MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD N I COLSON
AT the dinner given last week to Dame Myra Hess many fining compliments were paid to the organisers of the National Gallery concerts. Being myself one of those mutilated beings who
are tone-deaf in the sense that other unfortunates are colour-blind, I have been able to appreciate these concerts only at second hand.
My musical friends have assured me of their excellence and I have myself observed the contented faces of the young men and maidens who, on leaving the Gallery. would rest for a while beneath the exiguous shade of George Washington's statue. There can be no doubt at all that the music which Dame Myra organised and provided gave during the dark years solace to many strained minds and relief to many anxious hearts ; she has well merited all the tributes which have been paid to her. Thanks are also due to the Trustees of the National Gallery for allowing their premises to be used for what were after all extraneous purposes, and to the Treasury for turning a blind eye on practices which, however admirable in themselves, were not in strict accord with Civil Service requirements. And above all, I think, we should be grateful to Sir Kenneth Clark for the manner in which he has fulfilled his responsibilities during the years of war. Not only was he able, by foresight and organization, to rescue from possible damage the artistic treasures committed to his care, but he realised from the outset that the Gallery was essentially National and that in some manner it must play its part in the war. Instead, therefore, of allowing that lovely building and those huge rooms to remain dusty and unvisited during the years of danger, he flung wide his doors, providing canteens and music for a blitzed and hungry population. Above all, his device of bringing up from their Welsh retreat the favourite possessions of the nation on a short if dangerous visit to London was an act of thoughtfulness and daring for which many of us owe him a deep
debt of gratitude. The riches of the National Gallery are so various that even the practised eye becomes dazzled when they are spread out in 311 their immensity ; it was a curious and useful experience to be able to study a single masterpiece isolated from the rest.
To-day some fifty of our loveliest pictures have been brought back to London and are hanging happily again upon the walls of the National Gallery. To them, fittingly enough, has been added a new acquisition—a perfect Welsh landscape by Richard Wilson, which was presented to the nation by Sir Edward Marsh upon V.E. day. There it hangs, small and solemn, as a memorial to a great national triumph and as a symbol of the generosity which private collectors in this country have always shown. And around this modest and beautiful English picture are grouped the greatest masterpieces of Europe and the ages. One finds them again with that almost startled recognition with which one greets remembered beauty from which one has been sundered for many years. And as the eye travels over them with. affection and delight, one notices
n little things which one had not noticed before—a distant group of soldiers in an El Greco, the quality of the brick in the Pieter de Hooch interior—and one observes with surprise, here the restored colours of what had been the darkest Poussin, and there the dim tones of Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, a picture which, so I am assured, it would be dangerous to clean. How wonderful are these our national possessions, how astonishing is the actual richness which they display! And thereafter one returns to those pictures which have always had a special appeal, and examines once again the derail, half remembered, half forgotten, which had entranced one in the past.
* * * *
There, at the very entrance, is Renoir's "Les Parapluies," as gay as ever after its exile to the Welsh caves. This picture has always seemed to me to be one of the masterpieces of French painting. There is the daring composition in which the umbrellas, slanting at different angles, are tied together by the black lid of a hat box. There is the extraordinary skill with which Renoir in a few touches has painted the gloved hand of a child resting upon a hoop ; it is not only that the hand is resting upon the hoop and at the same time holding it but the actual shape and weight and pressure of the chubby little hand appears through the glove. This particular detail seems to me a perfect illustration of a painter's knowledge, or it may b; genius. This famous picture is. however, fascinating for an added reason. It was begun in 1878-9 and left unfinished for a period of two years. In the interval Renoir had seen much of Cezanne ; it is even possible that his visit to Sicily and South Italy in the early eighties occurred before he resumed work on the uncompleted picture. But he had learnt much in the interval. and it is strange to notice how, in painting the trees in the top left hand corner, and in handling the dress of the midinette, he had acquired something of the technique of Cezanne. This is no fanciful deduction ; even to the amateur eye it is evident that the dress of the midinette carrying the hat box is painted in a totally different way from the purely impressionist manner of the other figures. It is this curious blending of manners which makes Renoir's "Parapluies" one of the most educative, as well as one of the loveliest, pictures in ;he world.
Then there is the Nativity of Piero della Francesca, the last picture that he ever painted. This picture was never finished and the figures on the right, especially the figure of the old man sitting on the saddle, are scarcely more than sketched in. It has some- times been suggested by flippant persons that this picture furnishes us with the first recorded introduction of tobacco into art, and it certainly seems at first sight that the .man on the saddle is smoking an enormous. cigar ; it is only on closer inspection that we observe that what seems to be a cigar is in fact the brown belt of a man standing in the background. The colouring of this picture, which to-day produces so startling an effect, was not the colouring which Piero intended. The pinks and blues, especially the brightness of the blue cushion on. which the Infant Jesus. lies, stand in sharp contrast to the neutral background and the sombre tones in which the little trees and shrubs of the surrounding hills, the tufts of herb upon the pent-house are delicately put in. It is now known that when the Nativity was first painted this dim herbage was coloured a brilliant green, and that the verdigris which Piero used 'for his green colours has perished in the succeeding centuries, whereas the pinks and blues have retained their original colour. Even more striking in its freshness, now that it has been scrupulously cleaned. is Tan Van Eyck's portrait of Arnolfini and his wife, ; it is almost impossible to believe that this picture is five hundred and fifteen years old. In trustful Victorian days this portrait was called "The Betrothal," a title which Mrs. Arnolfini's condition renders mis- placed.
* * * * In one respect, however, this familiar picture caused a shock to me now that it has been so scrupulously cleaned. I had always supposed that the peach which is laid aside on the window sill was different from the other three peaches on the dresser in that it had gone bad ; and in fact it displays that slightly mottled surface, that browning colour, which one associates with mildewed fruit. But I must have been mistaken in this supposition, since now that the picture has been cleaned it is evident from the reflection in the mirror that my peach on the window sill is as bright and fresh as its three companions. Or is it, perhaps, that the picture has been cleaned too much? Recovering from this slight disappointment I cast a final look upon the pictures around me, and walked out under the portico and down among the pigeons of Trafalgar Square. What is it that gives the high exhilaration which one derives from the sight of such tremendous works of art? Surely it is comforting to remember in this difficult and angry world that there are certain
'values which stand apart from strife and bitterness? Surely it-is a solace and delight to be reminded in this age of instability that there are certain beauties which do not depend for their endurance upon the accidents of space art.! time?
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