The Galleries of the Exposition

It would seem only logical to begin our investigation with the pictures chronologically oldest, at the same time recognizing that European art has the right to first consideration. We are the hosts to the art of the world. Our own art is the newest, and yet occupies a large number of galleries most conspicuously, but it will not lose by waiting for attention till the end.

Gallery 63.

Some of the very earliest paintings in the exhibition are found in one of the large center rooms on the left, where a very stately Tiepolo controls the artistic atmosphere of a large gallery. This picture has all the qualities of an old Italian master of the best kind. Its composition is big and dignified and in the interest and richness of its color scheme it has here few equals. The chief characteristic of this splendid canvas is bigness of style. In its treatment it is a typical old master, in the best meaning of the term.

On the left of this Tiepolo, a rather sombre canvas by Ribera claims attention by the peculiar lighting scheme, so typical of this Italian master. While there is what we might call a quality of flood lighting in the Tiepolo, giving an envelope of warm, mellow light to the whole picture, Ribera concentrates his light somewhat theatrically upon his subjects, as in the St. Jerome. The picture is freely painted, with the very convincing anatomical skill that is manifest in most of Ribera's work. His shadows are sometimes black and impenetrable, a quality which his pictures may not have had at the time of their production, and which may be partly the result of age. The Goya on the same wall is uninteresting - one of those poor Goyas which have caused delay in the just placing of this great Spaniard in the history of art.

The Turner below the Goya has all the imaginative qualities of that great Englishman's best work. Venice may never look the way Turner painted it, but his interpretation of a gorgeous sunset over a canal is surely fascinating enough in its suggestion of wealth of form and color. Sir William Beechey's large canvas of a group of children and a dog probably presented no easy task to the painter. The attempt at a skillful and agreeable arrangement of children in pictures is often artificial, and so it is to my mind in this canvas. Nevertheless the colouring, together with the spontaneous technique, put it high above many canvases of similar type. The Spanish painting on the right of the Beechey could well afford to have attached to it the name of one of the best artists of any school. The unknown painter of this Spanish gentleman knew how to disclose the psychology of his sitter in a straightforward way that would have done honor to Velasquez, or to Frans Hals, of whom this picture is even more suggestive.

Below this very fine portrait Sir Godfrey Kneller is represented by a canvas very typical of the eighteenth century English portrait painters. The canvas has a little of the character of everybody, without being sufficiently individual. Reynolds' "Lady Ballington" has a wonderful quality of repose and serenity, one of the chief merits of the work of all those great English portrait painters of the eighteenth century. No matter whose work it is, whether of Reynolds, Romney, Hoppner, or any of that classic period of the painters of distinguished people, they always impress by the dignity of their composition and colour. We do not know in all cases how distinguished their sitters really were, but like Reynolds' "Lady Ballington," they must often have been of a sort superior physically as well as intellectually.

Above the Reynolds a small Gainsborough landscape blends well with the predominant brown of these old canvases. From the point of view of the modern landscape painter, who believes in the superiority of his outlook and attitude toward nature, we can only be glad that Gainsborough's fame does not depend upon his representation of out-of-doors. This small canvas, like the very big one on the opposite wall, is interesting in design. But neither gives one the feeling of outdoors that our modern landscape painters so successfully impart. Historically they are very interesting, and even though they carry the name of such a master of portraits as Gainsborough undoubtedly was, they are devoid of all the refreshing qualities that modern art has given to the world.

Sir Peter Lely and Sir Henry Raeburn claim particular attention on the north wall - the first by a deftly painted portrait of a lady, and the other by a broadly executed likeness of John Wauchope. As portraits go, the first picture is one of the finest in the gallery. Very conspicuous by their size, the two big Romney portraits on the east wall are not in the same class with either the Lawrence or the Reynolds on the same wall. The great Lawrence portrait, the lady with the black hat, is one of the most superb portraits in the world. There is a peculiar charm about this canvas quite independent of the very attractive Lady Margaret represented in the picture. The luscious blacks and pale reds and the neutral cream silk cape make for a colour harmony seldom achieved. Reynolds' portrait of John Thomas, Bishop of Rochester, is equally rich and full of fine colour contrasts. The shrewd-looking gentleman is psychologically well given, although one's attention is detracted from the head by the gorgeous raiment of a dignitary of the church.

I think Hogarth's portrait on the small wall to the right does not disclose this master at his best, nor does Hoppner rise to the level of his best work in the large portrait alongside of it. The Marchioness of Wellesley is better and more sympathetically rendered than her two children, who barely manage to stay in the picture.

On the whole an atmosphere of dignity permeates this gallery of older masters. One may deplore the lack of many characteristics of modern art in many of the old pictures. They are very often lifeless and stiff, but the worst of them are far more agreeable than most of those of our own time. The serene beauty of the Tiepolo, the Lawrence, and the Gainsborough portrait has hardly been surpassed since their day. Our age is, of course, the age of the landscape painter, the outdoor painter, as opposed to the indoor portraits of these great masters. It would not be right to judge a Gainsborough by his landscapes any more than it would be to judge a modern landscape painter by his portraits. But no matter how uninteresting these old landscapes are, their brown tonality insures them a certain dignity of inoffensiveness which a mediocre modern work of art never possesses, I would rather any time have a bad old picture than a bad one of the very recent schools. Modesty is not one of the chief attributes of modern art, and the silent protest of a gallery such as the one we are now in, the artist can well afford to heed.

The sculpture in this gallery has no relation to the historical character of the room, but fits well into the atmosphere. Adolph A. Weinman's admirable "Descending Night" is so familiar to all Exposition visitors, in its adaptation in a fine fountain in the Court of the Universe, that no more reference need be made to it. Here in bronze on a small scale, it is even more refined. Mrs. Saint Gaudens' charming family group, in burnt clay, is not so well in harmony with this gallery of older work, but infinitely more appealing than J. Q. A. Ward's "Hunter" or Cyrus Dallin's "Indian". Both of these groups lack suggestive quality. They are carried too far. Edward Kemeys' "Buffaloes" lacks a sense of balance. The defeated buffalo, pushed over the cliff, takes the interest of the observer outside of the center of the composition, and a lack of balance is noticeable in this otherwise well modelled group.

Gallery 91.

In this room one is carried farther back into the earlier phases of painting by a Luini of pronounced decorative quality. The picture is probably a part of a larger scheme, but it is well composed into the frame which holds it. Besides, it is of interest as the only piece of old mural painting included in the exhibition. The ground on which the angel is painted is a piece of the plaster surface of the original wall of which this fragment was a part. The method of producing these fresco paintings (al fresco calco) necessitated the employment of a practical plasterer besides the painter. The painting was first drawn carefully on paper and then transferred in its outlines upon freshly prepared plaster, just put upon the wall. Having no other means of making the paint adhere to the surface, the painter had to rely upon the chemical reaction of the plaster, which would eventually unify the paint with itself. It was a very tedious process, which nowadays has been superseded by the method of painting on canvas, which after completion in the studio is fastened to the wall. Above the Luini hangs a very Byzantine looking Timoteo Viti "Madonna" of interesting colour and good design, but with a Christ child of very doubtful anatomy, and also two old sixteenth century Dutch pictures - a Jan Steen and a Teniers. I have my doubts as to the authenticity of the last two pictures. They are both interesting as disclosing the fondness of the Dutch painters of the sixteenth century for over-naturalistic subjects.

On wall B two pictures, without author or title, appeal to one's imagination. They are both well painted and rich in colour. A certain big decorative quality puts them far above their neighbor - a Dutch canvas of bad composition with no redeeming features other than historical interest. Jacopo da Ponte's big "Lazarus" has a certain noble dignity. Though it is rather black in shadows, it is not devoid of colour feeling. On either side are two old Spanish portraits of children of royalty. They impress by their very fine decorative note, charmingly enhanced by the wonderful frames. Another Ribera, as forceful as the one mentioned before, easily stands out among the many pictures in this gallery, most of which are only of historical interest. The whole aspect of this little gallery is one of extreme remoteness from modern thought and idea, but as an object lesson of certain older periods it is invaluable.

Gallery 92.

Chronologically a typical old Charles Le Brun presides over a very interesting lot of pictures, mostly French. This academic canvas, of Darius' family at the feet of Alexander, has not the simplicity and decorative quality of the Italian pictures of that period, and it is entirely too complex to be enjoyable. The beautiful Courbet on the left, while suggestive of Ribera in its severe disposal of light and shadow, has also a quality of its own, a wonderful mellowness which gives it a unity of expression lacking in its turbulent neighbor on the right.

Among the other bigger pictures in this small gallery, a very poetic Cazin, "The Repentance of Simon Peter," commands attention by a certain outdoor quality which faintly suggests the Barbizon school. One does not know what to admire most in this fine canvas. As a figural picture it is intensely beautiful, and merely as a landscape it is of convincing charm. It is to my mind one of the finest paintings in the exhibition, and a constant source of great pleasure.