A hanging matter ARTS
ROY STRONG
Sadly this year's Winter Exhibition, 200 Years of the Royal Academy, will go down in history as a great opportunity missed. If it is remem- bered at all in the future it will be for one thing, for a much-needed restatement that the glory of English painting will always reside in the grandest works of Reynolds and Gains- borough, Constable and Turner. Above all, this exhibition is a profound revelation of the genius of the Academy's first president, Sir Jo,hua Reynolds.
This is important, for the cult among present collectors for minor eighteenth century Eng- lish artists such as Wootton or Seymour, now fetching astronomical prices in the sale rooms, has led to a neglect both in appreciation and in scholarship of the great painters. A Dcvis family group, with its vision of a country-house garden dotted with pretty dolls in prettier satins, may be pleasant to live with in this age of the apotheosis of the primitive and naive. But, if you can still respond to majesty and splendour in imagination, richness in the handling of paint and profundity of charac- terisation, look instead at a portrait by Reynolds. Look, to take a single instance. at perhaps my favourite portrait in. this year's academy, Mrs Lloyd, a willowy love:y lady bending her body as a swan bends its neck towards a tree trunk upon which she is etching her husband's name. Not only does the por- trait have all the intellectual-literary. associa- tions of classical pastoral and revived sylvan melancholy, together with painterly allusions to classical bas-reliefs and the sonorous can- vases of the great Venetians of the Renaissance, but before any of this it stands on its own as a truly great painting. Up to forty years ago the academy would have been thronged by visi- tors to see such canvases. Now they epitomise all that has sunk from public esteem and fashionable favour: they are sombre and realistic; they flaunt neo-classical garb; they are too large to live with and, what is more, they ask the spectator for something beyond an intuitive, immediate response; they require con- siderable thought to capture the range and wit of allusion.
One of the reasons why the public will prob- ably shy away from this show is its apparent lack of any central direction. In the first place, there are exhibitions within this exhibition. The best and most staggering of these is the Gains- borough and Reynolds galaxy, not on any account to be missed. The second is a Pre- Raphaelite show which could have been played down; some of these pictures have been appear- ing and reappearing lately with a relentless monotony. And, after 1900, any attempt at a coherent exposition of academy work seems to have been abandoned, except for salvaging a handful of items. by artists that a 1968 ex- hibition audience could bear to look at (Orpen, John, Sickert. Kennington), although many of these were untypical of the academy at the time. Clarity is not helped, either, by the fact that the plate volume of the catalogue fails to give any numbers for reference back to the text volume which, to add to the confusion, is
room by room and not under artist. I am also puzzled by the decision not to include any his- torical matter: the manuscripts of Reynolds's or Barry's lectures on art; the admittance books of the Academy Schools; caricatures of the academy and the mass of contemporary atti- tudes both in the press and in private papers. What an exhibition these could have made!
Now that the Hayward Gallery is open, and ip spite of its deficiencies, London at long last has a suite of .exhibition rooms equipped with all the latest gimmickry for lighting- and displaying works of art. The monopoly of the academy, in having the only large exhibition area outside the major museums and galleries, has been broken. Whatever the archi- tectural disadvantages of the Burlington House rooms, they could be excellent if well decorated with good colours and lighting or used as a shell by a designer inserting a decor. But the academy Winter Exhibitions are nearly all still staged as they were in the immediate post- war years.
No one seems to have noticed that a revolution has taken place—that the exhAlai- tion has become in itself an. art form, enablim the ordinary visitor to see a great work ,o.c..art in the best possible setting, or making him cow- prehend a complex historical or artistic theme through careful design. This year's indifferent hanging on stark white walls is cruel to a degree to eighteenth century pictures, 1st alone the rest. The lighting,, great bulbs in divers' helmets, beams down in blinding floods, ragipg some of .the greatest monuments to British genius in the arts. To continental visitors, used to the highest standards in elegance of presen- tation, the display of great works of art, yin such conditions must come as a horrible shock. The overall effect is to reduce the pictures ,to the level of their surroundings.
I write these hard words because one cares deeply and passionately for the academy and its traditions. One wants the great shows pa continue. One remembers with gratitude Vow in one's youth they were a source of joy and inspiration. And, heaven knows, there are enough beauties in this present show, once one extricates oneself from the surroundings and concentrates on the exhibits.
It is impossible to elaborate on all of them. Don't miss the Gainsborough room, which contains perhaps the most beautiful. landscape he ever painted, The Road from Market. Com- missioned by Lord Shelburne, who wished 'to lay the foundation of a school of British Land- scapes,' tired country people jog homeward through a russet-leaved lane touched with the gold of a setting sun. It is as though some rider, who has not yet come into the focus of It'he artist's eye, has bellowed to his cotnpaniatls ahead who all suddenly turn their headi'lo- wards us. Not far away is another jewel, Gainsborough's self-portrait of himself as a ' raffish young man with wife and little daughter sitting on a bank under a tree. And there aro later very grand and smart ones of ,his daughters, of Paul Methuen, of Gene,r11 flonywood 'and Lady Chesterfield. Lawrence
is interestingly represented by pictures of a stunning brilliance, in particular two from America which have not been seen here before, of young Arthur Atherley posed before an autumnal landscape of Eton, and Mrs Jens Wolff uncomfortably reading a book as a Michelangelesque sibyl. These items merely scratch the surface of the 900 paintings, sculp- tures, drawings, miniatures, medals and en- gravings, a visual equivalent to the splendours of an academy banquet.
I will end by yet again singing the praises of the first president, this time because he must surely go down in the history of painting as one of the great interpreters of children, over whom be waves a wand of prettiness that makes them as irresistible as the sweetest of Renoir's flaxen-haired tots, and as grand and shy as VelaSquez's befarthingaled Infantas. There is Lady Caroline Montagu, a little girl standitig in a wintry landscape and wearing the most 'absurd hat, her cheeks bright red with the icy cold, her hands plunged into a crimson Muff. Near by a robin chirps at her and her little dog scurries round after his tail. Lady Catherine Pelham Clinton is a very serious five year old, beautiful though somewhat pudding-faced, in white and fluttering pink ribbons, her face turned away oblivious of the turkey and chickens she is feeding from her apron.
And then there are the silly, witty pastiches of Holbein and Van Dyck, of Master Carew swaggering along as Henry VIII and the young anaemic Duke of Gloucester, in pink with plumed hat and walking stick, as Charles I a la chasse. Reynolds is also charmingly re- sponsive to the emotional mood of mother and child. From Chatsworth comes his most famous rendering of this theme, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, full of exuberance, hands of both mother and child uplifted in fun and in triumph. Or, again, there is the subtle double focus of Lady Spencer, hugging her little daughter's skirts as the child stands on a table while a little dog jumps up at her. Such senti- ment may be out of fashion in high artistic circles, and one knows that it led to Millais's Bubbles, but, as it was Christmas, I indulged and enjoyed every minute of it.
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