In the circular picture gallery will be found the admirable series of historical works by Sir James D. Sinton, P.R.I., representing scenes in the life of a soldier in the sixteenth century. Among the portraits of special local interest are those by Mr. W. T. Roden, of Samuel Lines, the Birmingham artist; of Peter Hollins, the Birmingham sculptor; of his Eminence Cardinal Newman; and of John Henry Chamberlain, who has been justly described as the “second founder of the Birmingham and Midland Institute,” and who, until his lamented death, was Chairman of the School of Art. Those of John Bright, by Frank Holt, R.A.; of George Dawson, by H. T. Munns; of William Murdock, by John Graham; of Arthur Ryland, the founder of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, and sometime Mayor of the town, by Sir J. W. Gordon; and of Sir John Franklin, by T. Phillips, R.A., also deserve note in this connexion. WATTS AND PORTRAITS.--The large room of the Art Gallery is nearly filled with a collection of Mr. Watt’s pictures, kindly lent by the artist. Much interest now attaches to these works, as Mr. Watts has just offered them, with others, to the nation. We can somewhat measure this noble gift when we remember that the collection contains portraits of some of our ablest and most famous men, as well as large and important figure pictures, the work of a lifetime, and that these are the best works of an artist of world-wide reputation. The English School of portraiture has attained a high standard in the works of such artists as Millais, Holl, Ouless, and Richmond; but the portraits by Watts stand apart from even these in their nobility of treatment, scheme of colour, and rendering of the man, his very life and soul. The portraits of Mr. Burne Jones, the Marquis of Salisbury, and Lady Garvagh, recall to mind the best works of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Again, Dr. Joachim, a lamp-light study--is quite Rembrandt like. Those of Cardinal Manning, Carlyle, Mr. Browning, Mrs. Manners, in blue against a blue background; John Stuart Mill, Lord Lawrence, Lord Sherbrook and Philip Calderon, R.A., also merit careful observation. Mr. Watts’s subject pictures are painted with the noblest motives, and the methods of execution and schemes of colour are all made subordinate to the idea. The subject “Love and Death,” was suggested by the struggle of near friends to resist a fatal disease in a young man whom the artist was painting; and here the power of art, imagination, colour, conception, drawing of drapery and figure, all unite, not for technical display, but to realize in an intense degree the motive of the picture. The same may be said of “Mammon;” dedicated to his worshippers. In the previous picture the colour is blue-grey; in this it is gold and scarlet. “The Meeting of Jacob and Esau” is a striking instance of the successful definition of opposite characters. “Orpheus and Eurydice” is descriptive of the moment when Orpheus looks back,