Accustomed, as I have been, to look to England as the refuge of the
pictorial as of all other distress, and to hope that, having no high art
of her own, she would at least protect what she could not produce, and
respect what she could not restore, I could not but look upon the attack
which has been made upon 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; I had seen in
Florence Angelico’s highest inspiration rotted and seared into fragments
of old wood, burnt into blisters, or blotted into glutinous maps of
mildew;[38] I had seen in Paris Raphael restored by David and Vernet;
and I returned to England in the one last trust that, though her
National Gallery was an European jest, her art a shadow, and her
connoisseurship an hypocrisy, though she neither knew how to cherish nor
how to choose, and lay exposed to the cheats of every vender of old
canvas--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 panes in the course of the day,
and darkness closing over the canvas 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 pictures
which we cannot see; the only question is, whether in the present
instance the process may not have been carried perilously far, and
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,”[39] I have no hesitation in asserting
that for the present it is utterly and forever 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 circumstances of obscurity,
which would be injurious to pictures of greater refinement; and, though
this was, indeed, one of his most highly finished and careful works (to
my mind, before it suffered this recent injury, far superior to
everything at Antwerp, Malines, or Cologne), this was a more weighty
reason for caution than for interference. Some portions of color have
been exhibited which were formerly untraceable; but even these have lost
in power what they have gained in definiteness--the majesty and
preciousness of all the tones are departed, the balance of distances
lost. Time may perhaps restore something of the glow, but never the
subordination; and the more delicate portions of flesh tint, especially
the back of the female figure on the left, and of the boy in the centre,
are destroyed forever.
The large Cuyp[40] 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 “Bacchus and Ariadne”[41] of Titian has escaped so scot free that,
not knowing it had been cleaned, I passed it without noticing any
change. I observed only that the blue of the distance was more intense
than I had previously thought it, though, four years ago, I 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
aërial enough_ to account for its purity of color. There is so total a
want of atmosphere in it, that but for the difference of form it would
be impossible to distinguish the mountains from the robe of
Ariadne.”[42]
Your correspondent is alike unacquainted with the previous condition of
this picture, and with the character of Titian distances in general,
when he complains of a loss of aërial quality resulting in the present
case from cleaning.
I unfortunately did not see the new Velasquez[43] until it had undergone
its discipline; but I have seldom met with an example of the master
which gave me more delight, or which I believe to be in more genuine or
perfect condition. I saw no traces of the retouching which is hinted at
by your correspondent “Verax,” nor are the touches on that canvas 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
sacrificed the solemnity and might of such a distance to the inferior
interest 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.
Even granting that some of the upper glazings of the figures had been
removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, gray, and
glittering, 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.
I believe I have stated to its fullest extent all the harm that has 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 discolored varnish has been withdrawn, for it is
perfectly possible to alter the structure and continuity, and so destroy
the aërial relations of colors of which no part has been removed. I have
seen the dark blue of a water-color 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 suspicion, 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 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,[44] 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
necessitating the enlargement of the rooms, and the bringing down of all
the pictures 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
enjoyment pictures are useless when they are even a little above the
line. The fatigue complained of by most persons in examining a picture
gallery is attributable, not only to the number of works, but to their
confused order of succession, and to the straining of the sight in
endeavoring 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 management
of our national collection are not to be limited either to its treatment
or its arrangement. The principles of selection which have been acted
upon in the course of the last five or six years have been as
extraordinary as unjustifiable. Whatever may be the intrinsic power,
interest, or artistical ability of the earlier essays of any school of
art, it cannot be disputed that characteristic examples of every one of
its most important phases should form part of a national collection:
granting them of little value individually, their collective teaching is
of irrefragable authority; and the exhibition of perfected 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 Ghirlandajo 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 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 are now, stumbling among its
fragments. Sir, if the canvases of Guido, lately introduced into the
gallery,[45] 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 and 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 Guidos,[46] and 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 Verrochio, 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 color, no drawing, no character, no
history, no thought? Yet 2,000 guineas were, I believe, given for one of
those encumbrances, and 5,000 for the coarse and unnecessary Rubens,[47]
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
1,500.[48] I do not speak of the spurious Holbein,[49] 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 poorly represented by a single head;[50] and I ask,
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 candor 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 honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”
_January 6._
[From “The Times,” December 29, 1852.]
_THE NATIONAL GALLERY._
_To the Editor of “The Times.”_
SIR: I trust that the excitement which has been caused by the alleged
destruction of some of the most important pictures in the National
Gallery will not be without results, whatever may be the facts of the
case with respect to the works in question. Under the name of
“restoration,” the ruin of the noblest architecture and painting is
constant throughout Europe. We shall show ourselves wiser than our
neighbors if the loss of two Claudes and the injury of a Paul
Veronese[51] induce us to pay so much attention to the preservation of
ancient art as may prevent it from becoming a disputed question in
future whether they are indeed pictures which we possess or their
skeletons.
As to the facts in the present instance, I can give no opinion. Sir
Charles Eastlake and Mr. Uwins[52] know more than I of oil paintings in
general, and have far more profound respect for those of Claude in
particular. I do not suppose they would have taken from him his golden
armor that Turner might bear away a dishonorable victory in the noble
passage of arms to which he has challenged his rival from the grave.[53]
Nor can the public suppose that the Curators of the National Gallery
have any interest in destroying the works with which they are intrusted.
If, acting to the best of their judgment, they have done harm, to whom
are we to look for greater prudence or better success? Are the public
prepared to withdraw their confidence from Sir C. Eastlake and the
members of the Royal Academy, and entrust the national property to Mr.
Morris Moore, or to any of the artists and amateurs who have inflamed
the sheets of _The Times_ with their indignation? Is it not evident that
the only security which the nation can possess for its pictures must be
found in taking such measures as may in future prevent the necessity of
their being touched at all? For this is very certain, that all question
respecting the effects of cleaning is merely one of the amount of
injury. Every picture which has undergone more friction than is
necessary at intervals for the removal of dust or dirt, has suffered
injury to some extent. The last touches of the master leave the surface
of the color with a certain substantial texture, the bloom of which, if
once reached under the varnish, must inevitably be more or less removed
by friction of any kind--how much more by friction aided by solvents? I
am well assured that every possessor of pictures who truly loves them,
would keep--if it might be--their surfaces from being so much as
breathed upon, which may, indeed, be done, and done easily.
Every stranger who enters our National Gallery, if he be a thoughtful
person, must assuredly put to himself a curious question. Perceiving
that certain pictures--namely, three Correggios, two Raphaels and a John
Bellini--are put under glass,[54] and that all the others are left
exposed, as oil pictures are in general, he must ask himself, “Is it an
ascertained fact that glass preserves pictures; and are none of the
pictures here thought worth a pane of glass but these five?[55] Or is it
unascertained whether glass is beneficial or injurious, and have the
Raphaels and Correggios been selected for the trial--‘_Fiat experimentum
in corpore vili?_’” Some years ago it might have been difficult to
answer him; now the answer is easy, though it be strange. The experiment
has been made. The Raphaels and Correggios have been under glass for
many years: they are as fresh and lovely as when they were first
enclosed; they need no cleaning, and will need none for half a century
to come; and it must be, therefore, that the rest of the pictures are
left exposed to the London atmosphere, and to the operations which its
influence renders necessary, simply because they are not thought worth a
pane of plate glass. No: there is yet one other possible answer--that
many of them are hung so high, or in such lights, that they could not be
seen if they were glazed. Is it then absolutely necessary that they
should be hung so high? We are about to build a new National Gallery;
may it not be so arranged as that the pictures we place therein may at
once be safe and visible?
I know that this has never yet been done in any gallery in Europe, for
the European public have never yet reflected that a picture which was
worth buying was also worth seeing. Some time or other they will
assuredly awake to the perception of this wonderful truth, and it would
be some credit to our English common-sense if we were the first to act
upon it.
I say that a picture which is worth buying is also worth seeing; that
is, worth so much room of ground and wall as shall enable us to see it
to the best advantage. It is not commonly so understood. Nations, like
individuals, buy their pictures in mere ostentation; and are content, so
that their possessions are acknowledged, that they should be hung in any
dark or out-of-the-way corners which their frames will fit. Or, at best,
the popular idea of a national gallery is that of a magnificent palace,
whose walls must be decorated with colored panels, every one of which
shall cost £1,000, and be discernible, through a telescope, for the work
of a mighty hand.
I have no doubt that in a few years more there will be a change of
feeling in this matter, and that men will begin to perceive, what is
indeed the truth--that every noble picture is a manuscript book, of
which only one copy exists, or ever can exist; that a national gallery
is a great library,[56] of which the books must be read upon their
shelves; but every manuscript ought, therefore, to be placed where it
can be read most easily; and that the style of the architecture and the
effect of the saloons are matters of no importance whatsoever, but that
our solicitude ought to begin and end in the two imperative
requirements--that every picture in the gallery should be perfectly seen
and perfectly safe; that none should be thrust up, or down, or aside, to
make room for more important ones; that all should be in a good light,
all on a level with the eye, and all secure from damp, cold, impurity of
atmosphere, and every other avoidable cause of deterioration.
These are the things to be accomplished; and if we set ourselves to do
these in our new National Gallery,[57] we shall have made a greater step
in art-teaching than if we had built a new Parthenon. I know that it
will be a strange idea to most of us that Titians and Tintorets ought,
indeed, all to have places upon “the line,” as well as the annual
productions of our Royal Academicians; and I know that the _coup
d’œil_ of the Gallery must be entirely destroyed by such an
arrangement. But great pictures ought not to be subjects of “_coups
d’œil_.” In the last arrangement of the Louvre, under the Republic,
all the noble pictures in the gallery were brought into one room, with a
Napoleon-like resolution to produce effect by concentration of force;
and, indeed, I would not part willingly with the memory of that saloon,
whose obscurest shadows were full of Correggio; in whose out-of-the-way
angles one forgot, here and there, a Raphæl; and in which the best
Tintoret on this side of the Alps was hung sixty feet from the
ground![58] But Cleopatra dissolving the pearl was nothing to this; and
I trust that, in our own Gallery, our poverty, if not our will, may
consent to a more modest and less lavish manner of displaying such
treasures as are intrusted to us; and that the very limitation of our
possessions may induce us to make that the object of our care which can
hardly be a ground of ostentation. It might, indeed, be a matter of some
difficulty to conceive an arrangement of the collections in the Louvre
or the Florence Gallery which should admit of every picture being hung
upon the line. But the works in our own, including the Vernon and Turner
bequests,[59] present no obstacle in their number to our making the
building which shall receive them a perfect model of what a National
Gallery ought to be. And the conditions of this perfection are so simple
that if we only turn our attention to these main points it will need no
great architectural ingenuity to attain all that is required.
It is evident, in the first place, that the building ought to consist of
a series of chambers or galleries lighted from above, and built with
such reference to the pictures they are to contain, as that opposite a
large picture room enough should be allowed for the spectator to retire
to the utmost distance at which it can ever be desirable that its effect
should be seen; but, as economy of space would become a most important
object when every picture was to be hung on a level with the eye,
smaller apartments might open from the larger ones for the reception of
smaller pictures, one condition being, however, made imperative,
whatever space was sacrificed to it--namely, that the works of every
master should be collected together, either in the same apartment or in
contiguous ones. Nothing has so much retarded the advance of art as our
miserable habit of mixing the works of every master and of every
century. More would be learned by an ordinarily intelligent observer in
simply passing from a room in which there were only Titians, to another
in which there were only Caraccis, than by reading a volume of lectures
on color. Few minds are strong enough first to abstract and then to
generalize the characters of paintings hung at random. Few minds are so
dull as not at once to perceive the points of difference, were the works
of each painter set by themselves. The fatigue of which most persons
complain in passing through a picture gallery, as at present arranged,
is indeed partly caused by the straining effort to see what is out of
sight, but not less by the continual change of temper and of tone of
thought, demanded in passing from the work of one master to that of
another.