Arts
Masters and museums
Robert Medley
It is a sound instinct that delays canonisation until after death, often for many years. A similar caution should prevail before we elevate our great artists to sacred heights of Parnassus. Their works must have stood the test of time before being placed out of the reaches of fluctuating tides of fashion. It is however astonishing that Turner, the only great painter of international standing that this country has produced, has had to wait so long to assume his merited station amongst the very great. Much longer than Monet whom he anticipated ; and in my mind's eye a vision of waterli lies gives way to one of Turner lashed to a ship's mast, in a stormy sea, staring towards the light.
Surely the time has now come to make amends and in doing so to review the functions and limitations of our national museums which must show their vast collections as anthologies, subject in their rearrangement to fashionable taste or even reflective of the bias of the special interests of the directors.
I have all my life been a constant museumgoer—ever since I was given my first bicycle some time at the age of twelve or thirteen. I can't remember exactly, but I do sharply recall bicycling off fairly regularly during the holidays to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, carrying my b;ke up the steps and leaving it propped against the iron balustrade under the portico. And again in my early twenties, as a student, I copied a Chardin and a Tintoretto there, when Sir Charles Holmes was Director. In those days, the walls were not covered by rich brocaded fabrics. In the aftermath of the First World War there was not much money about and, as many walls had been covered by dark and heavily embossed wallpapers, Holmes had had them painted over in ordinary distemper in light and fresh colours: white, pale grey, Whistler yellow. I think back with pleasure to the brightening of the interior which those changes made, and of how well the pictures looked against their simple backgrounds.
Holmes himself was frequently in the galleries and an attendant would bring in a stepladder, if the picture was a large one, which the Director would mount and with a swab carefully wash the surface of the painting with distilled water. And he would come across and talk to me. There were always a number of elderly ladies and gentlemen, professional copyists, their pictures never finished, awaiting a purchaser. They used to unsettle me with chat but could be useful when I wanted to borrow a paint rag. In spite of Sir Charles, I did not enjoy painting in the National Gallery as much as I had, a year earlier, at the Louvre. The presence of artists is not so easily taken for granted here and I was always afraid of dropping some mess upon the floor. Also, because my first real visit to the Louvre, in 1926, had come as an overwhelming experience—unforgettable.
The serious student is a glutton for works of art and the sight of the Long Gallery with great pictures, and works of all sizes and qualities hung three to five deep from floor to cornice was a stupendous sight. An historical way of showing pictures—many of them were not too clean—but all of them new to me and to be sought out. Practically the entire collection of great French nineteenth century masterpieces was similarly displayed in the Salle Denon. The 'Radeau de la Meduse' skied way up (how it was ever got there I don't know), Courbet's 'Studio', the 'Funeral at Ornans', Delacroix's 'Sardanapalus' and the 'Crusaders' Entry' also. Smaller pictures on the line: Ingres's 'Odalisque', a marvellous Millet with a rainbow, Daumier's picture, a large one for him, of two clowns plainly swopping a dirty joke. Round the corner from there I copied Poussin's `Et ego in Arcadia'. I am very glad I saw the Louvre like this. In my mind's eye I can rehang the Salle Denon as it then was, when first my eyes discovered Delacroix's 'Les Femmes d'Alger', the miraculous shades of colouring looking forward to Renoir. All is now changed, the stream of visitors can pass by pictures cleansed and uncluttered and, without risking a crick in the neck, hung at a proper eye level.
Since the time that Sir Charles Holmes covered the heavy 'Lincrusta' wallpapers at the National Gallery with a coat of whiting our museums have become increasingly attractive to visit. Modern technology has removed glass cases that stood in the way of our enjoyment and up-to-date advertising techniques of display have combined education with pleasure. But to modernise a national museum is a long-term operation and very expensive. The Trustees must convince the government that they are fulfilling a public demand. Money is the final arbiter. The merry clocking-in of visitors as the turnstile revolves becomes the criterion of success. Art like everything else is subject to promotion. More and more space is demanded for the sales counters at our museums, from which they are required to sell not only postcards of masterpieces but also books, 'do-it-yourself' framing kits, and finally reproductions of famous pictures cut up into small pieces as picture puzzles for the 'kiddy-winks' to play with.
Meanwhile a more informed public has been created which extends beyond the coffee-table Smiths and Joneses, who have to keep up with the neighbours. This Public is impatient of the charabancs outside, and of the shuffling crowds within. They require more than anthologies, however enticinglY presented. I remember that at the time 1 was coPYillg in the National Gallery, the seventeenthcentury metaphysical poets were much Iii fashion and that Professor Grierson's selection, his anthology of these poems, was introduction to the Poets; and naturallY, falling for John Donne, I felt compelled to buy a complete edition of his works as the only way of getting to know more than fragment. I needed to appreciate his work in its own context—a collected edition—and not as ah example in an anthology. This is what Turner meant when, in bequeathing his tures to the National, he repeatedly sal'' 'Keep them together'.
And so it is that these more sharp
focused collections are demanded. There iS now a collection of this kind at the Ma,1*' mottain in Paris, which is always well atten°ed, of Monet, whose steady climb to the higher planes of Parnassus has been an event of my lifetime. I think of Vincent van Gogh and Til,,en whose epic devotion ensured the salekeeping of pictures that would otherwise have been dispersed or lost but are now gether in Amsterdam. Also I anticipate wii" pleasure, when I go to Holland again, tiler renewal of the experience of the room full Malevich at the Stejdelik, a unique once" tion of Russian painting; and of Re II brandt's house in the old Jewish quarter flit' of his etchings; of Franz Hals, less gren but who flares into life in the Hospital at Haarlem and whose portraits painted shortly before he died are of unforgettable pathos and challenge the greatest. These intimate experiences are of 111! highest order to those vhose interests ar"the more than passing, for the workings.of artist's own creative process shine throtigne more closely than in other galleries, wiher,e masterpieces by different artists comPe` with each other for attention. Great artists are more than great ten1Per' aments, they are also creative intellects. Turner did for colour what Renaissanene artists did for linear perspective. He .r k5 artist, if ever there was one, whose Wortii. must be seen together and studiedfr°11A:. many angles. He left the nation three hull's red oil paintings and some 20,000 drawing_ and water colours to enable us to do Pre, cisely this—to be able to study a permanen.` collected edition of his life's works, seen in their own context. And yet, in spite of evidence to the con: trary, there are those who think that chs% plays of single artists are boring and bad b°, office. That amongst them should officials of our national museums is clis
couraging, but it is perhaps naive to expect them to support proposals so contrary to the momentum of their careers, even proposals that are after all consequent upon an enlarged and more enlightened public that they, by their own policies, have helped to educate and build up.
We all know that discussions are now going on in Somerset House about the suitability of the 'Fine Rooms' there and of the gallery above them for the housing of a Turner foundation or museum. It is not my intention to anticipate the result of these deliberations but the proposal is a singularly attractive one in so far as the apartments under offer by the Department of the Environment constituted the original eighteenth and early nineteenth century home of the Royal Academy, the place where Turner studied as a boy and later exhibited as an academician.
Turner has been kept waiting in the wings for one hundred and twenty-five years for Justice to be done to him. Also, at this moment of time, we need to be proud and to Show the world our highest achievements. If this project is abandoned, we shall very much want to know the reasons, without haggling—we cannot afford to waste any more time, it should all have been done ages ago.
Previous page
