410 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

4. I know that this has never yet been done in any gallery in Europe, for the European public have never yet reflected that a picture which was worth buying was also worth seeing. Some time or other they will assuredly awake to the perception of this wonderful truth, and it would be some credit to our English common sense if we were the first to act upon it.

5. I say that a picture which is worth buying is also worth seeing; that is, worth so much room of ground and wall as shall enable us to see it to the best advantage. It is not commonly so understood. Nations, like individuals, buy their pictures in mere ostentation, and are content, so that their possessions are acknowledged, that they should be hung in any dark or out-of-the-way corners which their frames will fit. Or, at best, the popular idea of a national gallery is that of a magnificent palace, whose walls must be decorated with coloured panels, every one of which shall cost £1000, and be discernible, through a telescope, for the work of a mighty hand.

6. I have no doubt that in a few years more there will be a change of feeling in this matter, and that men will begin to perceive, what is indeed the truth-that every noble picture is a manuscript book, of which only one copy exists, or ever can exist; that a national gallery is a great library, of which the books must be read upon their shelves; that every manuscript ought, therefore, to be placed where it can be read most easily;¹ and that the style of the architecture and the effect of the saloons are matters of no importance whatsoever, but that our solicitude ought to begin and end in the two imperative requirements-that every picture in the gallery should be perfectly seen and perfectly safe; that none should be thrust up, or down, or aside, to make room for more important ones; that all

¹ [“The Art of a nation is, I think, one of the most important points of its history, and a part which, if once destroyed, no history will ever supply the place of; and the first idea of a National Gallery is that it should be a Library of Art, in which the rudest efforts are, in some cases, hardly less important than the noblest.”-National Gallery Commission, 1857,-Ruskin’s evidence. Compare also St. Mark’s Rest, Preface.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]