The Lane Pictures
Asw verdict on the future of the Lane pictures (discussed by Brian Inglis on another page) should not be influenced by their artistic value or by their importance to English or Irish col- lections, but, because such considerations can hardly be excluded from the argument, they should be recognised. Lane was not a super- human collector. He bought trivial and ephemeral things, some of which appear among the thirty-nine pictures in question; their ulti- mate home will not be of much account. The masterpieces he acquired were not the shocking pictures of his generation but of a previous one; he bought fine impressionist pictures in a post- impressionist period and Professor Bodkin has recalled his lack of sympathy for the former's interest in Gauguin. But Lane did buy works of very great value, Corot's Palai.s des Papes, Renoir's Les Parapluies, Manet's Eva Gonzales, a splendid Daumier Don Quixote and excellent pictures by Courbet, Monet, Camille Pissarro, Degas, when our official taste was still afraid of such artists. French painting between Delacroix and CEzanne is now established as one of the great epochs in European art and is likely to maintain its pre-eminent public popu- larity for some time. A national collection weak in pictures of this period will not only be defi- cient but disappointing. Our acceptance of such works was not only belated—the majority of the Lane pictures were not hung when first received—but has come to depend almost entirely upon loans and bequests. Remove from the National Gallery and the Tate the Chester Beatty, the Courtauld and the Lane pictures (to mention only the most prominent) and there would not be much to show. If the Lane pictures are returned to Dublin, as I believe they should be, then the State will have to face these alter- natives. Either they must accept that we have in this respect missed the bus and hope that, as the years pass, the gifts and loans and bequests of generous and more enlightened individuals will fill the gaps. Or they must decide not to anticipate such beneficence and find the money to attempt replacement of the lost pictures. The search will not be easy and the purse will have to be long. BASIL TAYLOR
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