The Tate Gallery
At the end of the nineteenth century, the nation was enriched by two remarkable bequests of pictures:
the Wallace collection at Hertford House, Manchester Square; and the Tate collection, housed in a Corinthian building on the Thames at Millbank, Pimlico,
and called the National Gallery of British Art, erected and presented to the nation
by the late Sir Henry Tate as
the abode of the sixty-five pictures he so generously bequeathed, and which constitute
a nucleus around which others later gathered.
They represent genuine English nineteenth-century painting.
Prominent amongst them are Millais' unrivalled series of works, including Ophelia,
the wonderfully-wrought and pathetic example of his earliest time, and the famous Vale of Rest, which brings the first period to a close; the Order of
Release, with the portrait of the late Lady Millais in the garb of the Highland
wife; the North-West Passage, perhaps the most striking example of pathetic genre produced by the great artist in his period of maturity; Mercy
- St. Bartholomew's Day, exhibited in 1887; A Disciple, exhibited in
1895; and St. Stephen, shown in the same year, that is to say, just twelve
months before the lamented artist's death.
The late Lord Leighton is represented by the great design, And the sea gave
up the dead that were in it, one of the most impressive of his finely elaborated
works of art.
There are also paintings by Briton Riviere, T. C. Hook, Sir L. Alma-Tadema, Albert
Moore, T. W. Waterhouse, A. W. Hunt, Thomas Faed, and John Philip.
There are seven rooms in the Tate Gallery; two, of octagon shape, contain the
gift of Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., to his country, Love and
Life, Sic Transit, Love and Death, and his beautiful Psyche,
allegorical subjects in which he excels.
To ths gallery were brought from The National Gallery a good many paintings, including Rossetti's Beata Beatrix, works by Ford, Madox Brown, Frith, Egg, Maclise, and Leslie.
From the Victoria and Albert Museum have also
been transferred hither the pictures lent by the Royal Academy and purchased by
them under the Chantrey bequest,
amongst them being Sir E. Poynter's Visit to Aesculapius, Britannia's
Realm by J. Brett, R. A., and Orchardson's Napoleon on board the Bellerophon.
The Tate rooms are well lighted from the top, and the walls are covered with a
deep plum-coloured figured paper, while the walls of the octagon rooms are of
a bright red tint to suit Mr. Watts' style of colours.
London art in 1900 - National Picture Galleries - Art Exhibitions and Private Collections:
The Wallace Collection |