A VALUABLE TITIAN

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 146, 21 June 1924, Page 16

A VALUABLE TITIAN

OLD MASTERS FOR AUSTRALIA.

Many connoisseurs (says the London correspondent of thb "Manchester Gazette") went to the National Gallery to see the picture "The Monk," by Titian, which has just buen acquired for the Melbourne Art Gallery. It was hung next to Titian's "Bacchus aaid Ariadne," the chief glory of our National Gallery. There is no Titian portrait of its particular type in tlje National, although a. bearded, middle-aged mail in dark clothes is a/favourite Titian subject. Tho portrait has the gravity and keenness and reserve .force that" were all indicated in the absurd but happy remark of Hazlitt's friend about Titian: "Isn't he an old mouser !"

The provenance of the picture has not yet been disclosed, but t,be fatt that it is hung for a time in this plate of high honour in the National Gallery show's that it is accepted by the experta. Writing not as an expert, one would incline to think that at spme time or other the face had been cleaned. A. lack of subtlety in certain passages, particularly in the relation of the flesh to the flat blackness of the dress, is noticeable. But even in the National Gallery few of the famous paintings are in 'pristine condition. Australia is to be congratulated on her Titian.

/[The Monk" is, I think, the first Titian to go to Australia. There are no great private collections of old masters there, as there are in America and to a Jess degree in Canada and South Africa. Australia, which is so careful to prptect the perceptions of its artists from paintings, from outside, even frqm paintings by Australian artists in England, that it levies a duty of 25 per cent, against them, also levies that duty against the pis masters, although Australia as yet has no old masters to protect, nor—to judge from the history of art elsewhere—is she likely to have them if. her young painters are not. to have every advantage of communing with the masters of their craft. Of course, pictures for the public collections go in free of duty, but "without the ordinary freedom for private collectors (whose collections nearly always gp in the end to the State). Australia, will be starved of a great civilising boon which Europe alone can give, and which other new ■countries welcome.