HER MAJESTY AND ART

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 122, 19 November 1929, Page 13

HER MAJESTY AND ART

How the great knowledge of art posr sessed by the Queen enabled her to detect a mistake unnoticed by the famous experts of the <lay is told in the October number of the " Connoisseur.>;

Art dealers have frequently been surprised by the accuracy of Her Majesty's judgment, but those who know her intimately realise, that if she hatl not been a Queen she might have been known as one of the foremGst authorities on art of her age. Until quite recently a Gainsborough picture in the Lady L»ever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight has always been described as a portrait of Princess Augusta Sophia, second daughter of Geprge 111. It was sold as s?cb in the garland Peck collection, 1920, and entered as such in a recently issued illustrated catalogue of the Lady Lever Gallery. The Gainsborough picture was not a portrait of Princess Sophia, but of Anne Luttrel, Duchess of Cumberland sisterrin-law of George lIL Although hundreds o.f men and women have? seen the Gainsborough picture, including some of the greatest art authorities in the country it remained ror the Queen to detect the error. Apparently the Queen' saw' a copy of the catalogue, for she; communicated the fact that the description was an error, and informed the authorities that the portrait was one of ■ Anne Luttrel. The Queen has a wid. knowledge of 18th century portraiture, and perhaps she alone of all the artl-lovers in this country had the knowledge which enabled her to say at onpe that a mistak had been made. '