GREAT BRITAIN: London: EXHIBITIONS OPEN DURING MAY Guildhall Art Gallery. (About May 14.) Exhibition of Irish Painters. A collection of more than 300 pictures, by artists of Irish descent, which was originally destined for the St. Louis Exhibition. It should be a show of some interest, since it includes works by many of the most prominent of our younger British painters. It will remain open on Sundays as well as on weekdays for about six weeks. Whitechapel Art Gallery. Exhibition of Dutch Painting. The Royal Academy. Summer Exhibition. The Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colour. The Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colour. The Royal Society of British Artists. The Royal School of Art Needlework. The Viscountess The Society of Miniature Painters. (May 9 to May 30.) The Carlton Galleries. Miniatures by Edward Tayler. Dowdeswell Galleries. Landscapes by Jan Van Beers. Leicester Galleries. Drawings and Studies by Sir E. This collection of works by Burne-Jones is a good one. T. Maclean. Spring Exhibition. New Hanover Gallery. Paintings and Drawings by S. Lépine and painters of the Barbizon School. Shepherd Brothers. Spring Exhibition of Early British Masters. Contains oil-paintings by John Sell Cotman, etc. Tooth & Sons. Spring Exhibition. E. J. Van Wisselingh. Moorish Sketches by A. S. Forrest. Vicars Bros. Mezzotints by J. B. Pratt. Manchester : Corporation Art Gallery. Ruskin Exhibition. Bradford : Cartwright Memorial Hall. Inaugural Exhibition. (May 4.) This promises to be the most important of the English provincial exhibitions. It will contain a representative collection of British pictures, prints, furniture, etc., arranged in chronological sequence. Birmingham: Royal Society of Artists. Oxford: East Writing School. Exhibition of Historical Portraits. H Grand Palais des Beaux-Arts. Salon de la Société Musée du Luxembourg. Temporary Exhibition of Galerie Barthélemy, 52 rue Laffitte. Landscapes by Gabriel Rousseau. (Till May 7.) Galerie Vollard, 6 rue Laffitte. Émile Besnard Exhibition. Matisse Exhibition. Galeries Durand-Ruel, 16 rue Laffitte. Views of London by Claude Monet. From the above list it will be seen that the exhibitions in Paris during the month are of unusual interest. Besançon : Clocks and Watches in the style of Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, and of the Empire. BELGIUM: Brussels: Société des Beaux-Arts. (To May 15.) Cercle Artistique. Exhibition of Works by Moutald. (April 23 to May 15.) Exhibition of Works by the recently deceased painter Verdgen. (April 25 to May 12.) With the exception perhaps of an exhibition at Ostend during the season, there will probably be no other exhibitions of importance in Belgium till the autumn. GERMANY: Berlin : Berliner Kunst-Ausstellung. (May 1.) Grosse Kunst-Ausstellung. Düsseldorf: Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, 1904. (May 1.) This, besides being an international exhibition on a large scale, will contain the finest collection of Menzel's work ever brought together, and a great number of works by Rhenish and Westphalian painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The artists of France, too, make their first corporate appearance in Germany since the Franco-Prussian War. Rothenburg ob der Tauber :Exhibition of pictures painted in the town. (May 15.) Rothenburg is an ancient and picturesque place much frequented in summer by German artists. The remaining German exhibitions of the month belong to the class that recur annually, and have more or less of a local colouring. They are-1st of May: 'Kunstverein für Pommern,' at Stettin; Kunstgesellschaft,' at Lucerne : 'Gesellschaft der Kunstfreunde,' at Olmütz. 15th of May; 'Kunstverein,' at Altenburg; and 20th of May, 'Kunstverein,' at Halberstadt. AMERICA: St. Louis: Universal Exhibition. The Fine Art Section contains a splendid collection of works by contemporary and deceased painters. NOTE. The sale at Christie's of the second portion of Mr. C. H. T. Hawkins's collection (nearly 1,300 lots) will last from May 10 to 17. A miniature of Frances Howard, Duchess of Norfolk, ascribed on good authority to Holbein (Lot 907), is perhaps the most notable feature in the catalogue. The third portion of the collection will be sold towards the end of June, We have received from Messrs. F. Muller of Amsterdam well illustrated catalogues of works by Josef Israels and V. Van Gogh, which will be sold by them on May 3. 115 I-THE CHANTREY TRUSTEES AND THE NATION N OT every attack calls for a reply, and there are cases in which silence is at once the wisest and the most dignified policy. There are also cases in which it would be an ad mission of guilt, and the case of the Royal Academy in relation to the Chantrey Bequest is now one of them. Sir Edward Poynter has ignored, as we think unwisely, the comments of the daily press, and even questions in the House of Commons. But he must not ignore the pamphlet by Mr. MacColl containing the text of Chantrey's will, which Mr. Grant Richards has just published,1 if he wishes the Royal Academy to retain a reputation for common financial honesty. No body of honourable men could allow such a pamphlet to pass unnoticed, and if the Royal Academy remains silent, the conclusion of the public will be that there is no possible reply to the charge. That charge is nothing less than one of misapplication of public funds. In plain English, if what Mr. MacColl says is true, the Royal Academy has been guilty for twenty-seven years of deliberate misuse of trust money, and the stigma attaches to every member of the Academy who has acquiesced in such misuse. We put the matter hypothetically, for really it is incredible that the facts should be as he states them. There must be some reply to the charge that he makes. We should like to believe, as long as it is possible to do so, that a body of English gentlemen placed in a responsible position have had a due sense of their responsibilities, and have honestly and to the best of their ability fulfilled the trust committed to them. The text of the will, however, which Mr. MacColl reprints, seems clearly to prove : 1. That the President and Council of the Academy are simply (to use the words of the Royal Commission of 1863) trustees for the public, and therefore accountable to the nation for their doings. 2. That the trustees are paid to form a 'public national collection of British Fine Art in painting and sculpture.' 3. That only works of the highest merit (provided that the work was actually executed in England) were to be purchased. To ensure this, works by deceased as well as living artists might be secured; the fund might be accumulated for five years if needful to buy a supremely important picture, and no sympathy for an artist or his family was in any way to influence the purchasers' judgement. What are the facts? 1. The trustees have, with one unsatisfactory exception, entirely ignored the deceased masters of the British school. 2. They have also ignored the following artists living and working in England with them: Alfred Stevens, Madox Brown, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Cecil Lawson, Legros, Whistler, and Matthew Maris. 3. In four instances only have they bought works outside their own exhibition, and of the artists thus favoured one was an Academician and two others Associates. 4. Out of about £60,000 hitherto expended about £48,000 has been paid to members of the Academy or to artists who have since become members. It must be recognized that Mr. MacColl does not plead on behalf of any section of artists, but on behalf of the nation, which is deprived of the representative collection of British art which Chantrey intended for it. With remarkable tact and courtesy he eliminates from his argument all cases in which there could be a difference of opinion as to the relative merits of the pictures purchased, and yet is able to assert with some apparent reason that the fund has 116 The Chantrey Trustees and the Nation been deliberately and consistently maladministered. We ourselves can only explain in one way how such a mistake could have originated and been continued. When the trust was started in 1877 the merits of the great outsiders were not generally recognized, and the trustees may honestly have thought that the annual exhibition of the Academy was the only place in which the best works of art could be obtained. This tradition would be inherited by successive trustees, and would doubtless be helped by a natural feeling of good fellowship and esprit de corps until it became a custom, which even questions in Parliament and almost universal remonstrances in the press could not alter. Now that the custom seems to be as inconsistent with the terms of the will as it has become unjust and ungenerous in practice, we trust that the President and Council of the Royal Academy will have the good sense to see the position in which they are placed, and the manliness to acknowledge it frankly. By such an acknowledgement they might regain the confidence of their friends and the respect even of their opponents; without it, or without some adequate defence, they will, it seems, have to face a very awkward exposure. If rumour can be trusted, Sir Edward Poynter has recently acted with no little courage and self-sacrifice in defence of his own convictions. The recent elections to the Royal Academy, and the lectures of its professor of painting, indicate an increased generosity of thought on the part of the Council. We therefore hope that the President will not be overruled by his colleagues, that his strength of mind and sense of honour will be allowed free play, and that he will by a public statement settle once for all a discussion which has for some years been trying alike to the fair fame of the Royal Academy and to the patience of the British public. II-A GREAT COLLECTOR LLUSION has been made in another column to the death of Mr. James Staats Forbes. The regret of his personal friends will be shared by many living artists to whom he was personally unknown, for of all collectors of modern pictures he was perhaps the most lavish and most intelligent. Like the late Mr. Hamilton Bruce he was fortunate in possessing a confidence in his personal judgement which enabled him to buy pictures boldly before fashion had made them expensive. Unlike Mr. Bruce, however, he had the somewhat uncommon courage to extend his patronage to the work of comparatively young artists, and to judge them, not by their social talents, but by the actual merit of their painting. We understand that his collection proved a splendid investment, but his service to himself was far less than his service to the general cause of the arts, which does not often find supporters until time and carefully calculated advertisement have established a painter's reputation—and raised the price of his work. The public often estimate a man's patronage of art by the amount of the cheques he devotes to it. If one judges by the benefit that an art patron confers upon art, as would be more just, the man who patronizes at the time an artist needs patronage has the first claim upon our gratitude. That such patronage should be a good investment does not make it any the less creditable. |
