ABSTRACT
515 We are not so ungrateful as to give the sum of the season as—pax et preterea nihil ; the glad tidings of peace came in time to give happiness to many hearths; the impulse was soon felt—men of genius, who, at the end of last year, knew not when they might again be employed, have been gradually yet fully re-commissioned. Jint sculpture does not so soou recover from a state of depression’as paiuting. We could name artists of eminence in this department who have not received a commission during the last twelve months ; hence the meagre exhibition of sculpture this year. We very ingenuously declare ourselves destitute of taste for large Art; hut verily there must be somewhere a craving appetite for minor productions. We sec yearly thousands, of pictures ; and of these, hundreds are good enough or bad enough to impress the memory insomuch that they may be remembered; but having disappeared from the walls of the exhibition rooms, how rarely do we again see any of them ! Of some few of paramount excellence we learn the destination ; we may know their whereabouts, though we may never see them agaiu. We have seen known works distributed and re-distributed by the hammer of the auctioneer, yet these bear an insignificant proportion to those purchased directly from the painter, and indirectly from them through dealers. The great proportion of collections now in progress of formation are the property of the middle classes, to whose patronage in a very great measure the prosperity of Art is indebted. Those of our countrymen who are facetiously termed the “cotton lords” and the “iron princes” of our land, are munificent buyers of the works of living artists, and all therefore of the productions which they acquire will hereafter be property unquestionably genuine; whereas those collections, geuerally, of so-called old masters, formed under the insufficient warranty of foreign dealers, will, under the matter-of-fact test of the auctioneer’s hammer, realise one. twentieth of their cost.—With reference to the sales of our modern Art, and the channels into which it flows, the fact we state woidd be attested by the salc-books of the different Art-societics, if we were to refer back during the few last years to these records.
