THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART 11 



fine arts, and particular attention is being given to paintings 

 and sculpture. The former have composed most of the recent 

 donations, and it is this class of objects especially which has 

 made it necessary to seek new and appropriate quarters. A 

 committee representative of the higher art associations of the 

 country has been designated as censors of the gallery and it is 

 expected through their cooperation to maintain this department 

 on a dignified and satisfactory basis. 



For the initial steps toward the creation of a national gallery 

 of art credit must be given to the National Institute, whose 

 name is now scarcely remembered, though its short life was 

 historically important and its activities were fruitful in both a 

 material and educational way. Organized in Washington in 

 1840 and two years later incorporated by Congress for a period 

 of twenty years, nominally for the promotion of science, it estab- 

 lished a department of Uterature and art, and accumulated a 

 museum of considerable size, located in the Patent Office build- 

 ing, in which the collections of the Government made prior 

 to 1850 were also deposited. Both its constitution and its 

 charter provided that upon the dissolution of the society its 

 collections should become the property of the United States. 



While the number of art objects in the museum of the Insti- 

 tute was not great, it included examples of the work of several 

 prominent artists, all of which, with the exception of a few 

 loans, should now be in the possession of the National Museum, 

 but the location of some of them remains to be ascertained. 

 Of portraits in oil there were seventeen, including Washington 

 by the elder Peale ; Guizot, Tyler, and Preston by Healy ; Cap- 

 tain Kvans by Copley; Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and 

 Monroe by Gilbert Stuart ; one of Jackson by Sully and another 

 by R. E. W. Earl, and Corwin by J. M. Stanley. Among 

 paintings of miscellaneous subjects, numbering at least ten, may 

 be mentioned: Job and his Comforters, by Spagnoletto; Cattle 

 Piece with Peasants, by Nicolas Berghem; General Marion giv- 

 ing dinner to a British Officer, by Lieut. Henry C. Flagg, U. S. 

 Navy; a View of Constantinople purchased from the collection 

 of Cardinal Fesch in Rome; and a figure subject of Italian 

 origin, evidently of some merit. The notable collection of 

 Indian portraits and scenes, painted for the Government by 



