Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 | Page 2

hobbling eagerly along, peering closely into the more promising works, jerking their heads from side to side, so as to get the painting in as many lights as possible; and full of talk--good critical talk--about the productions in course of inspection. True, there may be something in their observations speaking too much of the technical, and too little of the more ideal faculty. They are greater upon flesh-tints and pearly grays, middle distances and chiaroscuro, than upon conception, expression, or elevation or magnificence of sentiment. Nevertheless, they know thoroughly what appertains to a good picture. They give a work its place in a moment, and assign it to its author by internal evidence, with an unfailing accuracy, which speaks of long training and constant familiarity with all the main studios of London. Perhaps you observe one of our friends apparently fascinated before a particular canvas: he dances about, so as to get it in every angle of light. Then he shuffles off, and brings two other skilful old foggies, holding each by an arm; and the three go through the former ceremony as to the lights, and then lay their heads together; and then our original personage glides softly up to the table where the secretary's clerk sits with pen and ink before him, and whispers. The clerk smiles affably--turns up a register: there are two or three confidential words interchanged; and then he rises and sticks into the frame of the lucky picture a morsel of card, labelled 'Sold;' and leaves the purchaser gloating over his acquisition.
And where do these pictures go? Frequently to some quiet, solemn old house in the West End, or to some grange or manor far down in the country. The picture-gallery is the nursery of that house--its pride and its boast. Year after year has the silent family of canvas been increasing and multiplying. Their proprietor is, as it were, their father. He has most likely no living ties, and all his thoughts and all his ambitions are clustered round that silent gallery, where the light comes streaming down from high and half-closed windows. The collection gradually acquires a name. Descriptions of it are found in guide-books and works upon art. Strangers come to see it with tickets, and a solemn housekeeper shews them up the silent stairs, and through the lonesome mansion to its sanctum sanctorum. At length, perhaps, the old man takes his last look at his pictures, and then shuts his eyes for ever. It may be, that within six weeks the laboriously collected paintings are in a Pall-Mall auction-room, with all the world bidding and buzzing round the pulpit; or it may also chance that a paragraph goes the round of the papers, intimating that his celebrated and unrivalled collection of modern works of art has been bequeathed by the late Mr So-and-so to the nation--always on the condition, that it provides some fitting place for their preservation. The government receives bequests of this kind oftener than it complies with the stipulation.
In the beginning of March, the first of the galleries opens its portals to the world. This is the British Institution, established at the west end of Pall-Mall, and now in existence for the better part of a half century. The idea of the establishment was to form a sort of nursing institution for the Royal Academy. Here artists of standing and reputation were to exhibit their sketches and less important works; and here more juvenile aspirants were to try their wings before being subjected to the more severe ordeal of Trafalgar Square. The idea was good, and flourished apace; so much so, that you not unfrequently find in the British Institution no small proportion of works of a calibre hardly below the average of the Great Exhibition; while the A. R. A.'s, and even the aristocratic R. A.'s[1] themselves, do not by any means disdain to grace the humble walls of the three rooms in Pall-Mall. This year, the only picture of Sir Edwin Landseer's exhibited--a wild Highland corry, with a startled herd of red deer--is to be found in the British Institution. But the merit of the works is wonderfully unequal. They are of all classes and all sizes, in water-colour and in oils. Clever sketches by clever unknowns, rest beside sprawling frescos by youths whose ambition is vaster than their genius; and finished and accomplished works of art are set off by the foils of unnumbered pieces of unformed and not very promising mediocrity. Among them are the productions of many of the more humble painters of genre subjects--the class who delight in portraying homely cottage interiors, or troops of playing children, or bits of minutely-finished still life--or careful academical studies of groups with all the conventions duly observed: this class of pictures musters strong, and