ARTS
Leave it to the people
More should be done to ensure collections are left to the nation, writes Andrew Lambirth In a recent Spectator article about the collection of high art, low art and ephemera assembled over more than half a century by the Pop artist Peter Blake (Arts, 9 October), I suggested that in the fullness of time this unique omnium gatherum should be left to the nation. To my mind it should be kept together and preserved as a museum to the collecting spirit and the working methods of one of our key post- war artists. But who would bankroll such a worthy project? Would the artist himself have to provide the necessary funds? (Sounds a bit like vanity publishing.) If the state were bequeathed Blake's studio con- tents — of considerable value in them- selves — would it be too much to expect the running costs to be met by local or cen- tral government?
The popular portrait and landscape painter Graham Sutherland ran into prob- lems on just this issue. In 1976 he gave a sizeable and representative collection of his work to Picton Castle, near Haverfordwest in Wales, hoping that it would form a last- ing memorial to his achievement in the country that had so inspired him. But who was to pay for its upkeep? Sutherland soon found himself out of pocket and tried unsuccessfully in the last year of his life to move the museum to more suitable quar- ters. The collection remained at Picton, increasingly strapped for cash. Running costs escalated. Eventually the National Museum of Wales took over responsibility for it in 1989, but by 1995 it was threatened with closure. Its future remains uncertain.
What are we to make of this cautionary tale? Perhaps Sutherland's need to be remembered impaired his common sense. If you plan to set up a museum nowadays it has to have a solid and practicable founda- tion, and probably the subject of the muse- um is not its best instigator. You would expect a professional collector to be more tough-minded altogether, and recent events seem to bear this out. Take the example of Sir Denis Mahon (born 1910). This distinguished art historian has built up an unparalleled collection of 17th-century Italian paintings, which he reckons cost him around £50,000 to assemble and which is now worth £25 million. He has never intended to sell these pictures, but has always wanted to safeguard their future. Mahon offered to trade his collection for a government assurance that no charge would be made for museum access and no work of art sold from a museum's existing collection.
Last year he got his way. He will leave the bulk of his collection to the National Art Collections Fund which will lend the pictures to various English museums, as well as keeping a sharp, eye on their policy and procedures. In June this year it was announced that 28 Italian baroque master- pieces, including works by Guercino, Guido Reni and Domenichino, were to join the National Gallery on indefinite long-term loan. Mahon's behaviour can hardly be termed anything as crude as blackmail, yet the subtle arts of bargaining and diplomacy can here be seen to have achieved a desired result which will be a real benefit to the nation.
The NACF has an important role to play in the administration of collections and the allocation of loans. When in the 1980s the philanthropist Charles Kearley took an interest in the newly opened Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, it was through the NACF that he decided to act. Dean Walter Hussey, the greatest church patron of mod- ern British art, had already established Pal- lant House by promising to leave practically all his pictures to it if a gallery The Architects', 1981, by RB. Kitaj were started. As he so succinctly comment- ed, 'And that blackmail did it.'
Hussey's collection comprises work mostly by the artists he knew and commis- sioned — Moore, Sutherland, Piper and Ceri Richards, for example — and it is both complemented and extended by Charles Kearley's bequest. Kearley had col- lected the likes of Piper and Hitchens but also bought major works by European modernists such as Severini and Leger. A very definite character has been created by these bequests, and the substantial holdings of 20th-century art at Pallant House now look set to receive an even greater boost. An exhibition in the gallery (until 9 Jan- uary, then enlarged and extended from 21 January until 19 March) highlights the scheme.
Colin St John Wilson, best known as the architect of the British Library, has been collecting art for more than 50 years, and has gradually amassed an impressive group of museum-standard works by modern British artists. A selection of these is on show at Pallant House, together with the plans and models of a proposed extension to the gallery. A new wing is planned, designed by architects Long and Kentish in association with Wilson himself, which will enlarge the gallery to more than six times its present size, and enable the entirety of Pallant House's existing collections to be shown concurrently. It will also be the dis- play case for the Colin St John Wilson col- lections, which will find their permanent home here if the extension is built. All that is now needed is the money.
The good burghers of Chichester and its environs should not hesitate to dig deep into their pockets, for a Pallant House enlarged as planned would indeed be a jewel in the glittering tiara of the South East. Among the works on show at Chich- ester are a magisterial late Thames paint- ing by Michael Andrews, artwork by Peter Blake for the inner sleeve of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the world's best- selling album, and Richard Hamilton's relief work (with real car door) 'Swingeing London '67', which depicts Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser handcuffed after a drug bust. This last is particularly at home in Pallant House as the groovy pair were actu- ally arrested just outside Chichester all those years ago.
Further key paintings include Bomberg's 'Last Landscape', excellent things by Patrick Caulfield and Prunella Clough, an early Lucian Freud self-portrait and Sick- ert's large oil of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies in The Lady with a Lamp. Among the other artists are Auerbach, Coldstream and Hodgkin. R.B. Kitaj is represented by a
number of works including a superb dou- ble-portrait of Wilson and his wife, of 1981, entitled 'The Architects', The collections are particularly strong on drawings — there was a trailer exhibition of Wilson's drawing hoard at Pallant House in 1997 — and include several preliminary studies for fin- ished works. Any museum would be proud to add this significant group to its perma- nent collection.
Both Hussey and Kearley bought and sold to the end of their collecting lives, and Colin St John Wilson reminisces in the ele- gant catalogue of his collection (The Art of Drawing and Painting, £9.95) about the compulsion to trade-in pictures for better things. Indeed, what good collection is stat- ic? Charles Saatchi is probably the single most important collector in Britain today, exercising a profound (though not neces- sarily always benign) effect over our younger artists. But he appears to vary his collecting with dealing: by buying in liulk (which many collectors would claim vitiates the particular pleasure of acquisition) and by off-loading in bulk those artists he tires of. This would seem to be taking the responsibility of collecting rather too light- ly. It would seem, in fact, to be more about market forces than art. There is doubtless some aspect of power-play in all collecting, but the truly gracious gift of work to the nation — such as Janet de Botton's recent benefaction to the Tate of a quarter of her collection, including Warhols, worth more than £2 million, or indeed Colin St John Wilson's handsome offer — reaffirms that there are still those around who want to share culture, not attempt to direct it.
Previous page
