The Whitechapel Gallery
SIR, It is pleasant that the Jubilee Exhibition of the Whitechapel Arf Gallery should be receiving the attention this great institution richly deserves, but I regret that your art critic should find room for a gibe at its early catalogues and say nothing of the astonishing vision of Canon Barnett in founding such a place so long ago and his remarkable choice of Charles Aitken to launch and nurse it.
It is widely recognised now that Aitken was a genius of a gallery-director with great originality of vision, and that at the Tate Gallery afterwards he laid down many of the lines which are followed successfully in the Tate's policy today. And Canon Barnett gave him unfailing support and the freest of hands.
As a close friend of Charlea Aitken fifty years ago, I saw for myself these astonishingly educative exhibitions of impressionist and pre- Raphaelite pictures and the choice old masters which somehow he con- trived to carry east of Aldgate Pump. By his daily toil he sowed the seeds of all the art and the love of art which flourishes in that region today. The pioneer work had been finely imagined and carried out.—
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