The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-19 00:00:00

tions, it might:not show also that nothing was in-
digenous. Though the earliest of our artists—we
speak of our masters—Hogarth, was at the samo
time homebred and the greatest, we had to wait for
him till the middle of the 18th century. Up to his
appearance we could hardly boast a portrait, except
in miniature, worth having from an English artist.
Holbein, Zuccaro, Powebus, Rubens, Vandyke,
Mytens, Vander Plaas, Lely, and Kneller, were all
foreign men. Whatever we were born, whether
sailors, or poets, or merchants, or soldiers, or ora-
tors, it is certain we werTnot born portraitpainters.
For centuries we were content to have our art as we
had our merchandise, by buying it from the foreigner,
and it is so far fortunate for us now that we are col-
lecting our acquisitions that they were made with so
much judgment that their exhibition will repay any
conceivable cost it may put us to,, and leave a
heavy balance of obligations to the noble lord to
whose taste and energetic initiative we shall be in-
debted for it. The division of the project into two
or three exhibitions, taking place in as many years,
follows from the national wealth in portraits. The
Earl of Derby proposes that not more than about
800 portraits shall be exhibited together, and that
none of the exhibitions in the series shall extend
beyond the four or five months of our summer sea-
son. The chronological order is naturally preferred
to any arrangement founded on social status or pur-
suits, and this all the more that the latter arrange-
ment may be easily made subsidiary to the other.
But the difficulty arises as to the period at which we
shall begin—and end—the series of portraits. At
the meeting over which Lord Derby presided at the
South Kensington Museum it was the general feel-
ing that we should not begin before the reign of
Richard 111. or Henry VII. For our part we fail
to see the necessity of fixing a date or epoch for the
commencement. At Hampton Court we have por-
traits which are alleged to be those of Fair Rosa-
mond and Elizabeth Woodville, on authority which
ought at least to be respectable. In other of our
collections, national, semi-national, or private, we
ought to have hundreds of historical portraits of
anterior or contemporary dates, not probably in
worse preservation than those which trace back for
us the artistic history of Italy, France, or the
Western Empire. True, the art may be for the
most part contemptible, but for the earlier epochs
our desire, perhaps, should be less to exhibit art
than to elucidate history—though indeed from very
early periods our church windows show some admi-
rable specimens of artistic ability that imply
something in favour of whatever may remain of
contemporary portraiture. Even an unmeritable
performance may have an interest in showing the
state of art, which it may want as a contribution to
political history. The fixing such a date as the reign
of Richard 111. may abridge the responsibility of the
committee of selection, but might exclude, perhaps,
the most interesting " trouvaille offered the collec-
tion. And here arises a suggestion for extending
the exhibition and its uses. As the chief riches of
our earlier historical portraiture consist of the
statuary and painting which adorn our ancient ar-
chitecture, might we not have their reproduction by
photography as a part of the first of the collections ?
There are not wanting the eminent artists, assisted
by able archaeologists, to form a sub-committee who
would enable the connoisseurs to place under a single
examination nearly all the personal celebrities con-
nected with the earlier history of the country. The
difficulty of fixing a date for ending the series is
more easily understood. Art has its "irritabile
genus" as well as poetry, and how stave off any liv-
ing artist who has painted a great man if you do
not shut out all ? It may be painful to exclude the
productions of Landseer's delicate and discriminat-
ing pencil, especially when they are of such extra-
ordinary interest as his Walter Scott, but- how, ad- •
milting him, exclude any portrait of Walter Scott,
by any contemporary whom the great man privi-
leged by sitting to ? No rule is probably possible
but that of admitting only deceased celebrities by
deceased artists ; but that rule once adopted, there
does not seem any ground of limiting it by fixing
that anterior term of ten or twenty years which for
some time had the sanction of the trustees of the
National Portrait Gallery. Had the Prince
Consort, for example, or the Duke of Wellington
'died but yesterday, the absence of their portraits
from the Exhibition would be as conspicuous as
that of the busts of Brutus and Cassius from a
celebrated procession. It is because they have
just passed away from among us that the general
sentiment asks to be satisfied by the presentation
of their effigies.