On the Old Road, Vol. 2 | Page 3

the glass, which, perhaps, some persons might think it
expedient to avoid altogether.
Do you put it down to the absolute tint in the glass like a glazing, or do
you put it down to a sort of reflection? Is the effect referable to the
color in the glass, or to some kind of optic action, which the most
transparent glass might produce?--I do not know; but I suppose it to be
referable to the very slight tint in the glass.
118. Dean of St. Paul's. Is it not the case when ladies with very brilliant
dresses look at pictures through glass, that the reflection of the color of
their dresses is so strong as greatly to disturb the enjoyment and the
appreciation of the pictures?--Certainly; but I should ask the ladies to
stand a little aside, and look at the pictures one by one. There is that
disadvantage.

I am supposing a crowded room--of course the object of a National
Gallery is that it should be crowded--that as large a number of the
public should have access to it as possible--there would of course be
certain limited hours, and the gallery would be liable to get filled with
the public in great numbers?--It would be disadvantageous certainly,
but not so disadvantageous as to balance the much greater advantage of
preservation. I imagine that, in fact, glass is essential; it is not merely
an expedient thing, but an essential thing to the safety of the pictures
for twenty or thirty years.
Do you consider it essential as regards the atmosphere of London, or of
this country generally?--I speak of London only. I have no experience
of other parts. But I have this experience in my own collection. I kept
my pictures for some time without glass, and I found the deterioration
definite within a very short period--a period of a couple of years.
You mean at Denmark Hill?--Yes; that deterioration on pictures of the
class I refer to is not to be afterwards remedied--the thing suffers
forever--you cannot get into the interstices.
Professor Faraday. You consider that the picture is permanently
injured by the dirt?--Yes.
That no cleaning can restore it to what it was?--Nothing can restore it to
what it was, I think, because the operation of cleaning must scrape
away some of the grains of paint.
Therefore, if you have two pictures, one in a dirtier place, and one in a
cleaner place, no attention will put the one in the dirtier place on a level
with that in the cleaner place?--I think nevermore.
119. Chairman. I see that in your "Notes on the Turner Collection," you
recommended that the large upright pictures would have great
advantage in having a room to themselves. Do you mean each of the
large pictures or a whole collection of large pictures?--Supposing very
beautiful pictures of a large size (it would depend entirely on the value
and size of the picture), supposing we ever acquired such large pictures
as Titian's Assumption, or Raphael's Transfiguration, those pictures

ought to have a room to themselves, and to have a gallery round them.
Do you mean that each of them should have a room?--Yes.
Dean of St. Paul's. Have you been recently at Dresden?--No, I have
never been at Dresden.
Then you do not know the position of the Great Holbein and of the
Madonna de S. Sisto there, which have separate rooms?--No.
Mr. Cockerell. Are you acquainted with the Munich Gallery--No.
Do you know the plans of it?--No.
Then you have not seen, perhaps, the most recent arrangements adopted
by that learned people, the Germans, with regard to the exhibition of
pictures?--I have not been into Germany for twenty years.
120. That subject has been handled by them in an original manner, and
they have constructed galleries at Munich, at Dresden, and I believe at
St. Petersburg upon a new principle, and a very judicious principle.
You have not had opportunities of considering that?--No, I have never
considered that; because I always supposed that there was no difficulty
in producing a beautiful gallery, or an efficient one. I never thought that
there could be any question about the form which such a gallery should
take, or that it was a matter of consideration. The only difficulty with
me was this--the persuading, or hoping to persuade, a nation that if it
had pictures at all, it should have those pictures on the line of the eye;
that it was not well to have a noble picture many feet above the eye,
merely for the glory of the room. Then I think that as soon as you
decide that a picture is to be seen, it is easy to find out the way of
showing it; to say that it should have such and such a room, with