In the Academy of Fine Arts is
something of everything, and not much of anything--a few figures and
busts, most in plaster, a few architectural plans and pencil
drawings, and a collection of very old oil paintings. It really
seemed to me as if some private picture gallery had been carefully
weeded of all the rubbish in it, which had then been put here out of
the way. Most of the oil paintings are so injured, that it is
scarcely possible to make out what they are intended to represent,
which, after all, is no great loss. The only thing respectable
about them is their venerable antiquity. A startling contrast is
produced by the copies of them made by the students. If the colours
in the old pictures are faded, in the modern ones they blaze with a
superfluity of vividness; red, yellow, green, etc., are there in all
their force; such a thing as mixing, softening, or blending them,
has evidently never been thought of. Even at the present moment, I
really am at a loss to determine whether the worthy students
intended to found a new school for colouring, or whether they merely
desired to make up in the copies for the damage time had done the
originals.
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