just valuation, and make it the nucleus of a National Gallery. The gentlemen who were most instrumental in determining the minister to this step were Lord Aberdeen, Lord Farnborough, Mr. Alex. Baring (now Lord Ashburton), Lord Dover, Lord Wharncliffe, and Mr. William Smith of Norwich; but among the most influential and enthusiastic advocates of the measure were Sir George Beaumont, Galley Knight, and Sir Thomas Lawrence, then President of the Royal Academy. "Buy this collection of pictures for the nation," said Sir George Beaumont, " and I will add mine;" and the offerthe bribe shall we call it? was accepted. In the November following Sir George thus writes to Lord Dover :-" Our friend Knight has informed me that Parliament has resolved upon the purchase of the Angerstein collection; and as I shall always consider the public greatly indebted to your exertions, I hope you will pardon my troubling you with my congratulations. By easy access to such works of art the public taste must improve, which I think the grand desideratum; for when the time shall come when bad pictures, or even works of mediocrity, shall be neglected, and excellence never passed over, my opinion is, we shall have fewer painters and better pictures. I think the public already begin to feel works of art are not merely toys for connoisseurs, but solid objects of concern to the nation; and those who consider it in the narrowest point of view will perceive that works of high excellence pay ample interest for the money they cost. My belief is, that the Apollo, the Venus, the Laocoon, &c., are worth thousands a-year to the country which possesses them."

The sum at which the whole of the Angerstein pictures were valued by competent judges was 57,000l.; to defray other incidental expenses Parliament granted the farther sum of 30007., in all 60,000l.* The pictures remained for several

*The prices given for the three great collections sold in England within the last century may perhaps be interesting as data.

The

years in the house of Mr. Angerstein in Pall-mall, where they were first opened to the public on the 10th of May, 1824. They were placed in the edifice they now occupy in 1838, and it was opened to the public on the 9th of April in that year.

In the mean time, the original collection had been materially increased by purchases and bequests. In 1825 three fine pictures, viz. the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian (No. 35), the Dance of Bacchanals by Nicolo Poussin (No. 62), and, subsequently, Annibal Carracci's "Christ and St. Peter" (No. 9), were purchased of Mr. Hamlet the jeweller, for 80007. In the same year the exquisite little Correggio (No. 23) was bought from Mr. Nieuwenhuys for 3800 guinéas.

In 1826 Sir George Beaumont (dear be his memory therefore to every lover of art and of his country!) made a formal gift of his pictures, valued at 7500 guineas, to the nation. This was the first example given of private munificence. Sir George, besides being a passionate lover of art, was himself a fine artist. The pictures he had collected round him were not mere objects of pride or taste, but the loved companions of his leisure-the reverenced models of his art we are told he used to gaze upon them by the hour; he could scarcely bear to be absent from them. Yet, endowed with a truly poetical and elevated mind, he appears

Houghton pictures, 232 in number, collected by Sir Robert Walpole, were sold to the Empress Catherine of Russia for 43,500l. The pictures were overvalued, even in the estimation of Horace Walpole, and the Empress never paid more than 36,000l. of the money, and, in the extremity of her imperial indignation, she refused to look at them, or to allow them to be taken out of the packing-cases in which they arrived at St. Petersburg. Her disgust at being, as she thought, overreached, was stronger than her love for fine pictures. The Orleans collection, consisting of 296 pictures, was sold, in 1798, for 43,5557.; and the Angerstein collection of 38 pictures was valued and sold at 57,000%.

to have felt and understood one of the highest, truest sources of delight, when, "with ambition, modest yet sublime," he made of this rich sacrifice a gift, and not a bequest, and had the gratification while he yet existed of seeing his pictures, by him not only valued but loved, hung up in public view to bestow on thousands " unreproved pleasure." And, as this was most nobly done, so there was something affecting in his request to be allowed to retain till his death one little picture, a favourite Claude, which had long been in his possession. For several years he had never moved from one residence to another without it; but carried it about with him like a household god. This picture (No. 61) will henceforth be consecrated by these grateful and tender recollections in the mind of every spectator.*

In the year 1831 a magnificent addition was made to the Gallery by the bequest of the Rev. William Holwell Carr, a clergyman who had expended his private fortune in the acquisition of works of art, and left to the nation thirty-one pictures, most of them excellent works of the Italian school.

In 1834 a most important acquisition was made by the purchase of two celebrated works of Correggio, the Education of Cupid, and the Ecce Homo, which had been bought by the Marquess of Londonderry with the collection of Murat, and were by him sold to the nation for 10,000 guineas.

*Sir George Beaumont died on the 7th of February, 1827, at the age of seventy-four. The friendship between him and Wordsworth has been celebrated by the latter in many beautiful poetical compliments :

"One woo'd the silent art with studious pains,

These groves have heard the other's pensive strains;

Devoted thus their spirits did unite

By interchange of knowledge and delight."

Which may be compared with Pope's elegant compliment to Jervas the

painter:

"Smit with the love of sister-arts we came,

And met congenial, mingling flame with flame," &c.

In 1838 Lord Farnborough bequeathed to the Gallery fifteen pictures, chiefly of Dutch and Flemish masters, and a few Italian, the value of which could not be less than seven or eight thousand pounds. Other benefactors of the Gallery are enumerated by name at the end of this Introduction.

The number of pictures is at present 177, of which 118 have been either presented or bequeathed by individuals. We possess one of the finest pictures of the Florentine school in the Raising of Lazarus ;* but the school of Raphael is most inadequately represented in the Saint Catherine, beautiful as it is. We may esteem ourselves rich in Correggios (we have three among his finest productions, and he is the rarest of the first-rate masters, Michael Angelo excepted); also in pictures of Claude, and of Nicolò and Gaspar Poussin, and of Annibal Carracci and his school. We are poor in fine specimens of some of the best of the early Italian masters; of Gian Bellini, of Francia, of Perugino, the master of Raphael, of Fra Bartolomeo, of Frate Angelico

"The limner cowl'd, who never raised his hand

Till he had steep'd his inmost soul in prayer,”

and others who flourished in the latter half of the 15th century, we have as yet nothing :† of Titian we have only one very good picture,—not one of his wondrous portraits;

* I call it Florentine, because, though painted by the Venetian, Sebastian del Piombo, the composition is by Michael Angelo, and bears the stamp of his school of design.

See Mr. Solly's Evidence before the Arts Committee in 1836 :"I should say that painting was at its greatest state of perfection from 1510 to 1530; but even of that period there are a great number of painters whose works are not known in this country, as Gaudenzio Ferrari, Bernardino Luino, Cesare da Sesto, and Salaino (Milan); Andrea da Salerno (the Raphael of Naples); and painters of Bergamo, Padua, Verona, Treviso, whose works are all extremely fine, and would be desirable for a National Gallery (No. 1845)."

:

the only Giorgione is doubtful. Of the gorgeous Paul Veronese and the fiery Tintoretto there is nothing of consequence.* of the power and splendour of Rubens we have some fair examples; but for the great pictures at Whitehall, which he painted for Charles I., and which lie there out of sight and out of mind, there is absolutely no space in our National Gallery. They exceed in dimensions (both in breadth and height) any room in it.† Of Salvator Rosa, whose great works are so often met with in England, we have but one picture a noble one, it must be allowed. There are two fine Murillos, but of Velasquez nothing,-for the picture which bears his name is certainly not his and of the other great masters of the Spanish school-Alonzo Cano, Zurbaran, Coello, el Mudo, el Greco-not one picture. We are as yet most poor in the fine masters of the Dutch school. specimen of Hobbema or Ruysdael. Vandervelde are insignificant; and of the beautiful conversation-pieces of Terburg, Gerard Douw, Netscher, Metzu, Ostade, Franz Mieris, and their compeers, not one. what is most extraordinary, and almost melancholy, is, our poverty in the works of Van Dyck, a painter almost naturalised among us; whose best years were spent in England, whose best works belong to us and our history. The only very good picture of his here-the portrait styled Gevartius—as a specimen of what his pencil could do, is invaluable; but otherwise not interesting. How would it keep alive in the mind of the people all the chivalrous, and patriotic, and historical associations connected with the families of our old

There is not a single

The specimens of

But

*The consecration of St. Nicholas is undoubtedly a fine picture; but when we speak of important works of Paul Veronese, we allude to such as are to be seen at Venice, Dresden, and in the Louvre. In the latter collection is the "Marriage at Cana," which no room in our National Gallery is large enough to contain.

† Vide Evidence before the Arts Committee (1654).