WEALTH OF ART

Taranaki Daily News, 6 October 1928, Page 16

WEALTH OF ART

UNIQUE LONDON EXHIBITION. NOTABLE TREASURES SHOWN. London, July 27. It seeded a great deal of courage to organise an exhibition of art treasures the aggregate value of which is estimated at £10,000,000. This, however, is what the Daily Telegraph has done at Olympia. The pictures alone are insured for £1,000,000, and the postage stamps are appraised at £250,000. All phases of arts and crafts are represented, including objects produced some centuries before the Christian era and others made but yesterday. Not only have all the principal antique dealers arranged their stalls, but private owners have very generously lent treasures that are irreplacable. Here then, the public are able to see under one roof pictures and other precious possessions which are at ordinary times seen by the privileged few. The promoters of the exhibition have in view the developing of a greater appreciation of the beautiful work of craftsmen of long ago; providing the public with an opportunity of seeing some of the unique works of art which are in private houses and have never been exhibited before; and adding to the prestige of London as the art centre of the world. An idea of the scope of the exhibition may be gathered from the fact that the catalogue is a quarto volume of 358 pages. Among the thousands of striking exhibits there is a. bust in pure gold excavated recently in Humdan, Persia’s Treasure City; a piano on which Beethoven often played; a Michael Angelo relief in marble, a model for the work in St. Peter’s, Rome, which made his repuation; an old envelope with the original stamps on it, valued at £20,000; and a Sheraton satinwood cabinet bookcase which belonged to Lord Nelson’s Lady Hamilton. PICTURES BY OLD MASTERS. Among the loan collection of pictures is the Wilton Diptych, “Richard H. before the Virgin.” This beautiful work, which dates from 1388, and has been in the home of the Earls of Pembroke since the reign of James 11., is believed by some authorities to be the earliest known example of English painting. Others believe it to be of Rhenish origin. An excellent “Portrait of a Lady,” by Holbein, not hitherto exhibited, tomes from the Earl of Lonsdale, who thinks that it represents a member of the Lowther family. Sir Joseph Duveen lends the “Cowper Madonna,” . by Raphael, a “Portrait of Guilio de Medici/’ also by Raphael, “A Savant with the Bust of Homar,” by Rembrandt, and “Pinkie,” by Sir T. Lawrence. Mrs. Gutekunst contributes Titian’s “Portrait of Doge Andrae Gritti,” which, when Ruskin owned it, was brought by him to Court in the trial, “Whistler v. Ruskin,” as an example of great painting. Lord Dewar show’s the splendid “Macnab,” * by Raeburn, Sir William Berry Vandyck's “The Abbe Scaglia,” Mr. James Harvey Crome’s “Willow Tree,” Mr. P. M. Turner Cotman’s “Silver Birches,” and the Earl of Kilmorey a “Portrait of Jack Needham, Earl of Kilmorey,” by Gainsborough. THE PERIOD ROOMS. The period rooms, arranged under the direction of Sir Charles Alloin, stand out as a distinctive feature of the exhibition. Attractive in themselves, they are faced by lovely old world gardens. Each room contains contemporary furniture no detail in the general conception of presenting a faithful representation of the particular epoch having been lost from view. There are seven of these graceful, structures —the Henry VIII., Linefold Room, the Gothic, Elizabethan, Charles 11., Janies 1., Jacobean, and Georgian Rooms. The actual chimney-piece ot the Gothie Room once graced a French chateau; the benches and the heavy elm tables once did duty in a mediaeval noble’s banqueting hall. The Elizabetan oak room came from a Tudor house at Ipswich —and those who knew the threat of the Spanish Armada slent in its beautiful four-poster bed. The exquisite porcelain and lacquered furniture of the Stuart room once delighted a subject of the “Merry Monarch”; the Jacobean room, shown just as it stood at Yarmouth, harboured men who drank to “the King over the water.” And in the Georgian room, with its delicate chairs, its elaborately carved woodwork, and its marble-faced mantelpiece, a Duchess once moved when a woman’s hair added two feet to her stature. Among the relics are a model in bone of the. Halsewell, a double-banked frigate of the East India Company, built in 1778 and wrecked in 1786; a model in bone of the Victory; a score of Nelson relics; a medal struck in Paris by Napoleon to celebrate his anticipated occupation of England; and a survey of the Thames on vellum, showing Queen Elizabeth’s route from Greenwich Palace to Tilbury camp, made by Robert Adams in 1588. Very interesting are the old musical instruments—a clavichord of 1783; a Venetian virginal of 1581; a harpsichord of 1767; a square pianoforte of 1780; a grand pianoforte of 1800; a portatif organ of 1644; a pipe organ of 1751; a church barrell organ used in churches a hundred years ago when an organist could not be obtained; and a hurdy-gurdy made about 1740. Lovers of ancient books, of glassware of pewter ware, of silver —all may make fanciful excursions to distant lands and indulge in visions of a craftsmanship that is gone and of arts that baffle the modern in their subtlety. The Queen was one of the first arrivals at the exhibition .and Princess Marie Louise arrived later to perform the opening ceremony. RISING LEVEL OF EDUCATION. At a luncheon on the opening day Lord Burnham said that such a magnificent display, not of one, but of almost all the arte, had been brought together in happy unison, and the combination was due to the generosity of those who still possessed many of the world’s treasure houses, and to the enterprise of the men of business who dealt with these things. It must be attributed also, he thought, partly to the rising level of popular education, which mat’.e all classes of the community much mere’ anxious to see for themselves the illustration of the world’s beauty, and to let their children know something of it, too. Somebody had said, “It is only the ignorant who really enjoy art. because the learned know too much about it.” (Laughter). He did not believe that , the learned got the most sheer enjoyment ' out of art, and perhaps it was well to

recollect that all the arts had their usefulness to every man, whatever his calling. Sir Martin Conway said that the exhibition was one of the most remarkable that had ever been brought together in this country, and he hoped it would be only the first of a series. Everybody was too much inclined to think that when one spoke about art one meant pictures. This exhibition showed that all schools and crafts were capable of producing delightful work, and would enable the visitor to familiarise himself with many varieties of art of which previously he had little knowledge.