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‎ | ‎ ‎ Department of Paintings
| ••‎ ♟️🏛️
| Volume II — Permanent Collection

Chambers are often awake long before the first visitor draweth nigh unto the outer steps. Morning first steals upon the uppermost panes, then pursues its measured course across the oaken boards, tarrying where the footfalls of yesterday have already been swept into oblivion. To an eye unacquainted with these galleries, scarce any alteration would seem apparent. The gilt mouldings remain in their wonted stations; the engraved tablets of brass beneath them retain the same grave succession which they have observed through years beyond facile reckoning. The air is fraught with the faint odour of drying oil, foxed folio, burnished walnut, and stretched linen which hath lain untouched since the preceding eve. Yet now and again there cometh a strange conviction that something unseen hath shifted beyond the ken of ordinary regard—as though the possessions themselves had continued their private ordering after the house had yielded wholly unto repose.
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‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎⤿⬪ . . . /;\ . .

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ First Viewing
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‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎5th September 2026
‎ ‎ ‎ Commencing at 18.00 PM
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Galleries acquire their character after the manner of ancient houses: neither hastily nor in a single season. A further corridor is opened unto the light; another frame findeth its appointed wall; another name is entered into the catalogue until, after many seasons whose number hath long been forgotten, its presence seemeth no less native to the collection than the walls which contain it. If these halls have preserved aught through the years committed unto their charge, it is the knowledge that no gallery truly commenceth with the opening of its doors. Every accession retaineth a chapter whose first leaves were turned long before these chambers were given over unto the public eye.
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