Studio: international art (58.1913)

The National Art Gallery of Canada

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
andGrseco-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.

"a street in m0ntreu1l °

from a pencil sketch by frank mora There is no doubt that along with her

material prosperity, there is growing up in
Canada a strong and forceful art which only

THE NATIONAL ART GALLERY needs to be fostered and encouraged in order to be-

OF CANADA AT OTTAWA. come a great factor in her development as a nation.
Art schools and art exhibitions are needed every-

The National Art Gallery of Canada was where throughout the Dominion. There is no lack

the outcome of the establishment of the Royal of talent or intention; given the schools they will be

Canadian Academy of Arts in 1880 by the then filled and their existence and activity will help to-

Marquis of Lome and. H.R.H. Princess Louise wards the solution of the problem of how to develop

during the term of their Vice-Royalty. This estab- an interest in Canada's growing art in proportion

lishment placed in the hands of the Minister of to the production of it and encourage those who,

Public Works for public exhibition, the diploma during its infancy, satisfied their desires with foreign

pictures deposited by the Academicians on their pictures to appreciate this new art which is grow-

election. From this beginning the National Gallery ing in their midst.

has grown by means of the annual grants voted by In the short length of a magazine article it is
the Dominion Government for the purpose. In impossible to deal with the pictures severally, but
1907 the expenditure of these grants was placed perhaps by taking them in their groups or schools
in the hands of an Advisory Arts Council, whose I can, in a few words, give some useful idea of the
first President was the late Sir George Alexander possessions of Canada's National Gallery.
Drummond, and whose memb ers now are Sir Of primitive Italian pictures there is a fine full-
Edmund Walker, K.C.M.G. (President), Senator length picture called The Saviour,attributed to Cima
Boyer and Dr. Francis J. Shepherd, while the work da Conegliano, and a small Madonna by Marco
of the Gallery is carried on by the Director. It Bello, pupil and friend of Giovanni Bellini, while as
will be thus seen that although the National Art showing the primitive influence on the Dutchmen
Gallery has been in existence for thirty-two years it there is a brilliant Frans Floris, a landscape with