DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0127
INTRODUCTION.
83
placed in the house in Cleveland-row, and the whole known
then, and for thirty years afterwards, as the Stafford
Gfallery, became celebrated all over Europe. On the
death of the Marquess of Stafford, in 1833, his second
son, Lord Francis Leveson Gower, taking the surname of
Egerton, inherited, under the will of his grand-uncle, the
Bridgewater property, including the collection of pictures
formed by the Duke. The Stafford Gallery was thus
divided : that part of the collection which had been
acquired by the Marquess of Stafford fell to his eldest son,
the present Duke of Sutherland ; while the Bridgewater
Collection, properly so called, devolved to Lord Francis
Egerton, and has resumed its original appellation, being
now known as the Bridgewater Gallery.
I have already adverted to the charm and advantage
which this gallery possesses, in the variety and excellence
of its contents, and to the opportunity it affords for study-
ing and placing in immediate comparison, not only different
schools and styles of art, but the individuality of different
painters, and their manner of conceiving and treating the
same class of subjects. There is a deficiency of examples
of the older Italian and German schools ; but from the
time of Raphael, the series is more complete than in any
private gallery I know, not excepting the Lichstenstein
Gallery, at Vienna.
To possess one Raphael, is to go crowned and crested
among collectors. It is to have one’s house converted into
a shrine. But here—superfluence of riches !—are four
Raphaels. We may go stand before the Cartoons, till we
participate in their greatness; we may come here and learn
to feel other qualities of this great and gifted artist, which
not less reach the heart; the full significance of that blending
of spiritual and virgin purity, with the ten derest maternal
love, of which the imaginative type, refined through suc-
cessive painters, was perfected by Raphael. Well might
Charles Lamb say that the race of Virgin-Mary painters is
83
placed in the house in Cleveland-row, and the whole known
then, and for thirty years afterwards, as the Stafford
Gfallery, became celebrated all over Europe. On the
death of the Marquess of Stafford, in 1833, his second
son, Lord Francis Leveson Gower, taking the surname of
Egerton, inherited, under the will of his grand-uncle, the
Bridgewater property, including the collection of pictures
formed by the Duke. The Stafford Gallery was thus
divided : that part of the collection which had been
acquired by the Marquess of Stafford fell to his eldest son,
the present Duke of Sutherland ; while the Bridgewater
Collection, properly so called, devolved to Lord Francis
Egerton, and has resumed its original appellation, being
now known as the Bridgewater Gallery.
I have already adverted to the charm and advantage
which this gallery possesses, in the variety and excellence
of its contents, and to the opportunity it affords for study-
ing and placing in immediate comparison, not only different
schools and styles of art, but the individuality of different
painters, and their manner of conceiving and treating the
same class of subjects. There is a deficiency of examples
of the older Italian and German schools ; but from the
time of Raphael, the series is more complete than in any
private gallery I know, not excepting the Lichstenstein
Gallery, at Vienna.
To possess one Raphael, is to go crowned and crested
among collectors. It is to have one’s house converted into
a shrine. But here—superfluence of riches !—are four
Raphaels. We may go stand before the Cartoons, till we
participate in their greatness; we may come here and learn
to feel other qualities of this great and gifted artist, which
not less reach the heart; the full significance of that blending
of spiritual and virgin purity, with the ten derest maternal
love, of which the imaginative type, refined through suc-
cessive painters, was perfected by Raphael. Well might
Charles Lamb say that the race of Virgin-Mary painters is