The New Gallery II

The Speaker, 20 January 1894, pages 73-74, 2,176 words

The constitutional inability of the nineteenth century to appreciate fine art enables "the experts" to push their impertinences almost to any extent; and strange names ending in bach are affixed to the mediocre paintings which the enterprise of dealers extracts from the apparently inexhaustible mine of Dutch lumber-rooms; and fortunes and high positions are acquired by the invention of preposterous theories regarding Botticelli's finger-nails. For a certain number of years he turned the finger-nails of his Madonnas this way, but after a certain date he turned them the other way. I remember meeting an expert at an exhibition of old masters. We met in front of a full-length Venus by Velasquez. I had written in praise of this picture, my article had gone to press, and as the expert assured me that the picture was not a genuine Velasquez I was for a few moments seriously alarmed. But my alarm began to subside when the expert told me that the picture was unquestionably designed by Velasquez; only the picture had been laid in by a pupil. Velasquez had painted on it here and there. Further conversation with the expert elicited the fact that the head of Philip in the National Gallery was not by Velasquez; the full-length was; but the head was glazed, and Velasquez never glazed.

An amusing article might be written on the imposture of the expert. But I have to write about the pictures at the New Gallery... One story, however, I must tell. A rather handsome picture of two children caught my eye in the shop of a West End dealer. I examined the picture and wondered who had painted it. I asked the dealer. "Opie," he answered. " I don't think that possible," I replied. His face darkened. "I don't think Opie ever painted so good a picture." His face brightened. "That is the kind of criticism I like to hear," he said. "We believe it to be by Opie, but, of course, if the purchaser would like a better name, we shall be most happy to suggest one." The dealer then told me that he had some Dutch pictures upstairs which he was in doubt about – no serious doubt, "nothing that a little earnestness and good-will cannot remove." He asked me if I would like to come upstairs and suggest. I said I should be happy to look at the pictures, but did not think I should be able to suggest. We went upstairs. I shall always regret that a reporter was not hidden behind the curtain; the world has lost some remarkable dialogue. I might recall some fragments if space permitted, but I have said enough for my purpose, which is to clear myself of all suspicion of knowledge of trademarks – of the up-turned and the down-turned finger-nail. But though quite ignorant of these things I am not troubled with doubt before great works: it does not require expert knowledge to know that the last number of Tit Bits is not a Chaucerian manuscript. So, when I read " Botticelli " under the four panels representing the four seasons, which Lord Rosebery sends, I think merely of the painters who decorated the grill-room of the South Kensington Museum, and pass on. Between these absurd seasons there hangs a very fine picture (156), lent by Mr. G. Donaldson. I do not know that I should have at once thought of Botticelli; the elaborate architecture might have suggested another name, but I do not for a moment question the authenticity of this picture.

But let us take the Botticellis in their order. 96, "Virgin and Child," lent by Mr. Charles Butler, is a very feeble work, and it seems quite impossible that it can be by Botticelli. 103, "Virgin and Child with St. John," lent by Mr. Henry Willett. A nice picture; the head of St. John copied from Botticelli, but surely not a genuine work by the master. 110, "Portrait of Esmeralda Bandinelli." A most interesting picture. The face is full of a strange intensity which bespeaks genius; but the face is wanting in the grandeur of design which is so special a characteristic of Botticelli, and the fact that it is a portrait no way affects this argument. But who except Botticelli could have endowed the face with that strange intensity? Above all, who could have painted that pink gown showing through the white gauze? Here we have the exquisite handicraft of the master, and the expressive drawing of the hand laid across the stomach could hardly be by another. 108, Holy: Family and St. John the Baptist. Within a ruin, the Virgin kneeling adores the Infant Saviour who lies on the ground; on the left St. Joseph, seated; in the background stands St. John the Baptist in an attitude of adoration. Lent by Mr. Wickham Flower.

The merits of the design are incontestable, and so much is the design in advance of the execution, that I cannot but believe the picture to have been executed by an inferior hand. True that it has been obviously retouched. The streak of white paint along the Virgin's nose has been added; the eyes and eyebrows are sadly lacking in drawing; they look as if they had been painted in; the head of St. Joseph is almost formless, and could not possibly have been painted by Botticelli, of that I am quite sure. Then examine the head-dress of the Virgin: how dull and heavy the touch, how unlike the exquisite subtlety of the inspired touch which we never miss in a head-dress painted by the Master. If you are in doubt, compare the painting of this head-dress with the head-dress of the great Botticelli at the end of the room – the picture I spoke of last week. There is so much merit in 111 – "Virgin and Child," lent by Lord Battersea – the face of the Virgin is conceived so vigorously, that we hesitate and ask ourselves if it be really authentic. I should not like to offer an opinion either way – Botticelli was not always Botticelli. Still, I do not believe this picture to have been painted by him…. But we have had enough of spurious work and doubtful work. Come and let us look at a genuine work, a work about which there can be no possibility of doubt, a work which convinces at the first glance by the extraordinary expressiveness of the drawing, by the originality of the design, by the miraculous handicraft; come let us look at 134, "Virgin and Child and St. John," lent by Messrs. Colnaghi.

A panel some 30 by 25 inches, almost filled by a life-size three-quarter-length figure of the Virgin. She is seated on the right, and holds the Infant Saviour in her arms. In the foreground on the left there is a book and cushion, behind which St. John stands, his hands clasped, bearing a cross. Never was a head designed with more genius than that strange Virgin – ecstatic, mysterious, sphinxlike; with half-closed eyes, she bends her face to meet her God's kiss. Those pagans, Raphael and Del Sarto, merely desired to display the human form in all its attributes and all its perfections, and the Holy Family was treated by them from this point of view to their purpose; but in this picture at least Botticelli sought to realise the awfulness of the Christian mystery – the Mother leans to the kiss of her Son – her Son, who is likewise her God. Therefore her brain is dim with ecstasy. She is perturbed and overcome; the kiss is in her brain, and it trembles on her lips. You who have not seen the picture think that this description is but the tale of the writer who reads his fancies into the panel or canvas before him. Not so. The intention of the painter did not outstrip the power of expression which his fingers held. He expressed what I say he expressed, and more perfectly, more suggestively, than any words. It will be imagined that it was by means of some illusive line that Botticelli rendered the very soul and breath of this extraordinary kiss – by that illusive line which Degas employs in his expressions of the fugitive and the evanescent. When we look into the picture we find that the mystery and ecstasy of this kiss are expressed by a hard, firm, dark line.

And the sensation of this strange ecstatic kiss pervades the entire composition; it is embodied in the hand placed so reverently on the thigh of the Infant God and in the eyes of St. John, who watches the divine mystery which is being accomplished. On St. John's face there is earthly reverence and awe; on Christ's face, though it be drawn in rigid outline, though it looks as if it were stamped out of iron, there is universal love, cloudlike and ineffable; and Christ's knees are drawn close, and the hand of the Virgin holds them close; and through the hand come bits of draperies exquisitely designed. Indeed, the distribution of line through the picture is as perfect as the distribution of colour – the form of the blue cloak is as perfect as the colour, and the green cape falls from the shoulder satisfying both senses; the crimson vesture which she wears underneath her cloak is extraordinarily pure, and balances the crimson cloak which St. John wears. But these beauties are subordinate to the beauty of the Virgin's head. How grand it is in style! How strange and enigmatic! And in the design of that head Botticelli has displayed all his skill. The fair hair is covered with delicate gauze edged with lace, and overcoming the difficulties of that most rebellious of all mediums – temper! – his brush worked over the surface, fulfilling his slightest thought, realising all the transparency of gauze, the intricacy of lace, the brightness of crimson of silk, gravity of the embossed binding of the book, the sway and texture of every drapery, the gold of the tall cross, and the darker gold of the aureola high up in the picture, set against a strip of Florentine sky.

Before a great picture no questions are asked; vexatious conjecturing only happens before inferior work that might have been done by any sufficiently practised hand. To pretend to distinguish between the very minor masters were vain. Inferior work may be by anybody except the great master. So when we read that 187, a half-length figure of St. John the Baptist, lent by Mr. W.B. Hewetson, is by Leonardo da Vinci, we all know that that were as impossible as that Botticelli painted Lord Rosebery's Four Seasons. Not if you were to resurrect the painter and he were to affirm in all the solemnity of his grave-clothes that he painted it; not if time were put back three hundred years and we were by some miracle vouchsafed sight of Leonardo painting it we should say, "Our eyes deceive us," or else,"This is a day when Leonardo is not Leonardo." The hanging committee seemed to have had some pretty inkling of the absurdity of this attribution, for between 187 and 198, another half-length of St. John the Baptist, lent by Mr. D.G. Waters, and likewise attributed to Leonardo, they have hung a real Leonardo (180), a study of a head, and he who would still further inquire into Leonardo's manner I will recommend to a drawing on the screen opposite a Study for the Head of St. Anne, 281, lent by Her Majesty the Queen. The most casual glance tells us at once that this is Leonardo, that no one before or since ever thought or felt or executed like that. Some very feeble pictures in bright colours are set down to Luini, but we have only to stand for a moment before bis beautiful portrait of a lady (202) to see that they are not by him. Mr. Charles Butler believes the 254 to be a replica of the picture by Raphael in the Berlin Gallery. It may be; but there is nothing in heaven or earth that I should find more difficulty in believing – and so on, and so on.

But although we cannot believe that all those pictures are by the painters they have been attributed to, we do not mean that they are bad pictures. There is not a bad picture in the Gallery. Everything bears, in a greater or less degree, some of that sense of beauty which seems to have been the common lot of all who lived in Italy in the fifteenth century. And we think as we leave the Gallery how little of this national inspiration is with us to-day. Only by force of extraordinary and unnatural separation of our mind from the mind of our century may we achieve anything. But Botticelli's mind was concentric with the mind of his time. To-day everyone can read and write, and yet the general intelligence is lower than it was. G.M.