French Gallery

Review of the French gallery.

Rossetti, William M. "The French Gallery." Academy (April 1, 1876): 204. Web. 21 Sept. 2011.

Rossetti proclaims this year's French exhibition to be laudable and vastly improved over the "mediocre" exhibition of the previous year. This pattern of good year/bad year Rossetti says repeats annually with this exhibition. He starts with the French paintings and promises at the close of the review to consider "the pictures belonging to schools other than the French" in a future notice.

Rossetti faults the awarding of a medal to a work by Adan, thereby calling into question the valuation underwriting the judging: "The Last Day of the Sale, by L.E. Aldan, which obtained a medal; a picture with a good deal of small character and smaller incident neatly individualized and combined, but on the whole rather poor otherwise; one hardly knows whether to count it as pretty or ugly, silly or clever."

He reviews two pictures he said were the leading pictures of last year's exhibition, and also one that he says is tolerable despite the strict adherence to the ruling school of art (the French Salon of 1875"), but only as a matter of "willing homage to the genius of the painter, and the aim towards which he has been working."

Several French works are reviewed with only minor discovery of flaws and largely favorable critique.