were carried on under his " daily superintendence," 
 and by " direction of the trustees ;" an assertion which has 
 never elicited any public expression of disapproval on their 
 part, although the injuries inflicted on the pictures alluded 
 to in that pamphlet, were most grievous, and only surpassed by 
 those which have been committed on much more important 
 works during the last vacation. 
 
 4. The refusal or neglect of well-known works of that consum- 
 mate excellence essential to a model, and consequently, to a 
 national collection, although they might have been procured, 
 
67 
 
 within the same period, in some instances, for less than half 
 the price the people have been made to pay for inferior works.* 
 
 # I will take this opportunity of mentioning another very flagrant 
 instance of the continued neglect of works of the highest excellence, 
 and far more striking than any I have hitherto quoted. The work I 
 allude to, represents a dignitary of the Church of Rome, and may be 
 seen at Mr. Graves's, in Pall Mall, to whose care it has been intrusted 
 by the proprietor, Sir Robert Gordon. The trustees and Mr. Keeper 
 Eastlake are aware that Sir Robert Gordon would be willing to sell it 
 to the nation, though not to a private person. They have had the 
 choice, and have preferred works of very inferior character, and only 
 recently, the Velasquez ; but then, they were threatened with the 
 exportation of that, and of course, could not avoid buying it. It might 
 have been a first-rate work of art, for what Mr. Eastlake knew : — to return, 
 however, to the picture at Mr. Graves's. Doubts are entertained as to 
 its author ; but no doubts ought to be pleaded in excuse for the neglect 
 of a picture, except those which impugn the excellence of the work. 
 Mr. Eastlake's libel on Holbein, of which even the " Author of Modern 
 Painters " justly remarks, that the " veriest tyro might well be 
 ashamed of such a purchase," was bought for the name, legibly 
 enough written on the background, but which proved as false as the rest 
 of the picture, and has since been officially scraped out. Sir Robert 
 Gordon's picture has no name on its background, but greatness is le- 
 gible (to tnose who can read it) throughout the work. There may be 
 those among us capable of solving, even that awful difficulty, but if 
 not, let it be borne in mind that the names of the authors of some of 
 the finest specimens of Greek sculpture are unknown to us. Had this 
 great production resembled Holbein " in manner," Mr. Keeper East- 
 lake's <f eminent German friend " might have again assisted him, and 
 there would no doubt have been found some " experienced dealer " to 
 have informed him of its value ; but it has not that advantage, and no 
 German handbook has, it appears, as yet been discovered, which gives 
 its measurement, or any other such enlightened clue to its merits. Like 
 the recently-purchased Velasquez, it has been long neglected ; but, un- 
 like that picture, it is a model work. This much is certain, that those 
 who are capable of judging, will not hesitate to pronounce it a first-rate 
 work of one of the greatest masters of the brightest period of modern 
 art — the latter end of the fifteenth, and first half of the sixteenth centuries. 
 The names, therefore, of those to whom it could be rationally ascribed, 
 must be very few. It is unquestionably of that high character which 
 would render it a noble feature in any gallery in Europe. Mr. Eastlake's 
 neglect of this picture is the more reprehensible, because, to my certain 
 knowledge, he has been exceedingly anxious for the acquisition of very 
 inferior works, — knowing this to Have been within his reach. One of 
 the most meddling of the trustees, was especially cautioned by a gen- 
 tleman, who may be said to know something of pictures, against that 
 low class Guido, " the Infant Christ and St. John," and he was as earn- 
 estly urged, by the same gentleman, not to neglect Titian's " Tarquin 
 and Lucretia," while it was hanging in Mr. Christie's room, for sale ;— * 
 but to no purpose. Let us see whether the present information will be 
 attended to. 
 
 I 
 
08 
 
 5. The inferior character of all the pictures purchased of 
 late years, but more especially since 1842, and the positive bad- 
 ness of some of them. 
 
 6. The wasteful outlay of the public money in the acquisition 
 of those inferior works ; some of them having been offered to 
 private persons, for less than half the price given for them by the 
 trustees, from the public money. 
 
 7. The needless outlay of the public money in paying- dealers 
 for the valuation of pictures, while a professional man holds the 
 office of keeper. The grounds for admitting a picture into the 
 national collection ought to be so distinct from, and so infinitely 
 superior to the caprices of fashion, that no one should dream for 
 a moment of referring to dealers and their valuations, as if they 
 were to influence his decision. For who does not perceive that 
 it is the very idea of their occupation that, instead of being- 
 regulated by the merit of the work, they must be entirely sub- 
 servient to the morbid fancies of those wealthy dilettanti, who 
 think it more convenient to buy a taste than to acquire it by 
 study, and afterwards dogmatise on art, not on the ground of 
 the principles they have learnt, but of the guineas they have 
 disbursed ? It is of common occurrence to find pictures of the 
 highest character utterly neglected by dealers, while others of 
 the lowest, are as frequently valued by them at the most absurd 
 prices. Among the numerous examples I could adduce of the 
 influence of fashion, I will quote the following : — Within the last 
 four years, a dealer of the most extensive experience purchased a 
 picture for the sum of one thousand eight hundred guineas ; but 
 the same picture having been, only two years later, again offered 
 for sale, he refused it at one thousand two hundred guineas. A 
 contemptible little head, by Greuze, which realized one thou- 
 sand guineas at the sale of Mr. Higginson's collection in 1846, 
 (such is the refinement of the auction-room, that the " spirit " of 
 the purchaser found its reward in a round of applause,) was, to 
 my certain knowledge, valued previously, by several " expe- 
 rienced dealers," at seven hundred guineas. Now, Sir, it is to 
 be most devoutly hoped that we shall have no seven hundred 
 guinea Greuzes purchased for the National Gallery, although, 
 under the present management, we are not altogether free from 
 
69 
 
 the danger of so dreadful an intliction. On the other hand, 
 Titian's " Tarquin and Lucretia," (besides being- of great im- 
 portance as a work of art, and especially interesting to this 
 country, as having* formed a noble feature in the celebrated 
 collection of Charles I.,) hung' in Mr. Christie's room for sale, 
 during three weeks, with a reserved price upon it of only £1000; 
 yet " experienced dealers'' were so far from valuing- that fine 
 painting- at this sum, that after Mr. Nieuwenhuys had pur- 
 chased it, one of the very "experienced," boasted of having* re- 
 fused it at £700. It was an " experienced dealer " who valued 
 that " Susanna and the Elders," at one thousand two hundred 
 g-uineas. So much for the valuation by dealers of pictures for 
 the National Gallery. When we have a keeper equal to the 
 responsibilities of his office, the public money will not be squan- 
 dered on fashionable mediocrity, and charg-es for valuation. 
 
 8. The defective state of the official catalogue, but particu- 
 larly the very objectionable omission of the price of each picture, 
 find of every expense attending its acquisition; as the people are 
 fairly entitled to the satisfaction of knowing- how their money is 
 expended. 
 
 9. The appointment of persons as trustees, who are not deeply 
 impressed with the importance of seizing every opportunity of 
 acquiring- model works for the national collection. 
 
 10. The appointment of persons as trustees, who, so far from 
 appreciating- works of the most exalted character, have obtained 
 a ridiculous notoriety among- men of sense, for giving- prepos- 
 terous prices for inferior pictures, when they might, at half the 
 price, have done honour to themselves, and enriched their collec- 
 tions and their country, by the acquisition of first-rate productions. 
 Such persons are objectionable, because it is neither safe nor wise 
 to entrust the direction of our affairs to those who manag-e so 
 badly for themselves. 
 
 11. But especially the appointment of persons as trustees, who 
 covet a most contemptible notoriety, by affecting- to despise those 
 works, which, having for many ages received the sanction of the 
 wisest men of all civilised nations, should be the principal 
 objects of our care and veneration. These are objectionable in 
 the highest degree, because common sense forbids us to appoint 
 
 i 2 
 
70 
 
 persons to protect that which they despise. So long as ex-officio 
 trustees are appointed, such anomalies will occasionally occur.* 
 
 12. The appointment of a person to the office of keeper, with- 
 out having* previously taken every precaution to ascertain his 
 qualifications for such an important charge, hut especially his 
 retention in the same, after he has repeatedly proved himself 
 unequal to the fulfilment of his duties. 
 
 13. The appointment of any person to a superior office in this 
 establishment, who is not thoroughly alive to the deep respon- 
 sibility attending any attempt to effect a remarkable alteration 
 in the appearance of any of the public pictures. 
 
 14. The undue interference of unqualified persons in the choice 
 of pictures for the national collection ; those alone being compe- 
 tent for so arduous an undertaking, who have had the best oppor- 
 tunities of studying the principles of the greatest masters in 
 their finest works, and who have made that study the serious 
 occupation of their lives. 
 
 15. The great ignorance betrayed in the hanging of the 
 pictures, whereby the people are deprived of the benefit they 
 might otherwise derive from the study of some of the best 
 works, which have been, in several instances, thrust out of reach 
 in order to make room for bad fashionable pictures. 
 
 16. The long annual vacation of six consecutive weeks> 
 whereby the people have hitherto not only been deprived, for too 
 long a period, of that recreation and instruction, which, from the 
 outlay of their money, they were entitled to expect without 
 interruption j but they have been prevented still more grievously 
 from exercising that wholesome watchfulness, which, had it 
 remained unobstructed, would undoubtedly have rescued several 
 noble works from the mutilations they have undergone from 
 their stupid and self-sufficient servants. 
 
 17. The too limited number of attendants. The addition of 
 one alone would enable all to enjoy in turn their annual holy day, 
 
 * This, though evidently a most rational objection, may to some 
 persons appear supererogatory, as it is difficult to believe that any one 
 answering to this description, should ever have been appointed as trustee ; 
 but, that nothing should be wanting to the total disorganization of this 
 important establishment, even such anomalous appointments have been 
 made. 
 
71 
 
 and would do away with the necessity for closing- the g allery at all. 
 The pay of each attendant being two guineas per week, the 
 £1,800 of the public money so wastefully squandered in the 
 acquisition of the three pictures mentioned in my last letter, 
 would have sufficed to keep an additional attendant upwards of 
 sixteen years. 
 
 18. The insufficient extent of the present gallery for such a 
 country as England ; but, as she has hitherto failed so deplora- 
 bly in the management of a small one, this is, for the present, a 
 question of comparatively no importance. 
 
 Such, Sir, are the abuses which prevent the formation of a 
 National Gallery worthy of the people of this great country ; 
 and, until they are removed, we shall never make any progress 
 in the fine arts, as the public museums are the only infallible 
 guides, by which a nation's refinement in the arts can be truly 
 tested. Such a nation as England, we are told, should not 
 fritter away her resources on : " little wars." The truth is, ahe 
 should never condescend to littleness in any thing; whatever she 
 undertakes should be magnificently conceived, and liberally 
 carried into execution, as the most dignified, the speediest, and 
 the cheapest means of securing honour, renown, and profit to 
 her people * 
 
 I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 • I believe I have furnished a tolerably complete exposure of the 
 scandalous mismanagement of the National Gallery, and made it 
 evident to all men of sense, who take any interest in the institutions of 
 their country, that if we are to support such an establishment, it must 
 henceforth be conducted on very different principles, and placed under 
 the control of some Minister, responsible to Parliament for any abuses 
 which may arise in its administration. 
 
72 
 
 XI. 
 
 The defence of Mr. Eastlake's Vandalisms, put forth by The 
 Daily News, may be considered as official; for, besides the 
 general characteristics of official blarney discernible throughout 
 it contains two or three passages which directly betray the 
 source whence they proceeded. For instance : — 
 
 " And here let us offer a remarkable and beautiful example at once 
 of the necessity of this cleaning, ( <r the Peace and War/) the skill 
 with which it has been done, and the hardness of the vehicle in 
 which Rubens wrought. It presents an infallible test to those who 
 desire to judge honestly if any injury has been done to the picture — 
 and might alone be an answer to the objectors. Let us look at the 
 fine and perfect line formed by the jet of milk pressed from the bosom 
 of the principal figure. Here is a beauty which was scarcely visible 
 before the picture was cleaned. When we saw it in its freshness, 
 after the cleaning, for a moment we fancied that it might have been 
 restored — in the more objectionable sense of the word. On touching 
 it with the nail, we found it as hard as a flint."— (Daily News, 
 January 19th, 1847-) 
 
 As none but officials are allowed to touch the public pictures, 
 it is fair to conclude that this statement was published with the 
 approbation of the Keeper : at all events, he must have furnished 
 the official stool upon which " we" of The Daily News were en- 
 abled to reach, and " touch with the nail," the " remarkable and 
 beautiful example" which "we" recognised as the "infallible 
 test" of skilful cleaning; — so beautiful, indeed, and fresh, that 
 " we " thought it must have been restored ! The Keeper's no- 
 tion that the materials with which Rubens produced his pictures 
 were " as hard as flint," betrays the spirit with which that 
 " consummate" — academician operated on this ill-fated work. 
 It has indeed been rubbed and scrubbed as though it had been 
 of flint. 
 
 The meanness of the upholders of abuses is nowhere more 
 conspicuous, than in their eagerness to seize hold of the absurd 
 dicta of a man, whose superficiality and inconsistency have ren- 
 dered him an object of ridicule and contempt to all parties. 
 The triumphant chuckle with which Mr. William Coningham's 
 blunders are picked to pieces, is worthy of so wretched a cause. 
 
73 
 
 "The better part of valour is discretion/' — " Cerberus"* might 
 bite as well as " snarl." We shall, however, presently see that 
 even Mr. Coningham's absurdities become almost respectable 
 when contrasted with official nonsense. Mr. Coningham says, 
 (Times, Jan. 7,) "the luminous colour, the true aerial perspec- 
 tive, can be produced by glazing only."f Now, as the ultimate 
 effect of a great work does not depend upon any separate 
 part of the process necessary to attain it, he will doubtless dis- 
 cover, (after he has been told,) that he intended to have said, 
 that the " luminous colour, and the true aerial perspective" (which 
 to his mind appear synonymous) are not " produced by glazing 
 only" although this is indispensable to their perfection. The 
 processes anterior to glazing are as essential to " luminous colour" 
 and "true aerial perspective," as the operation of glazing itself : 
 — so much for Mr. Conino-ham's valuable communications. 
 
 Let us now see what the official oracle says. He announces 
 that " the effect of glazings, as many of them (his ' audience') 
 can inform Mr. Coningham, is rather to subdue that luminous 
 colour, and approximate the aerial distances." The very fact of 
 his talking about the necessity of subduing luminous colour, is 
 a convincing proof that the official bungler mistakes " luminous" 
 for crude. Now it is very easy to make colour too crude — but 
 it is impossible to render it too "luminous;" — in other words, 
 to infuse into it too much of that quality which gives it the 
 
 * " The tragedy of ' The Picture Cleaners 1 is rehearsed for the 
 'Times' after the attic model. In that the performer was double — 
 one gentleman delivoring the words, and another the action ; and, in the 
 same manner, if we be rightly informed, the reasoning of the letters in 
 'The Times ' is supplied by one party, and their language by a second. 
 In other words, ' V erax ' is ' two single gentlemen rolled into one ;' a 
 compound whose individualities may be described — for we, too, would 
 be classical in such a presence — as in the one case f vox quae faucibus 
 hcesit,' and in the other, ' vox et pretcrea ?ii/u(.' We would suggest 
 to the ' Times ' that, under the circumstances, Cerberus would have 
 been a more appropriate name ; would, besides, have included the snarl 
 among its meanings, and would have been yet more intensely classical." 
 — Daily News, January 19. — Two single gentlemen like three-headed 
 Cerberus ! ! 
 
 f After the frequent drillings this accomplished dilettante has had on the 
 subject, he ought to have expressed himself a little better ; but he has, 
 it appears, yet to learn that it requires something besides buying and 
 selling pictures, to constitute a knowledge of art. 
 
74 
 
 appearance of "emitting light," —the only true definition of 
 " luminous/' as applied to colour in a picture. This is what is 
 understood by the intelligent student by the " light from within." 
 There can, in no case, be an excess of this exquisite quality. Not 
 even the most luminous work by Giorgione or Titian has enough 
 of it, although those wonderful men carried it to far greater per- 
 fection than any other master. It cannot, therefore, belong to 
 glazing to "subdue" that which is incapable of exaggeration; but 
 it is one of its essential qualities to subdue crudeness, which the 
 official oracle ignorantly confounds with the luminous quality : — 
 so much for glazings being applied for the purpose of subduing 
 " the luminous colour." 
 
 And now for their effect " to approximate the aerial distances.'* 
 The coolness of this unqualified assertion is of a piece with the 
 rest, and almost as false. That glazings may be made to diminish 
 distance to a certain extent, is true ; but their chief property 
 (I have already spoken of their effects on crudeness) is to give 
 greater breadth, vigour, saliency, vivacity, and last, though not 
 least, increased distance. Glazings, on all finely coloured pic- 
 tures, gradate into greater quantity as they approach the depth 
 of shadow or of colour, which is most powerful when nearest to 
 the spectator ; and so it appears in nature. Glazings, moreover, 
 besides bringing forward the foreground, by giving it strength 
 and warmth, are instrumental in making distance retire, by neu- 
 tralizing its crudeness. They, consequently, act with twofold power 
 in increasing distance. It is precisely because the glazings have 
 been indiscriminately scoured away from the foregrounds and 
 backgrounds of the mutilated pictures, that the former have receded, 
 and the latter have advanced. The removal or reduction, there- 
 fore, of the glazings, has caused the distances to u approximate," 
 and destroyed that double effect which their presence would pro- 
 duce. I will exemplify this yet further, by imagining the change 
 that such a model of colouring as the " Bacchus and Ariadne" 
 must have undergone, and was intended to undergo, by the addi* 
 tion of the glazings. No qualified judge will for one moment 
 deny that they must have had the effect of giving gTeater 
 force and space, that is, increased aerial distance. Were it 
 not too evident that thought has had no part in the recent dese- 
 
75 
 
 cration, this ignorant notion of glazings being necessary only to 
 " approximate the aerial distances," might in some measure ac- 
 count for what has occurred. The " restorers" imagined them- 
 selves quite at liberty to scrape the flinty picture without mercy, 
 and that whatever came away from either the background or the 
 foreground could not but improve the " aerial perspective." 
 
 It would be almost an endless task were I to refute all the 
 absurdities advanced by the official "We," in three closely 
 printed columns of Tlie Daily News, but I cannot refrain from 
 noticing the unsuspecting innocence with which they quote Ru- 
 bens, against themselves.* All, save our National Gallery offi- 
 cials and their small friends, are well aware that the a yellow" or 
 "brown" tone, as Rubens indiscriminately calls it, and of which he 
 speaks, as likely to spoil the effect of a freshly painted picture, 
 " long shut up in a case without air" is totally distinct from 
 that golden tint necessary to represent the sunny warmth with 
 which this great master overspread some of his finest works. So 
 far was it from the thoughts of Rubens to denounce this, and so 
 
 * " On the 9th of August, 1629, being theD in London, Rubens writes 
 to Pieresc, — 1 If I thought that ruv portrait was still at Antwerp, I 
 would direct it to be detained, and the ease opened, to see whether it is 
 not spoiled, after having been so long shut up in the case without air, 
 and whether, as sometimes happens to fresh colours, it has not taken a 
 yellow tone, which would cause it to lose all its original effect. The 
 remedy, however, if that should have happened, is to expose it several 
 times to the $un ; for the sun's rays check this superfluity of oil, which 
 causes the alteration ; and if at any time it should again incline to 
 brown, it would be necessary a^ain to expose it to the sun. The sun's 
 heat is the only remedy lor this serious evil.' " — Gachet. Lettres 
 inedites de Pierre Paul' Rubens, Bruielles, 1840, p. 23". 
 
 " In a letter, preserved by Baldinucci, in the ' Life of Subtermans,' 
 dated Antwerp, 12th of March, 1638, Rubens commends one of his 
 works, ' An Allegory of War,' — now in the Pitti Palace, and of which 
 Mr. Rogers has the original sketch — to his countrymen residing in Flo- 
 rence. He concludes as follows : — ' I fear that in a picture packed up 
 while in a fresh state, the colours may undergo some alteration, par- 
 ticularly in the flesh ; and the whites may also become a little (quale/, e 
 poco ) yellow. But one so great in our profession as you can easily 
 remedy this, by exposing the picture to the sun, leaving it so exposed at 
 intervals, and when it seems to require it. You have also my permis- 
 sion to put your hand to the picture, and retouch it where it may want 
 mending, either in consequence of accident or from my oversight.' He 
 thus invites his friend, not to varnish, but to retouch a picture which he 
 himself was not to see again.'' — Daily News, January 19, 1847. 
 
 K 
 
clearly does he allude only to that filthy, horny tinge, which 
 defiles " fresh colours long deprived of air/' that he loosely calls 
 it, first yellow, and then brown. Had it been his intention to 
 decry that luxurious glow, so wonderfully expressed by the great 
 Venetian Painters, and of which he was so enthusiastic an ad- 
 mirer, he would have explained himself with equal distinctness. 
 But Rubens no where recommends spirits or scrapers for the 
 removal of even that offensive tinge. 
 
 Now, as Mr. Eastlake so stupidly mistook the rich sunny gla- 
 zings of the " Peace and "War," for that repulsive tinge * to which 
 Rubens so strongly objects, (otherwise, what does he mean by 
 his quotations from that master ?) it appears to me that a feel- 
 ing of reverence should have deterred him from applying any 
 other remedy for their removal, than that so strictly prescribed 
 by Rubens as the only cure for the yellow or brown. Had Mr. 
 Eastlake, instead of employing u his consummate knowledge of 
 that art, (that of flaying pictures ?) of which he is so consum- 
 mate an ornament," only exposed the u Peace and War" to the 
 sun, it would most assuredly not have been robbed of its harmony 
 and aerial perspective. The absurdity — nay, the impertinence of 
 bringing forward the authority of Rubens, only to treat it with 
 contempt, is so palpable, that even the meanest capacity can- 
 not fail to be struck by it. 
 
 It is very characteristic of such a defence to quote two 
 letters, in both of which Rubens expressly says, that the 
 " sun's heat is the only remedy for the serious evil " of which he 
 complains. Even in the letter to Subtermans he says : — " but one 
 so great in our profession as you can remedy this, by exposing 
 the picture to the sun, leaving it so exposed at intervals when it 
 seems to require it." Not a word of spirits or scrapers. The 
 only manual labour recommended, is that necessary to place it 
 in the sun. 
 
 I must not allow the impudent attempt to establish a prece- 
 dent for retouching important works by the Great Masters to 
 pass unnoticed. I beg most particularly to remind the Keeper 
 
 * Not only the whites, but even the deepest yellows, which would 
 seem incapable of more " } r ellowing," would acquire this other " yellow," 
 or "brown " if long shut up, " freshly painted," in a case without air. 
 
77 
 
 that Subtermans, to whom Rubens gave " permission" to retouch 
 his picture, was an able painter, his contemporary and country- 
 man, and understood the principles on which he worked; — 
 this establishes no precedent for every jack-in-office to plaster 
 filthy restorations on a work of Rubens. Titian's historians 
 concur in saying" that he finished several of Giorgione's pic- 
 tures ; — this is no precedent for Mr. Eastlake to bedaub the left 
 pectoral and deltoid muscles of Titian's " Bacchus," which 
 makes him look as if he were infected with leprosy. Let Mr. 
 Eastlake and his colleagues bandy compliments by retouching 
 each other's works, but he must not be permitted to exercise his 
 ingenuity in u cleaning" and "restoring" the public pictures. 
 
 Those friends (!) of Mr. Eastlake, who endeavour to fix 
 the praise or blame of the late proceedings on Mr. Seguien 
 offer the strongest evidence (although they have not the wit 
 to perceive it,) of their protege's incapacity, especially as he 
 has publicly acknowledged " such labours" to have been carried 
 on u under his daily superintendence ;" for, is it not greatly 
 lowering him beneath that position which he ought to occupy in 
 public opinion, to make his judgment subservient to that of a 
 mere " restorer ? " * " We " of The Daily Xen-s say, that " Mr. 
 Eastlake' s judgment rests upon testimonials probably as sound, 
 and certainly more notorious than Verax's." Behold, them, if 
 you doubt, in the " genuine spurious Holbein," (as our uncon- 
 sciously witty friend, the " Graduate," calls that sublime pro- 
 duction.) — Behold them in the wretched Guidos, the G. Dow, &c- 
 — but, above all, in the flayed pictures ! "Verax" certainly 
 cannot boast of testimonials so notorious as these, which, if not 
 very sovnd, are at least eminently convincing. 
 
 I have a right to complain of the excessive cruelty of my an- 
 tagonists, who, not content with triumphantly refuting my 
 
 * " Now — assuming for a moment that the keeper was not the 
 cautious person he is described to be — assuming that, no matter from 
 what cause, he could counsel the over-cleaning of pictures by the great 
 masters — is Mr. Seguier, qualified as he is, and with a high reputation 
 to lose (not dealing with the pictures of a country gentleman, but in the 
 face of the whole world,) is Mr. Seguier likely to assent to such a 
 course, and to fall in with an opinion and practice contrary to his 
 experience and judgment ? It would be absurd to suppose it," &c. — 
 Daily News. Januarv 18. 
 
 K 2 
 
78 
 
 errors, have been hard-hearted enough to cut me in two.* The 
 cause is now to stand on the case-paper as " The Daily News v. 
 i Verax' and another;" and, truth to say, " Verax" has certainly 
 availed himself of the assistance, not of one, but of many ; for 
 instance, of Virgil, Milton, Hume, Wordsworth, <fec, who have 
 obligingly furnished him with quotations. If the possessors of 
 so pure and classical a style as the writers of The Daily News, 
 would vouchsafe to lend him their powerful help, he will gladly 
 avail himself of it. At the same time, he will not trouble them 
 for their names, as that would only be necessary if he took 
 them, not as scribes, but as witnesses ; but before he claimed 
 their assistance in that way, he must have better proofs of the 
 competence of their judgments, and of the honesty of their inten- 
 tions. Indeed he scarcely knows how to repay the unusual 
 compliment of multiplying him, and thereby increasing the 
 authority of his statements. As to the multiplicity implied in 
 the " We" of The Daily News, he would advise his accusers 
 not to draw public attention too closely to that, lest any mis- 
 chievous person should be tempted to make some perverse allu- 
 sion to that lively knot of undistinguishable vermin which is 
 the sure forerunner of decay in any constitution that is infected 
 by them. See Dr. Bateman de Morbo Pediculari. 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 * "'Verax/ the twin-critic of the 'Times.'" — Daily News 
 January 18. 
 
 XII. 
 
 In consequence of the overbearing tone which Sir Martin Shee 
 thought proper to assume in the letters he published in The 
 Times, January 27th, I felt it absolutely necessary to expose 
 his repeated attempts to persuade the public that he is a great 
 admirer of the works of the ancient masters, and that the state- 
 ments which represented him as " treating them with contemp- 
 tuous ridicule," were " false and slanderous." But it was not 
 enough for Sir Martin Shee to vindicate himself; — he must attack 
 
79 
 
 me a second and third time, denouncing me as an " associate" 
 (in the worst sense) of Mr. Woodburn. For this, Sir Martin 
 Shee has not the slightest ground; I not only consider Mr. 
 Woodburn' s conduct on the occasion quite as bad as his own, 
 but I never thought the President of sufficient importance to 
 even mention him in any of my letters on the " Abuses of the 
 National Gallery." The assertion, therefore, is as false as it is 
 impudent. 
 
 The following letter appeared in The Times of January 30. 
 To the Editor of The Times. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 The quarrel between Sir Martin Shee and Mr. Woodburn has 
 assumed a very grave character — the cause of truth is compro- 
 mised. As the case now stands, Mr. Woodburn lies under the 
 very serious imputation of having invented a falsehood highly 
 prejudicial to Sir Martin Shee's professional character, and so it 
 will remain, until Mr. Woodburn can bring satisfactory evidence 
 of the truth of the statements advanced by " Veritas," on his 
 authority. Not only has Sir Martin Shee denied in the strongest 
 language, the " slanderous statements" which " represented him 
 as treating with contemptuous ridicule the brightest genius that 
 ever adorned his profession," but the tone of his letters implies 
 the most " virtuous indignation" at being considered as wanting 
 in a proper appreciation of the great masters. I must, however, 
 remark, that the friends of truth would have been more satisfied, 
 had Sir Martin Shee less studiously inserted the word " official." 
 As strong presumptive evidence that Sir Martin Shee has been 
 "most falsely slandered," I offer the following : — 
 
 e< I (Sir Martin SheeJ consider the Royal Academy a much more im- 
 portant establishment to the nation than the National Gallery ; I look 
 upon it that a garden is of more consequence than a granary, and you 
 may heap up zJiortus-siccus of Art without producing any of the salu- 
 tary effects which never fail to result from the operations of such a 
 school as the Royal Academy. It would, therefore, I conceive, be an 
 injury to the nation, as well as to the Royal Academy, if they were 
 to be removed, in order to make room for even the best works of the 
 old masters." 
 
 Sir Martin Shee is, perhaps, not aware that this " hortus siccus" 
 — that this " granary" — that " the best works of the old masters" 
 
80 
 
 embrace, not only those of "the brightest genius that ever 
 adorned his profession/' but of others almost as great. Sir Mar- 
 tin Shee, in his attempt to exalt so useless an establishment as 
 the Royal Academy above a collection of " even the best works 
 of the old masters/' has treated with the most contemptuous 
 ridicule "the brightest genius that ever adorned his profession."* 
 Sir Martin Shee may perhaps say, that the above were not his 
 official opinions, f 
 
 I will give another instance of Sir Martin Shee's appreciation 
 of " the brightest genius that ever adorned his profession." A 
 gentleman who is above prevarication, affirms that about three 
 years ago he heard Sir Martin Shee say, that " it would be dif- 
 ficult to find as bad drawing in modern works as in the cartoons 
 of Raphael at Hampton Court." The gentleman in question, 
 who is willing (if Sir Martin Shee requires it) to come forward 
 in his own name and person, immediately remarked, that " it 
 would be more difficult to find as good." This, however, would 
 be but a poor excuse for any one to invent a falsehood prejudi- 
 cial to Sir Martin Shee. 
 
 I appeal to your impartiality and love of truth for the insertion 
 of this letter. 
 
 I remain, Sir, yours obediently, 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 January 27. 
 
 * And yet Sir Robert Peel advised the crown to acknowledge the 
 merits of Sir Martin Shee, President of the Royal Academy, by the grant 
 of a pension from the civil list ! I am told of £300 per annum. This is 
 another instance of shameless jobbery. Sir Martin Shee has no merits 
 which entitle him to his country's bounty. While he is rewarded for 
 nothing, many highly-gifted men in every profession are languishing in 
 hopeless distress. The Royal Academy should be compelled to support 
 their own officers. They possess an enormous sum of money in the 
 funds, which is derived from the annual exhibitions of the works of 
 many hundreds of artists. The Academy are very willing to render 
 their show more attractive by the efforts of others, but they take good 
 care to monopolize the entire control of the funds, and in addition, be- 
 come beggars to the nation for the support of their chief. 
 
 f So inveterate is Sir Martin Shee's hostility to the works of the old 
 masters, that even when, in " The Times" of January the 15th, he was 
 striving might and main to create a contrary impression, he could not re- 
 frain from a sneer at Mr. Woodbum's " gems," or from confessing that 
 he had " opposed " their purchase. These " gems " are that portion of 
 the M. Angelo and Raphael drawings, which forms the Oxford Collec- 
 tion. So much for the ** slanderous statements" of " Veritas." 
 
81 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Mr. Coningham has supplied his achievements with a suitable 
 Commentary, by the publication of a pamphlet with the follow- 
 ing title : " The Picture Cleaning in the National Gallery, with 
 some Observations on the Royal Academy. Whittaker & Co., 
 London." * To this he has added a " Supplement," containing 
 the whole, save one, of his valuable communications to The 
 Times, from December the 8th, 1846, to January the 11th, 
 1847. The exception is that creditable little note against "Ye- 
 rax's" u personalities ;" an omission, which, besides doing honour 
 to Mr. Coningham's candovr, must have been an act of great 
 self-denial, as the insertion of such a note, immediately after his 
 third letter, would have rendered the " Supplement" even a 
 greater curiosity than it is, and given it point, which, (be it said 
 with all reverence,) it certainly wants. It will ever be a source 
 of gratification to reflect that I had anticipated this excessive 
 delicacy towards myself: — the reader will find the missing docu- 
 ment at page 23 of this pamphlet. 
 
 I cannot, however, leave Mr. Coningham's performance with- 
 out further notice, as there are many matters in it which markedly 
 illustrate the character of the author, and the results which 
 we may expect from his interference in a question like the pre- 
 sent. The first page is headed, "Observations, &c," which 
 hieroglyphic turns out to be a compendious expression for 
 de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aJiis. We have first a fulsome 
 compliment to The Athenceum, for the nonsense which that 
 " four-penny-worth of Germanism,"t adopted from The Daily 
 News, — a parade of technical terms, and an explanation of them 
 which betrays at once the foppery and the ignorance of the 
 paltriest amateur. Mr. Coningham's " important principle of the 
 relative opacity of the high light graduating into transparent sha- 
 dow," and his jargon about " luminous quality," reminds us of the 
 transcendental " Graduate." The opposition between subduing 
 colour, and making it " more luminous," is a fair indication of the 
 
 • It maybe had of Mr. W. Pickering of Piccadilly. 
 
 t " The Athaeneum" received this appropriate nickname fromHaydon. 
 
82 
 
 amount of " lead " (Piombo) in Mr. Coningham's own conceptions 
 of the subject. 
 
 The next page presents us with an adroit legerdemain, by 
 which Mr. Seguier is fobbed off on the public as responsible for 
 the cleaning of the pictures ; no doubt, that he may bear the 
 brunt, in place of his principal. Then we have a list of the 
 author's discoveries on the " Peace and War," the " Brazen 
 Serpent," and Bellini's " Portrait of a Doge," and a remark in 
 answer to that critic whose statement, according to him, " con- 
 trasts " so " favourably " with all the others that have appeared, 
 namely, — that " any petty dealer could have given him that 
 information" which he quotes Rubens to prove. 
 
 After this, he alludes to the purchase of inferior pictures, 
 " and to the mode of hanging the Simmons bequest," without 
 a single word by which his readers might understand that it 
 was not his own service, but that of " Verax," to have called the 
 public attention to these abuses; and this assumption of the 
 merits of another is seasoned by a remark, that " persons of all 
 classes " have " expressed the greatest indignation " to him 
 " in private but that " few like to expose themselves to the 
 vituperation and abuse, to which they might be subjected, by 
 a public assertion of their opinions." This is, no doubt, intended 
 to throw into strong relief his own peculiar boldness and 
 constancy. 
 
 Then follows another appropriation, without acknowledgment 
 of the observations made by " Verax " — " the shameful waste 
 of the public money;" and a perfectly original and most ridicu- 
 lous proposal that artists, while at work in the gallery, should 
 have an opportunity of exhibiting their pictures to the public : — 
 
 " The system of closing the gallery to the public on the last two 
 days of the week, is quite indefensible ; it must be the amateurs, 
 not the artists, who would wish to exclude the public on those 
 days. The professional artist would be glad of the opportunity 
 of exhibiting his picture, while the public might be interested in 
 watching his progress, and method of working, and thus be enabled 
 more justly to appreciate, by comparison, the relative merits of the 
 ancient and modern schools." 
 
 The author's design for disseminating a taste for art, by ena- 
 bling the public to watch the " progress and method " of manu- 
 
83 
 
 facturing copies in the gallery, must, from its magnitude, bp 
 entirely his own . 
 
 The paragraph on the Royal Academy, is a good example of 
 the spirit in which corporate bodies ought not to be attacked. 
 The hesitating- critic, who thinks that " it appears very doubt- 
 ful," &e. — the complaisant critic, who makes allowances for the 
 " present state of society," — the loyal critic, who talks of " an 
 acknowledged head of the profession/' as if the Academy was 
 for the sake of the President, and not the President for the 
 Academy — the petit-maltre critic, who talks of " diplomas," 
 and " honours," as incentives to the study of art, — this is not 
 the adversary, through whose influence the Academy need 
 fear to " risk the loss " of its privileges, which is Mr. 
 Coningham's new English elegance for running the risk of losing 
 them.* 
 
 I pass hastily by an impertinent and unprovoked attack, 
 which this enemy to all personalities thinks proper to make on 
 Mr. Jones, keeper of the Royal Academy,t — a silly outcry 
 against the Royal Academy dinners, — a note on Bavarian fresco 
 painting,— the conclusion that " Mr. Eastlake's character, as a 
 
 • " Wilkie was told by Sir William Beechey that unless he called on 
 the academicians, he would risk the loss of his election." See Mr. C.'s 
 pamphlet. 
 
 f Mr. Coningham's passion for advertising himself has induced him 
 to write to the " Art-union," of February I, appealing to the editor's 
 xe sense of justice " to allow him to deny having anathematized the 
 " glory of his country " as " a gathering of chalky absurdities." In 
 this letter, he makes a fourth assault on Mr. Turner ; but this time he 
 cautiously gives him a thrust from behind a German cloak. Mr. Coning- 
 ham, I am told, glories in anti-Germanism ; it is, therefore, the greater 
 condescension, on his part, to employ a German critic to denounce Mr. 
 T.'s pictures as " the worst and most ludicrous aberrations," &c. In 
 this epistle, we are again favoured with " Piombo," for Sebastiano del 
 Piombo. 
 
 Notwithstanding Mr. Coningham's dutiful conduct, Pecksniff is very 
 hard upon him in a second article on the " cleaning;" but we trust that, 
 as he has withdrawn or denied the " intemperate phrase," the monthly 
 dispenser of jlunkeyism (I hope " the term here applied will not be 
 misunderstood ") will soon " have forgotten the hasty enthusiasm that 
 gave rise to its utterance," and that an essay from Mr. Coningham's 
 pen on " the legitimate interference of noble houses," (vide Mr. C.'s 
 third letter to the " Times," Jan 7,) will be accepted as a full atonement for 
 past offences. 
 
 L 
 
84 
 
 connoisseur, is not under consideration/' — the twaddle about 
 "Mr. Eastlake's anonymous partisans/' the moral assassins of 
 society/' — together with his gratitude for Mr. Shee's " gene- 
 rosity/'* in allowing' him to make himself ridiculous, — for I find 
 in the " Supplement " so astounding an allegation, (which, if it 
 be indeed true, as I must conclude that it is, by its remaining 
 so long uncontradicted,) that I could find it in my heart to for- 
 give all the faults and follies of his pamphlet, for the sake of 
 the following- sentence : — " I had at that time given up all idea 
 of again writing on the subject, having received a kind of semi- 
 official message from Mr. Eastlake, through a common acquaint- 
 ance, stating that the cleaning would 'probably not be continued" 
 If this is true — for I confess that Mr. Coningham's statements 
 have little weight with me — we have in this " semi-official mes- 
 sage, " Mr. Eastlake's condemnation of himself. How will he 
 reconcile it with " begging leave to repeat his entire satisfaction 
 at the result, (of the cleaning^) and to express his acknowledg- 
 ments to Mr. Seguier for the care with which he executed the 
 task undertaken by him. — Minutes of the Trustees of the 
 Nat. Gal. 1847." For what purpose did Mr. Eastlake send 
 such a message, if not as a " semi-official " admission that he 
 had begun to doubt the " result " of his " operations" on the 
 pictures ? If this is " entirely satisfactory," the " operations " 
 ought to be continued ; but if, on the contrary, he had reason 
 to suspect that the pictures had he&A flayed, instead of cleaned, 
 it was his duty to have assured the public, his employers, and 
 to promise them, and not every conceited, meddling dilettante 
 who might be railing at him, that the cleaning would be dis- 
 continued. If Mr. Eastlake cannot deny having sent this " semi- 
 official message," he will lie under a far more serious imputation 
 
 * et Postscript. — The generosity of Mr. Shee enables me to give his 
 own testimony in my favour. The following passage is taken from his 
 letter, dated the 1st February. 
 
 " ' I shall ever be ready to bear my willing testimony to the gentle- 
 manly frankness and perfect good faith with which you at once acknow- 
 ledged and retracted the error of statement into which you had been 
 unwittingly betrayed.' " Does Mr. Shee allude to the good faith with 
 which Mr. Coningham publicly apologized to Sir M. Shee, and accused 
 Mr. Woodburn of a ef false assertion," without any previous communica- 
 tion with the latter ? — Vide Mr. C.'s pamphlet. 
 
than that of incapacity — that of knowingly defending a bad 
 cause. This is the only conclusion which can, and will be 
 drawn from his conduct by every sensible and impartial person. 
 
 YE RAX. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 A parting word to all persons of that order of mind for which 
 feebleness and propriety are synonymous terms, since they have 
 been so dreadfully shocked at what they are pleased to call my 
 " personalities/' against Mr. Eastlake ; while Mr. William 
 Coningham,* alive to all delinquencies but his own, coolly 
 protests ■gainst the violence and u personality " of my letters, 
 the very day after his own " gratuitous assaults " on every body, 
 had appeared in Tlte Times. His subsequent attempt to screen 
 
 * The " Daily News,'' among other ill-natured remarks upon this ac- 
 complished dilettante, published the following : — 
 
 " We cannot help remarking it, as an unfortunate circumstance, with 
 reference to certain of the accusations, which should have kept Mr. 
 Coningham out of the field, or civilised his tone, for the sake of avoiding 
 inferences, that that gentleman has himself, if our information be correct, 
 been an unsuccessful offerer of pictures for purchase to the National 
 Gallery. If this be not true, we give Mr. Coningham an opportunity 
 of deuviug what at present we hear hinted against him as a motive." — 
 Daily News, January 19. That any one should be deterred from 
 doing what is right, for " the sake of avoiding inferences," is a precept 
 worthy of the supporters of abuses. Mr. Coningham, however, had no 
 w inferences" to dread, for he immediately published in the " Daily 
 News " an unqualified denial of ever having offered a picture for pur- 
 chase to the National Gallery ; and he ended it by declaring that there 
 was not " the slightest foundation "for the report. We must, therefore, 
 believe him. But it was really a curious coincidence that there should 
 have been another Mr. William Coninsham, who. about that time, had 
 an inferior picture, by Carlo Crivelli, for sale at Mr. Colnaghi's, in Pall 
 Mall, for which he had given about three hundred pounds, a short 
 time previously, in Italy. This other Mr. William Coningham did not 
 want to sell this inferior picture by Carlo Crivelli : but he was " open 
 to an offer " of two thousand pounds.'' Three hundred pounds was its 
 full value. It is confidently asserted that Mr. Eastlake thought it 
 would be a very doirable acquisition for the National Gallery : — hence 
 the " slightest foundation." 
 
86 
 
 Mr. Eastlake, by foisting upon the public, the " Master of the 
 Skinner's Company/' as responsible, in any way, for the mutila- 
 tion of the national pictures, is far from mending- the matter - y 
 Mr. Eastlake alone being the responsible person. When I have 
 occasion to profit by Mr. Coningham's judgment, I hope I shall 
 have the honour to acknowledge that I am indebted to him for 
 it ; but in this instance, I shall appeal to those on whom I have 
 more reliance. 
 
 All who do not fear to call things by their rig'ht names will, 
 I am convinced, acknowledge that strong terms are applicable 
 to strong facts only. We have for this, the greatest authorities 
 on our side, and if modern drivellers object to them, they are at 
 liberty to get up a dictionary for their own private use ; but 
 they must not expect us to conform to their absurd conventions. 
 Let any one put himself in the position of a devoted lover of 
 what is truly great in art, witnessing, day by day, and year by 
 year, all that barbarism in high places, unchallenged and uncon- 
 trolled, could effect for the depravation of taste and the extinc- 
 tion of scientific study ; at last, a crowning act of Vandalism 
 calls him forward to sustain the invidious and dangerous task of 
 an accuser ; turn where he will, he finds in every quarter the 
 same person, not only officially responsible, but the avowed agent 
 in every proceeding which he has to denounce. Suppose then, 
 that he has the following history to tell: that Mr. Eastlake, 
 during the four years that he has been keeper and professional 
 adviser in the purchase of pictures for the National Gallery, has 
 betrayed the utmost incapacity in the selection of ten pictures, 
 all of inferior merit, and some of them worthless, for which 
 he has made us pay preposterous prices ; — that he has, within 
 the same period, busied himself in attempts to acquire other 
 poor works for the public gallery, and has only been prevented 
 by the rapacity of disguised and professional speculators ; — that 
 he has shown himself totally insensible, on several occasions, to 
 works of the highest excellence; — that his arrangements in the 
 hanging of the pictures we possess, have been even worse 
 than those of his predecessor in the same office ; — that he has 
 thrust fine works out of reach to make room for bad ones, 
 while he was scribbling pamphlets "on the insufficient space 
 
87 
 
 of the present building" — and that he has frightfully and 
 irreparably injured some of our finest pictures. Were these 
 subjects to be set to some elegiac strain, or sentimental admo- 
 nition ? Was he to deplore, and regret, and lament, and wonder 
 how itL could be — or was he to impeach? And if so, were 
 " ignorance," and " incapacity," terms too harsh for such pro- 
 ceedings? I recognize the propriety of facts being stronger 
 than words. Are they not so in the present case ? Shall we, 
 to soothe the smelling-bottle school of criticism, substitute 
 "knowledge" and "ability?" Is "insolent arrogance" an expres- 
 sion so very inapplicable to the threat, made by Mr. Eastlake, 
 to persevere in the work of destruction, (even to naming the 
 " Consecration of St. Nicholas," by Paul Veronese, as the next 
 object of his mischievous diligence,) in spite of the loud and 
 angry denunciations which assailed him on every side ? Shall 
 we substitute "respectful firmness?" 
 
 Lastly, there are some who, incapable of high motives them- 
 selves, in the face of the great works so cruelly mangled, 
 attribute my letters to personal hostility, or professional jealousy. 
 Personal hostility to Mr. Eastlake ! I have, I believe, spoken 
 to him about four times in my life, (the first on his own unsought 
 introduction,) and if he particularly wishes me to relate the few 
 words which passed between us on those occasions, I can do so, 
 as I remember them well. That I now entertain a strong feeling 
 of indignation against him, (not altogether unmixed with one of 
 a different kind,) on public grounds, for his flagrant acts of 
 omission and commission, and that I have long considered him 
 utterly incompetent to fill any public office, I frankly admit. 
 Professional jealously of Mr. Eastlake ! Those who attribute 
 my interference to such a motive, betray the baseness of their 
 souls, and the poverty of their aspirations. If I feel any 
 professional jealousy, it is of such works as those which Mr. 
 Eastlake has so shamefully injured. 
 
 VERAX. 
 
88 
 
 POSTCRIPT. 
 
 Analysis of u The Minutes of the Trustees of The Na- 
 tional Gallery, &c."* containing Mr. Eastlake's Report. 
 
 DECISION OF THE TRUSTEES. 
 
 " At a meeting- of the Trustees of the National Gallery, held 
 on Monday, the 4th February, 1847 : Present— The Right 
 Hon. the Earl of Aberdeen, K. T. in the Chair ; The Most 
 Hon. the Marquess of Lansdowne, K.G. ; The Right Hon. 
 the Earl of Ripon; The Right Hon. the Earl of Ellesmere; 
 The Right Hon. Lord Monteagle ; The Right Hon. Sir 
 Robert Peel, Bart.; The Right Hon. Sir James R. G. 
 Graham, Bart.; Samuel Rogers, Esq.; William Wells, 
 Esq. 
 
 <s Read, and confirmed the Minutes of the last meeting. 
 
 " Read, A Report by Mr. Eastlake, Keeper of the National Gal- 
 lery, made by him in pursuance of the Minute of the Trustees of 
 the National Gallery of the 25th January last, together with various 
 testimonials and documents referred to in the Report, (copies of 
 which Report and documents are appended hereto). 
 
 " Resolved, That in the opinion of the Trustees, the Report so 
 made by Mr. Eastlake is entirely satisfactory, and justifies the con- 
 fidence which they have reposed in his judgment in respect to the 
 treatment of the pictures in the National Gallery." 
 
 This decision, founded on the most contemptible and interested 
 evidence, means nothing more than that the trustees are " en- 
 tirely satisfied" with themselves ; — a fact already so notorious, 
 from the many unequivocal tokens they have given us of their 
 assurance, but especially from their condnct in the " Holbein " 
 business, that it can surprise no one to find it printed. It how- 
 ever, in the present case, furnishes the most conclusive evidence 
 of their conceit and of their ignorance of art ; and, at the same time, 
 
 * To be had of Mr. Luke Hansard, printer for the House of Com- 
 mons, Great Turnstile, Holborn. Price Twopence halfpenny. 
 
89 
 
 of the absolute necessity for a public and a searching inquiry into 
 the whole administration of this portion of the National pro- 
 perty, in order that means may be devised for its future protec- 
 tion from stupid, mischievous, and dishonest practices. The 
 trustees themselves, after the serious charges that have been 
 brought against their management, which are rullv confirmed 
 by their own " Minutes," will also, if they have any regard for 
 their characters as gentlemen, court a public enquiry : other- 
 wise, we must conclude that they fear it. 
 
 From "The Minutes of the Trustees," recently published, we 
 find that there have been seventeen meetings since the 3rd 
 March, 1845; — that the average number of trustees present at 
 each meeting, amounts to three and a fraction — that on three 
 
 occasions, only tn-o were present — the chairman and an- 
 other; — that on seven occasions not more than three at- 
 tended; — and at one meeting alone, (the last) did they 
 muster nine. Upon such an occasion as this, when the very 
 existence of the pictures was to be the subject of discussion, not 
 onlv ought the whole of the trustees to have been present, but 
 each should have been obliged to give written reasons for his 
 decision, and these should have been inserted in the u Minutes." 
 If they are unable to specify their reasons, their decision is 
 worthless. Sir Martin Shoe's name does not occur in these 
 "Minutes:'' — he was, doubtless, too much occupied with that 
 delightful " garden M the Royal Academy, and with his nursery 
 of "young men, who draw better than Raphael," to trouble 
 himself about the u hortux-siccus" or the u granary " on the other 
 side of the building. 
 
 During the same period, fifteen pictures, gratuitously offered, 
 besides others in " crayon and oil," have been refused in the 
 most absurd and capricious manner; in some cases, without 
 assigning any reason whatever for their rejection ; while in others, 
 their " dimensions" were considered " too large for the limited 
 space at the disposal of the trustees, on the walls of this Gal- 
 lery:" — their measure was unsatisfactory. On the other hand, 
 one statue and sixteen pictures, fourteen of which belong to the 
 Simmons bequest, have been as capriciously accepted. As it is 
 impossible to imagine any better excuse for allowing some of 
 
90 
 
 these daubs to occupy any portion of the "too limited space/' we 
 may conclude that they were of a satisfactory number of feet 
 and inches, The Royal bequest and the other two donations 
 have not yet made their appearance- If the rejected pictures 
 were worse than some of those which have been accepted, or 
 even than others acquired by purchase, they might have been 
 secured as pictorial curiosities. 
 
 The " Minutes" also inform us that at a meeting* held on the 7 th 
 April 1845, Sir Robert Peel proposed, that " pictures or other 
 works of art offered as donations, in certain cases, be accepted 
 for the purpose of being" transferred to other Museums." It 
 will be time enough to talk of " transferring" works of Art to 
 " other" Museums, when we have a greater number of a high 
 character than we know what to do with ; for, surely, it would 
 be most unadvisible to stock our Provincial Museums with works 
 which are not of a class to promote a good taste. If the go- 
 vernment cannot give fine pictures, it should give none, as it 
 could not but prove highly prejudicial to Art if it lent the weight 
 of its authority to inferior ones; and as our National Gallery- 
 is as yet only in its infancy, and the chances of the government 
 possessing such a superabundance of fine works, are too remote 
 to warrant it in alienating, for some time to come, any of this 
 class from the capital,Sir Robert Peel's plan is, at best, very 
 premature. 
 
 As this gentleman has so especially signalised himself as an 
 apologist of the Vandalisms recently perpetrated in the National 
 Gallery with his connivance, by his " eminent" friend Mr. East- 
 lake, it may not be considered out of place if I make a short 
 digression in order to examine his peculiar qualifications as a 
 judge in the late decision. That the Right Honourable Ba- 
 ronet entertains the most exalted opinion of this own dilettan- 
 teism no one can doubt, from the self-sufficient manner with 
 which, after seconding Mr. Hume's motion on the National 
 Gallery, on the 27th January last, he pronounced Mr. Eastlake's 
 " knowledge of art" to be " consummate," — a judgment which 
 implied the perfect competency of the person who gave it ; nor 
 is it surprising that he should have seasoned it with a spice of 
 that inconsistency for which he is so renowned, by complimen- 
 
91 
 
 ting Mr. Hume on " the proper course he had pursued in re- 
 framing from comments until he was in possession of the papers." 
 But as it must ever prove a losing speculation to take men 
 at their own price, even when as precious as the Right Hon- 
 ourable Baronet himself, my readers will be better able to 
 appreciate his taste and knowledge of art, when I inform 
 them that he is celebrated in the " trade," as an exclusively 
 " Dutch, Flemish, and English collector which means that 
 he prefers inferiority and even badness on principle, and is 
 better pleased to give preposterous sums for pictures which 
 markedly partake of these qualities, than moderate ones for 
 works of the highest excellence. It would, however, be the 
 height of injustice to the Right Honourable Gentleman if we 
 hence inferred, that he %mderstands the higher objects of his 
 selection, which only vanity and a superfluity of guineas, have in- 
 duced him to procure ; for in that case, he would appreciate, 
 and be anxious to acquire some of those great productions, 
 which the best of the masters whose works he fancies he 
 admires, honoured as their greatest models. As a governor 
 and Director of the "British Institution for promoting the 
 Pine Arts in the United Kingdom," he considerably increased 
 his fame, in 1844, by encumbering nearly a whole wall of 
 that cradle of art, by the exhibition of Lawrence's prodigious 
 abortion of " Kemble as Rolla;" and as this specimen of " Bri- 
 tish talent" had, long before, received its due meed of public 
 praise, and been recognised as almost worthy of a wild-beast show, 
 Sir Robert Peel could have had no other motive in re-exhibiting 
 it, than to display his taste, and advance the objects which 
 that august and enlightened society so eloquently sets forth 
 in its title, and so rig-idly carries into practice. 
 
 With such powerful recommendations to our confidence in his 
 attainments as a connoisseur, we find him judging of cartoons and 
 frescoes, and the foremost of the dabblers in the National Gallery 
 abuses. He was one of the seven trustees who were present 
 at the meeting held on the 7th April, 1845, when that libel on 
 "Holbein" was "brought to their view;" and as he was 
 Prime Minister at the time, we can easily imagine what in- 
 fluence his favourable opinion of that vile production, (be- 
 
y2 
 
 smeared with fresh paint, and with the very name palpably 
 forged on the background — though imperceptible to them,) must 
 have had on the resolution, by which, 
 
 " Mr. Eastlake is empowered by the Trustees to negociate the 
 purchase of the picture, ' A Portrait of a Gentleman, by Holbein/ 
 at a price not exceeding eight hundred guineas." 
 
 Again, at a meeting held on the 2nd February, 1846, it was 
 "a letter from Sir Robert Peel," that "authorized the offer of 
 one thousand two hundred guineas " for that other worthless 
 picture representing*, " Susanna and the Elders," by Guido : 
 (vide " Minutes,") and lastly, it was the same distinguished 
 dilettante who suffered himself to be tricked into the purchase 
 of so inferior a picture as the Velasquez, by a crafty dealer, 
 who had succeeded in flattering him into the belief, that the 
 exportation of a very important work depended upon his de- 
 cision. Mr. Eastlake may now enjoy the full benefit of Sir Ro- 
 bert Peel's certificate of his " consummate knowledge of Art." 
 
 At a meeting held on the 5th May 1845, a resolution was 
 passed granting an exclusive privilege to the Royal Academy ; 
 the purport of which is to diminish the chances of study to the 
 mass of artists, by admitting, "in addition to the number of 
 general students already permitted to paint in oil colours in the 
 gallery, twenty students of the Royal Academ}'." The trustees 
 really appear to consider the National Gallery as their own 
 private property. What right have they to grant exclusive 
 privileges to the Royal Academy, or to any other Society? 
 The Academy enjoy too many privileges already -.—donations 
 are constantly rejected on the plea of "too limited space/' 
 while that worthless institution is allowed to occupy one half of 
 this national building, without any claim whatever to such a 
 distinction ; and we now find the trustees conniving at further 
 encroachments. This constant cry of "too limited space'' 
 plainly indicates that the room of the Academy would be far 
 more acceptable than their company; with so much wealth at 
 their disposal, they could easily build a place for themselves, as 
 the "Society of British Artists," without any of their advantages, 
 has already done. Let Parliament turn the Academy out, and 
 
03 
 
 we shall then have plenty of room for an efficient arrangement 
 of the public pictures, and of many more which might hereafter 
 be acquired either by gift or by purchase. 
 
 The "Minutes," moreover, report that since March, 1845, 
 the trustees, guided by Mr. Eastlake's " consummate know- 
 ledge," have offered £14,477 10$. of the public money, for 
 nine pictures, all, except the A. Caracci, (and even that is 
 strongly tinged with decay,) of a decidedly inferior character. 
 Of these they have contrived to secure four. Here is a list of 
 the nine pictures together with the sums offered for them by 
 
 the trustees: — 
 
 £ s. 
 
 That libel on Holbein 630 0 
 
 " Susanna and the Elders," Guido 12G0 0 
 
 " A Spanish Boar Hunt," Velasquez . . 2200 0 
 " The Temptation of St. Anthony," A. 
 
 Caracci 787 10 
 
 The following offers made by the trus- 
 tees proved ineffectual : — 
 
 For another, " Rubens " , 1800 0 
 
 For a much injured and inferior picture, 
 
 said to be by " Luini " 800 0 
 
 For the three Lucca Caracci 7000 0 
 
 £14,477 10 
 
 On the 3rd August, 1846, Mr. Buchanan offered two of these 
 
 Caracci to the gallery for four thousand five hundred guineas. 
 
 The trustees luckily refused them at this price, but their system 
 
 of purchasing is strikingly illustrated by the following resolution 
 
 which accompanied their refusal: — 
 
 "'Had it been in Mr. Buchanan's power to make them an offer of 
 tliese pictures with the third picture of the Caracci, the trustees 
 would have been inclined, in that case, to recommend the purchase 
 of the three, at a price not exceeding £7000, the sum formerly of- 
 fered for them." 
 
 So great is their zeal for stocking the gallery with infe- 
 rior works, that less than three at a time will not satisfy them. 
 I suppose they considered them " companions," as they give a 
 
 m 2 
 
94 
 
 similar twaddling* reason for having* purchased the " Susanna and 
 the Elders." Fortunately , however, for us, it was not in Mr. 
 Buchanan's power to satisfy their morbid craving : — the three 
 would have been a very bad bargain at the price demanded for 
 two of these pictures. 
 
 They likewise deliberated more than once, upon the expe- 
 diency of giving Mr. Farrer, the preposterous sum of £2000 
 for a low-class picture by Spagnoletto, which, considering the 
 price, would have been a worse bargain than the libel. 
 But when, on the 6th April, 1846, that marvellous picture, 
 the " Portrait, by Raphael," (vide page 67,) was offered to 
 them by Sir Robert Gordon, for £3000, they, at once, re- 
 jected a work so uncongenial to their tastes, and " resolved 
 that they did not consider it advisable to recommend to the 
 government the purchase of this picture at the price mentioned 
 by Sir Robert Gordon." On the other hand, we find one of 
 the trustees, the possessor of some of the finest paintings in 
 England, offering to the country, for the sum of £3000, not 
 such a work as would add to the dignity of the National Col- 
 lection, (by which he would have conferred a favour,) but two 
 pictures of an inferior character. In the present state of the 
 National Collection, the public money should not be squan- 
 dered on Jan Steen and Wouvermans ; for although the works 
 of these masters possess considerable attractions, and might, 
 under other circumstances, be desirable at moderate prices, yet 
 not even then should they be purchased, if the outlay impeded 
 in any degree, the acquisition of model works. We require 
 pictures of first-rate excellence — like that offered by Sir Robert 
 Gordon, and by the trustees and keeper so stupidly refused. 
 
 Of course no mention is made of the various important 
 works not offered to the Gallery, which have, to their know- 
 ledge, changed hands within the same period: — it does not 
 appear to belong to Mr. Eastlake's "consummate knowledge 
 of art " to seek fine pictures ; — it extends only to rejecting 
 them when offered. Neither do they condescend to inform us 
 how their " Holbein" was discovered to be a forgery, and 
 they are equally uncommunicative regarding the splendid, 
 though fruitless offer of £100, afterwards increased to £150 
 
95 
 
 by Mr. Eastlake,* to bribe the dealer to take it back. As 
 the reader will find the whole history of the purchase of this 
 picture at page 18, I will merel}" add the names of the eminent 
 dilettanti who " empowered " the keeper " to negotiate the 
 purchase of the picture, ' A Portrait of a Gentleman/ by Hol- 
 bein,! at a price not exceeding- eight hundred guineas ;" and 
 who, at a subsequent meeting held on the 5th May, 1845, 
 "Resolved, that this purchase is approved by the trustees." 
 The following are the names of the gentlemen to whom the 
 nation is indebted for so signal a service: — "The Most Hon. 
 the Marquess of Lansdowne, K. G., in the chair; The Most 
 Hon. The Marquess of Northampton, P. R. S. ; The Right Hon. 
 Lord Ashburton ; The Right Hon. Lord Colborne ; The Right 
 Hon. Lord Monteagle; The Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart.; 
 William Wells, Esq. ; Samuel Rogers, Esq. j — but prin- 
 cipally to Mr. Eastlake. I must here apologize to the last- 
 named gentleman for having inadvertently stated at page 18, 
 that the libel was purchased within two months of his prophecy, 
 that there was "little, (he should have said a little,) danger 
 of pictures being purchased for the nation which will not be fit 
 to challenge inspection, and be worthy of being well displayed." 
 I find by the "Minutes,'' that it was within one month. 
 
 The trustees might also have deigned to inform us by 
 what process they were aroused to a sense of " the intrin- 
 sic merit of the Guido," ("Susanna and the Elders,") after 
 having refused it only a few months before — how "the his- 
 torical evidence of its genuineness, and of its peculiar value 
 to the Gallery," burst upon their minds — and by what blan- 
 dishments their Deus ex machind, Mr. Buchanan, succeeded in 
 wheedling them into the belief, " that it would form a very 
 
 * Had the dealer accepted the offer, who ought to have borne the 
 loss of the £150? Common honesty answers; — the trustees and the 
 keeper. Have they then charged the nation six hundred guineas for 
 their contemptible blunder, or only four hundred and fifty? If by that 
 proposal it was their intention to make a slight sacrifice in order to 
 lessen the loss to the public, they were equally bound to abide by it, 
 whether the dealer accepted it or not. 
 
 f We are now informed in the Catalogue, that it is 'A Portrait, sup- 
 posed to be a Medical Professor.' Painted by an Artist, contem- 
 porary with HOLBEIN, and resembling him in manner." 
 
96 
 
 desirable addition to the Gallery, at the price of one thousand 
 two hundred guineas.'" By their own report, we find that this 
 now flayed picture was in a good state previous to its acqui- 
 sition 5 — " Mr. Seguier gave a favourable opinion of the condi- 
 tion of the picture by Guido." Behold it now ! but I suppose 
 it has not yet recovered. Here I must apologize for another 
 mis-statement, for I find that that " eminent judge of the 
 merits and pecuniary value of Italian pictures/' Mr. Farrer, ap- 
 praised this worthless production, not at twelve hundred guineas, 
 as I have said at page 28, but at the more dignified sum of 
 fifteen hundred guineas. Nothing is said in the " Minutes 
 of charges for valuation. For further particulars, see page 27. 
 At a meeting held on the 24th August 1846, 
 
 " The trustees have under consideration a communication from 
 Sir Robert Peel, one of their own body, informing them that the 
 picture by Velasquez, belonging to Lord Cowley, may now be 
 purchased for the nation at the price of £2,200." 
 
 The effect of this important " communication" is electric ; — 
 " they have no hesitation in recommending the purchase to the 
 Lords of the Treasury in the strongest manner, at the price of 
 £2,200." Did Sir Robert Peel, on this occasion, fulfil the 
 pledge he gave in Parliament, at the time of that disgraceful 
 libel job, " that the trustees would, in future, fortify their opi- 
 nions by the advice of eminent artists and experienced dealers?" 
 If so, we should like to know their names and their charges for 
 appraisement. Or did he, with that self-sufficiency peculiar to 
 dilettanti, act in this instance, solely upon his own responsibility 
 and judgment ? This, also, demands enquiry. Not a word is said 
 of the egregious trickery of which Sir Robert Peel was made the 
 dupe I Not a word that his sudden appreciation (such as it is) 
 of the Velasquez, owed its origin to Mr. Farrer's capital joke 
 of threatening to export it to Holland, if the Right Honourable 
 dilettante did not immediately decide on purchasing it for the 
 nation, at the price of £2,200 ! And, of course, the most pro- 
 found silence is preserved of its having been to Holland, and 
 there rejected only a few days before. The public were fairly 
 entitled to a full recital of this pleasant history, as some compen- 
 
♦ 
 
 97 
 
 sation for the preposterous sum they have been made to pay for 
 an inferior picture ; the insertion of Sir Robert Peel's " commu- 
 nication " would haved proved highly entertaining*; he, of course, 
 insisted on the necessity for their immediate decision, as a dilet- 
 tante friend of his had actually seen the Velasquez in a packing- 
 case, directed, " A sa Majeste le Hoi des Pays Bas." This, 
 with a few more such pithy anecdotes, would have rendered the 
 " Minutes" very attractive. 
 
 Thus we find that " The Minutes of the Trustees of the Na- 
 tional Gallery" bear the strongest evidence of Mr. Eastlake's 
 utter incapacity, and fully confirm the accusations of ignorance 
 and folly which I have urged against them for their neglect of 
 model works,* and their shameful waste of the public money in 
 the persevering acquisition of inferior ones. The letters which 
 they have allowed to be published in support of the outrages 
 committed, under their auspices, against the noble works of the 
 great masters, are, if possible, more discreditable to them- 
 selves than to their stupid and interested authors. I may before 
 long supply an appendix containing a few useful comments on 
 the much vaunted " unanimity" of the trustees. The opinions 
 that some of these dilettanti have been known to express of each 
 other, would prove as startling to themselves, as they would be 
 instructive to the public. 
 
 • When Titian's " Tarquin and Lucretia" was hanging in the auction- 
 room, a gentleman strongly advised one of the trustees not to neglect 
 so important a work. The only expressions of admiration which fell 
 from this noble dilettante, were, " disagreeable subject," — £C I dare say it 
 is very fine" — " frightful red breeches" — <f it won't do ;" — " but" said he, 
 turning to a miserable little Greuze, something similar to the one in the 
 Simmons bequest, "what a beautiful little thing that is!" A few months 
 after, they gave for Guido's " Susanna and the Elders," nearly double the 
 price for which the " Tarquin and Lucretia" was sold. 
 
THE REPORT. 
 
 Mr. Eastlake's "Report" on the " cleaning-" is, for the most part, 
 a repetition of his defence in The Daily News, {Vide page 72,) 
 with this difference, that while he has most carefully preserved 
 the ignorance and stupidity of the latter, he has interspersed the 
 former with a much greater proportion of effrontery and mean 
 subserviency ; and if anything could have added to the contempt 
 with which every honest and enlightened friend of art must 
 long since have viewed his official conduct, he has amply sup- 
 plied the deficiency, by consenting to shelter himself behind the 
 decision of a board of dilettanti, who, to the serious detriment of 
 art, have been so long suffered to trifle with the National 
 Gallery. For what is it but mean subserviency to recognize as 
 competent, on so vital a question as the present, the authority 
 of men whose judgment even he must know to be of no account ? 
 The homogeneous mixture of seven silly and interested Acade- 
 micians, for we must not deprive him of his friends Messrs. Shee 
 and Newton, who, with three uneducated and drivelling dealers, 
 compose his forlorn hope, is a fitting compound for such a 
 defence. 
 
 The "Report," which is dated the 28th of January, begins with 
 the hacknied lament, " The absence of spacious and well-lighted 
 rooms for conveniently carrying on the operations of cleaning 
 the pictures on a more extensive scale;" and to give greater 
 weight to his argument, he favours us with a quotation from the 
 pamphlet that he addressed to Sir Robert Peel, " on the unfit- 
 ness of the present building," &c, of which I have given some 
 account at page 15, in my third letter to The Times. He then 
 has the assurance to tell us that in consequence of the " ope- 
 rations having been unavoidably limited to a small number at a 
 time the pictures which are cleaned, present a temporary con- 
 trast in their appearance to the mass of the collection." Tem- 
 porary contrast! Had he said that flayed pictures must 
 inevitably present a hideous and irremediable contrast to those 
 which have not undergone that process, he would have accu- 
 rately described the state of the cleaned pictures. 
 
99 
 
 He next informs us, that a on attentively examining" the pic 
 ture of " Peace and War," he "found it extremely difficult to say 
 whether it might have been repaired or not at a former period;" 
 and that he, therefore, thought it his " duty, in what appeared 
 a difficult case," to consult Mr. Seguier ; because " he had before 
 and more than once cleaned" (he should have said flayed) " pic- 
 tures in the National Galley," and because on his " experience, 
 the trustees, as a body, were accustomed to rety." The keeper 
 winds up this admission of incapacity and subserviency to the 
 whims of his dilettanti patrons and to the " experience" of the 
 picture-cleaner, by expressing his satisfaction that he " took this 
 course, a question having now arisen whether the picture re- 
 ferred to has been properly cleaned or not by which last sen- 
 tence, he doubtless intends to insinuate the impression that 
 the picture- cleaner, and not himself, is responsible for the irre- 
 parable injuries inflicted on that noble work. He certainly might 
 have spared himself the superfluous labour of telling us, that 
 he finds it " extremely difficult" to discover whether a picture 
 has been " repaired or not at a former period," as the repainting 
 of the background, and the forgery of the name on his libel on 
 Holbein, had already afforded us distinct evidence of the amount 
 of his sagacity in this respect. Then follow some fragments of 
 a twaddling correspondence between this prophetic keeper and 
 the Right Honourable Exhibitor of "Kemble as Rolls," in which 
 we find confirmed that we are in a great measure indebted to the 
 taste of the latter for the purchase of that vulgar picture, " Su- 
 sanna and the Elders," said to be by Guido. 
 
 He then comes to what he calls " the operations of 1840." 
 After giving us the " resolution " by which " he is empowered 
 by the Trustees to use his discretion (!) in causing such pic- 
 tures as appear to be in want of this treatment, to be cleaned 
 and otherwise restored by competent persons," he says, that 
 " the pictures which appeared more especially to require atten- 
 tion ( ! ) were, the newly -purchased ' Velasquez,' < The Alle- 
 gory of Peace,' by Rubens, 'The Landscape,' by Cuyp, and 
 the 'The Bacchus and Ariadne,' by Titian : " he, therefore, "re- 
 quested Mr. Seguier to examine these pictures and give his 
 opinion as to the expediency of cleaning them which is an 
 
 N 
 
100 
 
 admission of his inability to decide the question himself, 
 notwithstanding "his great eminence as an artist." After 
 a warm eulogium on the many proofs Mr. Seguier has given of 
 his exquisite tenderness towards pictures, he concludes this 
 paragraph by telling us, that " the opinions expressed by him 
 on the occasion in question had his entire concurrence :" so that 
 we again find Mr. Eastlake, with all his " consummate know- 
 ledge/' truckling to the picture-cleaner. 
 
 The next paragraph begins with an appearance of boldness 
 in him quite startling, but as I have too implicit a reliance 
 on his obsequiousness to suspect him of willingly offending* 
 his very good masters the trustees, and at the same time, too 
 high an appreciation of his simplicity not to believe him per- 
 fectly capable of making unintentional admissions, I freely 
 acquit him of any feeling of independence. He says, 
 " those opinions, (Mr. Seguier's,) founded on minute investiga- 
 tion, and requiring technical experience to comprehend them, 
 need not be detailed here-" by which, if it means anything, we 
 are given to understand that the trustees have not that " ex- 
 perience " which results from " minute investigation, " nor 
 even sufficient preliminary knowledge to "comprehend" any 
 explanations that might be offered to them in plain and in- 
 telligible terms. This language, therefore, of the keeper, im- 
 plies a condemnation of the self-sufficiency with which the 
 trustees "resolved," that he had made an "entirely satisfactory" 
 report on a question, which, even according to him, it requires 
 " experience, founded on minute investigation to comprehend." 
 He adds : — 
 
 " I wish, however, to state, that Mr. Seguier did not recommend 
 cleaning the f Titian' so much as the other pictures. Some of the 
 trustees, as well as Mr. Seguier and myself, had remarked an in- 
 equality in the upper and left corner of this picture, arising from 
 the canvass having become partially detached from its lining. Mr. 
 Seguier stated that it was not possible to get rid of this inequality 
 entirely, without relining the picture ; but that operation I did not 
 consider requisite. The picture was accordingly cleaned only to the 
 extent proposed by Mr. Seguier, and the defect in the canvass was 
 remedied as far as it could be. The latter operation was the only 
 one, coming under the head of restoration, which was considered 
 necessary in the late cleaning." 
 
 Here we have this " eminent artist" again, subservient to the 
 
» 
 
 101 
 
 picture-cleaner — " the picture was cleaned only to the extent 
 proposed by Mr. Segnier:" but the keeper, with a cunning 
 which does him credit, evades telling us to what u extent." 
 The reader, however, will find the deficiency tolerably well sup- 
 plied at page 48. 
 
 He treats the Haying of the " Velasquez" and of the " Cuyp" 
 in an equally off-hand manner: — 
 
 " The 1 Velasquez ' and the ' Cuyp ' were freed from the dark- 
 ened varnish which obscured them. In cleaning the latter, it was 
 hoped that two light spots in the sky, produced by restorations, 
 which had been made before the picture was in the present building, 
 would cease to be apparent. The result has been quite satisfactory. 
 The Velasquez speaks for itself." 
 
 With regard to the " Cuyp," he indulges in an unnecessary 
 piece of stupidity, as no intelligent person ever expected that 
 " spots produced by restoration in the sky " of a line " Cuyp," 
 "would cease to be apparent." To his eyes, however, it ap- 
 pears that those filthy patches, though more palpable than be- 
 fore, have become invisible ! As I cannot make up my mind 
 to decide whether that mysterious sentence, " The Velasquez 
 speaks for itself/' was dictated by unpararalled effrontery or ex- 
 cessive imbecility, I refer every connoisseur to the picture itself, 
 and leave him to draw his own conclusions. 
 
 After more impertinence about the Rubens having been "long 
 buried under repeated coats of varnish," he tells us, " that the 
 doubt he had expressed, whether this picture might have been 
 restored at a former period, proved to be unfounded," — a mistake 
 scarcely credible in one so acute in detecting forgeries ; ( Vide 
 the libel on Holbein ;) and we are besides told, that " Mr. Se- 
 guier distinctly states, that it is extremely rare to find a large 
 work of the age of this specimen, in so pure a state of preserva- 
 tion:" the mutilations, therefore, that it has undergone are 
 solely chargeable to Mr. Eastlake. 
 
 The foregoing, which constitutes the w hole of his defence, he 
 calls "explaining what has been actually done to the four 
 pictures above-named;" and to this he generously adds; "I 
 beg leave to repeat my entire satisfaction at the result, and to 
 express my acknowledgements to Mr. Seguier for the care with 
 
 n2 
 
102 
 
 which he executed the task undertaken by him." It remains 
 to be seen how he will reconcile this implied intimation of his 
 intention to continue his destructive operations, with the " semi- 
 official message" which he sent Mr. Coningham " through a com- 
 mon acquaintance, that the cleaning' would probably not be 
 continued." 
 
 He next repeats that most impudent remark ; 
 
 " If some pictures are cleaned, while others hanging beside them 
 are in a dirtier state, the cleaned pictures may, for a time, present a 
 considerable contrast to the rest ; which difference is more likely to 
 be apparent, when a 'Rubens' so placed, is freed from the accumu- 
 lated effects of a London atmosphere." 
 
 The latter part of this sentence, is I suppose, intended as an 
 able vindication of the barbarous violence by which the injured 
 pictures have been "freed" from their glazings, and robbed of 
 their aerial perspective. He then says; 
 
 c ' The change has been already witnessed in two pictures, ' The 
 Brazen Serpent,' and ( The Judgment of Paris,' by the same master. 
 Those works were cleaned in 1844, and at first, as was generally re- 
 marked at the time, looked comparatively crude. They have now 
 acquired due mellowness of tone." 
 
 "The Brazen Serpent," and "The Judgment of Paris," 
 were both much injured : their present comparatively feeble and 
 monotonous appearance is owing to the vaunted " operations " 
 of 1844, and the "time "that has elapsed since then, has in 
 no may improved them : but if the keeper means to insinuate 
 that these pictures were ever in the frightful condition to which 
 he has reduced the " Peace and War," he must, knowingly, be 
 endeavouring to convey & false impression. I will here caution 
 the public, that the officials (as the gallery is entirely at their 
 mercy on Sunday,) may attempt to disguise their handiwork by 
 spreading some filthy mixture over the flayed pictures : as this 
 would injure them still more, and deceive only the ignorant, it 
 is a point that demands our greatest attention. Mr. Eastlake, 
 however, would do well to reflect that all are not as blind as 
 himself. Then follows more of this "eminent" artist's mean 
 subserviency to the picture-cleaner; — 
 
 " Lest, however, it should be supposed that glazings may have 
 
103 
 
 been removed with the soiled varnish, I beg leave to say that an ex- 
 perienced picture-cleaner is not likely to be deceived in these 
 points." 
 
 Again; "an experienced picture-cleaner knows, from long* 
 habit, the general nature of the materials used by the great 
 painters." 
 
 So, the picture-cleaner , according to Mr. Eastlake, is to be the 
 great authority before whom all must bow ! but I trust that 
 there is still sufficient spirit among artists, to resent, in a be- 
 coming manner, the subserviency of this Royal Academician. 
 Hitherto, those who have deserved the name of painter, have 
 been the most learned, not only in the theory, but in every 
 branch of the practice of their great predecessors, as may be 
 seen from the similarity of their results. Reynolds, for in- 
 stance, whose pictures above those of all other moderns, (not 
 even the modern Germans excepted,) present by far the greatest 
 similarity both in theory and material, to the works of the an- 
 cient painters, is well known to have derived his success from 
 the most persevering study of them ; but history has not re- 
 corded the name of the vulgar picture-cleaner to whom he was 
 indebted for his knowledge. We are, however, now told that it 
 is the picture-cleaner to whom we are to look for information; 
 in short, the picture-cleaner is to know more of pictures than the 
 painter, and consequently of the works of the great masters than 
 they themselves knew. >*o wonder pert dilettanti and impu- 
 dent "restorers" continually proclaim the ignorance of our 
 artists of the works of the great masters — that is, of art — 
 when the former are represented by Eastlakes. They can, un- 
 doubtedly, quote Messrs. U/wins, Eastlake, Etty, £c, as ex- 
 examples in support of their argument; but then, the produc- 
 tions of these Royal Academicians , in no way belie my previous 
 assertion, that all who have hitherto deserved the name of 
 artist, have been profoundly versed in the works of the great 
 masters ; they, therefore, are no exception to the rule. 
 
 Whether this exaltation of the picture-cleaner is merely a 
 paltry device to shirk the responsibility which attaches to him- 
 self alone, or only another proof of Mr. Eastlake's ignorance that 
 the most profound knowledge of the materials, as well as of every 
 other question connected with the works of the great masters, 
 
104 
 
 is essential to any one who would deserve the name of painter, I 
 neither know nor care ; but I strongly feel that every artist of 
 spirit, and every intelligent connoisseur should indignantly dis- 
 claim the brotherhood of this unworthy member, who, by thus 
 degrading their high calling, so shamefully misrepresents them. 
 Appointed to the honourable charge of protecting the glorious 
 models of a lost art, he has, instead^ wantonly mutilated them 
 by destroying their harmony, and violating their perspective ; — 
 and he now apologizes by talking of vehicles and varnishes, and 
 the infallibility of the picture-cleaner! Spirit of the noble 
 Reynolds ! was it for this that you spent so much of your life in 
 analyzing the materials and investigating the principles of those 
 mighty works which you so well knew how to appreciate ? Was 
 it, I say, that you might finally pay base homage to the u expe- 
 rience " and " long habit " of an uneducated picture- cleaner ? 
 
 Lest the public should be misled by the great stress which 
 Mr. Eastlake has laid, first in his defence in The Daily News, 
 and now in his " Report," on what he is pleased to call the 
 " extreme hardness which the works of Rubens often possess," 
 whence he argues the "perfect safety" in cleaning a picture by 
 this master, it may be necessary to inform some of them that the 
 solvents, in common use with picture-cleaners, are powerful 
 enough to remove every portion of the paint from any oil pic- 
 ture that was ever executed. Those persons, vulgarly called 
 ipictme-clea?iers, (picture-destroyers would be a more appro- 
 priate name,) who, without any knowledge of the principles 
 of the great painters, deprive an important work of any por- 
 tion of its surface, under the impression that they can do so 
 with " perfect safety," merely because they find it yield to their 
 violence, will infallibly injure it. But those picture-cleaners 
 who do not destroy pictures, are guided in their operations, rather 
 by some knowledge of light and shadow and aerial perspec- 
 tive, than by the more or less resistance which the surface of a 
 picture offers to the means they employ to remove it. Mr. East- 
 lake's blarney about " an experienced picture-cleaner not being 
 Jikely to be deceived on such points," is but too fully refuted by 
 the aspect of the cleaned pictures. 
 
 His defence of the disgraceful hanging, whereby some of 
 
105 
 
 the worst pictures, are allowed to usurp the best places, is in 
 perfect keeping with the rest of his performances. After in- 
 dulging in another quotation from his favourite pamphlet, he re- 
 marks, that " the question, which pictures should be near the 
 eye, and which should be sacrificed, (since some must be sacri- 
 ficed,) is a point on which amateurs would certainly differ." 
 Now, if there is one point on which all real connoisseurs would 
 agree, it would be in hanging the finest works in the best places, 
 that is, in such as are most accessible to the student, by which 
 term I mean all who take an elevated view of the Fine Arts, 
 and not the generality of those who copy in the Gallery 
 on private days: at all events, they would be unanimous in 
 resolving not to sacrifice any portion of " the limited space" 
 on the line t to such low-class pictures as Sir Robert Peel's " Su- 
 sanna and the Elders," the Harman "somethings" and the 
 Simmons trash. But the keeper is one of that intellectual 
 party who think it a mere matter of opinion which are the 
 best works; or whether the "Portrait of Giulia Gonzaga," by 
 Sebastiano del Piombo, and the " Concert," by Titian, are of 
 more consequence than the Harman u Guido " and the " Sim- 
 mons" bequest. He then says, " the original arrangement of the 
 principal pictures of the National Gallery, I need hardly ob- 
 serve was not under my superintendence;" — a very charac- 
 teristic excuse — he found them badly arranged, and with a 
 laudable spirit of emulation, he outdoes his predecessor by a still 
 worse distribution of "the insufficient space." He concludes 
 this part of his " Report " by observing ; a that every good pic- 
 ture in the collection can be duly exhibited to view is, under 
 existing circumstances, impossible." Now if Mr. Eastlake will 
 but get some one (not the picture-cleaner) to point out to him 
 all the bad pictures that are hung in good places, and re- 
 move them, he will be astonished at the quantity of " space at 
 the disposal of the trustees on the walls of the Gallery." 
 
 He then requotes the two letters by Rubens, which he in- 
 serted in his defence in The Daily News, but as I have minutely 
 analyzed their meaning at page 75, it is unnecessary to notice 
 them here. I will merely observe that if the original sketch by 
 Rubens, which Mr. Rogers possesses of the "Allegory of War," 
 
106 
 
 now in the Pitti Palace in Florence, and which is quoted in the 
 "Report/' were produced in evidence, in as fine a condition 
 as I saw it about two months ago, it would prove the 
 strongest condemnation of the treatment to which our " Peace 
 and War" has been subjected. 
 
 After these, and strongly contrasting with them, follow the 
 letters of the five Royal Academicians,* which Mr. Eastlake 
 begged the trustees to "permit" him "to subjoin to this Report 
 in his own vindication and in that of Mr. Seguier but as they 
 have received from the public the contempt they deserve, and are 
 only remarkable for imbecility strongly tinged with something- 
 worse, I shall not condescend to notice them further than by ob- 
 serving, that with true academical wiliness they try their 
 utmost to make the picture-cleaner their comrade's scape- 
 goat; and that it is grievous to reflect that the silly person 
 who signs himself " Thomas Uwins," (evidently A. G. of The 
 
 * Mr. Edwin Landseer would have done well, had he taken his father's 
 opinion of the " Peace and War/' instead of writing his silly letter to 
 " Dear Eastlake." Mr. John Landseer, in his Catalogue of the Nat. 
 Gal. said of this picture in 1834, " The general and gratifying light, and 
 warm colour, which catches on these sub-deities, and which Rubens so 
 well knew how to spread, falls broadly on the figure of Benevolence, or 
 Public Felicity ; and is conducted onward, with great address, to its 
 other principal objects — namely, the youthful group, where it emphati- 
 cally rekindles, with great advantage to the general effect. As a pic- 
 ture, and independently of the philanthropic trains of ideas with which it 
 is associated, the whole is magnificently rich." Here are rich harmonies 
 of splendid colour" &c. Again ; " abroad and brilliant light falls on the 
 personification of Public Felicity — a poetic creation of Rubens' own, 
 where he has lavished his best taste of female form, and his clear, and 
 pulpy, and juicy, and palpitating flesh tints, and blessed as with a 
 beautiful apparition ! The present figure is eminently beautiful," &c. 
 Mr. John Landseer's eyes are evidently of use to him ; but, Mr. Edwin 
 Landseer, his son, in 1847, writes to Mr. Eastlake ; " I should like you 
 to say to Mr. Seguier from me how much obliged to him I feel for his 
 judicious cleaning ; which enables me to see the merits of the masters," 
 &c. Mr. Etty says ; " 1 confess I could never like the Rubens because I 
 could not see it," &c. " its darkness, opacity, and heavy character, until it 
 was thus cleaned," &c. " for the first time in my life I liked this picture, 
 which I can now see and admire," &c. Mr. Uwins says ; " I have known 
 the picture many years, but never knew its value till now. It always 
 appeared to be covered with a solid mass of dirt, filth, and patches, from 
 which I have turned away in disappointment and disgust. Judge then 
 of the zest with which I have enjoyed this beautiful work in its present 
 intelligible state." — Vide " Minutes." 
 
107 
 
 Times,) and who says in his letter, that " nothing- can exceed the 
 beauty which the Cuyp and the Velasquez present as the effect 
 of the picture-cleaner's skill," is " curator (!) of the pictures 
 in her Majesty's possession." 
 
 Lastly, follow the certificates from Mr. Eastlake's "other 
 persons who have great knowledge of the works of the ancient 
 masters ;" — three uneducated dealers, notoriously the most dri- 
 velling of their class. His attempts to secure the assistance of 
 any of the intelligent dealers, have to their credit, signally 
 failed; and his mean acceptance of three such names as those 
 which he has tacked to his " Report," has only served to render his 
 position the more ridiculous and disg-raceful. It was my inten- 
 tion to have treated with merited contempt the evidence of such 
 ig-norant men; but as it would be unfair, on the one hand, to de- 
 prive Mr. Eastlake of any part of the benefit of such valuable 
 co-operation, and on the other, to prevent the dealer, who signs 
 himself " Peter Norton," from the full enjoyment of the distinc- 
 tion to which he has been raised, the public will be better able 
 to appreciate his candour and intelligence when I inform them, 
 that Mr. Morris Moore twice chanced to meet this very person 
 in December last — that on each occasion he said that the 
 Velasquez had been terribly used, and that he could now only 
 compare it to a "chalk-pit;" but that he did not think the 
 "Peace and War" so much injured, for although " frightful " 
 to look at at present, he believed it u would recover in time." 
 
 " Notwithstanding the deep-rooted notion, even amongst the ma- 
 jority of painters themselves, that time is a great improver of good 
 pictures, nothing can be more absurd." — Hogarth. 
 
 " Time cannot give a picture more union and harmony than has 
 been in the power of a skilful master, with all his rules of art to do." 
 — Hogarth. 
 
 At page 34, I have inserted the incontrovertible arguments by 
 which this great man supports his assertions; and as he has 
 shewn in his works, that he knew what he was talking about, 
 I would advise the reader to take his opinion in preference to 
 that of such brainless individuals as the friends Messrs. Norton 
 and Eastlake. If we believe, as we ought, that such great 
 
 o 
 
108 
 
 colourists as Titian and Eubens gave to their pictures both 
 "union and harmony/' we may rest assured that any process 
 which deprives them of these qualities, deserves no better name 
 than "flaying-" and that neither " time" nor t?vaddle will ever 
 improve them. 
 
 Mr. Eastlake winds up his model " Report " by saying : — 
 
 " These documents, with the statements and opinions before 
 submitted, will, perhaps ( ! ), afford sufficient information on the 
 subject to which the attention of the trustees has been called, and 
 on which I was directed to furnish a Report/' 
 
 Much more might be said against this disreputable document, 
 and of Mr. Eastlake's repeated admissions of his own incapacity, 
 but I have already noticed it far more than it deserves, and 
 said quite enough to convince the most sceptical, if honestly 
 disposed, that Mr. Eastlake has neither the ability nor the spirit 
 requisite in a public officer ; and that his appointment to the offices 
 of Keeper of the National Gallery, and of Secreta^ to the Com- 
 mission of Fine Arts, can have had no better foundation than 
 the patronage of a few influential men, whose ignorance of art 
 and whose vanity have enabled him to make his evasiveness and 
 superficiality pass for profundity, and his obsequiousness for 
 amiability. But lest the reader should require further proof of 
 his incompetency, I will subjoin a few extracts from " The Mi- 
 nutes of Evidence, taken before the Select Committee of Art 
 Unions, January 22, 1844." 
 
 "Thomas Wyse, Esq. in the Cliair. 
 
 « 4484. Mr. Ewarl. — Do you approve of the system which has 
 lately been adopted of issuing outlines, after the manner of Retseh, 
 to each subscriber? — Mr. Eastlake. — Fes, I should mention that as 
 one of the many proofs of the desire on the part of the committee to 
 do their utmost to promote the higher class of art." 
 
 We here find this " eminent artist" giving it as his deliberate 
 opinion, that " outlines after the manner of Retsch," than which 
 nothing can be more corrupt in style, or contemptible in design, 
 should be the models for promoting "the higher class of art-" 
 and as if sound taste was not expiring fast enough, from other 
 fatal causes, he stimulates that most pernicious society, the Art- 
 
109 
 
 Union Lottery, to new exertions in order to accelerate its final 
 extinction. 
 
 " 4495. Chairman. — Would you recommend that the subjects to 
 be selected for engraving should be taken from the works of an- 
 cient or living artists? — Mr. Easilake. — I should say from the 
 living artists" 
 
 " With respect to the pictures you would choose as your models 
 I would have you choose those of established reputation, rather 
 than follow your own fancy. If you should not admire them at 
 first, you will, by endeavouring- to imitate them, find that the 
 world has not been deceived. The works of those who have 
 stood the test of ages, have a claim to that respect and venera- 
 tion to which no modern can pretend." * 
 
 " 4496. Mr. M'Geachy. — Upon what principle ? — Mr. Eastlake. 
 — It would be possible to select works fine enough to promote pub- 
 lic taste ; and it is always an honour to an artist to have his works 
 engraved, if they are well engraved. 
 
 Upon what principle indeed! — The latter part of Mr. 
 Eastlake's rigmarole I do not pretend to understand, but I 
 know full well, that he who thinks that it would be possible 
 to select from among the productions of the artists of the pre- 
 sent day, " works fine enough to promote public taste," is not 
 the man to direct us in any attempt to raise art from the de- 
 graded state into which it has fallen. In the words of Rey- 
 nolds, " our only hope of its revival will consist in our being 
 thoroughly sensible of its depravation and decay." — " The mo- 
 dern who recommends himself as a standard may justly be con- 
 sidered as ignorant of the true end, and unacquainted with the 
 proper object of the art which he professes. To follow such 
 a guide, will not only retard the student, but mislead him."f 
 
 " 4497- Mr. Ewart. — You have spoken with approbation of the 
 system of outline engraving ; would you recommend that such a 
 proportion of the funds of the Art Union should be devoted to that 
 purpose, as to enable them to have the first drawings of the great 
 masters engraved ; such as in the collection at Oxford ; Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence's first outlines and drawings? — Mr. Eastlake. — No, I 
 would not recommend that, because it requires a very cultivated taste 
 to relish such things ; they would not be quite the class of works to 
 put into the hands of uncultivated amateurs." 
 
 * Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 f Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
110 
 
 No! — We might have been somewhat puzzled to compre- 
 hend how Raphael and M. Angelo drawings could be " re- 
 lished " without being seen and long studied, were it not for 
 the very lucid manner in which Mr. Eastlake has above ex- 
 pressed his warm approbation of " the system of issuing outlines 
 after the manner of Retsch," for promoting "the higher class of 
 art;" but he has hereby removed that difficulty, and we may 
 now rest assured that after " uncultivated amateurs" have been 
 well grounded in, " the works of living artists," and have ac- 
 quired " a very cultivated taste," by the contemplation of out- 
 lines " after the manner of Retsch," alias wretched outlines, 
 they will be in a fit condition to have M. Angelo and Raphael 
 drawings put into their hands, because they will then be able 
 " to relish such things" — at sight. " We are, on no account, to 
 expect that fine things should descend to us— our taste, if pos- 
 sible, must be made to ascend to them. We must even feign 
 a relish, till we find a relish come ; and feel, that what began 
 in fiction, terminates in reality."* " Our minds should be long- 
 habituated to the contemplation of excellence ; and, far from 
 being contented to make such habits the discipline of our youth 
 only, we should, to the last moment of our lives, continue a 
 settled intercourse with all the true examples of grandeur. Their 
 inventions are not only the food of our infancy, but the sub- 
 stance which supplies the fullest maturity of our vigour. Study, 
 therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever."\ 
 
 {C 4498. Is it not desirable that what is distributed among the 
 members of an art union should be in pure, and rather exalted 
 taste? — Mr. Eastlake. — Yes; but it should be as much as possible 
 of a perfect kind,, and no sketch can be perfect ; it is only a sketch 
 of something that may be made perfect." 
 
 The only conclusion that can be drawn from Mr. Eastlake's 
 twaddling reply is, that he considers "outlines in the man- 
 ner of Retsch," and " works of living artists" of a more 
 " perfect kind" than the drawings of Michael Angelo and Ra- 
 phael; but, as I can well believe, without any great stretch 
 of imagination, that Sir Robert Peel's "eminent artist" is 
 
 * James Harris. 
 
 f Reynold; 
 
Ill 
 
 utterly unconscious of his own meaning, I will, by way of hypo- 
 thesis, argue [that if he were asked what he really meant, he 
 would pause ere he made so startling- an assertion. Now, as 
 every work of human production has its defects, even " outlines 
 in the manner of Retsch," and " works of other living artists" 
 must be subject to this law. It appears to me, therefore, that 
 if the " defects" in the drawings of Michael Angelo and Raphael 
 are less (and he must be an impudent man who would say to 
 the contrary,) than those in "the outlines in the manner of 
 Retsch," or in the "fine-enough works of living artists," the 
 influence of the former must be less corruptive ; and that they 
 ought for this reason to be preferred. If, on the other hand, the 
 " beauties " in the drawings of Michael Angelo and Raphael are 
 of a more exalted character than those in " the outlines in the 
 manner of Retsch," or in "the works of living artists,'' (which 
 few, besides Royal Academicians will deny,) the former ought still 
 to be preferred for their superior excellence, and, consequently, 
 greater power in elevating our taste. This admitted, as I believe 
 it will be by every man of sense, Mr. Eastlake, with all " the con- 
 summate knowledge of art" with which Sir Robert Peel has 
 supplied him, will find it very puzzling to assign any respectable 
 reason why the disgusting outlines of Retsch, or prints from the 
 corrupt " works of living artists," should be issued as a means of 
 " promoting public taste and the higher class of art," in pre- 
 ference to the marvellous and pure drawings of Michael An- 
 gelo and Raphael. 
 
 " The style of Michael Angelo, now no longer exists, as it did 
 in the fifteenth century ; yet, with the aid of diligence, we may, 
 in a great measure, supply the deficiency of not having his 
 works so perpetually before our eyes — by having recourse to 
 casts from his models and designs in sculpture; to drawings, or 
 even copies of those drawings; to prints, which, however ill- 
 executed, still convey something by which this taste may he 
 formed, and a relish may be fixed and established in our minds 
 for this grand style of invention. Some examples of this kind 
 we have in the Academy, and I sincerely wish there were more; 
 that the younger students might, in their first nourishment, 
 imbibe this taste ; whilst others, though settled in the practice 
 
112 
 
 of the common-place style of painters, might infuse, by this 
 means, a grandeur into their works. To recover this lost taste* 
 I would recommend young artists to study the works of Michael 
 Angelo, as he himself did the works of the ancient sculptors j 
 he began when a child." * 
 
 <s 4499. You think that in engravings or drawings such as those, 
 the public would not discriminate between beauties and defects? 
 — Mr. Eastlake. — I think not ; I believe that was the reason why 
 they were not purchased by the Government in Lord Grey's time ; 
 there was an idea that it was inexpedient to place such works 
 before the eyes of the public, because the mass of spectators could 
 not relish them." 
 
 This is an implied approval of the government not having 
 secured the unrivalled Lawrence collection of Michael Angelo 
 and Raphael drawings; for, if we are to believe Mr. Eastlake, 
 they were not purchased, because Lord Grey's government 
 thought it " inexpedient to place such works beijpre the public 
 in which view he agrees, for, he has just told us that he not only 
 does not consider them " of a class to put into the hands of un- 
 cultivated amateurs," but that he regards outlines in the vile 
 a manner of Retsch," and prints from the works of "living art- 
 ists," (which are as corrupt as the drawings of Michael Angelo 
 and Raphael are pure,) as better adapted to "promote public 
 taste and a higher class of art." In this preposterous notion of 
 habituating the mind to inferiority, in the expectation that it 
 can hence derive the power of appreciating what is admirable, 
 we have still further evidence of the complete perversion of 
 Mr. Eastlake's ideas. The uninitiated student, whether he as- 
 pire to become an intelligent amateur, or to the far higher 
 position of a great artist, is not expected "to discriminate between 
 beauties and defects," in works whose merits " have stood the 
 test of ages," and which require years of laborious study to com- 
 prehend them. His advancement will be in proportion to his 
 confidence in them : a consummate knowledge of their excel- 
 lences can alone teach him their defects. 
 
 To expect efficiency from trustees utterly ignorant of art, who 
 never meddle but they make themselves ridiculous, or intelligence 
 
 * Reynolds. 
 
113 
 
 and spirit from a keeper who has repeatedly proved himself en- 
 tirely destitute of both; would be an absurdity. If we aspire to 
 raise a superstructure worthy of the glorious foundation of our 
 National Collection, it is absolutely necessary that we devise 
 some plan very different to that pursued of late years, and 
 find an officer equal to the responsibility of carrying" it into 
 execution — one who, to the education of a gentleman, unites an 
 independent spirit and long familiarity with the greatest works 
 of the greatest masters : — certainly, not one who bows to the 
 authority of an ignorant picture-cleaner — recommends issuing 
 outlines in the manner of Retsch, and prints from u the works 
 of living artists" as a means of promoting " a higher class of 
 art" — and discountenances, as injurious to " uncultivated ama- 
 teurs," the stupendous and classical drawings of Michael Angelo 
 and Raphael. Mediocrity and mawkish sentimentality not only 
 enervate the mind, but they destroy all chance of future pro- 
 gress. The works of Phidias in the British Museum ought to 
 be our models in the formation of a Public Gallery. Pictures 
 which nearest approximate the grandeur and beauty of 
 those divine performances, should be the objects of our search — 
 w r orks capable not only of expanding the faculties of the beholder, 
 but of making him fancy that his very "frame is enlarged" 
 while he contemplates them. Pre-eminent in this class stand the 
 productions of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and 
 Sebastiano del Piombo, for design, expression, and [form ; and 
 those of Giorgione, Titian, and Correggio, for grandeur of colour- 
 ing and chiaroscuro. If the government were steadily to pur- 
 sue such a course, the noble example would be speedily followed 
 in our Provincial Museums, and England might then aspire to 
 the glory of reviving the spirit which animated the ages of 
 Phidias and of Michael Angelo. 
 
 The greatest efforts have been made by certain persons to 
 hush up this National Gallery business : — several spirited letters 
 (copies of some of which I have seen) against its manifold abuses, 
 were sent to different papers, but they have not been allowed 
 to appear, while every facility was afforded to the supporters of 
 abuses ; but this, as might have been expected, has served only 
 to further expose the practices of their patrons. The friends of 
 
114 
 
 art are now, I trust, too deeply interested in the matter, to suffer 
 it to rest until a public and impartial enquiry has been institu- 
 ted: and let them bear in mind that the decision of the trustees 
 if an honest one, is a distinct pledge that every picture in the 
 gallery, is to he treated as the " Peace and War :" the opera- 
 tions on that picture have been pronounced " entirely satisfac- 
 tory." Should there be a public enquiry, many able and inde- 
 pendent men will doubtless then come forward, and fearlessly 
 advocate what is right.* But should my hopes in this be disap- 
 pointed, I shall derive some consolation when I reflect that I at 
 least entered an energetic protest against official barbarism, 
 propped up by the most contemptible imbecility, prevarication, 
 and " FLUNKEYISM." 
 
 VERAX. 
 
 * I will here state that Mr. Morris Moore desires that his letter to the 
 Earl of Ellesmere, which is printed in the " Minutes/' and was " refer- 
 red to Mr. Eastlake in order that he might make his report to the trus- 
 tees" &c, may be considered as ^.deliberate reiteration of the charges 
 it contains. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 LONDON ! 
 
 Printed by B. W. Gardiner, 20, Princes Street, Cavendish Square.