MASTERPIECES MONEY CANNOT BUY

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 264, 3 August 1929, Page 29

MASTERPIECES MONEY CANNOT BUY

INSIDE BUCKINGHAM PALACE

If the average man, proud of his country and its contents, were asked how we stand in the possession of first-rate paintings, he would reply, in all probability, that the best works have gone abroad (remarks P. G. Konody in the “Daily Mail”). The man in the street is nearly always right, but in that case he would be quite wrong. The galleries and museums which are open for his inspection are equal in the quality of their contents to any in the world, yet much of England’s real wealth in art treasures is hidden from his sight. Few people realise, for example, that the present-day value of one small room at Buckingham Palace is something like £1,900,000, The pictures in it are all Italian Primitives, and many of these, if lost, could not be replaced by anything approaching their quality and rarity. This part of the royal collections, which occupy extensive galleries in both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle owes its inclusion to the discrimination and foresight of the Prince Consort. He it was wjao, at a time when the general taste in art was distinctly on the downward grade, consistently bought, works, which, „ however unfashionable they might be, appeared to him to be examples of fine craftsmanship which played an important part in art history. Some idea of the rate of appreciation in monetary values of painted masterpieces may be gathered from the fact that the modern equivalent of the sum for which the whole of Charles I.’s great collection was sold by the Commonwealth Government is onlv about. £l,ooo,ooo—an impressive figure as it is, but one which would not buy but a part of the whole assembly of treasures.

Various monarchs have helped to form the royal collection, which is one of the finest, from both the aesthetic and financial points of view, in the whole world outside the important public galleries. It is known that Henry VIII. was sufficiently intrigued by paintings to form a collection of his own, and there is evidence that other monarchs, too, derived a great deal of pleasure from the efforts of famous artists, but it was Charles I. who, luckless in all else that he undertook, first gathered together a really imposing array of fine works. Even the Puritans, for all their vandalism and severity of outlook, appreciated the importance of keeping in the country some of the enormous wealth represented by these treasures. Accordingly many debts to prominent families up and down' the: land were paid in pictures. The noble examples of Van Dyck date from the time of Charles L, who also realised the future worth of Titian, Quintin, Massys, Joos van Cleve, Reymerswale, Rubens, Velazquez, Pencz, and others. The presence of Hoppner, Toffiany, Reynolds, Gainsborough, van der Heyden, Metsu, da Hooch, Cuyp, Rembrandt, Canaletto, and Vermeer is due to George HL who acted on the wise advice of Queen Caroline, and to George IV. throughout his unruly career as Prince of Wales, Regent, and King. Apart from the paintings by the greatest artists in history, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are the homes of many works whicb. take second rank only by comparison. Portraits, landscapes, historical and mythological pieces are there in profusion as the permanent heritage of our Kings.