White Gallery, for which the best obtainable examples of such work could be procured by gift or purchase, and thereafter exhibited. Stowed away in drawers and cupboards at the British Museum, at the National Gallery, and probably at South Kensington Museum and elsewhere—visible only in driblets, after regulated application, is untold wealth of beautiful drawings which should rightly be displayed on the walls of such a gallery as is suggested. Beautiful examples of work by living illustrators, both British and foreign, could be obtained for a comparatively nominal sum, and would exemplify a powerful and fascinating development of modern art; which meets the requirements of the day, in its own line, as fully as did the work of those early Italian masters in their time, which the nation’s art buyers collect so assiduously and at so much cost.
But such a gallery would be incomplete were it to pass by without example the strength of Steinlen, the dainty elegance of Wély or Morin, Huard’s types of provincialism, Forain’s delicacy of design, or the humorous observation of Caran d’Ache. To be complete and cosmopolitan it must chronicle within its walls something of that defiance of convention, that exuberance of youthful audacity, seeking ever fresh paths within the unexplored—above all, that single-minded devotion to art for its own sake which belongs to these Illustrators of Montmartre.
