HE collection bequeathed to the nation by the late Mr. Constantine Ionides is important in more ways than one. In the first place it shows what possibilities are still open to the intelligent art patron, even if he restricts himself to work done by those who are almost his contemporaries, and if the amount expended is comparatively moderate. No more signal disproof could be adduced of the plea now and then put forward, even in high quarters, that it is impossible to acquire good modern pictures, than the sight of a collection like this, in which there is hardly a picture which the most critical taste could overlook, and which includes a number of works which in their respective ways are masterpieces.

Indeed, one of the most striking features of the collection as a whole is the discrepancy in this respect between the relative importance of the old masters and the moderns which it contains. The fine series of prints will be chiefly useful in making some of the great masters far more easy of access than they have been hitherto. The pictures by the old masters are almost all of them excellent and interesting in their several ways-most of them, indeed, would hang without discredit in the National Gallery

or at Hertford House--but it would be extravagant to say that they are really as important as the specimens of the painting of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Yet, though the important series of family portraits by Watts, beginning with a picture painted in 1842, is not yet comprised in the collection, though the specimens of Rossetti and Burne-Jones are not completely representative of the greatest and most serious movement in modern English painting, and though the fine examples of the dignified art of Legros illustrate a per

sonality rather than a movement, their effect as a group is singularly powerful.

On the opposite wall hangs a collection of modern French pictures. At first sight it is far less imposing than the almost contemporary collection at Hertford House, which, with the help of a most important work by Delacroix and examples of Corot and Rousseau of almost equal size, makes a brave show. Yet when this show is examined but little remains to which the memory returns with pleasure. Bonington, Decamps, and Meissonier are brilliant enough, but their attractiveness lies on the surface and soon loses its hold on the spec

tator.

The Ionides pictures seem to have been chosen with a taste of a less ostentatious kind.

Almost all of them have a certain note of quiet sincerity about them which, as the so-called Barbizon school becomes visible to posterity in true perspective, appears to be its dominant feature. Each master of the school is seen thus in a mood really characteristic of his genius, and the ultimate result is much more convincing than any show performance on an unusual scale.

Yet, though important in themselves, these French pictures are still more so in their relation to our national collections. At last we can see in a single room in London representative specimens of the work of Delacroix and Daumier and Degas, of Millet and Rousseau, Courbet and Corot, masters whom in England it has been possible to study only by fits and starts in temporary exhibitions. exhibitions. The pictures in our public galleries other than the National Gallery are still far from being arranged on any methodical principle, so that a student has to pursue his studies in some half-dozen widely separated galleries. Yet the main point is secure. Thanks to Mr. Constantine Ionides there is now no very wide gulf in the series of our possessions, and the increased interest now taken in the matter,

as evidenced by the formation of the National Art Collections Fund, should soon reduce the existing vacancies still further.

I

Even in the case of Rossetti and BurneJones it cannot be claimed that the works bequeathed by Mr. Constantine Ionides make our public collections completely representative. As far as Rossetti is concerned, the two drawings here reproduced 1 are more attractive than important. Although they are far more emphatic and full of character than the large idealized heads which Rossetti produced in later years, and with which his fame is too frequently associated in the eyes of the public, the student of fine drawings by the great masters of other schools must feel that these, in spite of their charm, are somewhat too soft and empty in their modelling. It is only in the less deliberately polished studies for his earlier compositions that Rossetti's astonishing power as a draughtsman can be properly seen.

The Day Dream2 in the same way, while rather more typical of Rossetti's attitude and of his power as a painter than many of his other oil-paintings, cannot really be ranked with such pictures as those in the Tate Gallery in which his genius concentrates itself more passionately, or with the two or three other works in oil, such as The Beloved, in which he is a great and completely equipped master. In such company The Day Dream would appear diffuse and lacking in conviction. It is because the phase of painting in which Rossetti was most uniformly a splendid and remarkable master is still practically unrepresented in our national collections that we wish this picture could have been supplemented by one or two of those concise, passionate, and brilliant water-colours in which the genius of Rossetti found its most perfect and consistent expression.

Burne-Jones suffers in the same way, though to a less degree. His talent, too,

1 Page 457.

• Reproduced on page 459.

was of a kind which rarely gained by expansion, though several of his oil-paintings, and the glorious stained glass for the church at Birmingham, prove that he could on occasion grapple successfully with designs on a large scale. The modest size of such a painting as the Pan and Psyche is that which really suited his talent, and in many cases the suggestiveness possible on a still smaller scale, such as that of his illustrations to Chaucer, became him even better. It is impossible not to feel also that the conventions of decorative work, notably those of stained glass, often added a certain masculine force to a talent naturally prone to oversweetness. The tendency is notable even in the charming picture of The Mill,3 where the level lines of the water and sky, and the solemn shadowed walls meeting them, are all so scrupulously and delicately laid in (the painting was on hand for twelve years, 1870-1882) that they stiffen the design far less than they would have done had it been carried out in some sterner medium. Nevertheless, the picture has a romance and refinement of so rare an order as to disarm any criticism that does not take a much higher standard than is practicable in judging contemporary work.

Want of space makes it impossible to deal in this place with the charming design of Cupid's Hunting Ground, or the interesting early works by Watts-the broad and luminous Daphne's Bath and The Window Seat, which show how wide in its scope was the foundation on which he built his mature style. To the important canvases by M. Legros we hope Before doing to return in a future article. so, however, it will be necessary to deal with the important series of French paintings of the nineteenth century, because they represent a side of art in which our national collections have hitherto been deplorably weak.

• Reproduced on page 461.

C. J. H.

7