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ART RECOLLECTIONS OF MUNICH.

Munich is without doubt an earthly Paradise for the artist and the pleasure seeker.

Its galleries stand second to none, whilst its inhabitants are celebrated even amongst a hospitable people for their kind hearted geniality. We English have no word which exactly, to my mind, expresses the quality which is seen to such perfection amongst the good people of Munich. The Germans themselves call it "Gemuthlichkeit" and to those who have experienced the practical meaning of the word, its aptness is remarkable.

Travelling towards Munich as most visitors do, through the Swiss towns, calling at Ulm and Augsburg, its modern architecture of such singular and novel beauty is most marked, especially after seeing the last named towns, with their quaint old gabled houses towering up, into often two and three stories of rooms, with their little dormer lights in the tall steep roofs, standing memorials of the time when Spain was in the zenith of her glory, and had dominion over all this part of Germany. In Augsburg one can almost in fancy people the narrow streets, and the great square, with the shades of the former burghers transacting their business, raising their tall hats to the founder of the celebrated Fugger family, that house of merchant princes whose quaintly decorated palace is still a standing record of their successful trading, or can picture them after the labours of the day, comfortably seated at the doors of those identical houses, enjoying a neighbourly chat over their Rheinwein.

Augsburg is still a most busy town, and at the time of our visit there, the great annual fair was being held—a fair, second only in magnitude and importance to that of Novgorod, and really the crowds of strangers brought together, even from the confines of Asia, presented a rare study for the painter.

I say that the change that was wrought in our surroundings, by the passage of a few miles in the train to Munich, was marked in the extreme. It seemed like passing from medieval times to the full glory of the 19th century in the space of an hour, for whereas in Augsburg, all the houses date from the 15th and 16th centuries, in Munich we see, at least in the modern town, and that is by far the larger part, a style of achitecture essentially new. It is a style founded to meet a want. Stone is nowhere to be had, whereas clay is abundant, and of an excellent quality.

Good taste and artistic feeling are the predominant characteristics of the Munich people. They are therefore not content to use clay, as we unfortunates here are doomed to see it,—either totally unadorned and left in its bricky squareness to form square houses, whose elegant lines are broken only by the introduction of square doors, and square windows, or else with its native bareness, smothered and plastered over with cement, moulded into arches which support nothing, columns without

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object, and wreaths of flowers holding up stucco balconies, which are themselves shams.

On the contrary, here they have gained the credit of making the clay its own medium of decoration; in fact doing almost as much in red brick as the Grecians ever did with the finest marble.

Munich boasts a Cathedral, several magnificent Churches, a large Palace, a Museum, and numberless public buildings, all built of brick, without a square inch of that seaside abomination stucco, upon them, yet they have all the appearance of being built of richly sculptured stone of a reddish tinge. Nowhere has clay been used to such advantage, and with such success in point of imposing grandeur as in this city. The Maximilian Strasse, and the Ludwigs Strasse-the latter of these being named after King Louis, who first conceived this idea of raising bricks above the stigma of plainness and ugliness, so long hanging over them, present nothing but a succession of handsome Palaces, Public Buildings and magnificent shops, built of these beautifully moulded bricks.

In the cases however of some of the buildings, for instance the new Pinacothek or picture gallery, where the lighting is all from the roof, there has been but little scope for brick decoration in the long lengths of outer wall, and here another Munich speciality comes into prominent notice. I allude to its Fresco painting.

Munich has the credit of founding a school of painters in Fresco, amongst the names of whose disciples, many will descend to posterity as men of great artistic ability, and conception of the grand.

Of course the first thing one goes to see is the old Pinacothek (picture gallery) a fine building in the Roman Palatial style, erected by the late King Louis. It stands in a large open space, and from its free situation presents a very imposing appearance; on the richly ornamented console there are twenty-four statues of celebrated artists, executed in limestone after sketches by Schwanthaler. From a columned vestibule, marble steps lead up into the first story, divided into nine large rooms, from which, opening by arches to the right as you enter, are twenty-three smaller rooms or cabinets. These nine large halls, are hung round with the more important sized pictures, whilst in the cabinets, which lead from them are hung the smaller works. The beauty of this arrangement will be seen at once, for as upon entering the first Hall you see all the large pictures of the very earliest German Painters, including Van Eyk, Holbein, Durer, Cranach and others, you have merely to turn through the door opening to your right, and two or three cabinets are found containing the smaller examples of the same school, and the same masters. So as you progress through the nine halls, turning into the cabinets belonging to them, you pass through a completely illustrated and chronologically arranged history of the old German, Netherland, Spanish, French, and Italian Schools, comprised in well-known and magnificent, as well as numerous examples, of all the painters of each School and epoch.

Hall No. IV, called the Rubens Hall is devoted chiefly to paintings by that master, and though not numbering so many examples as either the Antwerp or the Louvre galleries, yet what are there amassed are all without exception the finest examples of his genius.

Hall No. VI, contains the French and Spanish Schools, giving splendid specimens of the works of Murillo, Spagnoletto, Velasquez, Le Brun, Claude and Poussin.

The seventh, eighth, and ninth Halls, with the cabinets adjoining are filled with illustrations of the Italian Schools, with examples of all the great and well-known names, too numerous to mention. Of the cabinets belonging to the latter Halls, one contains a collection of early Italian Mosaics, and another is solely devoted to the old Tuscan School, those quaint old religious pieces with their gold skies and backgrounds. Amongst these are several by Giotto.

To attempt any description or individual notice of these pictures would be simply out of the question within the limits of a short article. One can simply compare the collection as a whole, with other well-known European galleries, and after submitting it to such com parison, I must say that, in my certainly not very mature judgment, it stands pre-eminent. The Louvre and Dresden can boast larger collections, but they have not finer examples of any artist than are to be found here, nor are these two certainly splendid collections more complete than that of Munich, for it possesses works from the pencil of every old master, and finally in the old Pinacothek you have what no other gallery can give, or, even attempts to give, namely, a vast collection of pictures, arranged in a superb suite of rooms, built expressly for their reception, and classified in their proper schools in chronological order, whilst all the painters of each epoch are represented by master-pieces. Here the student of Art can note in the course of his walk through the halls beginning at No. I, the progress made since Van Eyk first painted in oil,-see the progress achieved by pupils over their masters, watch the changes wrought up to the time of Rafaelle, and the foundation of quite a new era, and all this under the roof of one building. Bear in mind also that each picture is one of note, and having a history, and you will see where it is that the superiority of the Munich gallery lies. It is a complete chain, in which each link is perfect.

Nor, in collecting the pictures, have the apartments destined to receive them been neglected, for each Hall is most beautifully decorated in a style and tone of quiet colour, quite distinct from its fellows, but still so unobtrusive is this colour, that although in your progress from room to room, you appreciate a difference in the light, you cannot for a time discover its cause.

Whenever the eye wanders from the pictures, it rests and is relieved by some quiet and lovely bit of ornamentation, displayed with such art that it only seems to add additional zest to the enjoyment of the feast prepared at such cost and labour.

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