128 
REVIEWS. 
[Nature and Art, April 1, 1867. 
broadly this : on a ground more or less dark and trans- 
parent they modelled the picture in tints formed by mixing 
white lead with coloured pigments, thus producing an effect 
which, as compared with their ultimate intention, was 
crude, cold, opaque, and technically speaking, ‘ dead 
coloured.’ To this pale preparation they imparted life, 
warmth, harmony, and richness of tone by repeated coats 
or ‘ glazing-s ’ of colours more or less transparent ; and a 
picture thns produced has the additional and invaluable 
quality of luminousness, resulting from light and opaque 
tints shining through colour rich but thin. Now it must be 
evident that pictures produced by this complex process can 
be injured at will. Let the owner or curator consider 
lightness or paleness a merit, and the glazings are at once 
torn off as ‘ dirt.’ ” 
Our author next proceeds to indict the late and present 
keepers of the National Gallery, their aiders, abettors, and 
accomplices of every degree ; for that they, under pretence 
of removing the accumulated filth of ages (which in a second 
count ho charges that they themselves imposed in the shape 
of varnish), did skin, flay, and destroy no less than one pic- 
ture per annum since 1843, and thus inflicted wanton devas- 
tation upon taste and art. 
The following peroration rather reminds us in style and 
solemnity of the celebrated one of Burke against the 
unfortunate Governor-General Hastings. Perhaps it is 
more than adequate to the occasion that has evoked it, 
but we quote it as a specimen of the intensity of party. 
“ Against this Vandalism we raise our voice — against this 
ignorant destruction of works which can never be replaced 
we protest in the interests of art, of the nation, and of the 
world. As Mr. Boxall — in contempt of the overwhelming 
evidence against the National Gallery process of ‘cleaning,’ 
given before the Committee of 1853, in contempt of the facts 
then deposed to by Mr. Morris Moore, Mr. William Coning- 
liam, Sir David Brewster, Mr. David Roberts, R.A., and 
other competent witnesses, with reference to the nature of 
‘glaze’ and the irreparable injury caused by its ignorant 
removal — in contempt of the universal condemnation of the 
Vandalism of 1852, by the press — has thought fit to re- 
commence this method of destruction, thereby not only 
depreciating the value of public property to the extent of 
thousands of pounds, but causing injury which no money 
can repair — wo demand in the name of the public, that all 
operations that come under the head of ‘cleaning’ be at 
once stayed, and that no more pictures be removed from 
public sight until Parliamentary inquiry has again probed 
this matter to the root.” 
We devoutly hope that the accomplished author may be 
disappointed of a Parliamcntry committee, which would be 
utterly abortive, because, as neither committees nor in- 
dividuals can elucidate the composition and nature of the 
glazing of any yet ‘unflayed’ picture, or find out the 
appearance which any one painting presented when it left 
the easel of the master, it would seem to us that no re- 
ference can settle how much paint or glaze, if any, has been 
or will be taken from any picture in the cleaning process, 
along with the hallowed, harmonizing dust which the in- 
decisive Eastlake is censured by our author for approving, 
but for which all these pages are a plea. No one invariable 
rule could be laid down on the subject save that dirt should 
be immoveable ; and in denying that the operations on the 
Rubens and the Salvator would justify such a rule, we 
differ, with regret, from the Artist. 
We have pleasure in extracting his agreeable commentary 
on the former work, not suppressing the castigation levelled 
at ourselves and all the other noodles of the world at its 
close : — 
“This noble landscape represents, not sunset (for this 
effect see smaller landscape by Rubens, No. 157), but a 
sultry autumnal sunrise. To the left is seen the ch&teau 
(still, we believe, standing) sheltered by tall trees with rich 
October tinge of leaf. On the terrace, taking the morning 
air, stroll Rubens and his wife ; whilst the lazy maid, 
holding their infant child, sits indiscreetly down. A moat 
surrounds the place, and, leaning over its bridge, a rod, with 
customary adjuncts of ‘ fool ’ and ‘ worm ’ (see Johnson), 
trusts to provide fish for dinner ; whilst, thinking of the 
same meal, a man, crouching in the foreground, with dog 
and gun, has designs on a covey of unconscious partridges. 
Far into the dim distance stretch rich level meadows, 
fenced with pollard and stream ; whilst in mead nigh at 
hand stand cows relieved by milkmaids — one still busy, the 
other bending her steps towards home. To the left, starting 
for market, with brisk but heavy trot, two horses draw a 
‘ lumbering ’ wain, in which is seen a bonny, smiling, buxom 
Flemish dame, in hat, red cloak, and gown of blue ; whilst 
a huge brass pitcher of warm milk, a barrel of portly size 
(sad sight to temperance eye), and unlucky red calf, trussed 
in bucolic style, all four feet together, bear her company. 
Guiding the team sits, postilion fashion, on near horse, a 
happy peasant, who turns the vehicle, at the moment caught 
by Rubens, into a shallow, brown, bi-awling brook, the 
disturbed waters of which flash with golden sparkles to the 
horses’ tread. Briars and tall weeds, wonderfully touched, 
sprawl over trunk and bank, and fill the foreground; whilst, 
perched in a bush to the extreme right, is an assembly of 
early birds, varied in kind, and deep in after-breakfast 
debate as to the influence of soil on the flavour of worms ; 
but a kingfisher, disdaining such small talk and disgusted 
at impertinent proximity of biped with gun, takes wing for 
fresh streams and gudgeons new. Such, in brief, is some- 
thing like the story told by this wonderful delineation of 
seventeenth century rural Flemish life, which, modelled in 
Rubens’s customary manner on a transparent ground of 
lightish yellow hue, was finished, tone and form, with free 
use of transparent colour, now ruthlessly torn away ; and 
although the uneducated eye, unequal to discrimination 
of Rubens’s handiwork from ‘ cleaners’ ’ brown or toned 
varnish (of which more anon), may think the picturo 
‘ renovated,’ the connoisseur, gifted with clear vision by 
years of study of art and nature, too, in all their forms and 
moods, knows that it has been converted into so irreparable 
a wreck, that the great Rubens, could he see it, would bo 
filled with unquenchable disgust, and would overwhelm 
with indignant reproach the ‘ noodles and the nincompoops ’ 
through whose dense ignorance so gross a desecration has 
been permitted — nay, more wonderful still, superintended.” 
Now, to whom do we — and perhaps even the artist-author 
— owe our thanks that we can follow, relish, and confirm the 
foregoing interpretation ? To the well-abused cleaner, the 
reverent, competent “ flayer ” who has exhumed for the 
painter, the poet, and the public a thousand beauties that 
have not been seen or dreamt of since the picture made its 
first appearance in the gallery. Had we any passion to 
bestow on the matter, we would as roundly as the “ Artist 
does, invoke the shade of the great Fleming to support our 
view of the case, and to offer thanks to those who have so 
late made his excellent work manifest among us. Truly no 
Parliamentary committee will reconcile such absurd optical 
difference as exists between us and our author. 
For him there are evil times, perhaps, in store. No com- 
mittee can deprive him of that exquisite feeling for colour 
which he shares with Mr. M. Moore, and a few others ; a 
feeling as refined, and sensitive as the touch of the blind or 
the ear of a Beethoven. Yet it is by what he deems the 
uncultured hordes of Noodledom, that committees or 
governments may yet again be swayed, and picture after 
picture may be “flayed” at the bidding of “idiots and 
“boors,” who must see what they have paid for, because 
they cannot evolve it from their imaginations ; while the few 
and fatally endowed connoisseurs weep outside in sympathy 
with each wounded glazing. Let us hope that consideration 
for those who have not that inner sense which can appre- 
ciate the beautiful through primary, secondary, and tertiary 
formations of dirt, may in time allay the irritation of the 
sensitive artist, and that he may make a little more allow- 
ance than he now seems disposed to do for the views and 
actions of those who do not walk with him. It is not 
necessary for a person to be a noodle, or a nincompoop, or a 
jobber, or a rogue, because he happens to be a public official, 
I or happens not to be a professional connoisseur. 
