1S27.J [ 35 ] 



THE CA1U.TON-HOUSE PICTURES. 



THERE are several reasons why a sober estimate of the character and 

 merits of the Carlton House Collection of Pictures should be placed on 

 record at this time. In the first place, it has for many years been held 

 up as the very best collection of its kind in Europe. Secondly, it has, 

 until lately, been almost entirely excluded from the public eye, and will 

 soon be once more withdrawn from it, probably never to meet it again. 

 Further, it displays, in a very marked manner, the peculiar habits of taste 

 indulged in, in this particular,* by a Personage about whom we are glad to 

 collect all that can with certainty bo known. 



We must entirely approve of one principle on which this collection has 

 been formed, namely, that of comprising a particular class and school of 

 works exclusively, or nearly so; since a private collection, formed on any 

 other principle, must be altogether without value and effect as a collection, 

 because it can scarcely be made to convey an adequate notion of the 

 characteristic powers and qualities of any one master, much less of any one 

 school. 



The Carlton House collection is confined almost exclusively to the 

 Flemish and Dutch schools ; and, in proof of the necessarily imperfect 

 nature of any private collection, though it comprises a splendid selection 

 from the abovenamed schools, it altogether fails in conveying an adequate 

 notion of several of the most distinguished ornaments of those schools. It 

 is, for instance, strikingly deficient in the works of Rubens and espe- 

 cially in his historical and poetical ones ; and it is poor even in the por- 

 traits of that other glory of the Flemish school Vandyke. In fact, it is 

 rich in the works of one great master alone Rembrandt; and its other 

 attractions consist chiefly in the productions of that highly amusing and 

 meritorious, but assuredly inferior, because merely mechanical class of 

 artists, the copiers of the real and still-lii'e of Dutch interiors, &c. the 

 Dows, Mieris's, A. Vandevelde's, Da Hooge's, and the rest. It must not 

 be supposed that we would class such admirable reflectors of nature as 

 Teniers, Ostade, Metzu, Jan Stcen, and the Flemish landscape painters 

 P. Potter, Ruysdael, Hobbima, Berghem, &c. with the abovenamed 

 mere copyists of her particular features. But the most striking work* in 

 this collection, next to the Rembrandts, and those which have evidently 

 been chosen as the most striking, belong to the merely mechanical class 

 alluded to. 



Assuredly we have nothing to say against all this. No one has a right' 

 to carp at the taste of another, or its exercise, provided they are confined 1 

 within private limits ; and it were hard indeed if a king might not gratify 

 his, where the meanest of his subjects enjoys that privilege. We there- 

 fore premise the above general account of this collection, because thus it 

 is, not because we would have it otherwise. The collection is, in many 

 respects, worthy of high admiration ; though the mere fact of its being the 

 result of a king's taste, has not yet persuaded us (as no doubt it has many 

 of his courtiers) that it is the finest of all possible collections to say 

 nothing of actual ones and that in fact it includes at least half a dozen of 

 the finest productions of RaflPaelle's pencil ! 



The leading features of this collection consist, as we have hinted above, 

 of the Rembrandts ; and these we shall notice first, as circumstances 

 do not make it advisable to pursue any regular or numerical arrangement 

 of the works. 



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