CHANTREY BEQUEST

Evening Star, Issue 22798, 5 November 1937, Page 12

CHANTREY BEQUEST

WMK FOR SIXTY YEARS HELP FOR BRITISH ART The close of the Royal Academy summer exiiibition marks the completion of (it) years’ activities under the Chantrey .bequest, which has been a generous contributor to the national collection, of modern paintings and sculpture, says a writer in the ‘ Daily Te.egraph.’ In tnoso 60 years the bequest made to the Royal Academy by Sir Francis (Jhantrey, R.A., has enabled more than 340 worKs of art to be acquired at a cost exceeding £130,000. No other individual has done so much to encourage modern British art. The acquisitions may not always have been the best available. Indeed, some of them have provoked much controversy, and the administration of the fund was inquired into a generation ago by a Select Committee of the House of Lords, There certainly was no doubt in the mind of Sir Francis Clxautrey as to the object and scope of his bequest, in his will he stated that it was to purchase works “ entirely executed within the shores of Great Britain, of the highest merit obtainable, at prices that shall bo liberal,” but the president and council were to have full discretion as to whether they expended in every or any one year the revenue available. EARLY PRICES. In the early days large sums were spent on individual works. Thomas Brock’s bronze group, ‘ A Moment of Peril,’ cost £2,200, and the same price was given for Herkomer’s painting, ‘ The Chapel of the Charterhouse,' Orchardson’s ‘ Napoleon on Board H.M.S. Bellerophon,’ Vicat Cole’s ‘ The Port of London,’ Millais’s ‘ Speak, Speak!’ and Dicksee’s ‘The Two Crowns ’ were bought for £2,000 each, and this sum was also expended on Leighton s bronze group, ‘ An Athlete Struggling With a Python.’ One painting by Alma-Tadema, cost £1,750, Farquharson’s ‘ Birnam Wood ’ and Cadogan Cowper’s ‘ Lucrezia Borgia Reigns in the Vatican' £1,500 each, and pictures by Briton- Riviere, Calderon, Poynter, J. C._ Hook, G. F. Watts, and John Pettie cost from £I.OOO to £1,200 each. Only on half a dozen occasions in tho last 15 years has £I,OOO or more been expended on a single purchase. In 1922, when the counsels of the Tate Gallery had been brought into the work of selection, the most notable acquisition was that of 13 cartoons and 60 drawings made by Alfred Stevens for the decoration of Dorchester House. They cost £2,000. Since then J. J. Shannon’s portrait of Phil May, Ambrose M'Evoy’s portrait of his son Michael, and Sir John Lavery’s ‘ Chess Players ’ are among those that have reached the one thousand guinea mark. There certainly has been a more enlightened choice by the Chantrey Bequest selectors in recent years, and also an economy of expenditure in tho absence of works of art clearly marked out for purchase. REGENT ACQUISITIONS. Such pictures as Alfred Munnings’s ‘ Epsom Downs,’ Orpen’s portrait of Sir William M‘Cormick, and that of Somerset Maugham by Gerald Kelly, are recent acquisitions of •permanent value and interest. Of sculpture there has been Epstein’s bronze of Einstein, Sir Alfred Gilbert’s ‘ Paderewski ’ and his bronze figure of Eros, John Tweed s 1 Lord Clive,’ and William M'Miham • fine piece of statuary in stone, ‘ The Birth of Venus.’ The Chantrey Bequest purchases this season, though eight in number, have cost only £1,400.' In the early days of the administration of tho fund it was the common practice to spend from £4,000 to £5,000 a year; but, on the other hand, there have been five years out of tho 60 in which no purchases at all have been made. The average annual expenditure works out at £2,353.