lint Arts.
THE SYDENHAM PICTURE-GALLERY.
We see it stated that the enterprising experiment of a picture-gallery at the Crystal Palace has been a decided success, both in the progressive public interest which it has enlisted and in the amount of sales effected. The latter is the true test. As regards public interest, it was sufficiently obvious a priori, that, whenever the building generally was thronged, the gallery would be the same, and that even a thin attendance in the vast- ness of the first would suffice to insure a fair number of visitors to the comparatively restricted space of the second ; and certainly, whenever we have been in the gallery we have found it well filled, and more than once crowded. A picture-gallery of any worth—not to say, of any sort whatever—forming one feature in an attractive collection of art, must necessarily draw numbers ; the more so when it presents several foreign schools as well as our own. This fact, therefore, however satisfactory in itself, is not to be relied on as a criterion of success.
Another test, not less valid than the first, is the amount of support which the gallery receives from artists. We have already noticed the improvement which has taken place in this respect ; and we rejoice to hear that the lame ducks with which the artistic market at Sydenham was glutted in the first instance are about to be removed, that they may make way for more marketable stock. Artists of eminence, it is said, both native and foreign, have tendered a number of additional contribu- tions, which are shortly to be exhibited. We may pity the perpetrators of the displaced works at finding that the Sydenham Gallery is not to be another asylum for bad art—a hospital of incurables, where the dislo- cated hero and heroine might repose amid trees of wool, mountains of putty, and streams of lead. But a picture-gallery should be a collection of art that can help others, not an almshouse for " artists " who cannot help themselves, and who o,gglit never to have attempted a work for which they are disqualified!' and indeed, it could be little service to such men to enable them to expose their fatuity, and little consolation to find that, if they could not make a reputation for themselves, they could at least destroy that of the collection which had harboured them. The cir- cumstance that artists deserving of the name are still ready to contribute, proves that the false step which the managers of the exhibition made at first in accepting trash can yet be retrieved; and when a creditable col- lection is once got together, there seems to be no reason why the Syden- ham picture-gallery should not establish itself on a firm footing. The managers started an excellent project; if they only carry it out with wisdom, they will have deserved public gratitude as well as favour.
Previous page
