AN OPPORTUNITY FOR BRITISH ARTISTS
SIR,—Mr. Middleton does welt to emphasise the opportunity now offered to London " to assume the cultural leadership of Europe" so long held by Paris, but we should not forget that, while the latter city remained the art-centre of Europe, she saw to it that her European customers purchased " home produce," and when, during the years immediately prior to the last war, the French dealers were gradually transferring their headquarters to London, it was with the self-same patriotic motives which prompted, not their change of Art, but merely address. I can see the same thing happening again, for as a nation we are still lamentably unaware of native talent, and might be well content to furnish a shop window for foreign artists. To illustrate the snob value still attached to Continental painting, I was cynically amused to hear of a wealthy London business-man who has just commissioned a friend of mine to procure for him a suitable picture for his luxurious town flat ; not from the well-stocked dealers' galleries at his very door-step, but from —Paris! This overseas search may give point to Mr. Middleton's doubt- ful stricture that " our public but seldom see work from abroad," but I would hazard a guess that London has seen more representative French painting in the past year than the French public has seen of British art in last thirty years! By all means let us expand and extol " the School of London," but let us see that British painting is well to the fore when Continental visitors converge on London.—Yours, &c., Old Laundry Cottage, Midhurst, Sussex. ADRIAN HILL.
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