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Studio: international art — 66.1915

DOI Artikel:
Wood, T. Martin: The national gallery, Melbourne, and the Felton Bequest
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21214#0242

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The National Gallery, Melbourne, and the Felton Bequest

Lepage was a picture acquired about the same
time. Lepage had the power which Cazin lacked,
a power which Lepage seems to have possessed in
common only with Rembrandt, of dealing with
the ideal in terms of convincing reality. In Rem-
brandt’s and in Lepage’s art it is as if they were
unable to distinguish where the things of this world
and of the next were
separated.

As we are nearing
the limits of the space
at our disposal for this
article we must leave
other pictures which
have been recently
purchased without
expressing thoughts
they naturally suggest.

We have not in this
article gone outside the
subject of purchases
made since 1909, since
when, benefiting by the
initiative and taste of
Mr.Gibson, the Gallery
has kept in constant
touch with European
estimates of pictures.

But in 1905 Mr.

George Clausen was
buying in several in-
stances very wisely for
the Gallery with funds
of the Bequest. It
was found, however,
after a test in the
Courts that the Be-
quest Committee had
no power to give an
art adviser freedom to
buy on his own dis-
cretion. Previous to
Mr. Clausen’s appoint-
ment the Director of
the Gallery visited
Europe, and acquisi-
tions on his advice
were made from the Felton Funds. Among
them were water-colours by Madox Brown, The
Entombment and Haidee and Juan, bronzes by
Barye, a bronze cast of the head,_/! P. Laurens, by
Auguste Rodin, a Turner water-colour and some
drawings by Charles Keene, all of them additions
to the collection of great value.

236

It is, of course, impossible for a writer, like the
present one, who is interested in the building up
of a great collection from the point of view of one
who follows it in London, to refer to the encourage-
ment that has been given to Australian art, but
some idea of what has been done in this direction
has already been given in articles contributed by

Mr. Moore.

In conclusion, he
would urge that there
are certain living artists
—William Orpen and
Augustus John, to
mention two alone—
whose works will
most likely increase
greatly in value, and
examples of which
should be obtained
while it is still possible
to select from speci-
mens that are more
than the leavings of
astute collectors, a
position of humilia-
tion to which our own
National Gallery was
reduced for its tardi-
ness in the case of
Whistler. Nor should
the art of France of
this moment, or rather
the moment before
the war, be overlooked.
In the last decade
there has been work
done there which every
day must rise in the
world’s esteem, some-
what overshadowed as
it has been by the
genius of the preceding
time. And among
other foreign nations,
Italy and Spain, too,
have produced schools
of the present which
should receive some recognition if the Melbourne
Gallery is to be, what it has already begun to be,
one of the great educational institutions of the new
world; if it is to satisfy, that hunger for the fruits
of the experience of the old world which is so
characteristic of the best genius of the British
Dominions.

“ THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE ” BY SIR E. BURNE-JONES
 
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