Art
Behind Leonardo
By HUGH GRAHAM
WHEN the President and Council of the Royal Academy decided to send their Leonardo cartoon for auction at Sothe- by's, they can scarcely have guessed how many issues, outcry. They—and Sotheby's too—must have known that every effort would be made to prevent its export. As the Treasury cannot legally ban the export of any work of art with- out actually purchasing it for whatever sum is being offered from abroad, the hope of effective government action is very small. But by focusing public interest on the cartoon, there is some chance of forcing the Treasury to act generously. It is not generally known that when Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington was sent privately on approval to the late Emil Btlhrle of Zurich (who declined it), the Treasury granted an export licence with the declared selling price of around £25,000. When, only a few years later, it came up for public auction and was made a patriotic issue, the National Gallery did not consider it .too expensive at £140,000.
What Sir Charles Wheeler and his fellow- Academicians cannot have foreseen was that by offering for sale a supreme masterpiece widely, it incorrectly, regarded as national property, they would bring the Academy's role in artistic affairs under keen critical scrutiny and raise all the problems implicit in the private ownership of great works of art. What is clear is that the RA has every right to sell its Leonardo. Some- times, when museums get rid of 'unwanted' items, they are clearly acting against the inten- tions of the donors from whom they received them (a particularly scandalous case was the sale not so long ago by the Museum of Philadelphia of a great Rembrandt still life merely because a restorer had expressed doubts about its genuineness; the family which had previously owned it was not consulted, nor were any recognised authorities on Rembrandt). But who- ever gave the cartoon to the Royal Academy— it was probably Sir Joshua Reynolds—cannot have attached vast importance to the gift. There is no mention of it in contemporary journals or Academy archives, and it was originally hung high on the wall in a room full of plaster casts. That time has revealed it to be the greatest Leonardo in Great Britain has no bearing on the case. A minor asset has turned into a major one. If the Academy is hard up, there is every argu- ment for, and none that I can see against, its turning the Leonardo into capital.
Its need to do so, however, does arise from a situation which is as hard on the general , public as on the Academy itself. Every year the RA has to find large sums of money for com- mitments and obligations dating back to a period when it was indisputably the centre of all artistic activity in England. It administers more than twenty charities, runs a free art school, and charges no commissions on sales from its annual summer exhibition. To meet these commitments, the Academy has always depended upOn the revenue from its winter exhibitions, and since the war, from occasional smaller exhibitions in its Diploma Gallery. With the rise in the value of works of art, insurance on these exhibitions has become enormously expensive, and the profit from them insufficient to cover more than a fraction of the Academy's annual expenditure. Apparently it cannot dispose of its premises in Burlington House, on which it must pay enormously high rates. Even if it could do so, it would mean relinquishing the only galleries in London which in scale and location are suitable for great international exhibitions, and so depriving itself of a good if dwindling part of its income. It is true that both the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery also welcome loan exhibitions, but they can only do so by emptying some of their own rooms and tem- porarily removing from display pictures which should be permanently accessible; the Biffirle pictures at the National Gallery, for instance, ousted all the nation's Piero della Francescas and Raphaels. Whether the Academy, a private body with marked loyalties and prejudices, is really the most suitable sponsor 'of great international exhibitions is open to doubt. In the past it has usually served us well, but there have been notable occasions when the enthusiasms and antipathies of Presidents have shown themselves all too clearly.
What the Leonardo fracas proves is this: the Royal Academy, through no fault of its own, has become an anachronism. Its most valuable function, that of housing major exhibitions, is now the duty of the Government. Of all the great European capitals, only London is without a permanent exhibition gallery. That hitherto no thought has been given to building one is merely further evidence of the Government's meanness in all matters relating to the arts; a meanness which the present outcry over the Leonardo may help to remedy, and must do, if this country is not soon to be dispossessed one by one of every treasure still in private hands.
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