COMMUNICATION DE M. WILLIAM BARCLAY SQUIRE

In these days when every possible subject is being arranged, classified and catalogued, it is curions that so little attention bas been paid to the classification of portraiture by subjects. Even Germany, whjch bas a passion for tbis kind of work, bas produced very little. For lawyers tbere is C. F. Hommers Effigies jurisconsultorum in indicem redactœ publisbed at Leipzig in 1760 ; for scientists W, Wadd’s Nugce chirurgicæ (London, 1822) ; W. E. Drugulin's, Verzeichniss von 6.000 Portraits von Ærzten, Naturforschern, Mathematikern, Reisenden und Entdeckern (Leipzig, 1863) and A. Van den Willingen’s, Bulletin de portraits de médecins, naturalistes et mathématiciens (Amsterdam, 1879) ; for englisb naval commanders tbere is tbe Catalogue of the portraits of naval commander s at Greenwich Hospital (London, 1887) ; for printers we bave J. T. Bodel-Nyenbuis's, Liste alphabétique d'une petite collection de portraits d'imprimeurs, de libraires, de fondeurs de caractères, etc. (Leipzig, 1836-1868), and for tbeatrical portraits tbe Catalogue... of Mr Matthew's Gallery of theatrical Portraits (London, 1833), and tbe Catalogue of Pictures and Miniatures in the possession of the Garrick Club (London, 1909). Tbis sbort list is probably very incomplète, but wben we corne to portraits of musicians our sources of reference are still more scanty. Tbere is a Catalogue (1904) of the Crosby Broffin Collection of musicians

'jyi ACTES DU CONGRÈS D’HISTOIRE DE L’ART

Portraits in the New York Metropolitan Muséum, but the collection only contains prints and engravings, no descriptions of which are given, and the catalogue only consists of short biographies.

For portraits exclusively of musicians there is very little, and that of little value. A. Ehrlich has published some sériés of portraits and biographies of pianists and violinists, but they are without any record of their sources of origin and in many cases are evidently imaginary. F. E. Bufïen’s two sériés of Musical celehrities (London, 1889 and 1893) will be useful to future générations, as they consist of reproductions of photographs from life, but it is doubtful if posterity will endorse the editor’s views as to the « Celebrity » of the musicians he has selected.

Artistically, though there are some notable exceptions, the portraits of musicians may not generally reach a high level of excellence, but to the student of musical history it must always be of interest to know what the great — and even the lesser — composers looked like. Questions on musical portraiture used frequently to corne me in my long career at the British Muséum, and at the National Portrait Gallery in London similar enquiries are frequently made. Owing to the want of anything like a classified work of reference on the subject, it is often very difficult to give an opinion as to whether or not a picture has any real daim to authenticity. In practice one has generally to fall back on the excellently arranged and catalogued collection of printed portraits in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Muséum (5 vols., 1908-1921) and on the useful Portrait Index to portraits contained in printed books and periodicals compiled by W. C. Lane and N. E. Brown, and published by the Library of Congress at Washington in 1906. But this latter excludes much that is useful for reference and includes a great deal that is practically worthless from an historical point of view. It therefore seems to me that this Congress, in which both artists and musicians are represented, might well devise something which should meet a real want, by planning an

HISTOIRE DE LA MUSIQUE

international catalogue of pictures and drawings of musicians.

The reference-sources already named provide fairly well for printed portraits, though even in this department a good deal remains to be done, but for pictures and drawings we hâve absolutely no work of reference, and to find them one has to search through endless catalogues of galleries and private collections, not to mention sale-catalogues, in which from time to time portraits of musicians occur, and which, for want of recorded descriptions, inevitably disappear or are lost.

In the case of a few great musicians, indeed, something has been done. The late Emil Vogel published good iconographies of Gluck, Haydn, Bach, Handel, and Mozart in the Jahrbücher of the Peters Library at Leipzig ; the Handel portraits are dealt with in a spécial number of the Musical Times (14 December, 1893) ; there is an admirable and exhaustive account of Mozart 's portraits by Mr. Edward Speyer in the New York Musical Quarterly for April 1919 ; and another — less authoritative — in Dr Schurig’s recently published Reise-Anzeichnungen of Léopold Mozart. But here again it is often not easy to remember where these scattered articles are to be found, and to prove by their means, for instance, to the possessor of a picture of a fat man with a disagreable expression and wearing a big wig, that it does not re présent (as he believes) Handel, or that every portrait of a youthful musician is the counterfeit presentiment of Mozart.

What I therefore wish to suggest to this Congress — the fisrt, I believe, in which Music has been included among the fine arts — is that a few enthusiasts should undertake, each in his own country, collect descriptions of ail existing pictures and drawings of musicians. The details and method of description could be settled by the collectors when formed into a committee. It would probably be found impossible, in every case, to give exact measurements, though of course this should be done whenever practicable ; but every detail, such as colour of hair, eyes, clothes, etc., should be noted, the names of painters, of présent and past owners —

in fact everything of interest relating to the picture or drawing and tending to establish its authenticity. If possible any kind of photograph (however rough) should be obtained ; in the case of unnamed portraits this should be a sine quâ non.

The collection of material such as I hâve sketched would doubtless be a lengthy and laborious undertaking ; and to carry it out we should hâve to rely largely on individual enthusiasm. But I cannot help thinking that it would be a work of such interest that there should be no difficulty in finding people with sufi&cient leisure and discrimination wüling to undertake it. I can speak but little about what portraits of musicians exist on the Continent — for the moment those I can chiefly recall are in the Conservatoire de Musique de Paris and the National Library at Berlin, no descriptions of which I hâve ever corne across. But, in my own country, there are portraits and drawings of musicians in the National Portrait Gallery, the British Muséum, the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, and the Music School at Oxford, besides many scattered in private collections.

If we could set to work, on the lines that I hâve sketched briefly, the coUected material should form the nucléus of a valuable and much needed work of reference.