EDINBURGH JOURNAL
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS



CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.


No. 444. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, JULY 3, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._




THE ART SEASON.


Returning with the circling year, and advancing _pari passu_ with the
multitude of metropolitan musical attractions, comes the more silent
reign of the picture exhibitions--those great art-gatherings from
thousands of studios, to undergo the ultimate test of public judgment
in the dozen well-filled galleries, which the dilettante, or lounging
Londoner, considers it his recurring annual duty strictly to inspect,
and regularly to gossip in. As places where everybody meets everybody,
and where lazy hours can be conveniently lounged away, the exhibitions
in some sort supply in the afternoon what the Opera and parties do in
the evenings. Nearly all through the summer-day, they are crowded with
a softly-rustling, humming, buzzing crowd, coming and going perhaps,
taking little heed of the nominal attraction, but sauntering from room
to room, or ensconcing themselves in colonies or clusters of chairs,
and lounging vacantly in cool lobbies. At energetic sight-seers, who
are labouring away, catalogue and pencil in hand, they stare
languidly. They really thought everybody had seen the pictures; they
know they have: they have stared at them until they became a bore. But
this sort of people, who only come once, why, of course, they suppose
this sort of people must be allowed to push about as they please. But
it is a confounded nuisance; it is really.

The great army of art amateurs, connoisseurs, and the body who are
regarded in the artistic world with far greater reverence--the noted
picture buyers and dealers, have come and seen, and gone away again;
after having lavishly expended their approbation or disapprobation,
and possibly in a less liberal degree, their cash. After the first
week or so, the galleries begin to clear of gentlemen of the class in
question; even artists have got tired of coming to see their own
pictures, particularly if they be not well hung; and so the exhibition
is generally handed over during the greater part of its duration to
the languid _far niente_ elegant crowd we have seen thronging its
corridors. The grand day for the moneyed amateurs, who come to
increase their collections, is, however, that of the private view.
This generally occurs on a Saturday, and the public is admitted on the
following Monday. Within an hour of the opening on the former day, the
rooms are crowded with a multitude of notabilities. You see that you
are in a special class of society, or rather, in two special
classes--literary and artistic on the one hand; wealthy and socially
elevated on the other. The fact is evident in the general mutual
acquaintanceship which prevails, principally within each respective
circle, but by no means exclusively so. First, you are sure to observe
a cluster of those peers and members of parliament who busy themselves
most in social, literary, and artistic questions. Bishops, too, are
regular private-view men; capital judges, moreover, and liberal
buyers; and we seldom miss catching a glimpse of some dozen faces,
whose proprietors are men standing at the very top of our historic,
philosophic, and critical literature, and who move smilingly about,
amid the keen but concealed inspection of the crowd, who pass their
names in whispers from group to group.

But the class of regular picture-buyers is quite _sui generis_. You
may pitch upon your man in a moment. Ten to one, he is old, and has
all the shrivelled, high-dried appearance of the most far-gone and
confirmed bachelorism. Everything about him looks old and
old-fashioned. His hair is thin and gray, and he shuffles along on a
couple of poor old shanks, which will never look any stouter unless it
be under the influence of a fit of the gout. He wears a white
neckcloth, arranged with the celebrated wisp-tie--shoes a great deal
too big for him--and to his keen, twinkling eyes he applies a pair of
heavy horn or silver-set glasses. These old gentlemen appear to know
each other as if by magic. They cluster in groups like corks in a
basin of water, and then go 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 connoisseurs, without so much remarking their
imperfections, carefully note their promise.

A month after the opening of the British Institution, three galleries
become patent on the same morning: the Old Water Colour, in Pall-Mall
East, the New Water Colour, in Pall-Mall West, and a still more
recently founded society, called, somewhat pompously, the National
Institution of Fine Arts. These are mainly composed of dissenters from
the other associations--gentlemen who conceive that they have been
ill-treated by Hanging Committees, and a large class of juvenile but
promising artists, who resort to the less crowded institutions in the
hope of there meeting with better places for their works than in the
older and more