THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART 15 



Gallery" was proposed both to the Regents and to Congress. 

 Though chiefly of ethnological value, it had been exhibited at 

 art galleries in London and at the Louvre in Paris, and its 

 acquisition for the Institution was petitioned by prominent 

 American artists. A suggestion made in 1847 by the assistant 

 secretary in charge of the library that plaster copies of some 

 of the more celebrated works of the plastic arts be procured 

 from abroad, met with favorable consideration and preliminary 

 arrangements were entered into for carrying it into effect. A 

 plan for receiving designs for buildings, of which such as were 

 meritorious would be placed in the gallery of art, was also 

 agreed to in 1850. In 1852 the J. M. Stanley collection of 

 Indian pictures was deposited by the artist in the Institution, 

 where it continued to attract much attention until its unfortu- 

 nate destruction by fire in 1865. 



The completion of the Smithsonian building in 1857, followed 

 by the fitting up of certain exhibition halls under a special act 

 of Congress, made it possible for the Institution to accept the 

 Government collections at the Patent Office in the succeeding 

 year. A proposition to take over the property of the National 

 Institute at the same time was declined by that society, and 

 during the four years which intervened before it came into the 

 possession of the Smithsonian under the provisions of the law, 

 it suffered greatly from lack of care. 



Following the transfers, the distribution of the art collection 

 was about as follows: The prints were kept with the library in 

 the west hall, one of the rooms which had been constructed for 

 the gallery. The miscellaneous paintings were hung in the 

 adjoining range, also designed for art but then occupied as a 

 reading room. The Indian portraits and scenes, some three 

 hundred in number, mainly by Stanley and King, were pro- 

 vided for in the western end of the large upper hall, while the 

 examples of the plastic arts were exhibited wherever they could 

 be best accommodated. Some objects were also cared for in 

 the Regents' room and other offices. The time had not yet 

 come to segregate the art collection, as it still contained too few 

 examples of esthetic merit to dignify it with the title of a gallery, 

 and there were no resources with which to take advantage of 

 this small but not unworthy nucleus. 



