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London's pleasure dome

Neil MacGregor believes the National Gallery offers everybody an opportunity to take themselves and their experience seriously

AEnglish fiction has been telling us for over 100 years, very strange things hap- pen in the National Gallery. Henry James and Ronald Firbank, Iris Murdoch, Anita Brookner and Alain de Botton all have their characters, at more or less climactic moments, come to Trafalgar Square to find emotional or physical refuge and to carry the plot forward. But to the catalogue of well-known fictional events and encounters set in the Gallery should be added a real one, no less striking, played out in 1884 in front of Velazquez's 'Christ after the Flag- ellation' and recorded in a letter written by Lord Napier and Ettrick now kept in the Nottinghamshire Archives Office. Early in October of that year Napier, a 65 year-old diplomat, had brought his wife to the National Gallery to see a painting by Velazquez, recently presented by his friend and colleague, John Savile Lumley. The picture, which now hangs in Gallery 29, has only three figures, all roughly life- size, and is a rare example in British collections of austere Counter-Reforma- tion Catholic piety: the soul, led by its guardian angel, witnesses the suffering of Christ which has been made necessary by human sinfulness. It was widely admired in the mid-19th century — not least by Land- seer and the Prince Consort — and when Lumley gave it to the Gallery in 1883, he pointed out that he had been advised by Paris connoisseurs that the work 'would realise a very large sum, and would proba- bly be bought by the Louvre or by a Roth- schild.' And he went on to say, 'it is precisely the fact of its being such a rare and, I believe, unique work of the master which induces me to offer it to the nation'.

In a letter to his friend of 14 October 1884, Napier reported on the nation's response.

We were a couple of days in London on our way here, and I took my wife to see the pic- ture. She has no great knowledge of Art, but a general capacity for appreciating what is beautiful, and a great deal of sensibility. ..

Christ after the Flagellation contemplated by the Christian Soul by Velazquez

The more she looked the more she loved, and was completely penetrated by the merit of the work in a quarter of an hour.

`When we went to the picture there was an old woman of the better lower class looking at it who said to Lady Napier spontaneously with a very moving expression 'Look at his poor hands — they are strangled' and then `that is his child.' She did not understand it was Jesus. She apparently thought it was some helpless innocent martyr (or perhaps even malefactor) and that his child was being brought out to him to take leave of him or soothe his sufferings. I observed that when we looked fixedly at the picture a number of the humbler sort of people flocked to it and seemed to survey it with deep interest but probably they had no conception of the real intent of the artist or of the mystic meaning.

It is a strange encounter. In high Victori- an London, a poor woman is so moved by this picture, which she does not have the education fully to understand, that she accosts a peeress on equal terms, and shares her reactions with her. Velazquez's elegiac study of suffering and pity speaks across her ignorance and emboldens her to take the initiative, to assert her common humanity with the City's elite. And the inci- dent is reported by Lord Napier with evi- dent delight, as something that will give pleasure to the man who had presented the picture to the Gallery.

That 1884 snapshot tells us a lot about the commitment of the Victorians both to looking at paintings (Lady Napier needed only a quarter of an hour to grasp the qual- ities of the Velazquez) and to allowing the widest possible access ("the humbler sort of people flocked'). And de haut en bas though the tone may now seem, it nonethe- less sums up and vindicates the very pur- pose of having a National Gallery at all. Of course, among those who argued in favour of a Gallery some had hoped that it would lead to a radical improvement in British painting, and that a great national school would blossom as a result. Others, like the Prince Consort, earnestly believed that it would foster a serious historical study of the different European schools of painting. But Peel spoke for the majority when he stated that the aim was above all to provide the pleasure of pictures for the working population, and that he believed the result would be not so much an artistic or histori- cal gain, as a social one — 'cementing the bonds of union between the richer and the poorer orders of the state'.

That belief, at least partially justified by Napier's letter, informed all the 19th-cen- tury parliamentary debates about the pur- pose and place of the Gallery. The National Gallery was to be in effect the pri- vate collection of every citizen, and not (like most Continental galleries) the assem- bled trophies of the State generously put on show. And if it was to be regularly enjoyed by the public that owned it, Parlia- ment concluded that it had to be 'in the very gangway of London', to be open to all conditions of men and, even when the air in the city centre had become dangerously polluted, to stay in Trafalgar Square.

The result has been a relation between the public and its pictures which is uniquely Anglo-Saxon. Contact with great art has become a habitual experience for millions. Few, if any, European national collections have so high a proportion of their own citi- zens among their visitors, and none so many short-term drop-ins, as people come to look at a picture on the way home or in a spare half-hour. The only thing compara- ble is to be found in Washington D.C., where the National Gallery of Art was modelled consciously on its London sister, enshrining in its founding statute the National Gallery's system of Trustees, its idiosyncratic mix of public and private funding, its tradition of free admission and indeed its very name.

There is no reason to believe that Peel's ideals are less necessary or less attainable in Britain today than they were in the last century. The working population has just as much need of aesthetic refreshment now as then, the bonds of union in society just as much need of strengthening. The pictures will still, if given time, speak powerfully and unpredictably to everyone who takes the trouble to look at them.

What they say will depend on the experi- ences that different viewers bring, and on the level and quality not of their education, but their attention. Information may encourage us to linger, may sharpen our awareness of the artist's intentions, help us to see more, but neither knowledge nor indeed pleasure is ultimately the point. A great painting, like a great work of litera- ture, enlarges our imagining, changes the way we think about ourselves and about the world. And it will work this change if we give it time. If we look at it long and often enough, we will ultimately be able to confront it — in Iris Murdoch's words 'with a dignity which it has itself conferred.'

But I think that episode in 1884 has a topical relevance that goes far beyond the National Gallery. As the Department of National Heritage embarks on its examina- tion of museum policy and a Fundamental Expenditure Review, as the various bodies set up to distribute lottery money consider the first applications for funds, I hope they will revisit the 19th-century debates about the public and its pictures and draw from lImmm absolutely delicious!' them what seem to me their inescapable conclusions.

One of the greatest cultural achieve- ments of this country has been the use we make of our museums and galleries, an achievement widely envied in the rest of Europe. The contemplation of great works of art offers everybody, educated or not, a unique opportunity to take themselves and their experience seriously. And perhaps most important, great art is not the pre- serve of an elite, as the millions of people who use this country's art galleries every year clearly show. Rather, it abolishes the very notion of an elite: we are all equal in the face of Velazquez.

Lord Napier's letter shows that all these things had been understood, valued and put into practice, over 100 years ago. That is a national heritage which the Depart- ment ought to be defending and the new lottery funds enriching for the future.

Neil MacGregor, Director of the National Gallery, is presenting Painting the World, a BBC2 television series in four parts on Tues- days from 17 January.