Special Issue Devoted to Italian Painting of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries || London and...

London and BirminghamAuthor(s): Keith RobertsSource: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 119, No. 888, Special Issue Devoted to Italian Painting ofthe Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Mar., 1977), pp. 199-200+203-204+207-210+213-214Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/878752 .

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CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Minneapolis, Institute of Arts. Charles Biederman. A Retrospective. Catalogue (245 items) still available.

Naples, Palazzo Reale. Frank Lloyd Wright: Disegni 1887-1959. Now over; well-illustrated catalogue (a good deal of colour), available from Centro Di.

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. The special double Bulletin (com- bining Summer and Autumn issues, 1976) consists of a very well illustrated catalogue of a recent Andrew Wyeth exhibition (129 items).

New York, The Corning Museum of Glass. The Journal of Glass Studies, Volume XVIII (I976), is a special Bicentennial Issue in honour of Helen McKearnin and focuses on John Fred- erick Amelung, the most distinguished eighteenth-century glassmaker in Am- erica. 279 pp. + ills. ($15). Oberlin (College), Allen Memorial Art Museum. Just published: Catalogue of Drawings and Watercolors, by Wolfgang Stechow. ix + 295 PP- + 303 ills. De- tailed catalogue of 370 items, ranging from Tiepolo to Klimt, Jan Asselijn to Claes Oldenburg.

Paris, Grand Palais. Courbet centenary exhibition: about 120 paintings plus a few drawings. Early October-January 1978. A slightly reduced version (minus, for example, the Atelier and the Burial at Ornans) will be shown at the Hayward Gallery early in 1978.

Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen. Friedrich Meckseper; retrospective, until 6th March.

Saint-Etienne, Musec

d'Art et d'In- dustrie. Pierre Soulages: exhibition of 53 paintings, dating back to 1946-47. Now over; illustrated catalogue.

Santa Barbara, Museum of Art. Orien- tal Lacquer: exhibition organized by F. Bailey Vanderhoef, Jr. Illustrated catalogue of sixty-six items.

Wolverhampton, Central Art Gallery. 'Pictures from 18th century Venice': travelling loan show from the National Gallery (see issue for December 1976, p.876). Until I3th March.

Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art. 'I7th century Dutch Drawings and Prints from American Collections'. Until

13th March.

London and Birmingham Madame Moitessier Seated is the seventh,

and one of the best, of the National Gallery's 'Painting in Focus' exhibitions (until 20th March). The sheer amount of preparatory and comparative material (drawings, fashion plates, props, even photographs of a second and related Ingres portrait of the same lady) makes it more satisfying than the show devoted to The Rokeby Venus, an isolated and unique image that comparisons somehow failed greatly to illuminate. The 'Ingres' has been prepared by Michael Wilson, who is also responsible for the illustrated pamphlet and excellent accompanying essay. This covers almost all the salient

points: the role of the preparatory drawings; the relationship with the interim standing portrait in Washington; and the derivation of the composition from the Naples wall-painting (a much copied work this - Colnaghi's had a drawing by J. E. Delaunay (summer, 1857) in the spring of 1975, and Degas drew parts of it in the summer of 1856 [Reff's Notebook 7]. The discussion of Baudelaire, and his views on Ingres, is particularly good.

The only point that Mr Wilson might have made more of is the Renaissance influence. After seeing Madame Moitessier Seated in progress in Ingres's studio in 1852, Auguste Galimard wrote of its nobility of pose and execution, comparable in simplicity, grandeur and majesty to the works of Leonardo and Raphael. (I quote, incidentally, from the very full entry on the Washington picture in the latest volume of the Kress Catalogue, which was not yet available to Mr Wilson.) A photo- graph of Bronzino's Eleonora of Toledo (Uffizi) is included but while this is apt, especially in view of Madame Moitessier's richness of costume, the Louvre's Giovanna of Aragon (no doubt still regarded as an autograph Raphael in the I840's) is a closer point of departure.

Then there is the whole question of the influence of the Mona Lisa, which was already a well-known masterpiece by the middle of the century. In the Splendeurs et Misares des Courtisanes (the relevant, first half was completed in I843), Balzac wrote of his heroine: 'It is not certain that Titian's mistress, or the Mona Lisa of Leonardo da Vinci, or Raphael's Forna- rina was as beautiful as the sublime Esther.' One of the preparatory sketches for the pose of the Washington portrait (Fig.62) is obviously based on the Leon- ardo; the gap between the first and second fingers argues in favour of the Mona Lisa rather than Raphael's formally similar Maddalena Doni, of which Ingres had made a painted copy of the hands (Wildenstein, No. 151). Leonardo's treatment of the Mona Lisa's expression obviously influ- enced the treatment of Madame Moites- sier's face in the London canvas. The greater use of shadow round the eyes and the slight suggestion of a smile at the corners of the mouth are what distinguish it from the Washington image; and it is surely this new, Leonardesque element that accounts both for the hypnotic spell of the later portrait and also for its tinge of smugness, from which Leonardo, in the Mona Lisa, was saved by his miraculously delicate technique (see Fig.59).

There is even something smug about the pose. The way the body is set back, and the head kept absolutely vertical, robs the image of the vitality Ingres had usually been at pains to maintain in his subtly classicizing portraits. Flandrin's 1846 Vicomtesse de Coislin (Fig.58) may seem meagre by comparison; but the manner in which the head is slightly tilted to the left, and the body inclined forwards, imparts just that touch of liveliness that Madame

Moitessier Seated needs. Perhaps, in the end, Ingres was simply too old to maintain the delicate but essential equilibrium between fact and idealization. The National Gal- lery picture is never quite convincing as a portrait of a real person; and is not the realistic virtuosity of the details really a kind of visual alibi, to keep us occupied while the painter stealthily turns his patient sitter back into his ideal of femi- nine beauty? Did Ingres realize that Madame's profile, with its long nose and weak chin, still echoed his own Baigneuse of 1807 (Fig.6o)?

The Jubilee Exhibition at The Queen's Gallery (until the end of the year) is an anthology of paintings, drawings (modern) and miniatures, quite literally from Duccio to Graham Sutherland, illustrating the taste of the monarchy since Henry VIII. As a coherent show it does not even begin to work, the styles are too disparate, and there is not enough material relating to any one sovereign or period to make the points with sufficient strength. As an anthology of fine works of art, however, there is much to be said for it.

Many pictures have been specially cleaned: among them Dosso Dossi's acridly Giorgionesque Virgin and Child with SS. Anne, Peter & Paul; Rubens's 1623 Self-Portrait, which has at last come alive; Stubbs's exquisite William Anderson with Two Saddle-Horses (I793); and Amigoni's Frederick, Prince of Wales (Fig.66), whose colour and handling are once again as light and airy as the imagery. The exhibition also enables one to see in a good light works normally secluded deeper within Buckingham Palace (such as the Cuyp Trooper with a Grey Horse), on show at Windsor or at Hampton Court - whose lighting and atmosphere, while adequate enough for 'wall-fillers' (Kneller studio, Gennari, et al.), are death to really good pictures. Holbein's Derich Born and Noli Me Tangere are here; so are Lotto's Andrea Odoni, Titian's early Portrait of a Man and Franciabigio's late male portrait, recently identified as Jacopo Cennini by John Shearman, who also now attributes the Lady in Green (variously called Pontormo, Battista Dosso and Girolamo da Carpi) to Bronzino. The Rembrandt, brought back for Charles I in 1629, is The 'Artist's Mother'. The image startlingly anticipates the I655 Old Woman Reading (Buccleuch), although the colour scheme, naturally enough, is very close to the i629 Judas and the Thirty Pieces of Silver, where precisely the same juxtaposition of gold and dark green (on the inside of the hood) occurs in the hanging on the right.

There are one or two agreeable Vic- torian pictures, notably a fresh and informal Winterhalter (Fig.67), but the more modern sections are generally less rewarding. The Queen Mother, it is true, owns and has lent a Sisley (poor), a Monet (medium to good) and an excellent Augustus John of Shaw - she apparently benefited from the advice of Sir Jasper Ridley. More recent acquisitions by The

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Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, on the other hand, while quite respectable (Nolan, Sutherland, Hepworth), are bound to seem meagre when compared with the glories of the past. The exhibition, indeed, has the unfortunate effect of' showing up, rather than showing off, the taste of the monarch whose jubilee it is designed to celebrate. And for this The Queen has only herself to blame. The very limits of her taste might have been shown in a positive light had she consented to discuss her views on art (in even the most general terms, without naming names). As it is, the catalogue several times laments the want of information, with regard to earlier sovereigns, while includ- ing items owned by a monarch who appears to be much less forthcoming than some of her predecessors. By saying nothing, The Queen only encourages the idea that the world of art is her oyster, and thus stands convicted of not buying Braque, Matisse, Klee, Stella, Bacon or Calder; whereas by admitting that she only liked this or that kind of work her actual achievements, within a strictly modest area, might gain more lustre. But it is still an exhibition to see, for Duccio and Rubens, for two superb Roman Canalettos (also cleaned), for Holbein and Van Dyck, for the silver furniture made for William III, and for the very best of the modern things: Paul Nash's 1943 Landscape of the Vernal Equinox and the 1942 Piper water-colours of Windsor Castle, so well described by Robin Ironside over thirty years ago: 'Piper's responsive interpretation has suc- ceeded in imposing upon the useless battlements and turrets, with his dark skies and flashes of yellow light, an almost Spenserian magic.'

Many people know what the Liber Veritatis is, but few can have examined it, even since its acquisition in 1957 by the British Museum, where the fragile condition of the bound-up sheets precluded examination by all but the most serious Claude specialists. But it has recently been taken apart (for at least the second time in its history), and the 200 drawings mounted separately and where necessary restored. They are being shown in se- quence in a Print Room exhibition (until 26th June), with a number of related drawings from other sources in this country, from European and American collections, as well as from the B.M.'s unrivalled holdings, placed alongside. The show has been mounted by Michael Kitson, who has also prepared a special book to go with the exhibition; unfortunately, this was not ready in time for the opening. No original paintings have been included but there are photographs next to many of the drawings; and my only point of issue would be that there are not nearly enough photographs. There are no less than six drawings, for example, con- nected with the Frick Sermon on the Mount but no record of the painting to show how they relate to the final design.

Kitson and R6thlisberger, whose studies

of the Liber Veritatis may reasonably be called definitive (see the three articles in this Journal in January, September & November i959), undermined forever the old idea (first put about by Baldinucci) that the book had been simply a kind of file-record of completed paintings, made as a guard against fraud. They also stressed that many of the later drawings in the Liber could be regarded as works of art in their own right; but the new exhibition suggests that they did not go far enough in this direction. What is most striking, seeing the Liber spread out in its proper order, is how early on in his career - from the late 1630's even - this unique 'record' was richly overlaid with aesthetic ambi- guity. A simple linear sketch would have been enough to cover the distribution of motifs; whereas what evidently absorbed Claude, well beyond documentary re- quirements, was the play of light, in the sky, on clouds and water and foliage, rendered with the most delicate use of wash.

Like many of the other Liber drawings, the Imaginary View of Tivoli (Fig.74; i642, after the small Seilern copper) has, over and above its delicacy, a strange urgency that is invariably absent from the paintings, with their more restrained touch, and which has much to do with the small scale of the Liber format (average size, 17-75 by 26 cm.) and the speedier, more informal technique of pen and wash. Drawing after drawing emerges as a masterpiece of lyrical intensity, an image of paradise on earth that for intimacy and power can scarcely be rivalled in European art, even by Samuel Palmer, whose work often comes to mind as one goes round the exhibition. It is hard to imagine anything more beautiful, in their evolved clarity and delicacy, than some of the late sheets - such as the Perseus and the Origin of Coral (L.V. I84) - in which Claude took the maximum advantage of the blue paper bound up in alternating sections in the Liber volume.

The exhibition is also very instructive. Because some of Claude's most unusual paintings no longer survive, the Liber Veritatis brings out the sheer variety of his vision more strongly than any selection of the pictures could possibly do. L.V.59, for example, records the only known moonlit scene, and the drawing shows a mastery of light effects every bit as developed at Rembrandt in, say, the 1647 Rest on the Flight into Egypt. L.V.i8O (Fig.75) is one of several drawings which demonstrate Claude's intentions much more clearly than the relevant paintings in their present condition: the picture that L.V.I8O records is in Brussels and certainly was, quite recently (and probably still is), filthy dirty and virtually impossible to see.

Bill Drummond, at his new Covent Garden Gallery, has developed an enviable talent for finding and presenting the work of little known but actually rather interesting landscape painters of the past. Recently there was Charles Wirg-

man; now it is the turn of George Cum- berland (1754-1848), who is best known for his friendship with Blake. He studied at the Royal Academy but a private income undermined any professional am- bitions that he may have entertained. Instead, he wrote articles and guide-books, kept up his friendships in the art world and maintained an even more extensive corres- pondence. He also made water-colour sketches wherever he went; and it is a group of these studies, dateable between

i815 and 1828, when he was living in Bristol, that constitutes the exhibition at the Covent Garden Gallery (9th March- 6th April; the catalogue has a good introduction by David Bindman).

As might be imagined, given the Bristol connection, there is some Danby influence but for most of the time Cumberland seems to have been uninterested in rival- ling the achievements of his greater contemporaries. The vision is sometimes peri- lously fragile, in the sense that it borders on the amateur, but often it is refreshingly direct. Constable and Turner give us a poetic response to nature in which interpretation is all; but Cumberland, quite unconsciously, provides a social view, a feeling of what Britain actually looked like in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. His art is the equivalent of an unpretentious and observant diary; but being sensitive, Cumberland could not help but absorb something of the spirit of the age. What frequently come to mind, in this charming exhibition, are not other English water-colourists, or even the Bristol School, but Danish landscape painters like Eckersberg. Cumberland's beautiful Cob at Lyme of 1825 (Fig.7 1) reveals precisely the same kind of visual thinking, the same freshness and modesty of intent, the same response to life- enhancing light.

Talking of water-colours, it is a shame that people still treat them like a debu- tante in the 1870's, never allowed out alone and unaccompanied. The English variety are the worst of the lot; like the sorrows of Claudius, 'they come not single spies, but in battalions'. Agnew's recent, Io4th Annual Exhibition of Water-colours and Drawings had no less than 275 jostling for attention: an exhausting kaleidoscope of genteel scenery and Trollopean spires, prompt sunsets and low folk busy pretending to be staffage. Oh, for a showing of the ten best things by themselves - a group that would certainly have included Cozens's Mount Parnassus from the Road between Livadia and Delphi (c. I790), based on a drawing by James Stuart but still a triumph of imaginative feeling; Turner's vaporous Lake of Lucerne by Moonlight (c.184 ); and The Curfew (1870), a lush late Palmer, one of a series of twelve illustrations to Milton commissioned by a London solicitor, Leonard Valpy. Joseph Nash's Interior of a Victorian Mansion (Fig 61) makes up in interest for what it may lack in technical finesse. The scene has not been identified, and the help of readers is

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requested; although I suspect it is probably a fantasy.

The National Portrait Gallery's exhibition of recent acquisitions (until 20th March) includes a number of interesting items. The grandest is the large Lely double-portrait of James II, as Duke of York, with his first wife, Anne Hyde; and it would be grander still had Lely lavished as much attention on the faces (particularly Anne Hyde's) as he evidently did on the landscape, the draperies and other accessories. This is the first portrait that I have seen for a long time in which a lady of quality is upstaged by a polished helmet. There is another picture of James II, this time as a child, and one of a set of three small panels painted by Cornelius Johnson about I640. The other two are of his sister, Princess Mary, and of Charles II as Prince of Wales (Fig.76). Recovered at the Restoration, the three paintings remained in the Royal Collec- tion until the time of Queen Anne. There is a slight but charming chalk sketch by Gainsborough for a lost portrait of his close friend, the viola da gamba player, C. F. Abel; some interesting Victorian material; and a group of photographs from the Dorothy Wilding archive.

Edgar Chahine (1874-1947) is a little- known artist of the Belle Epoque who was born in Vienna of Armenian parents. He spent most of his life in Paris, where he arrived in 1895, and is best known for his pre-1914 prints of Parisian life. A good selection is currently on view at the Lumley Cazalet Gallery in Davies Street. The vision is essentially eclectic, with many borrowings from the Impres- sionists and Post-Impressionists (Manet, Degas, Lautrec; Whistler in the views of Venice), and of much the same emotional weight as the work of Helleu and Boldini, by whom he must also have been influ- enced. It is a dream of elegance and fashion, gossamer thin, and depends for its effect on what is left out as much as on what is put in. Charm is vital; finesse is all. In the best of the earlier prints (Fig. 65), Chahine achieves the right tone of luxurious facility. Many of the landscapes, though conventional enough, are also very pleasing. At his worst, Chahine is simply arch and pert. Readers who wish to know more are recommended M. R. Taban- elli's new Catalogue Raisonni of the prints; this reproduces all 428 items and is very well printed. Further details from I1 Mercante di Stampe, Corso Venezia, 29, 20121, Milan.

At the Mayor Gallery (until 25th March) there is a good double exhibition of the work of Robert Colquhoun (19I4- 62) and his life-long friend, Robert MacBryde (1913-66), who belonged to that short phase of English Neo-Romanti- cism so acutely described by Robin Ironside in his I945 essay, Painting since 1939, from which I have already quoted the remark about Piper and where MacBryde and Colquhoun are included in the final section on 'the rising genera-

tion'. That promise unfortunately never quite

materialized. There are several very good pictures at the Mayor Gallery - Mac- Bryde's Backgammon Player, with a green face like a Greek mask of tragedy, has a disconcerting power that triumphs over the painting's acute formal self-conscious- ness - but the overall impression is dis- appointing. It was the usual problem, of course: not of absorbing but of surviving the influences - above all Picasso and Sutherland at his most potent. The example of Picasso's '30s style was particularly dangerous if accepted, so to say, at its own tempo. The only way out of the Picasso trap was towards either greater abstraction (William Scott) or a more overtly expressionist idiom (Francis Bacon). MacBryde's still-lifes (Fig.56) are clever but basically academic, without Picasso's own harsh, playful energy (or, come to that, Braque's infinitely subtle feeling for colour and texture). Colquhoun comes across at the Mayor Gallery as the more intelligent and interesting of the two; and he had greater range. The early (c.194 1) Portrait of David Haughton (Fig.49) combines Sutherland influence in the thorny forms of the setting (against a hot, dusky reddish ground) with a touch of Wyndham Lewis in the head. The much later Bitch and Pup (I1958; Fig.53), with its greys and whites and single area of strong blue at the top, is taut and zingy in a way that MacBryde's still-lifes never quite manage to be. The highpoint of their careers was the period from the end of the War until about 1950; after that lack of success, shortage of money, drink and personal problems woefully undermined their lives.

Michael Ayrton (1921-75) never had to face those kind of problems. He came from an intellectual background and was already designing a production of Macbeth for Gielgud when scarcely out of his teens. Thereafter, as well as painting and sculpting, Ayrton became well known as a writer and broadcaster, and even worked on films. Yet the very degree of his versatility and potentiality always somehow overshadowed his actual achievements so that he, too, in much subtler and infinitely less painful ways, came to seem like a failure. The recent exhibition of 261 items at the Birming- ham City Art Gallery lovingly and expertly prepared by Peter Cannon- Brookes, made out a very good case for the defence.

The show began with work of 1940, very much in the same Neo-Romantic mood as Sutherland, Colquhoun and Minton, whose portrait he painted in 1941 ; but almost from the beginning Ayrton reveals at first almost subliminal, but later more overt, literary overtones. This is obvious in the I942-43 Temptation of St Anthony (Fig.5I), which combines Sur- realist touches with a feeling for space derived from El Greco (the National Gallery version of the Agony in the Garden

or the Laocoon come to mind). In both small paintings, such as the 1944 Earth- bound (Fig.5o), as well as in stage sets, Ayrton continued to explore the possibilities of Neo-Romanticism. As the 1940's progressed, however, certain unhappy tendencies became apparent.

One of them is bound up with the whole problem of Ayrton's attitude to abstraction. It becomes clear, especially after going round the exhibition a second and third time, that Ayrton, deep down, was never all that concerned with abstract form as such. He was prepared to use it, though not necessarily in a calculating or even conscious way, as a means of en- livening a style and vision that were basically traditional. It is characteristic that whereas Henry Moore extended his range of abstract shapes by a study of skull and bone forms, Ayrton used them as an underpinning for a conventional type of imagery. Many of the sculptures relating to the Icarus legend (which, with the Maze and the Minotaur, obsessed Ayrton) suffer from this lack of instinctive faith in abstraction. The most successful are the bronzes of the Minotaur itself (Fig.54), perhaps because in its mythical shape and natural condition the abstract and the real could be reconciled without strain.

The other dispiriting 'tendency' can be summed up by Entrance to a Wood, a painting of 1945 that adapts Sutherland's 1939 Entrance to a Lane and turns it into a florid stage set in livid shades of green. This is among the first of a whole series of works dating right up to the time of his death whose vulgarity makes one catch one's breath. Ayrton often did small things very well; and he was frequently a superb draughtsman (Fig.55); but how could so gifted and so talented an artist produce works whose spiritual home is the open air exhibition along the railings of Green Park? Lacking, as I believe, the priceless gift of instinctive taste (which is only aesthetic intelligence guided by intuition), he frequently mistook ingen- uity for profundity. There is a group of late bronzes in which small, Riccio-sized figures are placed next to neutral perspex, creating all manner of reflectionrs (Fig.57). It is a very interesting idea, but there is no real resonance to it - it is the maquette of a clever stage designer. Ayrton is too clever, too ingenious, too intellectual, he loads everything on to his technique, as it were a dumb-waiter, without ever finding a corresponding amount in technique. He obviously wanted a kind of art as deep and mysterious and full of formal fascination as Leonardo's; but what he did produce is seldom in balance: dense yet formally impoverished, sometimes even banal, though rich in externalized associations - just like a Garofalo.

Between 9th March and 6th April, the Covent Garden Gallery is also host to an Old Master drawings exhibition presented by Adolphe Stein. There are a number of items both of interest and high

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quality. There is an elaborate pen, ink and wash study of the church of the Redentore by Canaletto (see illustration on p.xlix); a double-sided sheet of studies by Cigoli for the Last Supper formerly in the Collegiata at Empoli; and a possible self-portrait by Carlo Maratta. Ribera is represented by a study of a reclining St Jerome; and Ingres by two drawings, one a portrait of the minor Neo-Classical sculptor, Charles Dupaty (1771-1825). There is also interesting material by Jongkind, Menzel, Thoma (study for the 1893 Jingling auf dem Fisch), both Tiepolos, Rosa and Delacroix.

There can be no doubt about the most important of the recent shows - not the best, certainly, but the most significant. This was the exhibition of 'Unofficial Art from the Soviet Union' at the I.C.A. Galleries. The majority of the exhibits came from the Russian Museum in Exile in Montgeron, near Paris, established by Alexander Glezer, a collector and friend of many Russian artists who was expelled in February 1975. Glezer is also co-author (along with Igor Golomshtok) of the excellent accompanying book (available from Secker & Warburg) prepared by an admirable organization known as The Writers and Scholars Educational Trust: for more information about their very important activities, which includes pub- lication of the Index on Censorship, the reader is referred to 21, Russell Street, London W.C.2. The text of the exhibition book makes for extremely depressing reading; it is also in many ways more intellectually rewarding than most of the exhibits themselves, which are in a wide variety of styles with which we in the West are already familiar. The aesthetic standard this side of the Iron Curtain also tends to be much higher. The most interesting items are those which would seem to be making a crypto-political as much as an aesthetic point (Fig.52). Carl Andre's bricks may not amount to much; but at least he is free to play with them, and we to judge them as we wish.

KEITH ROBERTS

'The Cranbrook Colony' at Wolverhampton

Understanding the past, on its own terms, is fraught with difficulties because we usually cannot (or do not want to) accept the same priorities, take for granted what contemporaries assumed automatic- ally. When was the last history of seven- teenth-century Dutch painting written from the point of view of Gerard de Lairesse? There is also the question, for historians, of stimulating content or associations. Take G. B. O'Neill's Mending Dolly (Fig.69). This small canvas belongs to a type of genre painting that was popular all over Europe and which a great many people were prepared to pay good money for; but it is hard to imagine it exercising the mind of a Panofsky ('Das Bild mit demn Ptippchen in Liverpool', Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen .. .).

The special merit of the exhibition devoted to the Cranbrook Colony (Cen- tral Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, until 12th March; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, 26th March-I 7th April) is to examine, carefully and seriously, just such a neglected area of nineteenth-century British painting. There is a most useful catalogue by Andrew Greg (Assistant Keeper of Fine Art at Wolverhampton), who has brought together seventy-four pictures by six painters: F. D. Hardy, J. C. Horsley, A. E. Mulready, G. Hardy, G. B. O'Neill and Thomas Webster. They all spent part of their lives in the small Kent town of Cranbrook, which had the double attraction of being in picturesque countryside yet within easy reach (via the new railway) of London and business.

Partly what unites them, and certainly what provides the unifying thread in the Wolverhampton show, is the theme of childhood. There is also the influence of Dutch and Flemish genre painting, already transposed into refined and popular terms by Wilkie (e.g. Blind Man's Buff in the current show at The Queen's Gallery), who was an important influence on Webster (18oo-86; Fig.72), the oldest of the group. Ostade, Teniers and Steen are also obvious general sources for paintings that are usually small in scale and which depend on finish and careful observation of detail and types. John Callcott Horsley, who always courted a high moral tone (he was known as 'Clothes Horsley' because of his anxieties about the propriety of drawing from the nude model at the Academy), is a characteristic figure from the later, more florid phase of the genre (Fig.68). His scale is larger, the effects flashier, the social tone higher; the influence is often now from Pieter de Hooch (acknowledged by the artist himself in his autobiography).

The obsession with child subjects re- quires no Freudian explanations. There is actually a painting in the Wolverhampton exhibition, tucked away at the end, which goes a long way, I believe, to explain both the content and tone of many of the neighbouring exhibits. It is by G. B. O'Neill and is entitled Public Opinion (Fig. 73). Compared with, shall we say, Zoffany's Tribuna, which implies an ex- clusive, aristocratic and knowledgeable response to art, O'Neill's canvas suggests that to be popular a picture must appeal (and appeal instantly) to people of all ages and classes. Above all, it must not bring a blush to the cheek of the young person.

In exhibitions crammed with works competing for attention child subjects, with their instant appeal to a sentimental public, were natural show stealers. Also, as Dickens shrewdly realised, children could be used to publicize the iniquities of the social system without seeming to attack the social structure; reform might well be achieved by appeals to the con- science through sentiment rather than by reasoned argument and criticism of an overtly political character. The death of

Jo, the crossing-sweeper, in Bleak House (1853), is a classic instance; and because Dickens was a great writer this is still a genuinely touching episode. A. E. Mul- ready (who may have been an illegitimate son of William Mulready) is making exactly the same kind of point in A London Crossing Sweeper and a Flower Girl (1884) and in Share a Crust (1871), which shows a hungry child in rags across a street from a jewellers bearing the legend 'by appoint- ment to the Queen and Royal Family', a juxtaposition that would surely have been thought subversive had the down-and-out been adult.

But these paintings, alas, while interesting enough as documents, are not moving because they are so feeble as works of art. This is the real weakness of the whole Wolverhampton show; most of the exhibits are really not very good. Quality emerges, however, now and then. Horsley's Interior of the Great Hall, Haddon: Rent Day (Fig.7o) is a charming oil-sketch in the tradition of Bonington's small costume pieces and is infinitely more satisfying than Pay for Peeping (Fig.68), which is like an episode from Just William in fancy dress. Nonetheless, this is a most interesting and stimulating exhibition. Even Mending Dolly turns out to have Panofskian possibilities: the picture over the fireplace is a much reduced copy of Titian's Three Ages of Man.

KEITH ROBERTS

Kabinet van Tekeningen: Dutch and Flemish Drawings Recently on view in Rotterdam, the

exhibition Kabinet van Tekeningen: z6e en 17e eeuwse Hollandse en Vlaamse Tekeningen uit een Amsterdamse verzameling can be seen in Paris at the Institut N6erlandais from 20th January to 6th March and in Brussels at the Royal Library from 19th March to 3oth April. The selection of the items and the compilation of the excellent catalogue are the work of Drs. Bram Meij, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the Boymans, and Carlos van Hasselt of the Institut Neer- landais in collaboration with the collector.

The exhibition, splendidly presented at the Boymans, has many fine examples of the work of reasonably familiar draughtsmen; however, it reveals the collector's particular interests in a number of fascina- ting ways. There is, for example, an important group of drawings by Dutch figure draughtsmen working around I6oo, often loosely linked by the term 'manner- ist'. The variety of style and subject-matter displayed here work against the usefulness of the term. Abraham Bloemaert (drawings by whom include a study for The Entomb- ment in the Boymans), Karel van Mander, Cornelis van Haarlem, Jan Saenredam, Hendrick Goltzius, are all represented; but the palm goes without question to Jacob de Gheyn. The inventiveness and range of this great draughtsman can be seen to superb advantage: the group includes one of the best of his portrait heads,

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49. Young Man in a Lands:ape - Portrait of David Haughton, by Robert Colquhoun. Signed.

Canvas, 57"75

by 75"5

cm. (Exh. Mayor Gallery, London). 50. The Earthbound, by Michael Ayrton. Signed and dated 1944. Oil on board, 50-5 by 75'5 cm.

(Collection Peter L. Moldon Esq.; exh. City Art Gallery, Birmingham).

51. The Temptation of St Anthony, by Michael Ayrton. Signed and dated 1942-43. Panel, 55-5 by

72"75 cm. (Collection Mrs Elisabeth'Ayrton; exh. City Art Gallery, Bir-

mingham).

52. Execution If, by Alexander Makhov. 1974. (Exh. I.C.A., London).



53. Bitch and Pup, by Robert Colquhoun. Signed. 1958. Canvas, 121 by 90-25 cm. (Exh. Mayor Gallery, London).

54. Minotaur Alarmed, by Michael Ayrton. 1970. Bronze, 25 by 15 by 15 cm. (Bruton Gallery; exh. City Art Gallery, Birmingham).

55. Detail from Portrait of William Colding, by Michael Ayrton. Signed and dated 1965. Black ink wash, 40 by 50 cm. (Collection Mrs William Golding; exh. City Art Gallery, Birmingham).

56. Still life with Fruit and Vegetables or Large Still Life, by Robert MacBryde. Signed. Canvas, 88-25 by 143 cm. (Exh. Mayor Gallery, London).

57. Lens, by Michael Ayrton. 1974. Bronze and perspex, 315 by 35"25 by 20 cm. (Collection Mrs Elisabeth Ayrton; exh. City Art Gallery,

Birmingham).



58. The Vicomtesse de Coislin, by Hippolyte-Jean Flandrin. 1846. Canvas, 100-3 by 76-2 cm. (Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Mr and Mrs Alvan Macaulay Jr.).

- - p ' MVNuI, u 'J- A4 4

59. Madame Moitessier, by J. A. D. Ingres. Signed. Canvas, I20 by 92 cm. (National Gallery, London).

6o.., Detail from Bathing Women, by J. A. D. Ingres. 1807. (Musde Bonnat, Bayonne).

61. A Drawing Room, by Joseph Nash. Water-colour, 53"5 by 89 cm. (Exh. Agnew's, London). 62. Detail of a study for Madame Moitessier

Standing (Washington), by J. A. 1). Ingres. c.1850-51. (Private Collection, Paris).



63. 64. 65-

63. The Grotta Vecchia at Posillipo, by Willem Schellinks. Black chalk, pencil, brown crayon, brown and grey wash,

46"2 by 33-2 cm. (Private Collection, Amsterdam; exh. Institut Nierlandais, Paris).

64. Study for a large beech tree, by Jacob de Gheyn II. Brown pen, black chalk, brown- grey wash, 35 by 25-7 cm. (Private Collec- tion, Amsterdam; exh. Institut Neerlandais, Paris).

65. Le Boa de Plumes (Ada Visentini), by Edgar Chahine. 1902. Dry-point, 42 by 27-5 cm. (Exh. Lumley Cazalet Ltd., London).

66.

66. Frederick, Prince of Wales, by Jacopo Ami- goni. 1735-36. After cleaning. Canvas, 127-5 by o104 cm. (Exh. The Queen's Gallery, London).

67. Princess Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, by F. X. Winterhalter. Signed and dated 1855. Canvas,

35"25 by 30o25 cm. (Exh. The

Queen's Gallery, London).

67.

68. Pay for Peeping, by J. C. Horsley. Exh. R.A. 1872. Canvas,

102"9 by 127-6 cm. (Cart-

wright Hall, Bradford; exh. Central Art Gallery, Wolverhampton).

69. Mending Dolly, by George B. O'Neill. Signed and dated i1868. Canvas, 41-6 by

36.4 cm. (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool;

cxh. Central Art Gallery, Wolverhampton).

68. 69.



70o. Interior of the Great Hall Haddon; Rent Day, by j. C. Horsley.

Signed and dated 1866. Canvas, 35-6 by 35-6 cm. (York City Art 71. 'The Cob [or Pier] at Lyme augt. 1825 Preparing under Capn. Savage Treasury gave ?/3ooo', by George Cumberland. Water-colour, 152 by Gallery; exh. Central Art Gallery, Wolverhampton). 29-8 cm. (Exh. Covent Garden Gallery, London).

72. Roast Pig, by Thomas Webster. Signed and dated 1862. Exh. R.A. 1862. Canvas, 72 4 by i 8-7 cm. (Sheffield City Art Gallery; exh. Central Art Gallery, Wolverhampton).

73. Public Opinion, by G. B. O'Neill. Exh. R.A. 1863. Canvas, 53-2 by 78-8 cm. (Leeds City Art Gallery; exh. Central Art Gallery, Wolverhampton).



74. Landscape with a Traveller on a Bridge, by Claude Lorrain. Liber Veritatis No.67. (British Museum).

75. Coast Scene with Aeneas Hunting, by Claude Lorrain. Liber Veritatis No. 8o. (British Museum).

76. Charles HII as Prince of Wales, by Cornelius Johnson. 1639. Panel, 29 by 20 cm. (National Portrait Gallery, London).

77. Study of a Tree, by Roelant Savery. Black chalk, wash, on brown paper, 48-2 by 37 cm. (Private Collection, Amsterdam; exh. Institut Neerlandais, Paris).

78. Walking Monk, by Philips Koninck. Brown pen, grey- brown wash,

20o5 by 15'4 cm. (Private Collection,

Amsterdam; exh. Institut Neerlandais, Paris).



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