Art
Georgian glories
Evan Anthony
Looking around the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, from the balcony (inside the gallery), a colleague waved his arm, embracing all the eye could see, and exclaimed, "There's nothing to, write about here; just a lot of bloody masterpieces." I sympathised with his frustration, since it fills me with envy and admiration to read the words of other reviewers who can pick clean the bones of catalogue notes, extracting historical references and making bons mots of them that read as though the information has been personally stored away for years and has at last found occasion to come trippingly off the typewriter.
In a similar manner, the Queen's Gallery has paraphrased the times of George III, Collector and Patron so successfully that you are never as conscious of being in a gallery as you are of being in an especially lovely apartment where good taste reigns, sometimes even inspiring a flush of excitement. Here we have yet another example of impeccabilia, displayed in a way that only the Queen's Gallery can display "just a lot of bloody masterpieces."
What we are treated to in this exhibition is pntirely consistent with any imaginings we may have about a monarch who founded a (the) Royal Academy "to improve the state of the arts of the nation by example and instruction." Interested in science, architecture, painting, books, astronomy, music, George III and his Queen Charlotte were patrons of the arts in earnest. I par ticularly like John Gait's explanation of the King's penchant for Benjamin West as patronage that was "the more deserving of applause, as it was rather the result of principle than of personal predilection," West being capable of painting not only royal portraits, but neo-classically styled pictures celebrating the heroic virtues which the king revered. (I'm getting it all from the catalogue).
In addition to evidence of high principles, the king's addiction to astronomy and horology is sup ported by a fascinating collection
of clocks, mechanically and artistically rather special. If you haven't examined Zoffany's
'Tribuna of the Uffizi' at close range, here is your chance; a tour de force that it is impossible not to revere. The tone of the exhibition is of quiet intelligence; the Canalettos, the collection of miniatures, and the two Indian chairs given to Queen Charlotte, who appreciated oriental works of art, are among the exhibits that rightfully earn for George III the description "collector and patron."
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