BRITISH ART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 65, 17 March 1934, Page 16

BRITISH ART.

800 YEARS. A WONDERFUL EXHIBITION. PRIVATE TREASURES SHOWN. (By NELLE M. SCANLAN.) ' LONDON, February 10. Let us take our Art seriously, even though there is a temptation to wander after comic sidelights. We must not be lured away, even when we creep 011 aching feet, growing cross-eyed from the acute concentration which ranges from catalogue to wall, and wonder if there is still much more left to see. For quite a period now, as soon as the New Year shows its face, and we nntangle ourselves from the paper festoons and streamers, and remove the paper hats that seem so indispensable from gaiety, we are sobered by the sight of so much serious art assembled for our pleasure and our profit. Intellectual profit, I should add. One year it is Dutch art, another year French art, then we have a look at the Persians or the Italian Old Musters. All this is a very worthy beginning, and a prop to our New Year resolutions. This year the Royal Academy collected trom the four corners of the earth, and the palaces of princes and people, a representative array of all that is best in British art from the year 1000. And that, you will agree, is going back a long time.

We, in our colonial fastnesses, have been made familiar with many of these treasures in youth, thanks to the butcher's almanac and the grocer's calendar. We know our Gainsborough and our Romney; any bright scene will drag from us: "So like a Turner!" And we can sneer with the best of the moderns at a Burne-Jones lady, with her languid air and slightly goitrous throat.

But to-day I have made acquaintance with them in the original, pictures I have never seen before, and will never see again, as they have been loaned from private collections and from family vaults. Many have hung from the same nail for several centuries. That's a thought to make you feel young again. Lovely Ladies. I saw a nice young man of -53 —I know he was 53, because I heard him telling an old man at my elbow it was his birthday, and he was 53 to-day—and he was that clean-run type, ruddy and slim, and he mentioned that an. embroid: ered Cope, one of the exquisite treasures of needlework displayed, had been lent by him, and had been in his family for 640 years. This ancient vestment of crimson velvet was • embroidered in a scene showing ' the Coronation of the Virgin, and the stiteliery was as fine as paint.

In gallery three I found pride of place had been given to Gainsborough's large painting of the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.). He was in the uniform of the Guards, leaning against his favourite Spanish horse. A tall, slim young man, I heard someone murmur that he looked very like Albert the Good. This was only one of the eight pictures of the Prince that Gainsborough had painted. It now belongs to one of the Rothschilds.

Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough seemed to share the lovely ladies between them at that period, and most of the picturesque beauties have been painted in gorgeous silks, many -with the large, decorative hats, still known as "Gainsborough," and usually pictured against a scenic background of lawns and trees, and distant hills. The Duchess of Devonshire is well known to you; you became quite intimate with her as you ticked off the days of the year beside the promise of service in chops and sausages with "promptness and civility." And the children of that period, poor mites, swaddled in silk and frills, pose on grassy mounds, or recline on logs that suggest a mossy dampness and a consequent cold in the head. But these artists of long ago believed ill heightening the effect of portraiture by combining it with landscape. Constable, of course, refrained from spoiling his lovely landscapes with any face, however exalted, and any duchess, however great. Romney! I often pass his house and studio here at.Hampstead, where Lady Hamilton, Nelson's inspiration and friend, was painted by this great artist. Raeburn, the great Scottish painter, is represented here, and William Hogarth has a dozen or more.

Andrew Geddes has been a little neglected until this exhibition, but the critics have been loud in his praise, and regret that so little of his work is shown. Of the three portraits of Sir Walter Scott they acclaim his to be the finest work.

Love of art increases with age, it would seem. Nice old gentlemen, a bit weak in the legs, whose activities at home are carefully restricted, and who are not allowed on the loose about town, for fear of getting run over, delight in a day at the Academy. Here they are quite safe, and with a nurse or niece or custodian of some sort, toddle around and look at the pictures. And there are settees they can sit on, but they won't. I heard one rejoicing in the resemblance of a gorgeous lady to his cousin Lucy, but from my hasty glance at him he did not share the family resemblance. I caught the tired eye of a nurse, trying to a lure a little old man of 90 through a doorway, but hfc knew she had dodged one room, and refused to go.

Pre-Raphaelite Colouring. Leaving- the sombre splendour of all that well-known art, one blinked at- the eudden ravishing colours of the PreKaphaelites. Sir John Millais had piled the gold on his "Autumn i/eaves." Ford Mad ox Brown had filled with a pattern of luscious colour the whole crowded canvas of "Work" till it looked like a mass of tropical fruit. Hohnan Hunt went to the Scriptures for much of his inspiration. His "Scapegoat," painted by him on the shores of the Dead Sea, was completed with robbers all round, and one hand on a gun ... so we arc told. But it is a wonderful goat.

Bunne-Jones gives us "Green Slimmer," and his usual ladies wlio became a fashionable type at that period. Watts, too, and William Blake have a number in this room. Here also is Frith's "Paddington Railway Station," but perhaps you remember him better by liis famous picture of "The Derby." The. railway station is in the same manner, packed with people, each individual a type. Turner keeps cropping up; there are about 50 examples of his work in . this exhibition, oils and water colours, Venetian and English,, misty valleys and sunset clouds. It is a painful admission, but I am still a heretic in regard to Turner, but, oh, how the ladies love him. I listened to their raptures today, and they merely follow the critics, so I know I'm quite wrong, but still unrepentant. I go my way.

Will Art Go Back? If I seem to hop light-heartedly through this mighty and varied collection of tlie greatest treasures of British art, I can only plead that there are ](J3l things in "the catalogue to see, and the, eye is bewildered by their wealth [ of colour, and the mind staggered by their collective worth. So 1 turn for a moment to look at some gold anil jewelled vessels from English cathedrals, and nearly a hundred pictures •and treasures of the goldsmith's art lent by the King from his palaces —a silver table from Windsor - Castle, a waistcoat embroidered by a Yorkshire girl for her fiance in 158S, but he was killed when hunting, and so they were never married, and the waistcoat was irever worn. I wish you could see the loving stitches she put into her work. There is a beadwork basket, and a Wedgwood plaque. Chairs, too, huge and high, covered in faded velvet, and leather gloves made in 1496, the gauntlets rich in gold and silver thread. Statues in alabaster, miniatures on ivory, tankards and loving cups, flagons and pilgrim bottles —bottles that hold a gallon or two—watches set with jewels, and one like a tulip. .-\n exhibition like this makes one realise how little to-day really matters; it is a phase, its art a passing whim. When you look at the pre-Kaphaelites, massed in tlieir gorgeous colour, a riot of llowers, and every flower answering to its name like a seedsman's catalogue and leaving nothing to chance, may we wonder when a new generation will arise and speak pityingly of the stark angularities of tlie post-war group? A new generation, to-day newborn, and cutting its teeth 011 hygienic toys, may bo the leaders in the revolt that wiil swing our future art back to tho soft splendours and rich device of the artists who have come down to us, and survived the changing tastes of many centuries. " I