Volume 1

Treasures of art in Great Britain : being an account of the chief collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, illuminated mss., &c. &c. / by Dr. Waagen.

  • Gustav Friedrich Waagen
Date:
1854-57
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treasures of art in Great Britain : being an account of the chief collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, illuminated mss., &c. &c. / by Dr. Waagen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    opportunity of admiring the strictness with which the English custom-house officers perform their duty; for they not only ex- amined every portion of my luggage, but observed of the shoes, “The soles seem to be single.” During this whole time I quelled my occasionally rising impatience by the saying of the noble suf- ferer Ulysses, “Bear, O thou dear heart; thou hast already borne much,” which I have applied with the best success in the many great and little contrarieties of life, ever since my tenth year, when I first drank of the pure fountain of poetry. I was, however, well contented when I had said to a hackney-coachman, in my broken English, “ Mayfair, Curzon Street, No. 7,” and was driven at my ease to that goal of my journey. So long as we were in the city, the ancient centre of the commerce and business of London, where, as Homer says, ‘‘most furiously the tumult rages,’ we proceeded very slowly, on account of the immense crowd of carriages of all kinds. At times, when we halted longer than usual, I had the best opportunity of observing the people busily at work in the shops of the shoemakers, smiths, &c., some of which, by picturesque grouping and striking light and shade, resemble pictures of Adrian Ostade, or Schalken, and far surpassed by their naiveté the artificially arranged modern pictures. At last, when we reached the West End, the more roomy and elegant part of the city, where the fashionable world live, we drove so much the more rapidly, and I soon stopped at the door of Mr. Edward Solly. I never feel myself more solitary and forlorn than among a great number of people, none of whom know me; this feeling had come over me in my passage through the great city, where so many thousands of strange faces passed me. You may therefore easily imagine what a soothing impression I experienced on seeing the old familiar face of Mr. Solly, and, by the kindly recep- tion which I met with in his family, found myself, as if by en- chantment, suddenly at home. My gratification was enhanced by finding myself in the drawing-room surrounded by excellent Italian pictures of the time of Raphael, and thus, as it were, at once ushered into the sanctuary of the arts, the study of which was the sole object of my journey. The dining-room was ornamented in the same manner; so that at my first English dinner, which after my Neptunian course of physic I enjoyed heartily, I now and then willingly turned my eyes to the walls.
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