the
drawing-rooms of the Gymnasium in honour of the Prince, who had
recently been elected to the Bulgarian throne. Some five years later, on
the occasion of the first Bulgarian Industrial and Agricultural
Exhibition, held at Plovdiv in 1892, the first collective art exhibition
was organised, the productions of the various Bulgarian artists being
exhibited. King Ferdinand is a consistent patron of Bulgarian art, and
has the richest collection of pictures in Bulgaria, distributed among
his palaces at Sofia, Plovdiv, and Varna.

M. Audrey Protitch, in a recent monograph on Bulgarian art (to which I
am indebted for most of the facts above) gives this critical summary of
Bulgarian achievement:

If we exclude historical painting, which, since the early and
specialised attempts of Nicolas Pavlovitch, has been almost
entirely neglected in Bulgaria, Bulgarian artists have tried
their hand at almost every form of art. Ethnographical pictures,
national scenes, pictures of military subjects, landscapes,
interiors, flower pieces, animals, portraits, icons, allegories,
mythical subjects, ruins, architecture--all these are fully
represented in the art gallery of the National Museum, and have
figured in nearly all the art exhibitions. The first place among
these varieties is held by landscapes, _genre_, and portraits,
whether in oil, water-colour, or pastel. The weak point of
Bulgarian artists is undoubtedly undraped figures, especially
undraped feminine figures, the only exception being Stephan
Ivanoff, who however abandoned this class of work to become the
best icon-painter in Bulgaria.

Bulgarian art may be called national only as regards its
contents, but neither in form nor technique. As we have already
said, the subjects are taken from Bulgarian scenery or from
peasant and town life. The sense of human form is gradually
developing, with the exception of the feminine body, which
remains proscribed by public taste. This last circumstance
accounts, to a great extent, for the low level of sculpture in
Bulgaria. Decorative art is making rapid strides, owing to the
great amount of building going on during recent years. Artistic
form and technique are in a transitional phase, all the younger
artists waging war against the traditional and conventional
styles and the foreign influences that have hitherto hindered
the free