BBC FOUR:
ART, PASSION & POWER: THE STORY OF THE ROYAL COLLECTION
Forty years
since the story of the Royal Collection was last told so extensively on
television, a four-part series for BBC Four brings the many treasures of the
Collection to television. Andrew
Graham-Dixon selects some of the most spectacular works of art, as well as some
of the lesser-known objects, as he visits royal residences, museums and
galleries across the UK.
TV Review:
Art, Passion and Power: The Story of the Royal Collection (BBC4)
Sean
O'Grady is intrigued by Andrew Graham-Dixon's account of a remarkable gathering
of works
Sean
O'Grady
@_seanogrady
Wednesday 24 January 2018
Art isn’t
stats, but the cannonball numbers propelled towards the viewer by Andrew
Graham-Dixon in the latest instalment in his survey of the Royal Collection
were as impactful as any of the magnificent works we were allowed a glimpse of.
The Collection, for example, contains the world’s largest gathering of
Canalettos (50 or so); the world’s greatest collection of drawings by Leonardo
da Vinci (say 600); and the heaviest mobile work of art in this country, if not
the world, the Gold State Coach. This four-tonner was completed in 1762, and
the Queen recently gave poor marks to it in her (belated) report of her 1953
road test. Ride quality, very poor indeed; craftsmanship of gilded tritons and
golden mutts – peerless.
Even with a
focus on judiciously chosen episodes and works it was, in reality, and even on
the small screen, all too much to take in. That is hardly Graham-Dixon’s fault;
it is the nature of the beast, that beast being the astonishingly varied and
magnificent collection of art and furniture displayed across palaces and stately
houses that are themselves works of fine architecture (mostly). It might well
be the greatest such collection since the ancients.
I won’t
labour the point, but I have to mention that it is, despite some public
viewings and loans to collections, an essentially private affair, the property
of one person, the Queen, by hereditary right. This, I think, radically
devalues its worth to the nation. Ask yourself, for example, what was the last
time you actually saw Vermeer’s 1662 masterpiece A Lady at the Virginal with a
Gentleman. Or the silver furniture commissioned to rival Louis XIV’s
Versailles? Or the Mogul-era paintings so fine they say the brushstrokes were
rendered using the hairs of a kitten?
Not every
monarch was an enlightened patron of the arts. George II, for instance, his
words rendered with a hammy German accent by Graham-Dixon is reputed to have
remarked that “I hate art and I hate poetry”, though one exception would seem
to be the not-very-good painting of a “Fat Venus” that he had a bit of a
Hanoverian crush on.
By
contrast, Charles II, by instinct an absolutist, was determined to restore the
Royal Collection as much as he was the throne itself, much of it having been
sold off or melted down during England's brief experiment with Republicanism
under Oliver Cromwell. Charles’s coronation portrait, complete with new crown,
new sceptre and new orb shows him face on, staring down anyone who cared to
gaze up at his countenance, his spindly legs “manspreading” across the canvas.
Quite a divine sight of kings, you might say.
Charles II,
by the way, also seems to have been a bit of a Harvey Weinstein of his time.
The long gallery of portraits of the “Windsor Beauties” by Sir Peter Lely are a
testament to his taste, libertine ways and (abuse of) power, their eyes
suggesting a post-regal-coital state of contentment. Except for one, that is:
Francis Stuart, Duchess of Richmond. At the age of 15 she was introduced to the
court of Charles II and he became obsessed with her, which put her in a
predicament. In the words of our narrator: “Imagine having to rebuff the
advances of a lecherous king in a greased periwig.” She never, to her great
credit, became the king’s mistress. An early hero of #MeToo, right there.
Given where
the UK’s national finances seem to be heading right now this might be a good
moment for Philip Hammond to get all this stuff valued, if only for insurance
purposes, as they say on the Antiques Roadshow. It would make a substantial
inroad into the national debt. As I say, given that most of us never get to see
any of the Collection, you’d have to ask yourself if you’d miss them.
I’m not
ashamed to admit that I was terrified by the end of the latest Inside No. 9
playlet. The story of a long-married couple trying to save what was left of
their 20-year marriage was poignant and difficult enough to watch anyway. Harriet
(Nicola Walker) trying, for example, role play as sexy “Nurse Honeypot and her
magic fingers” on her bored and boring husband Adrian (Steve Pemberton), was an
exquisitely embarrassing and funny scene, as is so much of Inside No. 9.
Nothing, though, prepared the viewer for the rapid denouement. In the final few
minutes, with magnificent economy of direction and dialogue, was revealed the
darkest of dark secrets in professional wedding photographer Adrian’s basement
dark room. For Adrian had been keeping, Josef Fritzl-style, their Polish
cleaner (Agnes, Magdalena Kurek) and her son, we suppose fathered by
Adrian, locked up and fed on Pot Noodles
for the past nine years: but, after a failed suicide attempt, was then himself
incarcerated in that same cell, to be fed on Pot Noodles and chained to a wall
indefinitely. Worst of all, we felt as though he deserved it. To be drawn into
such dark thoughts was a deeply disquieting experience. Never has comedy
been so grotesque.
Charles II:
Art and Power review – crowning glories of a royal passion
Queen’s
Gallery, London
Portraits
depicted him as a grotesque figure but the king loved art and amassed a
magnificent array of works that celebrate his love of theatre – and Nell Gwyn
Jonathan
Jones
Thu 7 Dec
2017 17.28 GMT Last modified on Thu 7 Dec 2017 17.31 GMT
Stage
villain … detail from Charles II, c1676, by John Michael Wright. See the full
image Photograph: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Charles II
had the face of a corrupt satyr. His portraits resemble the one Oscar Wilde’s
Dorian Gray kept in the attic. Every sin seems etched into the work as a
grotesque wrinkle. His heavy black eyebrows and ungainly nose add to the
ugliness. In a popular print that was pinned up in about 1661 in a pub or
coffee house (it still has the pinholes), these features are exaggerated into
an almost devilish mask.
He may not
have minded looking like a stage villain, because he loved and supported the
stage. When Charles was invited to claim the British throne in 1660, plays had
been illegal for nearly two decades. They were banned for their “lascivious
Mirth and Levity” in 1642 by the Puritans, who won the English civil war. Their
religious bigotry was one of the reasons crowds hailed Charles II so
enthusiastically when he returned from exile in the Low Countries, after the
death of the Puritan dictator Oliver Cromwell.
A mezzotint
portrait of a nude Nell Gwyn, posing as Venus, reveals the exact nature of
Charles II’s passion for theatre – it was primarily a passion for female
actors. Women were immediately employed as professional actors when the
theatres reopened in 1660. In Shakespeare’s time that had been inconceivable.
Gwyn rose from selling oranges to acting in comedies, to bearing the king two
illegitimate sons, as a portrait in which she reclines on draperies while her
two blueblooded boys float above her breasts. No, this was not feminism, but it
wasn’t cultural conservatism either.
All of
these are printed images, not paintings. They’re beautiful, funny, strange and
grotesque – we see in these prints the beginning of the visual world that would
soon produce William Hogarth. Most spectacular of all, a giant louse bursts out
of a book, its vicious claws clutching a stalk, its hard carapace covered with
tiny hairs. It would make a great illustration to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis,
in which a man wakes up to find he has changed into a giant insect. In fact,
this is a superbly accurate scientific drawing from Robert Hooke’s 1665 book
Micrographia, in which this pioneering researcher describes and illustrates
tiny creatures he has seen with a microscope. Charles II is known to have owned
similar drawings by Hooke’s friend Christopher Wren.
Hooke was a
gifted artist as well as one of the founders of modern science. He’d learned to
draw from his teacher, the artist Peter Lely, who became the definitive painter
of the Restoration court. The reason Lely was so perfect for the job was that
he enjoyed painting “beauties” – he actually painted a series called The
Windsor Beauties. While not exactly masterpieces, they leap into life when he
gets aroused. The king’s mistress Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth,
looks powerful and monarchical, holding a crown of flowers between her fingers
as if it was the monarchy itself. Protestants feared her power over the king lured
him towards Catholicism.
This is all
good fun and fascinating history, but the real drop-dead highlights of this
absorbing show don’t come from Britain at all. Charles spent a lot of money
recreating the royal art collection, which had been sold off by Cromwell. In
fact, the Royal Collection as we know it starts with his reign – and what
gobsmacking works he purchased, or sometimes repurchased. He got his hands on
the greatest collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings in the world. Just four
are on view here from the hundreds of stupendous sheets that are still
preserved in the Royal Library, but they light up a winter day.
Another
treasure is Lorenzo Lotto’s portrait of Andrea Odoni, my favourite painting
owned by the Queen. In this 1527 masterpiece, a man puts his hand on his heart
as he daydreams of ancient grandeur amid his collection of Roman marble
fragments. The white and yellow stone heads and headless bodies seem to come to
life around him in this intensely atmospheric, enigmatic painting.
If only
Britain’s public art collections were as rich. If only the Royal Collection was
part of our free museums. Exhibitions like this show that it is undeniably
being well run. At a time when the monarchy looks like Britain’s healthiest
institution, even its most outrageous asset, the Royal Collection is clearly
being managed intelligently. In a year when good exhibitions of pre-modern art
were thin on the ground, God bless the royals for giving a damn about history.
Charles II:
Art and Power is at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, until 13
May.
No comments:
Post a Comment