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THE NATIONAL GALLERY
I
DANGER TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY1
(1847)
To the Editor of the “Times”
1. Sir,-As I am sincerely desirous that a stop may be put to the dangerous process of cleaning lately begun in our National Gallery, and as I believe that what is right is most effectively when most kindly advocated, and what is true most convincingly when least passionately asserted, I was grieved to see the violent attack upon Mr. Eastlake in your columns of Friday last; yet not less surprised at the attempted defence which appeared in them yesterday.2 The outcry which has arisen upon this subject has been just, but it has been too loud; the injury done is neither so great nor so wilful as has been asserted, and I fear that the respect which might have been paid to remonstrance may be refused to clamour.
2. I was inclined at first to join as loudly as any in the hue and cry. Accustomed, as I have been, to look to England as the refuge of the pictorial as of all other distress, and to hope that, having no high art of her own, she would at least protect what she could not produce, and respect
1 [From the Times, January 7, 1847. For the circumstances in which this letter was written, see Introduction, above, p. 1viii.]
2 [The “violent attack” alludes to a letter of “Verax” in the Times of Thursday (not Friday), December 31, 1846, and the “attempted defence” to another letter signed “A. G.” in the Times of January 4, two days (not the day) before Ruskin wrote the present letter. For “Verax,” see again Introduction, p. 1viii.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
