BRITAIN’S ART TREASURES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 54, 27 November 1928, Page 8

BRITAIN’S ART TREASURES

REMARKABLE exhibition PRECAUTIONS AT GRAFTON GALLERIES A remarkable exhibition —the first ot the kind ever held in England, was organised by the British Antique Dealers’ Association at the Grafton Galleries in London. Its primary aim (says the “Observer”) was to arouse public interest in antiques, and to show what beautiful objects still remain in England in spite of the heavy drain of antiques to America. A great number of the exhibits have never been in the market, and the total value of the collection—if estimated in terms of cash —must be well over a million pounds. Special precautions were taken to guard the treasures, both from fire and thieves. A body of twenty detectives and commissionaires watched the galleries throughout each day the exhibition was open, and about half that number patrolled the rooms throughout each night. There was a fireman always on duty also. “In the past ten years fifty or sixty million pounds’ worth of British antiques have gone to America,” said Mr. T. Livingstone Baily, hon. secretary of the Antique Dealers’ Association, in an interview. “Two centuries ago English collectors used to tour the Continent, picking up gems of art. Now the tide has turned, and the Americans are doing the same in this Country. “It is most regrettable that so many works of art intimately associated with our history should have been lost to us. We do not mind the Americans having a certain number of our treasures, because we have so many, but things are going too far. In America antique furnishing and collecting is the fashion. It is time that a similar mode was established in this country. Many pictures have been purchased and presented to our national galleries, but the same attention is not paid to priceless old English silver and furniture. There are still plenty of people with money in this country—industrial magnates and others—and one of the chief objects of the exhibition is to arouse their interest in antiques, so that American activities may be checked.” A Reynolds Cabinet. » The exhibition, which numbered 1435 items in its elaborate catalogue, covered a wide range in artistic treasures, many of them some thousands of years old. The walls of the salons were hung with priceless tapestries, and ranged round the rooms were beautiful old porcelain, illuminated manuscripts, prints, and drawings, ancient clocks, famous vases, and armour dating back to the earliest periods of English, history. There were 200 pieces in the English furniture section. One of the oldest pieces of furniture was a curious oak lectern of the fourteenth century. Amongst other objects of historic Interest was a mahogany painter’s cabinet of drawers, with pallet, rules, and other fittings, believed to have belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds. Old English silver was well represented, the objects including a pair of Charles II ginger jars, which were smuggled out of Russia after the Revolution. There w’as also a sumptuous George I toilet set of 27 pieces, made for Czar Alexander I by the celebrated maker David Willaume. Cellini Treasures.

Surmounting a collection of little gold boxes with miniatures, one of which was sold for £6400 many years ago, was the Orpheus Cup of enamelled gold, said to be the work of Benevenuto Cellini. Another treasure on a miniature scale, also by Cellini, was a jewel, with two perfectly modelled figures of Cain and Abel of less than three-quarters of an inch. In the section of eighteenth-century French furniture were many pieces of exceptional interest. There was a Louis XV bureau-de-dame by Latz, in marqueterle. The lock escutcheon was designed as crossed feathers, an emblem used by Madame de Pompadour, to whom the bureau was given by the King. A 'Louis XVI tulip-wood cabinet of superb quality came from the collection of the late Alfred de Rothschild. The English and Continental porcelain and pottery section contained about 200 pieces, covering examples of nearly all the better-known factories, and included some beautiful specimens of Worcester and Chelsea. Special interest attached to the tapestries, of which there were many magnificent examples. There were two beautiful tapestries from the Gobelins factory, three from Beauvais, one of which, iu brilliant colours, representing the toilet of Psyche, came from the collection of Sir Anthony de Rothschild. One of special interest to English people was a tapestry of the time of Wililam 111, woven on the looms of John Vanderbanc, of Great Queen Street, Soho, and represented a village festival before the Swan Inn. In the mediaeval section there were some choice ivory carvings, bronzes, and enamels; notably a Limoges enamel triptych, by Nardon Penicaud. The most historical of the musical instruments exhibited was the superb viola, dated 1696, which in 1775 passed into the hands of the Spanish monarch, Carlos IV. The record of this instrument, from Stradivari’s own lips, as related by him to Desiderio Arisi, was given in the catalogue.