BRITISH, FRENCH AND GERMAN PICTURES

WE are now to wander through the galleries to the left of the entrance stairs. On the landing we find a delightful oil sketch by Gainsborough "Mrs. Graham as a Housemaid." Here also is a sunlit landscape by Frederick Walker, and opposite it is Holman Hunt's "Triumph of the Innocents," a picture which, to me, is without any appeal whatever.

The first room, XIX, a very small one given to early German work, leads out of Room XX. Its masterpiece is Holbein's portrait of Christina of Denmark, daughter of Christian II of Denmark, who was born in 1523 and in 1534 married the Duke of Milan. The Duke died in the following year and Holbein painted this most attractive of widows in 1538, when she was still only twenty. The same master's "Ambassadors" is also here, with the curious distorted representation of a skull in the foreground, to see which properly one must get one's eye on a level with it at a point to the side. The Ambassadors are, on the left, Jean de Dinteville, Lord of Policy, and on the right George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. Chief of the other pictures in this room are those by Lucas Cranach (note the amusing "Charity," No. 2925, and that demure quaint little lady, No. 291), and by the Master of Liesborn who is always interesting, and the very fine portrait by Darer of his father, painted in 1497.

In Room XX we find a very mixed assemblage of French works. The gallery cannot be called rich in French art, although it has some fine Claudes, the best of which we shall see later, in the little Turner room; but in Room XX are two beauties Nos. 1319 and 61. Here also are several works by Nicholas Poussin, but they have gone very dark.

There is also a series of early portraits of the Clouet School, with a very interesting Mary Queen of Scots ; a portrait, in triplicate, of Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne, and again, full length, by the same artist ; and finally some early church works of which No. 1302, "S. Benin borne to Heaven," by Simon Marmion, is very quaint.

ADMIRAL PULIDO PAREJA,

AFTER THE PICTURE BY VALAZQUEZ IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY

In Room XXI we find modern and recent French art, with a few Dutch pictures added, the gift of Mr. J. C. J. Drucker. Among them are works by Matthew and Jacob Maris. An early Corot and a Daubigny are also on this wall and a powerful oil sketch of the "Deposition." Manet's "Firing Party," and a "Soldier Examining the lock of his Rifle" are here too the soldier being as typically French as any portrait you ever saw, with all the sadness and fatalism and intentness of the French face in perfection. A late Corot hangs next and it is interesting to compare this, in his studio manner, with the early one near the door, when he painted out of doors. We come now to good examples of Ingres, Millet, Chardin and Fragonard, but for Fragonard, as for Lancret and Boucher and Watteau, who are represented here by ones and twos, the Wallace Collection is the place. Chardin, however, did not appeal to Lord Hertford. The National Gallery has two examples of his delicate material art, and the Greuzes here are not inferior to those in Manchester Square. A recent acquisition is a pretty little blue Peronneau pastel, a child with a kitten. For the rest, there is a dashing Mignard, a very typical Georges Michel, some Puvis sketches full of a movement that be often lost in his large frescoes, a very good Boudin, and a glorious flower piece by Fantin Latour.

Room XXII is dominated by Constable, and you find him in every mood. We begin with "Weymouth Bay," a very modern work, full of rushing clouds and movement. At the other extreme is No. 1815, which is a storm not of weather but of paint. In Nos. 1246, 1819 and 1822, you see what a lot the Barbizon men learned from this Englishman, who was exhibiting at the Paris Salon, together with Bonington, in 189.4. There are two Boningtons here, as against the great number in the Wallace Collection, but one of them, No. 2664, is a masterpiece. Here also is Old Crome, with the golden "Windmill"; and Turner with two enchanted Venetian scenes, and a yacht race at Cowes in which you can hear the hissing of the foam; and W. P. Frith with his "Derby Day," a picture I never tire of not looking at; and William Dyce with his fascinating "Pegwell Bay," a triumph of minute painting and big effect ; and Millais with portraits of Mrs. Jopling-Rowe, very simply painted, and Mr. Gladstone, meek and mild; and Alfred Stevens with his portrait of Mrs. Collmann, one of the masterpieces of English portraiture; and John Sargent, with the commanding "Lord Ribblesdale." And then we come to the last wall, where Millais' "Ophelia" hangs, and Rossetti's "Ecce Ancilla Domini," and Whistler's lovely "Nocturne Blue and Silver, Cremorne Lights," and his "Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl." Lastly look at the breezy day by David Cox, and see in No. 2649 how tame and trim Constable, who began so bravely in this room with "Weymouth Bay" and its bluster, could now and then become.

In Room XXIV we come at once upon a sublime Old Crome, No. 2645, "Moonrise on the Marshes of the Yare," in which the moon grows brighter as you watch it. The composition is absolute. Next it is still another kind of Constable, showing how ready he was to adapt his method to the scene: the quiet "Malvern Hall," in which the hush of an English evening is perfectly captured and the rooks caw almost audibly. Above it hangs a very complete contrast in manner, "The Salt Box, Hampstead Heath." A second Old Crome, "The Poringland Oak," has another beauty of evening sky. The boys were put in by Crome's friend, Michael William Sharpe. And now another Constable, this time one of his smashing impressionistic works : No. 2651, one of many studies for the artist's great pictures of Salisbury Cathedral. The painting is amazingly dexterous, the brush being called upon to do impossible things, even to depicting the Bishop on his lawn.

THE CITY FROM WATERLOO BRIDGE