pronunciation), a very famous artist of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., to whom it has always been attributed, though the signature and inscriptions are probably of later date. Annexed to the roll is a eulogy of the painter in the handwriting of Ch'ien Lung, the emperor who received Lord Macartney's embassy in 1793; and following this is an admirable and delicate ink-landscape by an eighteenth-century painter. The importance of a picture by Ku K'ai-chih will be

realized when we consider that of the art of The Print the T'ang dynasty (600 to 900 A.D.) hardly Room of the a vestige remains, while relics of the later British Sung period are extremely rare. Nothing Museum so ancient exists in Japan, the country where for a thousand years the early paintings of China have been collected with ardour and preserved with veneration. ¶A full account of this and some other important examples of Chinese painting will shortly be given in this magazine. L. B.

NOTE ON THE LIFE OF

Bernard van Orley is generally said to have been the second son-third child-of Valentine van Orley by his first wife, Margaret van Pynbroeck, whom he married May 13, 1490. He is further stated to have left Brussels in 1509 for Rome, and to have studied in the school of Raphael, becoming a great favourite with his master.

It seems impossible to reconcile these

statements with certain facts which are established beyond doubt by authentic documents. In 1514 Bernard was settled as a master-painter at Brussels, and had already gained a certain reputation, for the confraternity of the Holy Cross at Furnes in 1515 sent a delegate to Brussels to ask him to furnish a design for the altar-piece of their chapel. Bernard must therefore have

BERNARD VAN ORLEY at that time attained the age of 30,' which would put back the date of his birth to 1484-5. And unless there is some error in the date-May 4, 1 504-of the procuration published by A. Wauters (Bernard van Orley,' Bruxelles, 1881, p. 70), his birth must have taken place before May 1479, as no minor could give a procuration or power of attorney to another to dispose of property. Children at that time only attained their majority at the age of 25. ¶If born in 1479 Bernard may well have become a free master or gone to Rome in 1509. I suspect that he was not the son of Valentine and Margaret van Pynbroeck, but of some other Valentine, perhaps the uncle. I know of no document giving 'the name of his mother.

W. H. JAMES WEALE.

N almost every corner of these islands there is to be found hidden away amongst the trees or proudly standing on the summit of a hill one of those imposing ancestral homesteads which the British aristocracy have erected at various times ever since the Norman conquest. From the feudal castle of gothic architecture to the modern mansion replete with every comfort and household invention of the nineteenth century every style is represented. These buildings are geographical landmarks in the country, and nearly all are also landmarks in the artistic topography of Great Britain. Succeeding generations of owners have accumulated treasures which, severely guarded by family settlements, can only be dislodged under special conditions. In not a few instances the ancient furniture thus preserved, the objects of art and especially the pictures, the latter usually grouped round a nucleus of family portraits of successive periods, would rival many a public collection for the perfection of the examples, their artistic and monetary worth, and even their actual number. The more therefore is it to be regretted that they are so rarely accessible to the artist, the student, the public at large. A small percentage is, it is true, to be seen at the admirable loan exhibitions organized yearly at Burlington House and the Guildhall, and also from time to time in galleries governed by private enterprise; but these artistic feasts are all too rare, and even were the owners of fine works of art always willing to lend their property, which is not invariably the case, it would be impossible for all the objects worthy of being shown to pass in this way before the gaze of a single generation. Many are the masterpieces in

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

this country which have not moved from their resting place for scores of years and which are, except to a privileged few, as completely unknown and invisible as the immensely distant stars which astronomers contemplate through their most powerful lens. The collection of pictures at Somerley, the Earl of Normanton's beautiful seat near Ringwood in Hampshire, is one of those of whose very existence only a small minority is aware. The mansion, of late Georgian style, stands on the banks of the Avon in the midst of a park and estate extending over 9,000 acres, and is visited by only a small number of persons annually besides Lord Normanton's immediate entourage. With a very few exceptions, the entire collection was formed between the years 1820 and 1868 by Welbore Ellis, second Earl of Normanton, and grandfather of the present peer. Born in 1778, he succeeded to the title in 1809, married Diana, eldest daughter of the eleventh Earl of Pembroke, in 1816, and died in his ninetieth year in 1868, leaving as a record of his taste and artistic knowledge the wonderful gallery of paintings which is the subject of this study.

The collection is composed chiefly of pictures of the eighteenth-century English school, including works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Hoppner, Romney, Lawrence, Morland, Bonington, Nasmyth and Crome; it contains also pictures by some Flemish and Dutch masters of the seventeenth century, Rubens, Van Dyck and Teniers, Paul Potter, Van de Capelle, Aart van der Neer, Wouwerman and Willem van de Velde; Guardi and Canaletto represent the Italian; Murillo represents the Spanish school; whilst Greuze is the only French artist who has found a place at Somerley. The most striking feature of the collection