Victoria and Albert Museum
In West London, in 1900, along the Brompton Road past the Oratory,
one came to a long line of hoarding, behind which extensive operations were going
on for the completion of the Victoria and Albert (formerly the South Kensington)
Museum, by means of a frontage in Cromwell Road and Exhibition Road, the temporary
entrance being in the latter.
The Museum stands on twelve acres of land, a portion of certain estates bought
by the Government out of the profits of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
At this Museum is a very fine collection of late nineteenth century pictures, a few early Italian and German paintings,
and Raphael's celebrated cartoons.
These last are drawn with chalk upon stout paper and coloured in distemper, and
are the original designs by Raphael and his pupils for tapestry work ordered by
Leo X.
They are twelve feet high, and seven in number, and the subjects are entirely
Scriptural.
Turn of the nineteenth century British Art in oil-paintings was well represented in the Sheepshanks
collection at this Museum, where there are works by Landseer, Constable, Eastlake, Mulready,
Leslie, Stanfield, Turner,
etc.
The Jones collection includes paintings by Frith, Goodall, Webster, Morland, Creswick,
etc., and some water-colours by Turner, W. Hunt, Birket-Foster, Goodall, etc.
In a temporary building were gathered together in 1855 several miscellaneous
collections which had been housed in various places, supplemented by the Fine
Art collection that had for some time been shown at Marlborough
House.
A new and permanent gallery was then constructed for the Sheepshanks paintings,
and was opened by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at 9.30 p.m., June 20th, 1857,
when gas, then a novelty in picture-galleries, was the illuminant.
Other courts and galleries grew up and were opened in successive years, and then
the building operations paused for a long while, until at last the requisite grant
was obtained to finish the Museum, and in 1899, Queen Victoria laid the foundation
stone of the extension, bestowing upon it simultaneously its new title.
From a plan showing the elevation at the entrance-gate, a good idea could be
formed as to what the new frontage would be like; but the general scheme of decoration
of corridors, arcades, courts, galleries, and refreshment-rooms was exceedingly
ornate and artistic.
Briefly, the Museum contained full-sized reproductions in plaster of important
and well-known architectural work, British and foreign; in goldsmith's, silversmith's,
and lapidary's art, purchased, and on loan, it had a world of treasures that alone
would account for the long line of police constables who periodically marched from
the Walton Street station along the Brompton Road, to patrol the place by night
and day.
There were tapestries and various textiles, laces, rich vestments, etc.; Italian
sculpture, Della Robbia ware, bronzes, majolica; Italian woodwork; French, Spanish,
Dutch, Portuguese, German, and Flemish woodwork; British woodwork and carriages;
a Keramic Gallery of great interest; ironwork of exquisite workmanship; enamels,
including examples of Limoges (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) that cost
from £1000 to £2000 apiece; the Jones collection of porcelain, majolica
ware, bronze, glass, and ivory-work.
These are only indications of the art riches at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
It was beautifully lighted and warmed; there were endless cosy nooks in which to
sit and rest comfortably; while, for the inner man, there was a really excellent
refreshment department where something more refreshing than vapid lemonade, bad
ginger-beer, and execrable tea and coffee (the rule in some other museums) could
be enjoyed.
London art in 1900 - National Picture Galleries - Art Exhibitions and Private Collections:
Hampton Court |