ART TREASURES

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 20287, 12 April 1938, Page 4

ART TREASURES

EXHIBITION IN PARIS MASTERPIECES FROM BRITAIN KING AND QUEEN INTERESTED The King and Queen Mary are lending some of their treasures for the exhibition of British art in Paris which is to be opened by President Lebrun in the Louvre. There will be 150 masterpieces from Britain—many of them never having been exhibited outside the country before. These pictures—they have been insured for a million pounds—were despatched from England in'sealed cases, the utmost precautions being taken for their safety. Some of the smaller pictures were taken by ’plane, the first time, it is believed, that such a course has been taken with loan examples of great art. The exhibition, which was originally due to close at the end of May, will be kept open until the end of June, so that the pictures will still be on view during the State visit of the King and Queen to Paris. It is as a result of recent legislation that so many of Great Britain’s art treasures have been allowed to leave the country. Some are on public view for the first time, as they come from private collections. There is an especially fine display of Constable, Gainsborough, Turner, Hogarth and Bonington. REPRESENTATIVE IDEA.

Sir Kenneth Clark, Director, of the National Gallery, stated: “We have tried to give the French a representative idea of British art, and to get rid of the idea that English painting consists largely of women with large hats. It is a curious fact that the National Gallery receives about five offers a day from abroad for the sale of what are said to be English paintings, and they are almost invariably of women with large hats. We have allowed only one large hat into the exhibition, and that is a very attractive one. The pictures show how much the question of climate affects the English. While artists abroad were painting in restricted, classical style, English painters were studying the effects of atmosphere at first-hand."

Among the pictures are Gainsborough’s remarkable painting of Sir Benjamin Truman, Lawrence’s “Archduke” lent by the King, and a number of Reynold’s which are in private collections. Among the pictures by Turner are “The Rock Bay” and “The Snow-storm in a Steamboat” which he painted after experiencing a heavy storm during which he was tied to the mast. Other pictures lent by the King are “Kitty Fisher,” "Windsor Castle from the Back Fields at Eton,” “French Review” and water colours by Rowlandson. Queen Mary is lending A. Plimer’s miniature of the Duke of Sussex, and other loans to the miniature section include three examples from the collection of the Queen of Holland.