Where's the king?
Andrew Lambirth finds a bit of a gap in a Holbein exhibition in The Hague
Exhibitions are strange things. We might assume they are put on for our pleasure and enlightenment — and so they should be — but actually they are often staged to further someone else's career. and I don't mean the artist. The idea for an exhibition is generally decided before the curator even knows which loans will really be available out of a dreamy wish-list. So a theme is chosen, and the pictures (one hopes) will fit it. I have some small experience of curating shows, and appreciate how difficult it is to achieve the key loans. But I've just been over to The Hague, and the Mauritshuis has managed to mount an exhibition, Hans Holbein the Younger: Painter at the Court of Henry VIII (until 16 November), and amazingly there isn't a single image of the king in question to be seen.
The handsome, if over-designed, catalogue does illustrate Happy Henry in all his glory — a remarkably concentrated head, shoulders and knuckles portrait of the great monarch, now in the possession of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection. (One wonders why it was ever permitted to leave England. A swift answer might well be: lack of interest and greed.) Presumably, that august museum refused to lend it. Well, these things happen. But to have no other image of H8 when there are copies and 'school of pictures dotted around the world ... I call it careless. And there are other substantial lacunae. If you want to see good Holbeins, you need go no further than the National Gallery in London. There they still are: 'The Ambassadors', for example, with its trademark sideways skull — a supreme example of anamorphosis if you ever saw one — and the full-length portrait of Christina of Denmark, a superb and lasting evocation of a lovely young woman. These, sadly, were not loaned to The Hague's supposedly flagship show.
Who cares, if it's still a good exhibition? Well, I think the paying public should care. 'Court Painter to Henry VIII' is a bit of a mockery without the iconic presence of its titular Renaissance power-monger. I dare say the two paintings mentioned above are too large, too valuable and too fragile to travel. The National Gallery's 'Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling', which has been lent, is a small painting, however beautiful. But this brings me round to my original point — what good are exhibitions of this kind? Presumably, we are being given the chance to acknowl edge the genius of a particular artist, which is fair enough in Holbein's case. But the case is inevitably dimmed when a number of essential pictures will not be lent. A painting has yet to be the target of an act of terrorism, but fewer and fewer owners are understandably prepared to take the risk.
One of the Mauritshuis's own Holbeins, the portrait of Robert Cheseman, has been specially cleaned for this show, and seems to have come up sparklingly well, but is this international news? It's only a picture of some old buster with a gyrfalcon on his fist. And it was a painting which William III of England deemed of so little value that he could spare it from the royal collection (in which so many choice Holbeins still thankfully reside) and transport it to the Netherlands to decorate his hunting lodge. Another painting of a nobleman with a hawk, an even less significant work, accompanied it. (Presumably the hawks made the pictures deeply appropriate to a hunting lodge.) In 1816 both were given to the Dutch state, and sensibly no one bothered to contest the issue. Of such things are exhibitions made.
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543) was the second son of a talented portrait painter who worked mostly in silverpoint. Although born in Augsburg, it was in Basel that he first made his name as a portraitist and illustrator. He travelled in Europe and made a reasonable living, but decided in 1526 to venture to England (how long have London's streets been mythically paved with gold?) to make his fortune. He was lucky to obtain the patronage of Sir Thomas More, the great humanist and friend of Erasmus (a previous Holbein patron), who was at the time Lord Chancellor. Holbein's superb coloured chalk drawing of him has been graciously loaned to the exhibition (along with a dozen or so other portrait drawings and three paintings) by HM Queen Elizabeth II, and it must be said that, without this central core, this smallish exhibition would have been a flimsy thing indeed. It focuses on the period from 1532 onwards. when Holbein came back to England to settle here permanently. His earlier visit had lasted only two years, but it had left an impression. By 1532, however, things had changed. More had resigned as chancellor, and was to be executed for treason three years later. Holbein, the typical artist opportunist, was on the lookout for a new patron, and settled on More's successor, Thomas Cromwell. He also painted the German merchants of the London branch of the Hanseatic League (the Steelyard). He became a success. By 1536 he was established as court painter, and the long series of exquisitely drawn portraits (paintings as well as drawings) for which he is celebrated was thoroughly established.
Holbein pioneered the naturalistic portrait, the sitter depicted in everyday surroundings engaged in familiar activities, a sort of keepsake snapshot for fond friends far from home. Indeed different versions of a portrait would often be made — there are five of Erasmus — and dispatched abroad. Although to us they may look iconic, not to say stylised, they were immensely effective and very popular. Holbein's style suggests an artist long on technique and short on pleasure, but then he had to give his patrons what they wanted. The drawings — particularly those in which he has used ink — show some of the freedom and fluidity of mark of which he was capable. Particularly fine is the one of an unknown man dated to 1532/4, from the Queen's collection.
Holbein was indisputably a master of stuff: he could paint fabric along with the best of them. But was his portraiture psychologically penetrating? Well, John Godsalve looks sufficiently shifty, and he became Comptroller of the Royal Mint. Henry VIII liked Holbein's rather flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves enough to want to marry her largely on the strength of it. Having repented at leisure, he decided he couldn't stand 'this Flemish mare', and had the marriage annulled on the grounds of non-consummation. Though it was Cromwell who had arranged the marriage, and who fell from grace because of it, it's difficult to imagine Holbein being entirely immune from disapproval. Yet he lived on, painting courtiers if not royalty, and turning out some very fine portraits indeed, such as the wonderfully sombre likeness of John Chambers.
An enjoyable exhibition, but not a great one, and probably not worth travelling to see. The Mauritshuis, on the other hand, deserves to be seen, with its trio of Vermeers, a room of Rembrandts and a gorgeous goldfinch by Fabritius. Perhaps the day of these kinds of monograph exhibitions is over, and we should be encouraged instead to visit a city and study its permanent collections, and learn why a particular picture has come to be in a particular place. Now that might be really useful.
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