guided in making the endeavour, for the sale sections, occupying no less than three galleries, cannot, with the exception of a few works, be regarded as doing anything but detracting from the art value of the Exhibition. Doubtless the few fine pictures they contain might have been secured just the same had the Exhibition been made entirely a loan one. If this had been done, the collection would have gained by the exclusion of valueless examples, and the space thus set free might have been occupied by some of the excellent loan works rejected for want of room, or else the pictures retained might have been arranged to for greater advantage.
In the British Loan Section there are important and characteristic works by such masters as Reynolds, Turner, Whistler, Burne Jones, Watts, Gainsborough, Cecil Lawson, Rossetti, Raeburn, Constable, Cox, Thomson of Duddingston, Roberts, Richard Wilson, and Wilkie. A chef-d'œuvre of Corot's is the great work of the Foreign Loan Section, which contains quite a number of excellent examples of the same master. There are, besides, representative works by the other men who, on the Continent, have led the movements in modern art to their highest developments—Millet, Matthew Maris, Puvis de Chavannes, Monticelli, Rousseau, James Maris, Troyon, Bastien Lepage, Courbet, Daubigny, Diaz, Delacroix, Jacque, Israels, Bosboom, etc.
In addition to these numerous examples of the art of the modern masters, which constitute the strength of the Exhibition, there are also displayed many characteristic works by such men as Orchardson, Mark Fisher, Alexander Fraser, E. J. Gregory, Alma Tadema, G. P. Chalmers, Albert Moore, Peter Graham, Henry Moore, John Pettie, John Phillip, Horatio Macculloch, Sam Bough, and others of similar calibre.
The pictures of Sir John Millais, of which there are several, occupy such a peculiar middle position in art that they are difficult to class. Millais' work would be that of a master—of the commonplace—did the commonplace not so often master him. His personality constitutes him the very genius of British Philistinism, in its best and its worst aspects, his big humanity, and his strong weaknesses and weak strength having exactly fitted him to typically embody and represent in his works the British Public's conceptions—and misconceptions—of what pictorial art should be. These pictures will therefore afford a convenient standard for reference in dealing with this subject in detail in a future paper.
While thus rich in examples of men who have done, or may now be doing the ripe work of their lives, it will be found that of work which is indicative of the art tendencies of the day—a feature notably awanting in Manchester—there are here a few examples, not, however, sufficiently important to form an adequate representation of present activities and the directions they take.
Popular pictures have long been deemed necessary by the promoters of Art Exhibitions to draw the unreflecting crowds who like a show of things they can easily comprehend, and the habit has too much been to appraise the 'success' of exhibitions by the figures registered at the turnstiles. Hundreds of pictures calculated to tickle the fancy of careless sightseers, and mislead the understanding of those who come with more serious aims, are yearly hung in the prominent places in exhibitions throughout the country. Thus public exhibitions, avowedly organised to foster the public taste for art, are made to exert a powerful influence for the lowering of the very thing they exist primarily to conserve and elevate. Exhibition managers may not be able to count on educating the public, but they can at least ensure, and the public have a right to demand, that all spurious work, which can only mislead, shall be excluded. The Fine Art Council of the present Exhibition, after their praiseworthy action in setting energetically to work, and gathering a mass of excellent material from public-spirited collectors willing to lend it, might well have made an admirable new departure, by exhibiting only Art of a high class. It is to be regretted that they have failed to avail themselves of this opportunity. And so there are plenty of popular pictures by the fashionable painters, whose prolific inanity and mediocre talent, often combined with the industry of an energetic commercialism, enable them to produce the myriads of meaningless works which, if they serve no other purpose, keep the names of their producers before the country—as manufacturers of padding for picture galleries, public and private.
It is a pity that considerable artistic ability should so often be misdirected by men from whom we have not only had fair promise, but even good performance. In this connection it cannot but make the judicious grieve to find, in the Exliibition, work from Sir Frederick Leighton, Luke Fildes, and Hubert Herkomer, which has in it no more of the vital spirit of Art than has the learned inability of E. J. Poynter and Sir J. D. Linton, the cheap sentiment of Faed and Phil Morris, and the sentimentality of Marcus Stone, the hideously unreal realism of Brett, and the meretricious prettiness of MacWhirter and Murray.
The productions of the fashionable painter are at any time out of place among the works of the serious artist. But their presence becomes specially obnoxious, when round and round the
