Bond Street attractions
David Wakefield
Several of London's leading art galleries have recently opened new exhibitions for the summer season. Though there are no sensational shows to rival some in the past, there are works of art of sufficient merit to attract even the most blast exhibi- tion goers. To some people the Old Masters, in which the Bond Street galleries traditionally specialise, may denote stuf- finess and a routine attachment to the art of the past. This image is by no means deserv- ed, however. Though dealers have naturally to cater for the collector's staple diet of good, well-painted Dutch landscapes, showy English portraits and familiar land- scapes, they are active in promoting new discoveries and in launching new fashions. They also play a vital part in the formation
of public taste, especially today when most private art cannot afford to remain private for very long and soon becomes public. Unlike the museums, which tend to see art as a continuous process and often display paintings in schools or categories, art galleries generally choose works of art for their individual appeal and for their purely pictorial qualities.
Agnew's exhibition of Master Paintings 1470-1820 (till 31 July) typifies the eclectic English approach to the art of the past. A 16th-century altarpiece, 'The Adoration of the Magi', by Adriaen Ysenbrandt is sup- ported by works by Veronese, Guardi, two attractive Italianate scenes by Cornelis Van Poelenburgh, a portrait by Van Dyck of a Genoese nobleman, a striking portrait by
Rubens of an intense, sombre-looking Augustinian monk of the Counter- Reformation period, a clear, tranquil seascape by Willem Van de Velde, a large spectacular still-life by Hondecoeter, followed by a selection of important Turner watercolours. Every visitor will respond dif- ferently, but the paintings which impressed me most were not the spectacular ones but those which clamour least for our attention, like the beautiful Flemish altarpiece by Ysenbrandt, closely inspired by a similar work by Gerard David in Brussels, with a gentle piety and clear articulation which makes it as easy to read as an open book. Pure colours of the rainbow range from strawberry pinks to deep crimson, and the materials of brocade and velvet are painted with meticulous care. Another, though more modest, painting of high quality is the Dutch shipping scene by Willem Van de Velde, a perennial favourite with English collectors, who specialised in calm seas and tall ships, using their masts and sails to create intricate linear patterns against the grey northern sky.
Finally, there is a group of Turner water- colours, views of Dunstanborough Castle, Wtirzburg, Lake Lucerne, the Spltigen Pass, Pallanza on Lake Maggiore, and ano- ther of Heidelberg (but possibly of Italy?). All are important in different respects, but the kind which have been most highly
prized ever since Ruskin devoted some of his finest critical pages to them in Modern Painters, the most quintessentially Turner, are the late works of the 1840s represented by the Splugen Pass, Pallanza and Lake Lucerne. Turner, as well as Ruskin his devotee, had an uncanny feeling for the mountainous region of Europe and the con- flicting aspects of its scenery — the Moun- tain Gloom and the Mountain Glory as they were christened by Ruskin. The Spltigen Pass conveys all the sinister claustrophobic power of the Alps, while the brilliant blue of Lake Lucerne suggests their radiant splendour, with mountains plunging sheer into the glassy surface of the lake.
The Leger Gallery shows a similar range of English and Dutch paintings, all careful- ly chosen and attractively hung. Outstan- ding among the English paintings is an ex- ceptionally fine portrait by Pompeo Batoni of an Irish nobleman on his Grand Tour, in a dark green coat trimmed with fur, holding a book in his left hand. In the same 18th- century grand tradition there are also two family portraits in pastel by Daniel Gard- ner, a common enough artist but one who rarely comes up to this standard. Perhaps the most interesting English painting, however, is the 'Blair Family in India' (1786), a recently discovered work by Zof- fany showing an English colonial family in India in the late 18th century, surrounded by typical furniture of the period and in- cluding paintings of Indian landscapes pain- ted for Colonel Blair some years earlier.
The Dutch paintings are also of high quality, beginning with a Wooded River Landscape by Salomon Van Ruysdael, dated 1644, with fishermen in boats and a village church on the right. Though often dull and rarely capable of the sublime feel- ing for nature of his nephew Jacob Van Ruysdael, Salomon occasionally creates a
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delicate and precise kind of poetry, as n this picture. Clearly indebted to Van Goya in his fleeting evanescent effects and lightness of touch, in place of the former's browns and ochres Ruysdael substitutes a clear palette of greys and smoky blue. The ships' masts and the church spire hover in the middle distance, lightly suspended bet- ween water, trees and sky. The Dutch in- terior is represented by an excellent familY portrait by Pieter Codde, showing a soberlY dressed pater familias presiding benignly over his wife and three children. As alvvaYs in this type of painting, the room is bright, tidy and spotlessly clean, with a few solid well-made pieces of furniture and a single picture on the wall. It is a cliché but nonetheless true to say that this sort of picture was painted of bourgeois, for bourgeois, and epitomises their way of life at the height of Dutch prosperity; but art- historians, who dislike nothing so much as the obvious explanation, will no doubt find deep emblematic significance in the apple one little girl is offering to her sister. The Heim Gallery is noted for its pioneering forays into less familiar ter- ritory, especially academic and history painting. This year they turn their attention to sculpture in Seven Centuries of Euro- pean Sculpture (9 June to 27 August). somewhat neglected and unpopular aryl) England, sculpture has never had a wide appeal partly on account of its natural austerity, partly because few of us live in the baroque palaces needed to house it- A brief glance at the range of exhibits in the Heim show quickly dispels any doubts as t0 the expressive potential of sculpture. This is clearly apparent from some outstanding works by French sculptors of the 17th, 18t11, and 19th centuries, from a terracotta model by Pierre Puget of Milo of Crotona (his masterpiece executed for Versailles, now the Louvre), to Rodin's Titan, sculpted in collaboration with his pupil Carrier' Belleuse. The affiliation between these two works separated by two centuries, and 1910 conveying human struggle, is patently clear. There are also several exceptionally fine portrait busts, including a ravishing ferriai,.! head by Lemoyne, a bust by Houdon of tll'A Abbe Berthelemy in old age all'antica, an a remarkable head of the 19th-century philosopher Auguste Comte by Etex. One, of the most interesting is a wax bust 0' Racine by the 18th-century sculptor Boizot, which miraculously survived only because the bronze for which it was intended was never cast. The result is a beautiful-I) modelled effigy, with a soft buttery texture, unique to wax. The same extraordinar)
fluency of which French sculpture is sometimes capable can also be seen in a single female figure by the late 19th-century sculptor Carrier-Belleuse. Lightly turning on her pedestal and gathering the folds of her drapery with her left hand, she distantly recalls certain figures from the great French Gothic cathedrals. More than any other work, perhaps, this figure illustrates the continuity of French sculpture.
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