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.'s1 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