[1] The Tate Gallery is ten minutes' drive or twenty minutes' walk
from Trafalgar Square. It is reached in a straight line by Whitehall,
Parliament Street, past the Houses of Parliament, Millbank Street, and
Grosvenor Road.
[2] Mr. Ruskin himself was converted by the acquisition of the great
Perugino (No. 288). In congratulating the Trustees on their acquisition
of this "noble picture," he wrote: "It at once, to my mind, raises our
National Gallery from a second-rate to a first-rate collection. I have
always loved the master, and given much time to the study of his works;
but this is the best I have ever seen" (_Notes on the Turner Gallery_,
p. 89 _n._).
[3] See, for instance, Nos. 10, 61, 193, 195, 479 and 498, 757, 790,
896, 1131, and 1171.
[4] The exterior of the building is not generally considered an
architectural success, and the ugliness of the dome is almost
proverbial. But it should be remembered that the original design
included the erection of suitable pieces of sculpture--such as may
be seen in old engravings of the Gallery, made from the architect's
drawings--on the still vacant pedestals.
[5] The several extensions of the Gallery are shown in the plan on a
later page.
[6] The total number should thus be 28; but in the reconstruction four
smaller rooms were thrown into two larger ones. The plan thus shows 25
numbered rooms and one called the "Dome."
[7] This sum only includes amounts paid out of Parliamentary grants or
other National Gallery funds or special contributions.
[8] In 1894, however, an alteration was made in the Minute, and the
responsibility for purchases was vested in the Director and the
Trustees jointly.
[9] Sir William Gregory relates in his _Autobiography_ the following
story: "In 1884, when the Trustees were endeavouring to secure some of
the pre-eminently fine Rubenses from the Duke of Marlborough, Alfred
Rothschild met me in St. James's Street, and said, 'If you think the
Blenheim Rubenses are more important than your Dutch pictures to the
Gallery, and that you cannot get the money from the Government, I am
prepared to give you £250,000 for the Peel pictures; and I will hold
good to this offer till the day after to-morrow.'"
[10] Of the 1170 pieces thus unaccounted for (the total number
belonging to the Trustees being roughly 2870) the greater number are at
Millbank. Others are on loan to provincial institutions (see App. II.).
[11] With this object in view, several of them have been published with
descriptive letterpress by Mr. Sydney Vacher.
[12] These contrasts were worked out and illustrated by Mr. Grant Allen
in his papers on "The Evolution of Italian Art" in the _Pall Mall
Magazine_ for 1895.
[13] See _Raphael's Madonnas_, by Karl Károly, 1894.
[14] Ruskin's _Modern Painters_ is of course the great book on this
subject. The evolution of "Landscape in Art" has been historically
treated by Mr. Josiah Gilbert in a work thus entitled, which contains
numerous illustrations from the National Gallery.