Note 53 — LETTERS ON ART. II. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

The public may not, perhaps, be generally aware that the condition by which the nation retains the two pictures bequeathed to it by Turner, and now in the National Gallery, is that “they shall be hung beside Claude’s.”{*}

{*} “Dido building Carthage” (No. 498), and “The Sun rising in a Mist” (No. 479). The actual wording of Turner’s will on the matter ran thus: “I direct that the said pictures, or paintings, shall be hung, kept, and placed, that is to say, always between the two pictures painted by Claude, the Seaport and the Mill.” Accordingly they now hang side by side with these two pictures (Nos. 5 and 12) in the National Gallery.