88 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH., [The Mound.
THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MOUND (concluded).
The Art Galleries-The National Gallery The Various Collections-The Royal Smttish Academy-Early Scottish Artists-The Institution-
The First Exhibition in Edinburgh-Foundation of the Admy-Presidents: G. Wataon, Sir William Allan. Sir J. W. Godon,
Si Gcorge Harvcy, Sir Daniel bfaatec-The Spalding Fund.
THEIR objects being akin, the Royal Icstitution and
Art Galleries stand in convenient proximity to each
other. The formation of the latter was one of the
results of the Report, referred to, by Sir John Shaw
Lefevre on the constitution of the Board of Manufactures
; and subsequent negotiations with the
Treasury led to the erection of the Galleries, the
foundation stone of which was laid by the Prince
Consort on the 30th of August, 1850, and they
were opened in 1859. The Treasury furnished
;t;30,000, the Board ~oo,ooo, and the city a
portion of the site at a nominal rate. By these
arrangements the Scottish people have a noble
National Gallery of great and increasing value, and
the Royal Scottish Academy has also been provided
with saloons for its annual exhibitions.
Designed by W. H, Playfair, the Galleries are so
situated that a railway tunnel crosses beneath their
foundation and a lofty green bank overlooks the
south end. They form a crucifom edifice, the
main length of which lies north and south, with a
broad and high transept intersecting the centre ;
at the south and north ends, or fronts, are beautiful
Ionic porticoes, and on each face of the transept
is a handsome hexastyle Ionic portico. The
eastern range is occupied by the Royal Scottish
Academy?s Exhibition from February till May in
each year, and the western range is permanently
used as the National Gallery, containing a collection
of paintings by old masters and modern artists and
a few works of sculpture, among which, terminating
the long vista of the saloons, is Flaxman?s fine
statue of Robert Bums. The first of these contains
specimens of the Flemish, Dutch, and French
schools of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ;
the central or second saloon specimens of the
Jtalian, Venetian, Genoese, Florentine, Flemish,
and other schools of the same period; while the
third room is devoted to examples of the Scottish
school.
The collections generally include some fine
specimens of Vandyke, Titian, Tintoretto, Velasquez,
Paul Veronese, Spagnoletto, Rembrandt, and others.
There is also a noble series of portraits by Sir
Thomas Lawrence, Sir Henry Raeburn, George
Watson (first President of the Academy), Sir John
Watson Gordon, and Graham Gilbert. In one
of the rooms set apart for modem works may be
The Mound.] THE SCOTTISH GALLERY. 89 -
seen Sir Noel Paton?s two wonderful pictures of
Oberon and Titania; others by Erskine Nicol,
Herdman, Faed, W. Fettes, Douglas, James Drummond,
Sir George Harvey, Horatio Macculloch,
R. S. Lauder, Roberts, Dyce, and Etty, from whose
brush there are those colossal paintings of U Judith
with the Head of Holofernes ?? and ?The Woman
Interceding for the Vanquished.?
Among the many fine paintings bequeathed to
this Scottish Gallery is Gainsborough?s celebrated
portrait of hfrs. Graham, depicting a proud and
are outlined ; and the great and accurately detailed
picture of the battle of Bannockburn.
There is a small full-length picture of Bums,
painted by Nasmyth, as a memento of the poet,
and another by the same artist, presented by the
poet?s son, Colonel W. Nicol Burns, and a fine
portrait of Sir John Moore, the property of the
officers of the Black Watch,
The choice collection of water colours embraces
some of the best works of I? Grecian ? Rilliams ;
a series of drawings bequeathed to the Gallery
INTERIOR OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
beautiful girl, grief for whose death in early fife
caused her husband, the future Lord Lynedoch,
?the hero of Earossa,? to have it covered up that
he might never look upon it again. There are
also some beautiful and delicate works by Greuze,
the gift of Lzdy Murray ; and one by Thomson of
Duddingstone, presented by Lady Stuart of
Allanbank ; and Landseer?s I? Rent Day in the
Wilderness,? a Jacobite subject, bequeathed by
the late Sir Roderick Murchison, Bart.
Not the least interesting works here are a few
that were among the last touched by deceased
artists, and left unfinished on their easels, such as
Wilkie?s ?John Knox Dispensing the Sacrament
at Calder House,? of which a few of the faces alone
00
by Mr. Scott, including examples of Robert
Cattermole, Collins, Cox, Girtin, Prout, Nash,
and Cnstall; and a set of studies of the most
striking peculiarities of the Dutch, Spanish, Venetian,
and Flemish schools. Of great interest, too,
are the waxen models by Michael Angelo.
The Gallery also contains a collection of
marbles and bronzes, bequeathed by Sir James
Erskine of Tome, and a cabinet of medallion
portraits and casts fnm gems, by James and
William Tassie, the celebrated modellers, who,
though born of obscure parents in Renfrewshire,
acquired such fame and reputation that the first
cabinets in Europe were open to their use.
The Royal Scottish Academy of Painting and
