On the Old Road, Vol. 2 | Page 3

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 such and such a light; not a raking light, as I heard Sir Charles Eastlake express it the other day, but rather an oblique and soft light, and not so near the picture as to catch the eye painfully. That may be easily obtained, and I think that all other questions after that are subordinate.
Dean of St. Paul's. Your proposition would require a great extent of wall?--An immense extent of wall.
121. Chairman. I see you state in the pamphlet