Page:EB1911 - Volume 02.djvu/712

 But France took up the cause of the Flemish count, and a splendid French army was led across the frontier by the young king Charles VI. in person. Artevelde advanced to meet the enemy at the head of a burgher army of some 50,000 Flemings. The armies met at Ròosebeke near Courtrai, with the result that the Flemings were routed with terrible loss, Philip himself being among the slain. This happened on the 27th of November 1382.

The brief but stirring career of this popular leader is admirably treated in Sir Henry Taylor’s drama, Philip van Artevelde.

ART GALLERIES. An art gallery (by which, as distinguished from more general, q.v., is here meant one specially for pictures) epitomizes so many phases of human thought and imagination that it connotes much more than a mere collection of paintings. In its technical and aesthetic aspect the gallery shows the treatment of colour, form and composition. In its historical aspect we find the true portraits of great men of the past; we can observe their habits of life, their manners, their dress, the architecture of their times, and the religious worship of the period in which they lived. Regarded collectively, the art of a country epitomizes the whole development of the people that produced it. Most important of all is the emotional aspect of painting, which must enter less or more into every picture worthy of notice. To take examples from the British National Gallery: pathos in its most intense degree will be found in Francia’s “Pietà”; dignity in Velasquez’ portrait of Admiral Pareja; homeliness in Van Eyck’s portrait of Jan Arnolfini and his wife; the interpretation of the varying moods of nature in the work of Turner or Hobbema; nothing can be more devotional than the canvases of Bellini or his Umbrian contemporaries. So also the ruling sentiments of mankind—mysticism, drama and imagination—are the keynotes of other great conceptions of the artist. All this may be at the command of those who visit the art gallery; but without patience, care and study the higher meaning will be lost to the spectator. The picture which “tells its own story” is often the least didactic, for it has no inner or deeper lesson to reveal; it gives no stimulus or training to the eye, quick as that organ may be—segnius irritant animos—to translate sight into thought. In brief, the painter asks that his  may be shared as much as possible by the man who looks at the painting—the art above all others in which it is most needful to share the master’s spirit if his work is to be fully appreciated. So, too, the art gallery, recalling the gentler associations of the past amidst surroundings of harmonious beauty and its attendant sense of comfort, is essentially a place of rest for the mind and eye. In the more famous galleries where the wealth of paintings allows a grouping of pictures according to their respective schools, one may choose the country, the epoch, the style or even the emotion best suited to one’s taste. According to this theory, though imperfectly realized owing to the paucity of examples, the philosophic influence of art galleries is becoming more widely extended; and in its further development will be found an ever-growing source of interest, instruction and scholarship to the community. The most suitable method of describing art galleries is to classify them by their types and contents rather than by the various countries to which they belong. Thus the great representative galleries of the world which possess works of every school are grouped together, followed by state galleries which are not remarkable for more than one school of national art. Municipal galleries are divided into those which have general collections, and those which are notable for special collections. Churches which have good paintings, together with those which are now secularized, are treated separately; while the collections in the Vatican and private houses are described together. The remaining galleries, such as the Salon or the Royal Academy, are periodical or commercial in character, and are important in the development of modern art.

The collections most worthy of attention are the state galleries representative of international schools. Among these the British National Gallery holds a high place. The collection was founded in 1824 by the acquisition of the Angerstein pictures. Its accessions are mainly governed by the parliamentary grant of £5000 to £10,000 a year, a sum which has occasionally been enlarged to permit special purchases. Thus, in 1871, the Peel collection of seventy-seven pictures was bought for £75,000, and in 1885 the Ansidei Madonna (Raphael) and Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I. were bought, the one for £70,000 and the other for £17,500. In 1890 the government gave £25,000 to meet a gift of £30,000 made by three gentlemen to acquire three portraits by Moroni, Velazquez and Holbein. The most important private gifts were the Vernon gift in 1847, the Turner bequest in 1856 and the Wynne-Ellis legacy in 1876. Since 1905 the Art Collections Fund, a society of private subscribers, has also been responsible for important additions to the gallery, notably the Venus of Velazquez (1907). The gallery contains very few poor works and all schools are well