ART
Principal Acquisitions of the National Art Collections Fund. At the National Gallery.—Watercolours and Drawings by Cecil Collins and Watercolours by Katherine Church. At the Lefev re Gallery.
THE National Gallery of this country possesses as representative a collection of the world's masterpieces as any in Europe ; repre- sentative in a catholic sense. Furthermore, the major provincial collections are steadily acquiring their share. Considering the marked tendency of the Treasury in time past to feel its duty to art well done at a very low price, the national property in pictures is remarkable. It is therefore good to see how a considerable body of our finest possessions came to belong to the nation, and to read, in Sir Robert Witt's preface to the catalogue, of what bitter struggles have gone on in the finding of funds to make these acquisitions possible. The debt we owe to Sir Robert, and to those who have worked for forty years so to enrich the people of Britain, is great. This exhibition, which contains only a proportion of the works of art distributed among the public galleries throughout the country, is in itself a monument of taste, knowledge and hard work in :he public interest. One of the Fund's most valuable functions nas been to make up, as far as possible, what deficiencies there may have been in the full representation of schools and individuals. Thus the Rembrandt " Saskia as Flora" adds an early picture the master to the National Gallery's fine collection of his late works, and the newly acquired "Madonna and Child" attributed to Diirer is a superb addition to the sixteenth century German School, the least adequately represented section of the national collection. Added to this the Committee has shown great discrimination in choosing the right gallery in each case to receive specific benefactions. The gift of a Richard Wilson, the greatest Welsh painter, to the National Gallery of Wales, is an instance of this.
It is unlikely that the exhibition will be noticed by the most widely circulated organs of the daily press, nor that the bulk if the ratepayers who now own all these treasures will give sufficient heed to the splendour of this heritage, but those of us who do, must feel towards all who have worked for and supported the National Art Collections Fund, the deepest possible gratitude.
Cecil Collins has a vision, he has a pictorial sense and he has a gift for texture. Why then is there a feeling of the amateur about all his work? He conveys his sensitive, poetic phantasy in part successfully, but the test of a true work of art is its ability to carry complete conviction from the artist and imbue the audience with it, on whatever emotional and intellectual level it is undertaken. Collins offers a slight, gentle, melancholic and perhaps rather cynical dream, but he seems to require the aid of a series of worn clichés, which detract from the essential simplicity of his conception. I do not think that he has the technical ability to do without these crutches, and I think he should set himself the task of acquiring it. His sincerity cannot be taken in question nor his sensitivity—except perhaps his sense of colour which is not yet sufficiently developed. Katherine Church, on the other hand, is very professional and uses watercolour with skill and taste, but she does not possess the quality of vision which makes even an unsuccessful picture an individual experience. Collins, to some extent, does MICHAEL AYRTON.
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