DURING the second half of the eighteenth century Gavin Hamilton was one of the outstanding figures in the artistic life of Rome. As an excavator and dealer in antiquities his activities have been fully described by Michaelis; as a leading exponent of the neo-classical school 'of which Mengs was the most reputed painter and Winckelmann the prophet' his importance has been assessed by Professor E. K. Water-house in a lecture (recently printed) which he delivered to the British Academy in 1954. It would have been particularly appropriate if one of Gavin Hamilton's classical canvases could have been shown in the neo-classic room in the present exhibition at the Royal Academy. Unfortunately the size and position of his paintings at the Palace of Holyroodhouse and at Althorp presented too many difficulties to justify their removal. Instead he is represented at Burlington House by the picture (Fig.13) which is the subject of this article and which is of exceptional interest as it is the only portrait group, at present known to us, painted by Hamilton during a residence of over half a century in Rome. If as a painter of neo-classical subjects he was in the vanguard of the movement and, as Professor Waterhouse has pointed out, over a decade ahead of David in this field, his portrait group, done in 1776-7, follows the fashion, which had evolved during the previous twenty years, of depicting Englishmen against a background of Roman monuments.

JUAN GRIs, acknowledged to be one of the major figures of Cubism, has never been accorded official recognition in France. Switzerland, on the other hand, has for the second time organized a large retrospective exhibition of this artist's work. Until 2nd January 1956 the Berne Kunstmuseum is showing i20 paintings by Gris and some fifty drawings and sketches, representing ap-proximately one-sixth of his total output, and including (with the exception of the 1912 Hommage a Picasso and one of the Ceret landscapes of 1913) all the cardinal works of his artistic career. One-third of the pictures are from collections in Switzerland, a third are from France, and the remaining third include works from America, England, and Sweden, most of which have never been seen together before. Almost all are of outstanding quality. The selection was made by Mr Douglas Cooper, who also compiled the catalogue. This is an important work and will be essential to all future study of Gris, since it is highly documented and is the first serious catalogue to accompany a Gris exhibition. Six of the paintings illustrated in the thirty-two plates are reproduced for the first time.