Walker Art Gallery, The, named after its donor, was a gift to the Corporation of Liverpool in 1887 by Sir Andrew Barclay Walker, Bart. The collection includes items of outstanding im portance, such as: (I) The Roscoe Collection, which illustrates in outline European art from the 13th to the 16th century; (2) The Modern Collection, totalling over 2,000 works and representing the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, which include oils, chalk drawings. and water-colours; (3) sculpture; (4) the black and white section, including famous etchings. The only endowment possessed by the Gallery is a capital sum of £2,000 bequeathed by the i 5th Earl of Derby, the income to be spent in the purchase of pictures "for the encouragement of rising artists." Manchester Corporation Art Galleries. The City Art Gallery was originally designed by Sir Charles Barry for the Royal Man chester Institution, and was opened to the public in 1829. In 1882 the sum of £2,000 was set aside as an annual sum with which to purchase works of art. The bulk of the pictures in the collection belong to the English school and mainly cover the i9th century. In 1925 a collection of some 8o paintings, 40o water-colours and drawings, 30o woodcuts and 20 pieces of sculpture by modern artists was presented by Mr. Charles Rutherston of Bradford, who offered it on condition that it should be considered as a nucleus from which various works might be distributed on loan for short periods to the various art galleries and schools of art in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Numerous exhibitions are held in the gallery during the course of the year; lectures on various aspects of the fine and applied arts are given during the winter months; and some Soo elementary school children are brought to the Gal lery every week and given instruction in the elementary principles of art. Besides, there are five branch galleries.
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, The, was founded in 182o. The Art Gallery was presented by Sir William Henry Wills, Bart., in 1905, and has fine art collections of etchings, water-colours, oil paintings and ivories. Lectures and demonstrations are given by members of the staff in outlying parts of the city.
Dublin Museum, The, one of the most suitably housed and or ganized museums in Great Britain, is remarkable for its collection of Celtic antiquities. It has among its famous specimens of Irish art the shrine and bell of St. Patrick, the Tara brooch, the cross of Cong and the Ardagh chalice. The series of bronze and stone implements is famous.
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, The, with perhaps the finest provincial collection of industrial art, has made a reputation for special exhibitions of art.
National Museum of Wales, The, Cardiff, has an extensive de partment of art which occupies three galleries. The collection of sculpture, mostly by Welsh artists, is of particular interest. The ceramics collection represents the work of almost every Con tinental and British factory, including beautiful examples of ex tinct Welsh potteries.
Sir John Soane's Museum, London, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was presented to the nation in 1835 by Sir John Soane. The collection includes Soane's own drawings, many of Hogarth's paintings, a splendid sarcophagus, sculptured in a single block of translucent Oriental alabaster from Alabastron, and many other valuable pieces. (X.) France.—The Louvre, founded during the Revolutionary pe riod, is not only noted as having the largest collection of art in the world, but is remarkable for the magnificence of its architec ture. (See PARIS.) The Cluny Museum supplements the mediae val collections of the Louvre with its select works of art, while the Luxembourg Museum, the Municipal Museum, the Rodin Mu seum and other smaller groups make Paris outstanding as an art centre. (See PARIS.) Italy.—The Museo Nazionale at Naples contains the best arranged and best classified collection in the country. For histori cal importance its Roman art ranks with the collections of Rome and the Vatican. (See NAPLES.) Florence, known as the art capital of Italy, is the home of the famous Uffizi Gallery, founded by the Medici and known as one of the largest and choicest col lections in the world. The collection is arranged chronologically by
Schools, and shows the development of Italian painting from the 14th to the 16th century. The tapestries are also of historical importance. The Pitti Palace, the Picture Gallery, the Academy of Fine Arts, the Archaeological Museum and the National Mu seum in the Bargello are other large galleries. (See FLORENCE.) The museums of Rome are numerous, the Vatican alone containing at least six remarkable ones. The Museo Nazionale (by the baths of Diocletian), the Museo Capitolino and the Palazzo dei Conservatori contain innumerable specimens of the finest classical art. (See also RomE.) Germany and Austria.—The Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Ber lin, has among its collections many antiquities of Babylon, Assyria, Syria and Phoenicia. (See BERLIN.) The Old Museum, housing only antique works of art, is especially interesting as an artistically unique building dating from 1828, while the New Museum contains a superb Egyptian collection, besides large groups of plaster casts, drawings and engravings. Schliemann's discoveries are housed in the Ethnographic Museum. The National Galerie is outstanding as a museum for paintings, dating from 178o to the present time. Roman, French and German technical art can best be studied at the Schloss Museum, which has nearly 700 rooms. Under the empire it was furnished with quiet magnificence, being the royal palace. It contains the living and state rooms, formerly occupied by royalty, called the King's Chambers, the Gobelin Gal lery, the Majolica Room, and immense collections of the various kinds of art, and well arranged. Dresden has many galleries of im portance, as the Johanneum, the Albertinum, the Zwinger and the Griine Gewolbe. (See DRESDEN.) The Old Pinakothek and the National Museum of Bavaria are at Munich (q.v.). Prague, Inns bruck and Budapest (q.v.) are respectively the homes of the Na tional Museums of Bohemia, Tirol and Hungary. Besides the large natural history museum of Vienna, there is the Imperial Art History Museum with collections of Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, of coins and medals, industrial art, arms and armour, and many military trophies, relics and curiosities. (See VIENNA.) Belgium and Holland.—The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels, has four divisions : (I) The Musee d'Art Ancien was es tablished under the French regime, taking form in the eleventh year of the Republic when a group of paintings of the Old Masters was granted by the French administration. In 1841, after the development of the Gallery had been somewhat retarded under Dutch regime, it was purchased by the State. The Gallery is particularly rich in its collection of old paintings. Although the French note predominates, other schools are well represented : the Flemish school, with numerous paintings of Rubens, A, Van Dyck, Jordaens and the Antwerp masters; the Dutch school, with ad mirable works of Rembrandt, Von Goyen, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, etc. ; and many paintings from various other foreign schools. (2) The Musee d'Art Moderne, which was founded during the Dutch regime, and which had a remarkable development, was reorganized after the World War with a view to making as excel lent a collection of the Belgian school as possible. (3) The JViertz Museum is entirely devoted to the works of painting and of sculpture of the Great Romantic painter, Antoine Wiertz (18o6 65). (4) The Gallery of Sculpture, which was started in 1836 with the collection of sculpture from the studio of Mathieu Kessels, has considerable interest in the development of sculpture in Belgium, and some works of foreign schools add to the richness of the collection. The great central depository of Dutch art is in Amster dam, where the State Museum of the Netherlands, generally known as the Ryks Museum, is located. (See AMSTERDAM.) Leyden university, The Hague and Rotterdam also have good collections.