Studio: international art (14.1898)

The International Society

of millions, and how they triumph ! And we feel
too that nothing will ever move Muhrman,
Segantini, Klinger, and Uhde.

It is the unconscious force within him which
guides the artist—-chosen of the gods—which
makes him the discoverer of the profoundest
secrets of Nature, which makes him the leader
and teacher of millions, and enables him to bear
the contempt and mockery of the vulgar with
indifference, strong in the consciousness of ful-
filling his mission. To conceive such a man the
slave of his commercial friend and patron is an
impossibility.

A few words about the Gallery
itself. The walls are hung with
quiet-toned green canvas, and
have a dado, whose dignified
black tone is repeated in a line
above. The gallery is of con-
venient size, not too small to be
the meeting-place of the “ Art
Congress,” as the President likes
to call it, and not so large as to
involve the executive council in
many embarrassments.

The three rooms are just about
the size of one long gallery in the
former Champ de Mars, perhaps
wider, or each room about as large
as the “ Ehrensaal ” in the old
Secession building in Munich.

But here we have no “ Ehren-
saal ”; all the rooms are equally
good, in shape, lighting, and
colour, and all the works are
almost equally well hung. Of
course, some pictures must have
central places, for it would
scarcely look nice to leave the
centres empty in the desire to
avoid allotting places of honour.

All the works can be seen equally
well.

One excellent point about the
Gallery is its situation. It is good
that it should not be in a row with
a dozen others, in Bond Street or
Piccadilly, but in “splendid isola-
tion,” within a stone’s throw of
Hyde Park, whither one can be-
take oneself to reflect in peace
upon the many problems that
have been put before one. “ SIN «

I ought, perhaps, not to speak

of other institutions, but I fear I must if I am to
demonstrate, as I should like to try to do, the need
which exists and calls for some such society as
this for the denationalisation of art.

If we go to the National Gallery (one of the
finest and most complete art collections I have ever
seen) and look round, how many names there are
that strike one as being anything but English ! but
how they all do honour to the English nation, these
grand names—Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Rafael,
Botticelli, Mantegna, Francesca, Velasquez, Rem-
brandt, Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyk, Terbourg, and

BY FRANZ STUCK

(From a photograph by Carl Hentschel &■ Co.)

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