ART
THE gallery of the Print Room at the British Museum has been re- opened, and at least one visitor found the exhibition in honour of the event quite staggering in its richness. I had intended to fill my allotted space with a review of the contents, but this superb show beggars description. The museum authorities have selected, not so much a completely balanced and representative ensemble, as the cream of those collections in which the Print Room is strongest. I can only, perhaps, indicate a handful of the things to he found there.
There is Botticelli's lovely Abbondanza, for instance, one of the finest Florentine drawings known to us, among those in the Italian section ; the museum's best examples of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo ; and Gentile Bellini's two clean and precise yet supremely sensitive oriental studies. After Vienna and Berlin the department holds the most important collection of Diirer's drawings, and, as one would expect, most phases of his work are represented here. Holbein, too, is shown to advantage. Of the Dutch and Flemish masters there are rich examples by Roger van der Weyden, Bernard van Orley and their contemporaries ; by Rubens ' • and above all by Rembrandt in his rapid, simple short-hand, so deceptively profound. France is represented by two superlative groups—one of Claude, one of firm and sparkling studies by Watteau (to what perfection he brought his " trois crayons ")—while the English section ranges from Hogarth to Turner, through the most excellent Townes, Cotmans, Girtins and Cozens fils. Blake is divided between water-colours and prints, and indeed the prints, from the early German engravers onwards, are not the least interesting part of this remarkable exhibition
One end of the gallery is devoted to Indian paintings of the Hindu, Mogul and Deccan schools. These will complement rather happily the display of " The Human Form in Indian Sculpture " from the third millennium B.C. to the eighteenth century A.D. which will open next week at the Victoria and Albert, and provide an exciting fore- taste of what is to come this winter. Also on view at South Kensing- ton will be acquisitions made in the last two years. Some may not yet know that further rooms at the Wallace Collection have recently been unbarred, and it is pleasant to note, among all this activity in the national collections, that the little Soane Museum has been able to open its doors again.
In fact officialdom is doing us proud at the moment. And since officialdom nowadays spreads beneficently beyond the metropolis, may I draw attention to an Arts Council exhibition on tour called " Welsh Landscape in British Art." This contains some pleasant, some lovely, and some outstanding pictures ; the catalogue provides
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