Antiques Trade Gazette 71
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PERSONAL VIEW
■ SANDY MALLET comes to realise that stifling supply really does create demand when it comes to art
I’M always missing brilliant shows. I kick myself that I didn’t get to see the exhibition of cassoni at the
Courtauld last year, Love and Marriage in Renaissance
Florence. I’ve always hankered after one of those sumptuously painted marriage chests – surely the perfect thing to have at the end of a grand four-poster – and love the combination of furniture and fine art in a single object, ignoring the frontiers between disciplines to create scintillating resonances. Recently I missed another fascinating exhibition – Saved Art– in Madrid earlier this year. This documented the extraordinary evacuation of masterpieces from the Prado by the Republican government in February 1939, as the armies of the Nationalists got closer to the city. Intriguing footage exists of huge paintings being manhandled in their hundreds onto open trucks, with barely a blanket to cover them, while plumes of smoke drift over the city. Many of these paintings – ones we know well today
from glossy catalogues and safe gallery walls – then went on an extraordinary journey through Spain, being chased by bombs, eventually crossing the border and travelling on to Geneva, where they were put on show. What a poignant and powerful exhibition that must have been, especially when, not long after, the victorious General Franco demanded them all back, and off to Spain they trundled. The Louvre had a similar exhibition last summer – which, of course, I also missed – of photographs of the evacuation and later re-installation of works during the Second World War. From 1938 on, pieces in French public collections were stored in selected châteaux, as far away from any military action as possible. In mid 1939, works from the Louvre were packed up, including 3690 paintings, and during a few days in September huge convoys snaked their way out of Paris.
The Winged Victory of Samothracewent off to the
Château of Valency, the Mona Lisato Chambord, then Louvigny and finally to Montal. With the German
occupation, the museum was nominally reopened, though many of the galleries were set aside for storing looted art.
At exactly the time the Prado’s pictures were heading back to Madrid, in September 1939, the National Gallery here was packing up its own masterpieces for safekeeping outside of the capital. Kenneth Clark, the Gallery’s director, wanted to ship them off to Canada, but was countermanded by Churchill in a wonderfully Churchillian way: “Hide them in caves and cellars. Not one picture shall leave this island.” You can hear the gruffness in his voice. Initially they were farmed out to a gang of sensible places, all suitably out of range of enemy planes. The University of Wales in Bangor, the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth, Penrhyn Castle etc. But by 1940, with the Luftwaffe getting ever more adventurous, memos started to go back and forth, and it was decided to move the biggest and best works to an even safer hideout, a slate mine deep inside a Welsh mountain. From then on, until 1945, one picture was famously extracted each month to be shown to bomb-battered Londoners, who eagerly lapped them up. The first ‘Picture of the Month’ was Titian’s Noli me Tangere, and others that followed included works by Botticelli, Bellini and Hobbema. Velazquez’s Rokeby Venusdrew a crowd of 35,000 visitors in September 1943 when it was chosen. An amazing statistic given the dangers of moving round London at that time. I saw a TV drama a while ago based on the evacuation of the National Gallery’s collection. This time a modern-day Gallery had sprung a leak, and the masterpieces had to be stored somewhere secure for a few months, so they took them back to the cave they’d been hidden in during the War. A neat parallel that was further stretched by a modern version of ‘Picture of the Month’ for the local Welsh villagers, who went a bundle on Van Gogh and Willem Kalf. What the TV drama brought home, as eloquently as
A little goes a longer way
the thousands that turned up to see The Rokeby Venus, was that art, when rationed, is clearly a lot sexier than when in bountiful supply. Single paintings presented on their own, seem to have a much deeper, more powerful appeal than a whole gallery full. Less choice means more focus. That, too, is pretty obvious, but it’s not a lesson we always take to heart. I was hanging a show of my own work the other day (on until April 23, if you’d like to take a look, though it’s down here in Beaminster), and found myself squashing more and more pictures onto the walls. The more they see the more they’ll buy, was what I thought. But on going back the next day I realised my mistake. The more space I could give to each piece, the grander it became and the louder the trumpets sounded. I halved the number of pictures. It’s also a question of tradition and taste, of course. Hop over to Haunch of Venison Yard and it’s rare you’ll find more than one object in each blindingly white room. Then have a look at a museum hang from 100 years ago and you’ll hardly see the walls for all the art. Perhaps we still stuff too much into our showrooms and galleries, eager to display greater and greater choice, not realising we just blunt the power of each object and end up selling far less. It’s a thought. I am about to get much more minimalist anyway. My time in the Dorset farmhouse is coming to a close, as the chap who owns it has understandably decided he wants to live there himself. So I’m packing up and heading off, though quite where I’m still not sure. Mounds of books and furniture will have to be boxed and wrapped and put in store (though not, I think, in a Welsh cave), and I’ll have to decide on a few essential objects to carry with me for the next month or so. It’ll give me a chance to put my theories to the test. Will being reduced to just one or two pictures make
me appreciate them all the more? It’ll be interesting to see.
sandy@sandymallet.com
“Hide them in caves and cellars. Not one picture shall leave this island”
London: summer capital of art
CONTACTS
EDITORIAL FAIRS:
davidmoss@atgmedia.comrolandarkell@atgmedia.com
GALLERY SHOWS:
annecrane@atgmedia.comannabrady@atgmedia.com
annecrane@atgmedia.com ADVERTISING
zoeprophet@atgmedia.com 020 7420 6652
AUCTIONS: ELIZABETH ARKELL
elizabetharkell@atgmedia.com 020 7420 6648
DEADLINES
EDITORIAL: Copy and picture deadline: Friday 23 April ADVERTISING:
Booking deadline: 30 April Copy deadline: 5 May
PUBLICATION DATE: ATG No 1940,
week ending 15 May
image © zoe prophet
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