International studio (49.1913)

The National Art Gallery of Canada


“a street in montreuil”
FROM A PENCIL SKETCH BY FRANK MURA

The national art gallery
OF CANADA AT OTTAWA.
The National Art Gallery of Canada was
the outcome of the establishment of the Royal
Canadian Academy of Arts in 1880 by the then
Marquis of Lome and H.R.H. Princess Louise
during the term of their Vice-Royalty. This estab-
lishment placed in the hands of the Minister of
Public Works for public exhibition, the diploma
pictures deposited by the Academicians on their
election. From this beginning the National Gallery
has grown by means of the annual grants voted by
the Dominion Government for the purpose. In
1907 the expenditure of these grants was placed
in the hands of an Advisory Arts Council, whose
first President was the late Sir George Alexander
Drummond, and whose members now are Sir
Edmund Walker, K.C.M.G. (President), Senator
Boyer and Dr. Francis J. Shepherd, while the work
of the Gallery is carried on by the Director. It
will be thus seen that although the National Art
Gallery has been in existence for thirty-two years it

has only had a few years of systematic
government, but during these last years
such a real progress has been made that
it is possible to forecast a future which
will see it take a fitting place among the
Art Galleries of the British Oversea
Dominions.
The National Gallery has in its posses-
sion some four hundred paintings, draw-
ings, etchings, and pieces of sculpture,
and in addition an exceptionally well
mounted and well arranged collection,
now occupying the two lower floors of the
space allotted to the National Gallery in
the Victoria Memorial Museum at Ottawa,
which takes up the story of sculpture at
the Temple of the Parthenon 447 b.c.,
carries it down through the Hellenistic
and Grseco-Roman periods to the Mediaeval
Gothic and thence to the Italian and
French Renaissance, leaving it for the
present with the French portraitists of
the eighteenth century. Each object is
prepared and coloured as nearly like its
original as possible, thus affording a
valuable opportunity of studying the
history and progress of sculpture and
design.
There is no doubt that along with her
material prosperity, there is growing up in
Canada a strong and forceful art which only
needs to be fostered and encouraged in order to be-
come a great factor in her development as a nation.
Art schools and art exhibitions are needed every-
where throughout the Dominion. There is no lack
of talent or intention; given the schools they will be
filled and their existence and activity will help to-
wards the solution of the problem of how to develop
an interest in Canada’s growing art in proportion
to the production of it and encourage those who,
during its infancy, satisfied their desires with foreign
pictures to appreciate this new art which is grow-
ing in their midst.
In the short length of a magazine article it is
impossible to deal with the pictures severally, but
perhaps by taking them in their groups or schools
I can, in a few words, give some useful idea of the
possessions of Canada’s National Gallery.
Of primitive Italian pictures there is a fine full-
length picture called The Saviour, attributed to Cima
da Conegliano, and a small Madonna by Marco
Bello, pupil and friend of Giovanni Bellini, while as
showing the primitive influence on the Dutchmen
there is a brilliant Frans Floris, a landscape with
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